My garden is a compost pile. Every fall I fill my garden with free leaves 2ft deep,by spring they are 7 inches deep. I plant my garden and by that fall there’s only 2 or 3 in. Of leaves left. Then I just repeat the process.
I am a gardener in SW Colorado, elevation of 7000 feet, where the climate is arid and the soil hard clay.. I started no dig gardening last year as my soil is hard dry clay with little organic matter. I had to purchase compost for my veggie and flower beds and have found that it is not totally broken down which had made growing difficult with little available nitrogen in the beginnings of the growing season. I now prepare my beds at least 9 months prior to planting by sheet mulching with cardboard and lasagna layers of manures, carbon material and home made compost. I have also found that the compost layers, once broken down create a wonderful soil but does not hold water well. Mulching with hay, straw and wood chips has been a good solution for moisture retention in my garden beds. Thanks for your great video.
I'm curious how long you've been at it in any one garden bed..? Wondering if it will hold water better, as your soil improves ( I mean, obviously it will, but I mean, if you'll notice much of a difference/how soon..). Am wondering how a broadfork , if you haven't used one yet, would affect this. I mean, I'm guessing you'd still need to use a not-compost-only-mulch on top, because for some, it heats too much, being dark colored and I wonder if your elevation makes that part of it... plus the dry air plus windy-ness, wicking away moisture so much. So, I'm wondering if your below-surface soil WILL otherwise hold moisture plenty well, once the humus and soil life gets up to a semi-decent level. Or if your plants are also just losing a lot of moisture as well, in that environment. Garden veg compared to what naturally grows there, especially.
Great conversation guys, lets have more of this type of content. Two highly experienced growers sharing their experiences and knowledge is awesone. Thanks.
Great discussion. I agree, creativity can go a long way. I source horse manure from a local stable, saw dust from my neighbor's wood shop (untreated wood), I grow cover crops and sorghum Sudan Grass (for my green material), I'm always searching the green waste bins in my neighborhood for leaves and stuff, and there's always wood chips. I can make about 15 to 20 yards of compost a year if I push it. Which is enough for my backyard garden.
Really interesting chat. I have an allotment over here in the UK and have been converting it from a barren almost sterile land which had been almost stripped bare of any nutrients to more of a no dig system. Although we try to compost as much as we can I found that during the winter, however much I'd save my food scraps with all good intentions, I just wasn't taking them up there on a regular basis. I've recently started the Bokashi bin system which I'm finding a bit easier as it only needs emptying once every couple of weeks. Also over here we are able to get municipal compost - that is green waste that is regularly collected by local councils and composted - then sold back at a fraction of the cost of shop bought. Of course the nutrient value can't be guaranteed but it certainly helps to add bulk and structure. Although it is an ongoing process the payback is priceless - we now have worms returning which tells us we're doing the right thing!
That was a great discussion and very helpful for this old new gardener. I am struggling with the compost situation both trying to make it an getting enough for my 300 ‘ garden I will order your book later today. Y’all havagudun.
Community supported composting! We are a very small farm, but access all of our compost material from the local community. In time I think this can be a model that redirects local waste to growers to maintain fertility for their communities food production. Keep it local!
I agree with increasing compost fertility through multiplying the biological life in compost teas and extracts. A small amount of high quality compost or even better vermicast will go a very long way and especially with vermicast can be easily maintained and scaled for ‘small scale’ needs
If you get that much sun and intense rain, would agroforestry of some sort not make sense? Partial shade helps against burning plants, partial canopy breaks a lot of the erosive force of the rain (if its in the splash, the runoff is another issue, though that gets mitigated at least a little bit too by water caught in the trees).
I mean, supply and demand also means that production will go up, spurred by higher prices. Which is exactly what we want. Less organic material into landfill, more people making livings off composting, supporting more farms.
Yes! There should be a commercial compost operation in every single town in the country. Plus every single homeowner doing a family compost bin. Nobody wants more landfills, but throwing everything in the trash is the easy, easy option.
I did an experiment with autumn leaves. In 2016 I shredded 20 bags of found (roadside) leaves. Wet with only rain water and storage in ventilated black bags inside ventilated trashcan. After 5 years I have the absolute 💯 best mult use leaf mold. The 20 bags condensed to 2 5 gallon buckets. Magic.
I use several layers on my onion band garlic patch each fall as they grow i add little bit no water gets needed and very little weed growth after 3 weeks when it's getting the first layer.bbtilled into soil, and my clay ground is about half way to garden soil in one year. It's a great way to clear a grass lot into garden in fall and reap a crop. I also just use bagged garlic from Costco or onion from spring seed. Bso pretty cheap initial crops
I set a no till set up this year. I have unlimited supply of wood chips coming in. We have a 100x400 area set up now over a foot deep. I had over 3 or 400 hundred yards that set over a year in my field. Im hoping to get at least an acre or more to plant on by next season. With having a thick clay base in our soil, I could not get anything to grow. But now that section is growing fantastic.
We also had a load of wood chips dropped here from a sign up place called chip drop. It was a HUGE load and it was beautiful! Very few limbs mostly medium to larger chips and leaves, a few small sticks. It took us awhile to wheelbarrow it all to the back but we payed out paths between all of the garden beds, mulched the beds after plants were big enough, and added a couple loads to a new compost bed. I’ve signed up for another one (my husband doesn’t know😬). That is a great way to add to long term compost needs. And you can request specific types of wood that you may or may not want. It may take a little longer to get a load if you limit the types of wood you won’t accept but that way you only get what you want. In this new request I said I would accept small logs so maybe get a few pieces of firewood.
dude jesse has aged like 10 years over the last 18 when looking at his videos! I just discovered his vids and Have been watching the old ones. They are great! Thanks Jesse and Josh!!!
We have been doing the deep compost method for 8 years. We added 1000 yards of compost per year on 3 acres. It has changed everything. It took several years for it to settle down . We made our own compost pile, rented large tractor to turn it. I spent 10,000 or more a year.
Great topic! I've stopped bringing in compost, and am working with only what my trees give me - leaves and needles. It started with fear of contaminated compost, and turned into a wonderful experiment. I'm not sure that compost is ultimately the answer - I think TREES are the answer!
I totally agree! Especially is this high desert area, every tree and bush/shrub helps things grow better even by the mulch produced, shade, wind break.
Agree! We had a new build home. Zero soil life. Construction dirt/heavy clay. Kept the sod alive barely. When planting our first tree zero worms, only grubs. The tree brought in worms. I cover my gardens with leaves. Rake my neighbors yard for them. Started beds with cardboard and crappy store bought "soil". Next spring worms everywhere! And pill bugs and cut worms and beetles and ants 🤨... Nowhere near perfect but working on it. My point is lots of life! I can work with that. Honestly saw with my own eyes the tree started this without any other inputs initially. So cool 😎
Thanks for raising the topic guys. I was wondering if you have tried John Jeavon's 'rule' of 60% of your land area to be grown for biomass crops for composting. In one video he mentions fava beans and rye as good candidates. I'm going to try it, but would be interesting to hear other experiences esp around labor time and quantities that the deep mulch method needs to set up and then to maintain.
Really good stuff. I have heavy clay soil that I will pile a layer of compost (Fairly high nutrient load ) then spread loam on top. There are things to worry about with this system but while I am in the building phase of this iteration of my farm it seems the best way to go. Had a great source for leaves a few years ago.. he would sell us leaf mold that was really amazing, though it was pretty hydrophobic. We lost that source unfortunately and have yet to get another... But leaves are really where it is at for soil health..... We experimented with using shredded leaves as mulch and it was not great in a dry summer....what little rain we got was soaked up by the leaves....
I'm writing from Chihuahua Mexico, drylands, many years of drought, 2mm rainfall per year. Anything burnable is usually burnt for warning houses because of poverty, if it's edible by animals it's fed to them... it's hard to access any carbon materials and one has to pay. I can buy cardboard and sawdust. I've learnt to compost weeds such as nightshades, tumbleweed, torritos by soaking them in barrels to rot the seeds and then adding them to sawdust, and adding the chicken bedding. It's not how much compost one needs but how to make it go along way with compost tea, compost ports in sawdust mulch.... I've also grow many more so called weeds for food than common vegetables such as malva, prickly pear, amaranth, pumpkin leaves, dandelion leaves, carrot tops, onion tops, purslane, rocket, dock, mulberry leaves, parsley, corrianda... plants that can grow by themselves in the grass in the tree wells
For my salad/vegetal beds I use compost, but as you said you can only make that much compost yourself. So for the rest of the garden I combine cover crops and leaves, which I get a couple of cubic meters each year blown onto my property from public trees behind my fence, to create Ruth Stout beds for potatoes, corn, soy, ...
Our weather station got fried in late January but here (couple of hours south of Sydney AU) we had about 3.8 m (149 inches) in just 13 months. Everything from mist through to 274m/hr (nearly 11 inches) rain rate. My neighbour had over 5m/ 200 inches. Without the greenhouse we’d have had almost no summer crops. We even had minus windchill in middle of summer and knee deep snow to the south. We’re relying on wood chip to manage weeds and erosion… laying it really thick as it quickly breaks down. I made a sign for the roadside “Wood chip welcome here” so we occasionally get arborists drop off truckloads.
We’re camping all summer while we renovated a farm house☺️. We’re using paper plates and composting our plates and food waste. This is helping us presence water for our current situation and helping us build up a carbon and Nitrogen supply for the future years.
I have a three bins for making compost for a fairly large home garden so with planning and work I can make most of what we need. We also buy Coast of Maiem compost and raised bed mixture which is vey good from a local feed mill.
Great talk gentlemen. Out of all my tension going into market gardening, compost is my biggest, I'm looking at all of what yall mentioned here, especially sourcing leaves(because I think I can get them from a landscape company I used to work for back in Bama). One thing that I'm thinking about that I haven't heard yall talk about yet is Johnson-Sue bioreactor compost. I realize that Jesse just said woodchips aren't so available there around Lexington and not sure what Josh's context is with this but I was wondering if you could take a jab at answering this question anyway. Do you think having a rotation of bioreactors to produce around say 20 yards of that compost a year would be practical to supplement a small established market garden? Again I realize this may totally be out of yall's context but it is an idea that I've pondered for a while and love the supposed quality and quantity of product coming from this system and would just like an honest opinion from yall if this might or might not not be practical at all. I have not trialed them where I'm at now because I thought I would be gone by now and I think it takes around a year to get the finished product. Thanks
I work in the kitchen at the Vancouver Marriott Pinnacle hotel and I have been taking home some kitchen scraps. When covid hit and was not, I asked the asian grocery store if I could take their vegie waste. Cheers from Canada.
Fascinating insight, as usual guys. Thanks for sharing and keep 'em coming :) You talk about needing to consider the permeability of the native soils underneath the deep compost and how this can be an issue for clay-heavy soils. Just wondering what you think the potential implications could be for building a deep compost mulch on almost pure sand native soils (central Florida)?
I can't speak from experience, but from what I know of other growers on sand, it's important to build that organic matter or work the compost into the native soil before building deep composted beds. Otherwise the water retention could be really poor to start.
I am the Chippewa River delta in Wisconsin and have a pure sand / extremely sandy soil. Last year, I tried putting down two layers of clean cardboard and and 3-4 inches of compost on top that I had saw Charles Dowding use. We had decent rain fall in the spring (as opposed to this year), and I had issues with water retention and the my compost drying out to the point of getting crusty. It might have been better if I would have laid the cardboard down the fall prior to give it more time to break down and become more porous. This year I'm trying with no cardboard over new broken (previously broad leaves and grass yard) fields. I want to try mixing in as well. Trial and error.
We’re not making enough amazing quality compost period. Great conversation. We have a few issues in the U.K. with pesticide residual getting in the large scale compost systems wiping out crops.
My bio intensive mentor Charlie Blaylock at Shine's Farmstand uses compost made at a place nearby that's decent, but he also makes his OWN compost that's really high quality stuff. He uses the Silver Creek Materials company compost for the bulk material which it works for, and then after that inoculates it with some compost tea from his piles as well as vermicompost inoculation. Works really well for him! In new beds he also focuses on edible pioneer species to really get the engine going and mulches when appropriate. Edit: Ah sure enough just at the point in the video I decide to comment Josh brings it up at 16:15 timestamp
We have rabbits bedding We keep our rabbits in pens with pine shavings So its mixed with poop and feed they didnt eat, pellets, whole oats and sunflower seeds This way i get a cover crop too ;) I use compost we made in around plants that really need it for nutrients The mulch part does not wash away on me but my sandy soil eats it fast If i put it on thick it will smother the weeds and it can still heat up so you need to put it on ahead of planting time
Good job guys on discussing issues related to practical use of deep bed compost. Long overdue. Unless you are raising and selling high value foliage crops in a sellers market purchasing compost is just not an economical option. Making your own weed free compost in large enough quantities is just not feasible for most of us. Even on our sizable hobby farm where we grow and make hay for several kinds of large animals it’s no simple task to compost
It is usually hard to get the material on the farm to have enough I think. But most people composting is obsessive if you ask me. Turning it every few days is just insane under most circumstances.
You just wet it as you pile and then tarp it. Turn it in a few weeks. Then monthly or not at all, until it’s done. Preferably apply it to the beds well in advance so you don’t have to process it quite so well.
I have been using brown cardboard for a lot of my beds and in compost as the carbon, with amozon being so prolific boxes are free in abundance we found a repackaging warehouse local that gives us truck loads weekly i add this to my compost piles in layers with layers of green material from mowing our unused areas around the farm adding in leaves in the fall and our animal bedding from cleaning pens and stalls, seems to be working great its free and keeps all that cardboard from being put into landfills.
for anything with significant acreage, cover crops are definitely the way to go. Those farms are usually less intensive anyways, you don't need to pack a huge amount of fertility into every square inch.
So Jesse, re the last 3-4 min of this video (deep compost and compacted soil)...using your cover crop approach, could we apply a deep compost layer to a new site known to have drainage issues in spring/ summer and then plant some daikons and other deep tap roots in late summer/ autumn? Specific cover crop blend grows and is winter-killed or otherwise terminated the following spring?
Important topic! A few thoughts: What we eventually want I guess is a circular kind of agriculture in which a farmer/community/region is self-sufficient in terms of compost. So then the question is: if we, no-dig growers, are not going to produce our own compost, how do we get our local sheep/goat/cattle farmers to get their animals off grids and onto a deep-litter systems that produces high-quality farmyard manure? Second thought: Can we start out no-dig systems with less compost? I'm currently trying a thin layer of farmyard manure spread onto pasture, covered with permeable fabric to kill off the gras for a whole season, then another thin layer of compost next year before planting. Curious if anyone has experimented with this? Edit: now finished watching, you guys come up with a lot of great suggestions, thanks for sharing your experience:)!
Just to set up my front yard it cost me $600 in compost. But I got a load of chips for free and have a couple lawn maintenance guys drop grass clippings and leaves and am starting to layer that with the chips as t were very fresh. And making lots of compost but list me driveways
Jesse I live in central Ky as well. Where do you get your compost from? I got some in the spring that was awful (still hot, pretty sure herbicides in it etc).
I think of deep compost mulch as initial drastic restoration of the soil. After it is repaired, the inputs can be much less, and eventually need not involve large amount of decomposed organic matter, but rather cover crops, green mulchs and teas.
Excellent video, thank you. I like the idea of using cover crop like winter rye then cutting it for mulch but here in zone 3 our soil temp in the spring is so low I have to cut the cover crop early and rake it off so the soil will warm enough to plant by June 1st. By the time I plant crops the rye is not that good for mulch and has to be composted. Composting wood chips or even pines shavings from the coop takes years and years to break down in our zone so that works for transplants but not for direct seeding. Thank God for leaves and grass clippings and manure for making compost. I recently have access to a huge amount of coffee grounds like a 5 gal pail every other day, how would you recommend I use it?
Yeah, if you can't bring it all the way to milk stage the mulch effect will be quite low. Maybe you have less than desirable growing areas that could be used for simply growing mulches? That's always an option - check out the work of Jan-Hendrik Cropp for insight on that
I took on a new half-plot at the allotment this year -- around a 40th of an acre, if I've calculated it correctly. The previous tenant didn't add any organic matter (except seeds) for seventeen years and left the soil bare over the rainy winters every year; the level of the soil surface is now a whole foot below the level of the surrounding grass paths, and the plot floods badly (the site used to be a water meadow and the water table is now fairly high because the river was redirected to put a motorway in and water doesn't flow uphill). But compost is expensive, the stuff I can get delivered to the allotment isn't guaranteed to be free of aminopyralid, and I don't drive! So what we're doing is: - digging paths into the (somewhat compacted, but not as bad as I feared) clay and using that clay to build up beds - filling the paths with woodchips (which do get delivered to the site for free, hurrah) - collecting leaves (I collected 58 bags last autumn, which is a lot when you're doing it by bicycle) - getting spent coffee grounds delivered from a local coffee chain -- about two wheelbarrows/week - being "enthusiastic and helpful" about mowing the various communal grass paths so we can have the grass clippings - gathering plants like comfrey and nettles from areas where they aren't wanted and adding those to the compost too (I figure there's nothing so very special about comfrey that doesn't apply to its close relative, green alkanet, which is all over the place here and almost impossible to eradicate. I wait until after it flowers to cut it, as the bees are quite fond of it.) - composting our food waste at home and bringing that to the plot (this is heavy, so it doesn't happen as often as I'd like) - making small amounts of biochar and adding that to the compost I have seven compost bays made of pallets, and have been hot composting in them. I've inoculated one or two heaps with a tiny pinch of local forest soil for the microbes, and I also add just about anything else I can find: paper packing material, wool packing material (after using it as mulch elsewhere), those weird cornstarch packing peanuts, cardboard that people leave out for the recycling. When the compost cools down we use it to grow oyster mushrooms; then the plan, this summer, is to make hills of a mix of clay, compost and coco coir on top of the compost bays and use them to grow squashes while the compost finishes (it should go faster when the weather warms up). In the autumn when it's time to harvest the squashes, and the potatoes that are growing in the "beds" (actually piles of hard clay, I'm not expecting a spectacular yield but if we're going to have to do a bit of digging anyway then we may as well get some potatoes out of it), we'll dig out as many of the weeds as we can from the beds, loosen any remaining hard clay with a fork (I'd love a broadfork but they aren't cheap either), put a layer of compost on each, and either cover it with the burlap sacks from the coffee grounds or get a cover crop on (it depends how long until the days get too short, I'm at 51ºN; probably we'll end up with a cover crop where the first and second earlies are, and maybe the early maincrops, but the late maincrops might be too late. On the other hand if we get a bad blight year again we could get our cover crops in very early indeed...). Then we can start refilling the compost bays. We'll probably stick to squashes on top of the compost bays every year if it works well; the rest of the plot will fit into the rotation with our other plot (a full plot). And after this first year it should be possible to spread the compost around over both plots. I don't know whether all of this will be enough, but it's also about as much as I can do without power machinery while also tending plants. We only took possession of the plot in January so it's a bit of a race, though I did have plenty of leaves on the other plot, at least. I'm considering vermicomposting too. I haven't really gotten into compost tea yet as the water was only turned on the other week and I was trying to conserve the rainwater we'd managed to save over the winter. I briefly thought about putting in a pond and using it to grow duckweed to compost, but all the high-volume pond plants here seem to be on one invasive species list or another and I don't want to borrow trouble. Eventually, I would like to have white clover or another cover crop for the paths, as the wood chips stick to the bottom of the watering cans when you put them down and then float around in the dip tanks, as well as being a lovely habitat for slugs (not so bad with very fine woodchip, but we don't get to choose what the tree surgeon delivers); but for now we inoculate the woodchip paths with wine cap mushroom spawn (we got a good crop last year on the other plot from spawn placed the year before), so it's still a productive space.
I mix shredded leaves with my rabbit manure which then is fed to compost worms in an outdoor bin. I build soil (from blow sand) by deep mulching with spoiled hay. I then fertilize my plants with the vermiculture produced by the manure, leaves, and worms.
Question ❓ I've added a lot of , grass, twigs,leafs last fall and spring.My potatoes have a purple look on the leaves tips and more so on the young leafs tips is that too much nitigern?
I placed 12 inches of mulch over a 2500 sqft area from last year's hurricanes here in Louisiana . I let it sit for a year then lightly till and then spread a high nitrogen cover crop (irons and clay) seed on top. Its unbeliveable the coverage now. I will just keep layering and repeating the process. I am hoping this will also improve my clay soil.
I’m in TN near the Mississippi River and my soil is clay. I dug 34 holes 18 inches deep to plant shrubs last year and after it rained over half of them were full of water two days later- no drainage. I’m using wood chips, leaf mold and gypsum to break up my clay, then 6-8 inches of compost on top of that. So much work!!! I hope it pays off.
A good place for people to check out as well is your local fatmer. If they feed round bales of hay, traditionally that spot where they put hay out year after year is extremely fertile soil that can be scraped off and used!
I got 4 dump loads of wood chips I'm mixing the chicken bedding with veggie scraps in with it until fall when I cover my gardens hope to have extra loads dropped soon
What do you think about woodchips and chop & drop lasagna in bed composting? I got a chip drop this winter and setting up.compost bins behind my fence in the alley (1/10th acre in city lot) I'm going to talk to my neighbors when everyone starts mowing to dump in my bins rather than the city's bins...
The reality is that at my local rate, 120 yards of compost would cost me 12,000$ to acquire (if I find a supplier). For that money I can hire someone to help with weeding.
Amazon had lots of deliveries last year and while I would prefer if they were unionized, the boxes shred well and work as good mulch for my garden, tree rings, and flower beds.
I also shredded junk mail and depending on what was in the mail, it went to food or non-food composting. I was using 2 different cross cut shredders and tearing the boxes into strips and thinning layers for one of the machines.
Bury dead fish in your garden rows in the fall along with garden/kitchen waste and let it decompose over the winter. Cover with a few inches of shredded leaves and let winter take care of breaking it down. Then come spring you will have amazing nutrient rich soil to plant in. Just clear holes in the leaves to plant in and you're good to go
I have a question: do I even want the chemical laced food scraps from people around me. Not many people I know even care enough to by organic. If there’s chemicals on the food and it’s not good for our bodies, is it ok for compost that grows food for our bodies? Sorry I have officially gone thru the looking glass and it shattered so I can’t go back.
We bought 2 dump trucks of what was supposedly composted garden soil this year. We’ve bought it before from this company and it was amazing that time. This year’s load was a big disappointment. We layered it on top of wood and hay and watered it down and planted. The weather was back and forth so we contributed the slow start mostly to that. Finally I had tested the soil myself and the nitrogen was almost nonexistent. So just to make sure we sent it off through the county extension office and turns out we were right. Almost no nitrogen in the soil at all. So we called them and they emailed us a copy of their soil test results and they in no way matched ours. So they did let us come get a pick up load of compost (which honestly didn’t look a whole lot better.) So you really have to research the company you buy compost from because some may be “overselling” the quality of their product.
Never put compost OVER woodchips. Woodchips are a coarse mulch & will tie - up Nitrogen the first year or so as they break down if fresh chipped rather than aged chips.
Agree, When I lived in Marshall Town Iowa I could fill my trailer for $5 and in Ohio I pay $25 the next year after I moved back, I also think the Iowa compose was much better
Im in East Tn. We have had a boom in legal distillerys here. Josh, your background in brewing may give insight in this situation. Would there by products collected county wide be significant? Is waste distillery grain a valuable material for large scale compost on a community level?
Yes I’m working on that. I’ve done a large brush burn off and put it out with the hose and separated the char. Mine I will inoculate by adding to the compost just because it’s the simplest way. I built on of those rotary sifters and hope to incorporate it in my soil blocks that I’ve started making. Our temperature drops below 15 degrees this time of year so I’m trying to start seeds growing indoors. My first soil blocks are just seeded so I’ll know in a month or so if my experiment is successful. Ideally I can set up my garden without $ outlay. So far so good I’m only up to 40$ spent on some blood and bone. I brought a load of char up to the house and the missus covered our best pot plants with raw char because she liked the look of the dark top layer. So we will find out if the char absorbs all the nutrients as I’m told it does.
Probably the biggest problem for me in my Australian garden is that my leaves are almost exclusively eucalyptus and allelopathic. I can compost them to reduce this but the process is considerably slower than your standard deciduous tree leaves.
Try shredding and using indigenous microbes (I prefer the JADAM methodology for ease and convenience). Let it decompose for 4-6 months and do a test run. Do not eat mushrooms that grow out of this mulch.
Are the longer term soil impacts of "Deep Compost Mulch" given much consideration? Growers that rely on manure based compost (not everyone) often face nutrient issues with a buildup of phosphorus. Growers that move locations every few years may not face these issues, but long term a Deep Compost Mulch may not be sustainable for a number of reasons (including those mentioned). It is extremely difficult to build (and maintain) soil tilth and organic matter by continually adding compost because in many soils these organics are burning so fast ( and not sequestered). On the other hand, the cover crop methods and living pathways that you continue to explore seem to offer a sustainable alternative for building healthy soils. I would love to see less emphasis on compost ($$) and instead more time flushing out the alternatives that improve native soils and not simply bury them. Native soils have a lot to offer. Keep up the great work.
The problem I see with no till is the tree roots take over the soil. I use a hand dill for planting tomatoes and peppers and the small tree roots wrap around the 3" drill bit. next year I am going to till those roots up. Am I the only one with small tree roots taking over your garden soil??
We have about 50+ dump truck loads of wood chips that were dumped on our property (and more coming). What is the quickest way to turn that into compost? I do not own any large equipment but do have access to a small tractor. We have used wood chips + chickens on our garden successfully on a small scale. I've been thinking of making large batches of comfrey tea and using that to help speed up the process. Thoughts?
Let it sit for a season ( dig into it now and then to see how it’s decomposing) and the bottom will be mostly worms and composted chips. If the piles are big(8’x8’x8’) they will develop plenty of heat and break down sooner. I use this material to help loosen clay soil. Eventually all of the chips will be compost or you could use some of the chips for paths.
@@janking2762 - The piles are about that size. In the past we have found that only about the outer 25% composted and it didn't compost much after a year. The inside of the piles didn't break down at all. That was from a load that was chipped in the winter so there were no leaves. I started getting the more recently loads since this spring so there are a lot of leaves. The piles were fairly hot but are starting to cool down some.
What I have is ramial wood chips from spring through fall, leaves and branches up to 5” all mixed, in USDA zone 6B. The outer chips didn’t compost but the inner, deeper chips did. We get lots of rain that facilitates microbial action in the piles. Maybe we are in very different contexts?
@@janking2762 - I'm in zone 7b. We get a lot of rain but we typically get a lot at once so I think a lot of it runs off the pile. I'm actually outside right now measuring the temperature of the piles and my newest pile is 135°. My oldest pile is about 105°. We are in a drought so I should probably water the wood chips.
Finding large amounts of compost has been a tough job this year for my small farm/ market garden. I can only make so much and purchasing compost at $115 a yard locally is not very cost effective.
Well I feel better that I am not the only one who couldn’t find compost lol thought I moved to Mars for awhile! In a bad soil situation would layering 4-6” of woodchips letting them breakdown for 6 months+ then doing the deep compost method on top of that work? My idea is those woodchips would continue to decompose and overtime would add an extra 1-2” of organic matter below the compost.
przybyla420 I actually did both I put the raised bed on top of the woodchips and then put the compost/soil mix planted then covered the top with more woodchips.
I’ve been searching for the answer to this question for months now and am obviously looking in the wrong areas… Can we lay down say 12-24 inches of fresh cow manure mixed with loads of hay/straw - leave it to sit for 6-12 months then spread it out and plant in it? We’ve our own cow, who spills the hay/straw and have abundance of fresh manure but what we lack is time to spend composting.. anyone know??
Compost available around here is made from shredded leaves from the city and chicken litter from industrial poultry houses. Its not great, microscoped it - all bacteria. Chicken litter is from systems that aren't currently sustainable. There is huge opportunity here in my mind.
The hesitation I’d have is being able to trust the supply stream to be herbicide free. That’s the biggest negative. Other than that, it would be challenging to find sources for different minerals to create different pH balances and also different textures. As for my 1/3 acre home garden, my goal is to never let any organic material off my property.
See, this comment right here is why I am so excited by the demand for compost going up. Yay for the free market. High compost demand means food waste streams become more efficiently handled. The first thought about how to start a small or large scale composting business (for me anyway) is “where can I secure organic matter?”. Restaurants, grocery store produce waste, juice bars, coffee bars breweries arborists, saw mills, etc. anyway, you start handling that stuff, get it into maybe bokashi, maybe a large scale bsfl proto pod, (so that you don’t have to be picky about what food waste you’re handling…) compost it, bag it. Sell it… that food waste is a contributor to green house gas production when it’s not broken down properly. So high demand of compost, means a healthier ecosystem on two sides, growing more and more efficiently handling waste.
@Ernest Elton I don’t have a dog. Pig and dog poop, animal offal, infectious microbes need much higher compost temperatures than mine ever has. Optimum temperature kills offensive bacteria. Too hot and the compost is not good.
If every 3rd person had just 6 laying hens (in their prime) we would have no need for commercial eggs and food waste into manure compost (this is legal in most city’s with no rooster needed)
Check out Will Bonsall’s book Essential Guide to Radical, Self Reliant Gardening. It’s a homesteader’s approach and highly focused on sustainability, grows his own green manure, etc. But I can see where a business focused market gardener might need a simpler approach for fertility.
18 day compost piles - grass clippings, leaves/pine needles/wood chips/ straw and some dirt or old compost really works great. If you have grass clippings you can do this!
I think a great episode would be to talk about herbicide used on straw or hay and what it can do to your garden if you compost it or use it as mulch. It seems like this is becoming a bigger problem but there aren't a lot of people who talk about it or even know about it. When your garden is affected by it, its devastating. I've looked for straw and hay for our rabbits and have yet to find a feed store that can say 100% without a doubt the straw or hay has not been treated with herbicide.
I am new at this but I got three big round bales of old wheat straw that is at least two years old. I am hoping that the herbicide will have diminished enough to allow plants to grow. I am told the longer they sit and a compost cycle will make them safe to use. Good luck and havagudun.
Quantity in the Memphis TN area isn’t a problem yet. But the quality IS NOT what it should be. The seven yards I bought last year had construction and clothing waste in it
my municipality couldn't make a commercial sized composting facility work. nobody wanted it in their backyard. It is a hard thing to make at scale. the run off can eutriphy streams and lakes, the smell is unpleasant to some people. Also in a city, the organic waste that people divert is more likely to be the hard to compost stuff (bones, meat). Meanwhile there are more and more vermiculture programs in cities. an organic chicken farm could get a thousand pounds of meat waste (for black soldier fly feeding) if they put the sign out. overwhelm is a real thing though.
Only other thing I wish you guys had touched on was I've heard some ppl claim that deep compost systems can cause high nitrate levels in the soil and issues with runoff into water ways similar to synthetic fertilizers and just curious if either of you have seen evidence of this in your experience. The only other farm I can think of that I've found so far that touched on this was singing frogs farm and if I remember right their tests disproved that theory but would be interested in any other 'case studies'
HI Jessica, Indeed that's an omission. JM Fortier has tested his waters as well I believe and found no significant pollutants from compost (would double check with him tho). I discuss this a bit in the book, but because composts vary so widely and soils nutrient holding capacities vary so widely, I don't think there is an easy, cut and dry answer. I believe composts that are heavy in nitrates, especially in wet regions with sandy soils would be the most likely to cause issues. Generally though, if the compost is broken down + planted and kept planted there should not be significant risks to the environment based on the agronomists I've spoken with. Of course, context is everything, though.
@@notillgrowers thank you for your thoughts, and I will have to look for JM's data on this also. I agree that there's probably not a once size fits all and that in certain contexts it could potentially cause problems, but just was curious if either of you had done any tests or knew of others that had some additional data that at least pointed to it not being likely with proper management. Gonna have to see if I missed anything from Richard or Diego that might have addressed this too possibly.
We have not done any independent testing yet, but I would like to (especially as wet as my new farm is). A couple interviews I've done for the No-Till Market Garden podcast that you might find of interest would be David Blanchard, Neal Kinsey, and John Kempf. Each has a different take on it.
I don't disagree that it has a more intense leachate but if you were to take that same compost material & had left it to rot where it'd have fallen then there would be no difference in how much nitrate levels reached the Ocean. The problem comes when a farmer refuses to use 30% of their land for drainage that's at moderns standards for trapping those surplus nutrients. Still today the grandchildren of farmers in 1974 complain on YT about how they don't want the government telling them what to do, meanwhile the Mississippi River is bottom-lined with 35ft of topsoil from poorly-managed farms. We literally have to use smaller boats to ship our corn so it doesn't bump the topsoil left in the river by our grandfathers.
A good carbon layer might be bio-char. Creating it is an issue. There's plenty of free material available from new construction sites that ends up in landfills.
Came on, can se start using international units? Like a acre... Okay, is about 5000m2 or half an hectare. But a yard? I though It was used for distance...
I’m surprised how no-dig is claimed as sustainable but then no one refers to compost as being a heavy input into your systems Back-to-eden styles systems fix that with it own source of carbon (trees) and the reality is that many(/most?) growers would have enough space to include trees in a broader, but more sustainable system that “grows” it own composting/mulching.
@@growingwithfungi Richard has a couple newer videos showing how they now are self sufficient with making their own compost on site for all their market gardens
@@jessicah2345 after he bought tons of it in the last 7 years...plus he have a big animal operation, mostly chikens operation (import feed and buys peatmoss) from where he gets most of the compost for the market garden. He also still import woodchips and cardboard and manures... Never knew any case where a comercial market garden using no tiil deep mulch system can produce even a 1/10 of its one compost and other mulch. And we are talking about very small operations...
My garden is a compost pile. Every fall I fill my garden with free leaves 2ft deep,by spring they are 7 inches deep. I plant my garden and by that fall there’s only 2 or 3 in. Of leaves left. Then I just repeat the process.
I am a gardener in SW Colorado, elevation of 7000 feet, where the climate is arid and the soil hard clay.. I started no dig gardening last year as my soil is hard dry clay with little organic matter. I had to purchase compost for my veggie and flower beds and have found that it is not totally broken down which had made growing difficult with little available nitrogen in the beginnings of the growing season. I now prepare my beds at least 9 months prior to planting by sheet mulching with cardboard and lasagna layers of manures, carbon material and home made compost. I have also found that the compost layers, once broken down create a wonderful soil but does not hold water well. Mulching with hay, straw and wood chips has been a good solution for moisture retention in my garden beds. Thanks for your great video.
Coffee grounds help a lot.
Agreed. If you don't want to fork over the cash for finished compost or break your back creating it, compost in place well ahead of time.
I'm curious how long you've been at it in any one garden bed..? Wondering if it will hold water better, as your soil improves ( I mean, obviously it will, but I mean, if you'll notice much of a difference/how soon..). Am wondering how a broadfork , if you haven't used one yet, would affect this. I mean, I'm guessing you'd still need to use a not-compost-only-mulch on top, because for some, it heats too much, being dark colored and I wonder if your elevation makes that part of it... plus the dry air plus windy-ness, wicking away moisture so much. So, I'm wondering if your below-surface soil WILL otherwise hold moisture plenty well, once the humus and soil life gets up to a semi-decent level. Or if your plants are also just losing a lot of moisture as well, in that environment. Garden veg compared to what naturally grows there, especially.
Great talks! Love when yall come together and tackle to unspoken issues!
Great conversation guys, lets have more of this type of content. Two highly experienced growers sharing their experiences and knowledge is awesone. Thanks.
Great discussion. I agree, creativity can go a long way. I source horse manure from a local stable, saw dust from my neighbor's wood shop (untreated wood), I grow cover crops and sorghum Sudan Grass (for my green material), I'm always searching the green waste bins in my neighborhood for leaves and stuff, and there's always wood chips. I can make about 15 to 20 yards of compost a year if I push it. Which is enough for my backyard garden.
Great one guys! Your videos keep getting better!!
Really interesting chat. I have an allotment over here in the UK and have been converting it from a barren almost sterile land which had been almost stripped bare of any nutrients to more of a no dig system. Although we try to compost as much as we can I found that during the winter, however much I'd save my food scraps with all good intentions, I just wasn't taking them up there on a regular basis. I've recently started the Bokashi bin system which I'm finding a bit easier as it only needs emptying once every couple of weeks. Also over here we are able to get municipal compost - that is green waste that is regularly collected by local councils and composted - then sold back at a fraction of the cost of shop bought. Of course the nutrient value can't be guaranteed but it certainly helps to add bulk and structure. Although it is an ongoing process the payback is priceless - we now have worms returning which tells us we're doing the right thing!
That was a great discussion and very helpful for this old new gardener. I am struggling with the compost situation both trying to make it an getting enough for my 300 ‘ garden I will order your book later today. Y’all havagudun.
Community supported composting! We are a very small farm, but access all of our compost material from the local community. In time I think this can be a model that redirects local waste to growers to maintain fertility for their communities food production. Keep it local!
I agree with increasing compost fertility through multiplying the biological life in compost teas and extracts. A small amount of high quality compost or even better vermicast will go a very long way and especially with vermicast can be easily maintained and scaled for ‘small scale’ needs
If you get that much sun and intense rain, would agroforestry of some sort not make sense?
Partial shade helps against burning plants, partial canopy breaks a lot of the erosive force of the rain (if its in the splash, the runoff is another issue, though that gets mitigated at least a little bit too by water caught in the trees).
I mean, supply and demand also means that production will go up, spurred by higher prices.
Which is exactly what we want. Less organic material into landfill, more people making livings off composting, supporting more farms.
Right, exactly. I think we (kinda) make that point later in the video.
Yes! There should be a commercial compost operation in every single town in the country. Plus every single homeowner doing a family compost bin. Nobody wants more landfills, but throwing everything in the trash is the easy, easy option.
Also thanks for this awesome conversation fellas. 🙏
Great chat and it makes you think
I did an experiment with autumn leaves. In 2016 I shredded 20 bags of found (roadside) leaves. Wet with only rain water and storage in ventilated black bags inside ventilated trashcan. After 5 years I have the absolute 💯 best mult use leaf mold. The 20 bags condensed to 2 5 gallon buckets. Magic.
I have a tree in my back yard and every year I shovel the leaves into a compost bin and also into an area of degraded top soil and let it break down.
Magic! 👍
I use several layers on my onion band garlic patch each fall as they grow i add little bit no water gets needed and very little weed growth after 3 weeks when it's getting the first layer.bbtilled into soil, and my clay ground is about half way to garden soil in one year. It's a great way to clear a grass lot into garden in fall and reap a crop. I also just use bagged garlic from Costco or onion from spring seed. Bso pretty cheap initial crops
I set a no till set up this year. I have unlimited supply of wood chips coming in. We have a 100x400 area set up now over a foot deep. I had over 3 or 400 hundred yards that set over a year in my field. Im hoping to get at least an acre or more to plant on by next season. With having a thick clay base in our soil, I could not get anything to grow. But now that section is growing fantastic.
Important stuff here. Thank you guys
We also had a load of wood chips dropped here from a sign up place called chip drop. It was a HUGE load and it was beautiful! Very few limbs mostly medium to larger chips and leaves, a few small sticks. It took us awhile to wheelbarrow it all to the back but we payed out paths between all of the garden beds, mulched the beds after plants were big enough, and added a couple loads to a new compost bed. I’ve signed up for another one (my husband doesn’t know😬). That is a great way to add to long term compost needs. And you can request specific types of wood that you may or may not want. It may take a little longer to get a load if you limit the types of wood you won’t accept but that way you only get what you want. In this new request I said I would accept small logs so maybe get a few pieces of firewood.
dude jesse has aged like 10 years over the last 18 when looking at his videos! I just discovered his vids and Have been watching the old ones. They are great! Thanks Jesse and Josh!!!
We have been doing the deep compost method for 8 years. We added 1000 yards of compost per year on 3 acres. It has changed everything. It took several years for it to settle down . We made our own compost pile, rented large tractor to turn it. I spent 10,000 or more a year.
Great topic! I've stopped bringing in compost, and am working with only what my trees give me - leaves and needles. It started with fear of contaminated compost, and turned into a wonderful experiment. I'm not sure that compost is ultimately the answer - I think TREES are the answer!
I totally agree! Especially is this high desert area, every tree and bush/shrub helps things grow better even by the mulch produced, shade, wind break.
Agree! We had a new build home. Zero soil life. Construction dirt/heavy clay. Kept the sod alive barely. When planting our first tree zero worms, only grubs. The tree brought in worms. I cover my gardens with leaves. Rake my neighbors yard for them. Started beds with cardboard and crappy store bought "soil". Next spring worms everywhere! And pill bugs and cut worms and beetles and ants 🤨... Nowhere near perfect but working on it. My point is lots of life! I can work with that. Honestly saw with my own eyes the tree started this without any other inputs initially. So cool 😎
Thanks for raising the topic guys. I was wondering if you have tried John Jeavon's 'rule' of 60% of your land area to be grown for biomass crops for composting. In one video he mentions fava beans and rye as good candidates. I'm going to try it, but would be interesting to hear other experiences esp around labor time and quantities that the deep mulch method needs to set up and then to maintain.
Really good stuff. I have heavy clay soil that I will pile a layer of compost (Fairly high nutrient load ) then spread loam on top. There are things to worry about with this system but while I am in the building phase of this iteration of my farm it seems the best way to go. Had a great source for leaves a few years ago.. he would sell us leaf mold that was really amazing, though it was pretty hydrophobic. We lost that source unfortunately and have yet to get another... But leaves are really where it is at for soil health..... We experimented with using shredded leaves as mulch and it was not great in a dry summer....what little rain we got was soaked up by the leaves....
This is a great conversation with a lot of reality 👍👨🌾🤙✌
I'm writing from Chihuahua Mexico, drylands, many years of drought, 2mm rainfall per year. Anything burnable is usually burnt for warning houses because of poverty, if it's edible by animals it's fed to them... it's hard to access any carbon materials and one has to pay. I can buy cardboard and sawdust. I've learnt to compost weeds such as nightshades, tumbleweed, torritos by soaking them in barrels to rot the seeds and then adding them to sawdust, and adding the chicken bedding. It's not how much compost one needs but how to make it go along way with compost tea, compost ports in sawdust mulch.... I've also grow many more so called weeds for food than common vegetables such as malva, prickly pear, amaranth, pumpkin leaves, dandelion leaves, carrot tops, onion tops, purslane, rocket, dock, mulberry leaves, parsley, corrianda... plants that can grow by themselves in the grass in the tree wells
For my salad/vegetal beds I use compost, but as you said you can only make that much compost yourself. So for the rest of the garden I combine cover crops and leaves, which I get a couple of cubic meters each year blown onto my property from public trees behind my fence, to create Ruth Stout beds for potatoes, corn, soy, ...
For me in the city, I've just been mowing lawns with a mulch bag on the mower, and for my 1/6th of an acre that works great.
Great chat. Have you explored tillage radishes as a cover crop? Does great things for my food plots.
Cool chat!
This year I got a trailer truck load of compost And it totally stunk, it was
Hot when it came and it burned most of my Crops😓
Our weather station got fried in late January but here (couple of hours south of Sydney AU) we had about 3.8 m (149 inches) in just 13 months. Everything from mist through to 274m/hr (nearly 11 inches) rain rate. My neighbour had over 5m/ 200 inches. Without the greenhouse we’d have had almost no summer crops. We even had minus windchill in middle of summer and knee deep snow to the south. We’re relying on wood chip to manage weeds and erosion… laying it really thick as it quickly breaks down. I made a sign for the roadside “Wood chip welcome here” so we occasionally get arborists drop off truckloads.
We’re camping all summer while we renovated a farm house☺️. We’re using paper plates and composting our plates and food waste. This is helping us presence water for our current situation and helping us build up a carbon and Nitrogen supply for the future years.
I have a three bins for making compost for a fairly large home garden so with planning and work I can make most of what we need. We also buy Coast of Maiem compost and raised bed mixture which is vey good from a local feed mill.
Great talk gentlemen. Out of all my tension going into market gardening, compost is my biggest, I'm looking at all of what yall mentioned here, especially sourcing leaves(because I think I can get them from a landscape company I used to work for back in Bama). One thing that I'm thinking about that I haven't heard yall talk about yet is Johnson-Sue bioreactor compost. I realize that Jesse just said woodchips aren't so available there around Lexington and not sure what Josh's context is with this but I was wondering if you could take a jab at answering this question anyway. Do you think having a rotation of bioreactors to produce around say 20 yards of that compost a year would be practical to supplement a small established market garden? Again I realize this may totally be out of yall's context but it is an idea that I've pondered for a while and love the supposed quality and quantity of product coming from this system and would just like an honest opinion from yall if this might or might not not be practical at all. I have not trialed them where I'm at now because I thought I would be gone by now and I think it takes around a year to get the finished product. Thanks
Hügelkultur beds baby! I can minimize my compost needs, relatively, and have much more soil for next season .
Love watching experts nerd out 😁✌️
I work in the kitchen at the Vancouver Marriott Pinnacle hotel and I have been taking home some kitchen scraps.
When covid hit and was not, I asked the asian grocery store if I could take their vegie waste. Cheers from Canada.
Fascinating insight, as usual guys. Thanks for sharing and keep 'em coming :) You talk about needing to consider the permeability of the native soils underneath the deep compost and how this can be an issue for clay-heavy soils. Just wondering what you think the potential implications could be for building a deep compost mulch on almost pure sand native soils (central Florida)?
I can't speak from experience, but from what I know of other growers on sand, it's important to build that organic matter or work the compost into the native soil before building deep composted beds. Otherwise the water retention could be really poor to start.
I am the Chippewa River delta in Wisconsin and have a pure sand / extremely sandy soil. Last year, I tried putting down two layers of clean cardboard and and 3-4 inches of compost on top that I had saw Charles Dowding use. We had decent rain fall in the spring (as opposed to this year), and I had issues with water retention and the my compost drying out to the point of getting crusty. It might have been better if I would have laid the cardboard down the fall prior to give it more time to break down and become more porous. This year I'm trying with no cardboard over new broken (previously broad leaves and grass yard) fields. I want to try mixing in as well. Trial and error.
Thank you.
We’re not making enough amazing quality compost period. Great conversation. We have a few issues in the U.K. with pesticide residual getting in the large scale compost systems wiping out crops.
They mentioned aminopyralids, present in persistent herbicides.
It happens here in us with herbicides used in hay ground especially for garden crops
Leaves seem to be the answer as most people don’t spray trees. I’m using all I can get!
My bio intensive mentor Charlie Blaylock at Shine's Farmstand uses compost made at a place nearby that's decent, but he also makes his OWN compost that's really high quality stuff. He uses the Silver Creek Materials company compost for the bulk material which it works for, and then after that inoculates it with some compost tea from his piles as well as vermicompost inoculation. Works really well for him! In new beds he also focuses on edible pioneer species to really get the engine going and mulches when appropriate. Edit: Ah sure enough just at the point in the video I decide to comment Josh brings it up at 16:15 timestamp
Very true about the availability. I paid 1900$ for a triaxle load and 600 of it was delivery as it was coming from 100 mils plus away.
We have rabbits bedding
We keep our rabbits in pens with pine shavings
So its mixed with poop and feed they didnt eat, pellets, whole oats and sunflower seeds
This way i get a cover crop too ;)
I use compost we made in around plants that really need it for nutrients
The mulch part does not wash away on me but my sandy soil eats it fast
If i put it on thick it will smother the weeds and it can still heat up so you need to put it on ahead of planting time
Thank you
Good job guys on discussing issues related to practical use of deep bed compost. Long overdue. Unless you are raising and selling high value foliage crops in a sellers market purchasing compost is just not an economical option. Making your own weed free compost in large enough quantities is just not feasible for most of us. Even on our sizable hobby farm where we grow and make hay for several kinds of large animals it’s no simple task to compost
It is usually hard to get the material on the farm to have enough I think. But most people composting is obsessive if you ask me. Turning it every few days is just insane under most circumstances.
You just wet it as you pile and then tarp it. Turn it in a few weeks. Then monthly or not at all, until it’s done. Preferably apply it to the beds well in advance so you don’t have to process it quite so well.
Good job
I have been using brown cardboard for a lot of my beds and in compost as the carbon, with amozon being so prolific boxes are free in abundance we found a repackaging warehouse local that gives us truck loads weekly i add this to my compost piles in layers with layers of green material from mowing our unused areas around the farm adding in leaves in the fall and our animal bedding from cleaning pens and stalls, seems to be working great its free and keeps all that cardboard from being put into landfills.
for anything with significant acreage, cover crops are definitely the way to go. Those farms are usually less intensive anyways, you don't need to pack a huge amount of fertility into every square inch.
So Jesse, re the last 3-4 min of this video (deep compost and compacted soil)...using your cover crop approach, could we apply a deep compost layer to a new site known to have drainage issues in spring/ summer and then plant some daikons and other deep tap roots in late summer/ autumn?
Specific cover crop blend grows and is winter-killed or otherwise terminated the following spring?
Important topic! A few thoughts: What we eventually want I guess is a circular kind of agriculture in which a farmer/community/region is self-sufficient in terms of compost. So then the question is: if we, no-dig growers, are not going to produce our own compost, how do we get our local sheep/goat/cattle farmers to get their animals off grids and onto a deep-litter systems that produces high-quality farmyard manure?
Second thought: Can we start out no-dig systems with less compost? I'm currently trying a thin layer of farmyard manure spread onto pasture, covered with permeable fabric to kill off the gras for a whole season, then another thin layer of compost next year before planting. Curious if anyone has experimented with this?
Edit: now finished watching, you guys come up with a lot of great suggestions, thanks for sharing your experience:)!
Just to set up my front yard it cost me $600 in compost. But I got a load of chips for free and have a couple lawn maintenance guys drop grass clippings and leaves and am starting to layer that with the chips as t were very fresh. And making lots of compost but list me driveways
Covid played a roll in the shortage of compost this year. It should be more available next year in a lot of areas.
Jesse I live in central Ky as well. Where do you get your compost from? I got some in the spring that was awful (still hot, pretty sure herbicides in it etc).
I think of deep compost mulch as initial drastic restoration of the soil. After it is repaired, the inputs can be much less, and eventually need not involve large amount of decomposed organic matter, but rather cover crops, green mulchs and teas.
Excellent video, thank you. I like the idea of using cover crop like winter rye then cutting it for mulch but here in zone 3 our soil temp in the spring is so low I have to cut the cover crop early and rake it off so the soil will warm enough to plant by June 1st. By the time I plant crops the rye is not that good for mulch and has to be composted. Composting wood chips or even pines shavings from the coop takes years and years to break down in our zone so that works for transplants but not for direct seeding. Thank God for leaves and grass clippings and manure for making compost. I recently have access to a huge amount of coffee grounds like a 5 gal pail every other day, how would you recommend I use it?
Yeah, if you can't bring it all the way to milk stage the mulch effect will be quite low. Maybe you have less than desirable growing areas that could be used for simply growing mulches? That's always an option - check out the work of Jan-Hendrik Cropp for insight on that
@@notillgrowers thank you for the quick reply.
I took on a new half-plot at the allotment this year -- around a 40th of an acre, if I've calculated it correctly. The previous tenant didn't add any organic matter (except seeds) for seventeen years and left the soil bare over the rainy winters every year; the level of the soil surface is now a whole foot below the level of the surrounding grass paths, and the plot floods badly (the site used to be a water meadow and the water table is now fairly high because the river was redirected to put a motorway in and water doesn't flow uphill). But compost is expensive, the stuff I can get delivered to the allotment isn't guaranteed to be free of aminopyralid, and I don't drive! So what we're doing is:
- digging paths into the (somewhat compacted, but not as bad as I feared) clay and using that clay to build up beds
- filling the paths with woodchips (which do get delivered to the site for free, hurrah)
- collecting leaves (I collected 58 bags last autumn, which is a lot when you're doing it by bicycle)
- getting spent coffee grounds delivered from a local coffee chain -- about two wheelbarrows/week
- being "enthusiastic and helpful" about mowing the various communal grass paths so we can have the grass clippings
- gathering plants like comfrey and nettles from areas where they aren't wanted and adding those to the compost too (I figure there's nothing so very special about comfrey that doesn't apply to its close relative, green alkanet, which is all over the place here and almost impossible to eradicate. I wait until after it flowers to cut it, as the bees are quite fond of it.)
- composting our food waste at home and bringing that to the plot (this is heavy, so it doesn't happen as often as I'd like)
- making small amounts of biochar and adding that to the compost
I have seven compost bays made of pallets, and have been hot composting in them. I've inoculated one or two heaps with a tiny pinch of local forest soil for the microbes, and I also add just about anything else I can find: paper packing material, wool packing material (after using it as mulch elsewhere), those weird cornstarch packing peanuts, cardboard that people leave out for the recycling. When the compost cools down we use it to grow oyster mushrooms; then the plan, this summer, is to make hills of a mix of clay, compost and coco coir on top of the compost bays and use them to grow squashes while the compost finishes (it should go faster when the weather warms up). In the autumn when it's time to harvest the squashes, and the potatoes that are growing in the "beds" (actually piles of hard clay, I'm not expecting a spectacular yield but if we're going to have to do a bit of digging anyway then we may as well get some potatoes out of it), we'll dig out as many of the weeds as we can from the beds, loosen any remaining hard clay with a fork (I'd love a broadfork but they aren't cheap either), put a layer of compost on each, and either cover it with the burlap sacks from the coffee grounds or get a cover crop on (it depends how long until the days get too short, I'm at 51ºN; probably we'll end up with a cover crop where the first and second earlies are, and maybe the early maincrops, but the late maincrops might be too late. On the other hand if we get a bad blight year again we could get our cover crops in very early indeed...). Then we can start refilling the compost bays. We'll probably stick to squashes on top of the compost bays every year if it works well; the rest of the plot will fit into the rotation with our other plot (a full plot). And after this first year it should be possible to spread the compost around over both plots.
I don't know whether all of this will be enough, but it's also about as much as I can do without power machinery while also tending plants. We only took possession of the plot in January so it's a bit of a race, though I did have plenty of leaves on the other plot, at least.
I'm considering vermicomposting too. I haven't really gotten into compost tea yet as the water was only turned on the other week and I was trying to conserve the rainwater we'd managed to save over the winter. I briefly thought about putting in a pond and using it to grow duckweed to compost, but all the high-volume pond plants here seem to be on one invasive species list or another and I don't want to borrow trouble.
Eventually, I would like to have white clover or another cover crop for the paths, as the wood chips stick to the bottom of the watering cans when you put them down and then float around in the dip tanks, as well as being a lovely habitat for slugs (not so bad with very fine woodchip, but we don't get to choose what the tree surgeon delivers); but for now we inoculate the woodchip paths with wine cap mushroom spawn (we got a good crop last year on the other plot from spawn placed the year before), so it's still a productive space.
I mix shredded leaves with my rabbit manure which then is fed to compost worms in an outdoor bin. I build soil (from blow sand) by deep mulching with spoiled hay. I then fertilize my plants with the vermiculture produced by the manure, leaves, and worms.
Thoughts on the risk of using leaves from cities/counties where you don't know what's been sprayed on them (say, anti-mosquito pesticides, etc.)?
Question ❓
I've added a lot of , grass, twigs,leafs last fall and spring.My potatoes have a purple look on the leaves tips and more so on the young leafs tips is that too much nitigern?
Would love to see you guys experiment with JADAM in your use cases.
I placed 12 inches of mulch over a 2500 sqft area from last year's hurricanes here in Louisiana . I let it sit for a year then lightly till and then spread a high nitrogen cover crop (irons and clay) seed on top. Its unbeliveable the coverage now. I will just keep layering and repeating the process. I am hoping this will also improve my clay soil.
I’m in TN near the Mississippi River and my soil is clay. I dug 34 holes 18 inches deep to plant shrubs last year and after it rained over half of them were full of water two days later- no drainage. I’m using wood chips, leaf mold and gypsum to break up my clay, then 6-8 inches of compost on top of that. So much work!!! I hope it pays off.
@@nicolemcclanahan4975 have you looked into a worm bin, bokashi, and a Johnson-Su bioreactor?
@@neverwinterfarms a worm bin yes, but I’d never heard of the other two. Just looked them up and will give the bokashi a try. Thanks!
A good place for people to check out as well is your local fatmer. If they feed round bales of hay, traditionally that spot where they put hay out year after year is extremely fertile soil that can be scraped off and used!
I got 4 dump loads of wood chips I'm mixing the chicken bedding with veggie scraps in with it until fall when I cover my gardens hope to have extra loads dropped soon
thanks
What do you think about woodchips and chop & drop lasagna in bed composting?
I got a chip drop this winter and setting up.compost bins behind my fence in the alley (1/10th acre in city lot) I'm going to talk to my neighbors when everyone starts mowing to dump in my bins rather than the city's bins...
The reality is that at my local rate, 120 yards of compost would cost me 12,000$ to acquire (if I find a supplier). For that money I can hire someone to help with weeding.
I have used a lot of comfrey tea.
Amazon had lots of deliveries last year and while I would prefer if they were unionized, the boxes shred well and work as good mulch for my garden, tree rings, and flower beds.
I also shredded junk mail and depending on what was in the mail, it went to food or non-food composting. I was using 2 different cross cut shredders and tearing the boxes into strips and thinning layers for one of the machines.
Bury dead fish in your garden rows in the fall along with garden/kitchen waste and let it decompose over the winter. Cover with a few inches of shredded leaves and let winter take care of breaking it down. Then come spring you will have amazing nutrient rich soil to plant in. Just clear holes in the leaves to plant in and you're good to go
I have a question: do I even want the chemical laced food scraps from people around me. Not many people I know even care enough to by organic. If there’s chemicals on the food and it’s not good for our bodies, is it ok for compost that grows food for our bodies? Sorry I have officially gone thru the looking glass and it shattered so I can’t go back.
I get 30 yards to start 20 ×50 hightunnel when delivered was still hot had to let set for 5 months
We bought 2 dump trucks of what was supposedly composted garden soil this year. We’ve bought it before from this company and it was amazing that time. This year’s load was a big disappointment. We layered it on top of wood and hay and watered it down and planted. The weather was back and forth so we contributed the slow start mostly to that. Finally I had tested the soil myself and the nitrogen was almost nonexistent. So just to make sure we sent it off through the county extension office and turns out we were right. Almost no nitrogen in the soil at all. So we called them and they emailed us a copy of their soil test results and they in no way matched ours. So they did let us come get a pick up load of compost (which honestly didn’t look a whole lot better.) So you really have to research the company you buy compost from because some may be “overselling” the quality of their product.
Never put compost OVER woodchips.
Woodchips are a coarse mulch & will tie - up Nitrogen the first year or so as they break down if fresh chipped rather than aged chips.
What do you do if you get compost from a pasture raised pork farm and when you put it down it spawns a billion weeds...
Agree, When I lived in Marshall Town Iowa I could fill my trailer for $5 and in Ohio I pay $25 the next year after I moved back,
I also think the Iowa compose was much better
Im in East Tn. We have had a boom in legal distillerys here. Josh, your background in brewing may give insight in this situation. Would there by products collected county wide be significant? Is waste distillery grain a valuable material for large scale compost on a community level?
Hope you get an answer. I'd love to hear their thoughts on distillery 'waste'.
Any thoughts about adding activated biochar to the compost?
Yes I’m working on that. I’ve done a large brush burn off and put it out with the hose and separated the char. Mine I will inoculate by adding to the compost just because it’s the simplest way. I built on of those rotary sifters and hope to incorporate it in my soil blocks that I’ve started making. Our temperature drops below 15 degrees this time of year so I’m trying to start seeds growing indoors. My first soil blocks are just seeded so I’ll know in a month or so if my experiment is successful. Ideally I can set up my garden without $ outlay. So far so good I’m only up to 40$ spent on some blood and bone. I brought a load of char up to the house and the missus covered our best pot plants with raw char because she liked the look of the dark top layer.
So we will find out if the char absorbs all the nutrients as I’m told it does.
What’s your thoughts on mushroom compost? I have been using it and it seems to be working great
I used it successfully for 6 years
Probably the biggest problem for me in my Australian garden is that my leaves are almost exclusively eucalyptus and allelopathic. I can compost them to reduce this but the process is considerably slower than your standard deciduous tree leaves.
Try shredding and using indigenous microbes (I prefer the JADAM methodology for ease and convenience).
Let it decompose for 4-6 months and do a test run.
Do not eat mushrooms that grow out of this mulch.
Are the longer term soil impacts of "Deep Compost Mulch" given much consideration? Growers that rely on manure based compost (not everyone) often face nutrient issues with a buildup of phosphorus. Growers that move locations every few years may not face these issues, but long term a Deep Compost Mulch may not be sustainable for a number of reasons (including those mentioned). It is extremely difficult to build (and maintain) soil tilth and organic matter by continually adding compost because in many soils these organics are burning so fast ( and not sequestered). On the other hand, the cover crop methods and living pathways that you continue to explore seem to offer a sustainable alternative for building healthy soils. I would love to see less emphasis on compost ($$) and instead more time flushing out the alternatives that improve native soils and not simply bury them. Native soils have a lot to offer. Keep up the great work.
Good points. I think ultimately the goal is to grow soil. Copmost is like an addiction for some growers. The first bag should be free.
Buy a big wood chipper and start making your own. I don’t have one yet but it’s on my mind.
The problem I see with no till is the tree roots take over the soil. I use a hand dill for planting tomatoes and peppers and the small tree roots wrap around the 3" drill bit. next year I am going to till those roots up. Am I the only one with small tree roots taking over your garden soil??
I had this issue but broadforked for two years, lifting and pulling every old root and blackberry I could find.
We have about 50+ dump truck loads of wood chips that were dumped on our property (and more coming). What is the quickest way to turn that into compost? I do not own any large equipment but do have access to a small tractor. We have used wood chips + chickens on our garden successfully on a small scale. I've been thinking of making large batches of comfrey tea and using that to help speed up the process. Thoughts?
Let it sit for a season ( dig into it now and then to see how it’s decomposing) and the bottom will be mostly worms and composted chips. If the piles are big(8’x8’x8’) they will develop plenty of heat and break down sooner. I use this material to help loosen clay soil. Eventually all of the chips will be compost or you could use some of the chips for paths.
@@janking2762 - The piles are about that size. In the past we have found that only about the outer 25% composted and it didn't compost much after a year. The inside of the piles didn't break down at all. That was from a load that was chipped in the winter so there were no leaves. I started getting the more recently loads since this spring so there are a lot of leaves. The piles were fairly hot but are starting to cool down some.
What I have is ramial wood chips from spring through fall, leaves and branches up to 5” all mixed, in USDA zone 6B. The outer chips didn’t compost but the inner, deeper chips did. We get lots of rain that facilitates microbial action in the piles. Maybe we are in very different contexts?
@@janking2762 - I'm in zone 7b. We get a lot of rain but we typically get a lot at once so I think a lot of it runs off the pile. I'm actually outside right now measuring the temperature of the piles and my newest pile is 135°. My oldest pile is about 105°. We are in a drought so I should probably water the wood chips.
Try a bioreactor - it wouldn't be perfect, but I have seen some promising videos.
Finding large amounts of compost has been a tough job this year for my small farm/ market garden. I can only make so much and purchasing compost at $115 a yard locally is not very cost effective.
Well I feel better that I am not the only one who couldn’t find compost lol thought I moved to Mars for awhile!
In a bad soil situation would layering 4-6” of woodchips letting them breakdown for 6 months+ then doing the deep compost method on top of that work? My idea is those woodchips would continue to decompose and overtime would add an extra 1-2” of organic matter below the compost.
No I wouldn’t bury chips under compost, do it the other way around.
przybyla420 I actually did both I put the raised bed on top of the woodchips and then put the compost/soil mix planted then covered the top with more woodchips.
what about leaf mulch??
How can i get a No Till Grower hat down here in Australia Josh and Jesse Cheers Lucas
What do you think about Nitrate leaching from compost?
it certainly can be an issue. Generally the C:N ratio of a compost has to be 10:1 (so finished) or you may run into leaching issues.
I’ve been searching for the answer to this question for months now and am obviously looking in the wrong areas…
Can we lay down say 12-24 inches of fresh cow manure mixed with loads of hay/straw - leave it to sit for 6-12 months then spread it out and plant in it? We’ve our own cow, who spills the hay/straw and have abundance of fresh manure but what we lack is time to spend composting.. anyone know??
Compost available around here is made from shredded leaves from the city and chicken litter from industrial poultry houses. Its not great, microscoped it - all bacteria. Chicken litter is from systems that aren't currently sustainable. There is huge opportunity here in my mind.
I’d love to learn more about starting a small scale composting business
Make a pile of waste, keep it moist, turn it when it once and a while, bag it when it smells like soil.
The hesitation I’d have is being able to trust the supply stream to be herbicide free. That’s the biggest negative. Other than that, it would be challenging to find sources for different minerals to create different pH balances and also different textures. As for my 1/3 acre home garden, my goal is to never let any organic material off my property.
See, this comment right here is why I am so excited by the demand for compost going up. Yay for the free market. High compost demand means food waste streams become more efficiently handled. The first thought about how to start a small or large scale composting business (for me anyway) is “where can I secure organic matter?”. Restaurants, grocery store produce waste, juice bars, coffee bars breweries arborists, saw mills, etc. anyway, you start handling that stuff, get it into maybe bokashi, maybe a large scale bsfl proto pod, (so that you don’t have to be picky about what food waste you’re handling…) compost it, bag it. Sell it… that food waste is a contributor to green house gas production when it’s not broken down properly. So high demand of compost, means a healthier ecosystem on two sides, growing more and more efficiently handling waste.
@Ernest Elton I don’t have a dog. Pig and dog poop, animal offal, infectious microbes need much higher compost temperatures than mine ever has. Optimum temperature kills offensive bacteria. Too hot and the compost is not good.
If every 3rd person had just 6 laying hens (in their prime) we would have no need for commercial eggs and food waste into manure compost (this is legal in most city’s with no rooster needed)
not legal in mine sadly :(. No farm animals allowed at all.
@@richards5110 pets with benefits
@@richards5110 move to an area where you can have chickens
@@seven1378 I'm not moving just for chickens lmao, especially in this housing market
Check out Will Bonsall’s book Essential Guide to Radical, Self Reliant Gardening. It’s a homesteader’s approach and highly focused on sustainability, grows his own green manure, etc. But I can see where a business focused market gardener might need a simpler approach for fertility.
Finding some local people with big lawns that bag their clippings and don’t use weed and feed could be a route.
18 day compost piles - grass clippings, leaves/pine needles/wood chips/ straw and some dirt or old compost really works great. If you have grass clippings you can do this!
I think a great episode would be to talk about herbicide used on straw or hay and what it can do to your garden if you compost it or use it as mulch. It seems like this is becoming a bigger problem but there aren't a lot of people who talk about it or even know about it. When your garden is affected by it, its devastating. I've looked for straw and hay for our rabbits and have yet to find a feed store that can say 100% without a doubt the straw or hay has not been treated with herbicide.
I am new at this but I got three big round bales of old wheat straw that is at least two years old. I am hoping that the herbicide will have diminished enough to allow plants to grow. I am told the longer they sit and a compost cycle will make them safe to use. Good luck and havagudun.
Quantity in the Memphis TN area isn’t a problem yet. But the quality IS NOT what it should be. The seven yards I bought last year had construction and clothing waste in it
my municipality couldn't make a commercial sized composting facility work. nobody wanted it in their backyard.
It is a hard thing to make at scale. the run off can eutriphy streams and lakes, the smell is unpleasant to some people. Also in a city, the organic waste that people divert is more likely to be the hard to compost stuff (bones, meat).
Meanwhile there are more and more vermiculture programs in cities. an organic chicken farm could get a thousand pounds of meat waste (for black soldier fly feeding) if they put the sign out. overwhelm is a real thing though.
In areas that have rental apartments they don't have but one trash and they don't recycling here in Columbus Ohio
Only other thing I wish you guys had touched on was I've heard some ppl claim that deep compost systems can cause high nitrate levels in the soil and issues with runoff into water ways similar to synthetic fertilizers and just curious if either of you have seen evidence of this in your experience. The only other farm I can think of that I've found so far that touched on this was singing frogs farm and if I remember right their tests disproved that theory but would be interested in any other 'case studies'
HI Jessica, Indeed that's an omission. JM Fortier has tested his waters as well I believe and found no significant pollutants from compost (would double check with him tho). I discuss this a bit in the book, but because composts vary so widely and soils nutrient holding capacities vary so widely, I don't think there is an easy, cut and dry answer. I believe composts that are heavy in nitrates, especially in wet regions with sandy soils would be the most likely to cause issues. Generally though, if the compost is broken down + planted and kept planted there should not be significant risks to the environment based on the agronomists I've spoken with. Of course, context is everything, though.
@@notillgrowers thank you for your thoughts, and I will have to look for JM's data on this also. I agree that there's probably not a once size fits all and that in certain contexts it could potentially cause problems, but just was curious if either of you had done any tests or knew of others that had some additional data that at least pointed to it not being likely with proper management. Gonna have to see if I missed anything from Richard or Diego that might have addressed this too possibly.
We have not done any independent testing yet, but I would like to (especially as wet as my new farm is). A couple interviews I've done for the No-Till Market Garden podcast that you might find of interest would be David Blanchard, Neal Kinsey, and John Kempf. Each has a different take on it.
@@notillgrowers thanks much for the additional leads!
I don't disagree that it has a more intense leachate but if you were to take that same compost material & had left it to rot where it'd have fallen then there would be no difference in how much nitrate levels reached the Ocean. The problem comes when a farmer refuses to use 30% of their land for drainage that's at moderns standards for trapping those surplus nutrients. Still today the grandchildren of farmers in 1974 complain on YT about how they don't want the government telling them what to do, meanwhile the Mississippi River is bottom-lined with 35ft of topsoil from poorly-managed farms. We literally have to use smaller boats to ship our corn so it doesn't bump the topsoil left in the river by our grandfathers.
A good carbon layer might be bio-char. Creating it is an issue. There's plenty of free material available from new construction sites that ends up in landfills.
There are like 20 ideas for deep dive videos in this chat
Syntropic agriculture.... Make it on site
Came on, can se start using international units? Like a acre... Okay, is about 5000m2 or half an hectare. But a yard? I though It was used for distance...
Compost is sold in my area "by the yard" , short for cubic yard, a volumetric measure.
I’m surprised how no-dig is claimed as sustainable but then no one refers to compost as being a heavy input into your systems
Back-to-eden styles systems fix that with it own source of carbon (trees) and the reality is that many(/most?) growers would have enough space to include trees in a broader, but more sustainable system that “grows” it own composting/mulching.
@@growingwithfungi Richard has a couple newer videos showing how they now are self sufficient with making their own compost on site for all their market gardens
@@jessicah2345 after he bought tons of it in the last 7 years...plus he have a big animal operation, mostly chikens operation (import feed and buys peatmoss) from where he gets most of the compost for the market garden. He also still import woodchips and cardboard and manures...
Never knew any case where a comercial market garden using no tiil deep mulch system can produce even a 1/10 of its one compost and other mulch. And we are talking about very small operations...