The Best Way to SUPERPOWER Your Soil (For $6 or less)
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- čas přidán 8. 06. 2022
- This is the best way to transform a patch of bad soil without hauling in compost or spending $$$ on amendments.
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Cover cropping adds life to the soil. Root exudates pump sugars into the ground, and increase good bacteria and fungi in your garden. If you want to add fungi to the garden as well as adding worms, bacteria and other good guys, plant a cover crop! This is a simple no-till method to build soil fast. You can plant Sudan-sorghum, rye grass, clover, millet, sunn hemp and other plants that will get to work adding sugar to the soil as they add organic matter! You don't need to make a compost pile to feed the garden - not when you can grow your own compost right in place! Any time you have bare soil, cover it with living plants and transform bad dirt like the regenerative farming people do!
More about sunn hemp as a cover crop: www.ecofarmingdaily.com/grow-... - Jak na to + styl
This is the best way to transform a patch of bad soil without hauling in compost or spending $$$ on amendments.
Get COMPOST EVERYTHING: The Good Guide to Extreme Composting here: amzn.to/3aSXObR
Subscribe to the newsletter: thesurvivalgardener.us3.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=d1c57e318ab24156698c41249&id=1f74a21dc8
Thanks for watching!
Lol Breaking tools for the sake of comedy. Love it!
Are weeds a cover crop ? ...
Ok you answered my question at 10:15 ...😂😂😂
I should learn not to jump in with questions before the end of a video shouldn't I 😂😂😂❤️✌️
Your advise is both welcoming and educational
Thank you
Coggins grass used to tear my taters up. Holes in everything. The roots and shoots are like needles when they come up.
It literally depends on the "weed". Dandelions indicate two things, the soil is highly compacted (think hard pan clay) or is lacking calcium. The deep tap roots can begin to break up the soil, cutting the leaves off before flowers appear, can add calcium, which the dandelions bring up from deeper layers of the ground.
Some weeds are worth getting rid of, IF you understand why they're growing in the soils. Poison ivy, for example.
....
A moment of silence for that poor rake.
Academy Award for the opening act!🏆
All my kids stop whatever they're doing to come watch your videos when I put them on. You're not only teaching adults how to think like a successful gardener, you're teaching the next generation as well. Thank you for making my homeschool life just a little bit easier! ❤️
Thank you. Homeschool is best school!
@@davidthegood please explain why that corn 🌽 was very malnourished.. you were talking about filtelizer all the time.. but why the hell on earth those corn of yours was so malnourished..i feel sad and disappointed.
@@mrdeepwebinsider2197 It's landrace corn. We barely fed it on purpose in order to select for survival genes. Modern corn is hungrier than older types, and we are working on building tougher strains. We could make it deep green in days if we liked, but the ones that produce under stress may lead us to more robust genetics after a few generations of seed saving. See: Joseph Lofthouse
@@davidthegood oh okay sir.. i love your response.. thats very informative thank you so much.. keep it up.
Thank you for keeping your kids in a REAL school and not an indoctrination day camp.
I always wondered why cane sugar was one of the magic ingredients to get tomato plants to grow. I never knew it was to feed the soil. Magic recipe (tablespoon of each : sugar, powdered milk & epsom salt ) Thanks for solving the mystery.
My husband didn't believe me when I planted a cover crop (green manure). Now, you have shown him (in a guy way) what I have tried to prove to him. And I mean it with a smile. Thanks.
That’s what I have to do- pull up a CZcams of someone with a beard saying the same thing. 😂
Pull up mint and you will find worms wrapped around the roots, and 3 - 6" of crumbly, black worm compost soil. Mint takes over the garden, but you can pull it up in 1 second. But leave some to keep those wonderful worms.
Absolutely! Those living roots are magical.
Thats actually brilliant
It’s so satisfying to pull up mint. It smells good too!
@@ke3347 I have a lawn customer that has some mint get into his lawn, I love mowing it, what a lawn cut in heaven must smell like...
@@davidthegood would mint work for chop and drop or is it evil like Bermuda and able to reestablish itself after it has been chopped and dropped?
I worked a sandy allotment plot for a couple of seasons. I used buckwheat as the cover crop and fertilised with stinging nettle tea. At the end of the second season, I dug up a bit of ground and was shocked to see the sand had started to turn black after I got a few inches down. Buckwheat puts down a big, saturated root mass and can work itself down pretty deep.
:)
Interesting
That’s amazing. Thanks for sharing!
I’ve just planted a whole bunch of false stinging nettle (version without the sting). I’ll try that nettle tea trick. Thanks!
I love your videos. You have taught me how to transform my Sandpit of Death and Despair, into a tiny little ecosystem that has grown from literally nothing. It has NOT been easy but it has been worthwhile and we are seeing actual changes in the color and consistency of our sand. The pests came first and I lost everything to them last year, but it didn't take long for the predators to show up and now everything is balanced and the new species list increases year after year. I did take this summer off from growing so I could focusing on continuing to add biomass, charged Biochar etc., in preparation for next year. It's so amazing seeing Bees, butterflies, Dragonflies, Lightning Bugs, Hummingbirds etc., in a place where there were none before. I've learned that all I have to do is take care of Mother Nature and She will take care of the rest.
That is awesome.
@@davidthegood Thank you! I owe it to you!
👍 yup
Do you now have P.O.U.S. s? Plants Of Unusual Size?
@@greenteafinch9833 LMAO! I managed to breed a crop of Giant Bantam Corn that don't produce well. I'm going to try back breeding them for better production
That fit you were having on the ground is so me recently as I watch all my tomatoes bite the dust one after another from southern wilt….thank God for dogs and comedic relief! Word of the day : exudate
Always love coming back for my garden fix and a bonus track of great music at the end.
Now I understand what my Dad was doing in the Wisconsin fall when he would plant rye grass in the garden. I was too young, 5-9 years old, to understand, but I remember him doing that for years to the sandy-loam soil in the garden. In a way he was doing the compost in place for years along with spreading kitchen scraps all over the garden while it was producing. I remember in particular one night when he threw out a watermelon rind and as he released it high into the air he caught a glimpse of something moving around where the rind would land. Dad made it back to the house in 2 steps and had the door shut just before the aroma of skunk arrived to the house! When we could finally stand to go to that part of the garden, about three days later, we discover Dad's target had landed right in the middle of the radish and turnip bed and the skunk had made the vegetables unusable. In the fall, Dad simply plowed them under and sowed rye seeds on it. During the winter he put wood ash over the garden also. The next year, we had to lime the garden because the wood ash had changed the pH too much. Such is life of a gardener. By the way, the garden produced abundantly, the fruit and nut trees never did, but we think we know why now. By-the-by, my Dad, who is 84, has since moved to AZ and is attempting to raise tomato plants there. It's a far cry from the acre+ garden he use to grow, but his three plants are keeping him happy, along with his cactus garden.
Yup 👍 .. Geoff Lawton says the soil is an animal that is all mouth. Once we start seeing things that way, the task at hand becomes so much clearer. Gotta keep 'em fed!
That is a great quote. Leave it to Geoff.
lol David the Good, thanks for the giggles today! One giggle after the next... lol Your videos always make me smile and that is priceless in itself. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us along with your humor!
Great explanation. You do such an excellent job of distilling scientific information into broadly understood terms that inspires action.
I like to read all the boring stuff so normal people don't have to. Thank you.
@@davidthegood I like the boring stuff as well. Thanks for sharing.
@@davidthegood that's not boring stuff! I read a soil science book to a child starting at a week old for many months. He's 15 and loves to read!
Let the weeds grow if you want food without buying fertilizer !!
Plants make more plants. Stop killing the plants caz you think it looks pretty !
Just pull up the weeds where u are planting.
Use overgrown weeds as ground cover to shade soil.
The most fertile thing I've got in the garden is what I call a grass heart. Its the ball of roots when I pull out a grass plant. I shake off the dirt in a place which needs fertility. Then leave the heart above ground to dry up. I typically make a berm/donut around a cash crop. The shade from the heart donut keeps the ground moist. Once I feel it's time, I add compost + kitchen scraps and mix this donut into the earth. Making it flat. Then start from the beginning. The process loops & continues.
Btw pistachio shells make great aeration !! I leave the salt on there. Did tests to compare rinsed vs left alone pistachios and the salt did better. Also compared boiled softened shells vs regular dry and did not notice any difference.
ALSO, something huge which could help mankind immensely is to >> NOT harvest completely
I use the deer plot cover crop seeds because it’s usually the cheapest although going to the grocery store (as David mentions) might be a little cheaper. I use the perennial mixes of chicory, alfalfa and red clover as they are perennial and produce lots of edible leaves, rabbit food and flowers for the bees.
You can sometimes get the deer plot mixes on sale in TS after hunting season.
I'm surprised you can grow popcorn. Never heard of that before.
I’ve never thought of leaves as solar panels. I like that!
The crying or getting mad segment made me laugh, between the plants I've grown or the animals I keep, that part was very relatable. I work long hours during the week so I'm not able to keep a watch all the time. I ended up having to replant all of my corn and almost all of my cucumbers on account of wild geese that were on my pond. But anyways I loved this video! I was planning on planting shell peas in the bare patch a have but now I'm wondering if there's an ideal way to plant both those and the sunflower seeds I have in the same bare patch.
Lupins grow wild where I live. They're nitrogen fixers (pea family I think) and have a nice deep tap root. There's a bunch growing in the ditch just down the road from my house, seems like a good year for "wild" seed collection
Absolutely. I would love to have them all over.
David, I have learned so much from you! I've added so much to my soil and it shows through my plants! People wanna know how to get plants looking good and making food...i tell them the methods I've learned from you but unfortunately most people are just too lazy to even try. They just throw down 13-13-13 and walk away..thanks for keeping it real!
The power of seeds. God knew what he was doing
I'm doing this to fix the grass in my front yard. I'm doing a round of annuals that I covered with a little compost and some grass clippings. When it gets up I'll cut it and seed a diverse perennial grass mix with at least one perennial legume
Well, this plan didn't work quite like I had planned. The covercrop didn't grow as well as I had hoped in some areas. I already cut it down. But I am going to put some grass seed out and probably some clover or something.
Another Good video David. I finished reading Grocery Row Gardening for the second time, and Compost Everything arrived, I just finished chapter 3. I thoroughly enjoy your writing. I’ve been growing food for 50 years and like you I’m an avid reader so I can’t say I’m learning much that’s new, but your approach to food gardening is so refreshing. I highly recommend your books! One of these days when my grocery row garden fills out a little more I’ll post some pictures on your blog site. Thanks
Need to refresh the cooking spices in your cupboard or kitchen? Take all the spices you are replacing that are seeds and plant them out. I also have four pounds of supermarket black eyed peas on the grow at the moment and they are thriving in Texas, but even I have the odd patch of garden where thick dark green rows of black eyed peas will have some stunted and yellow plants in a patch and then goes back to large dark green healthy black eyed peas.
I hit rewind to see the beginning of the video again. Lol! I know this feeling when nothing works right no matter how hard you try Lol! Thanks for the laugh!
Very timely video for me David. Thanks for sharing.
That anger in the beggining, and the despair, was so INTENSE! 🔥 I nominate you for a Slapademy award!
This was a great video. I definitely learned more from this video than I have from a lot of videos I’ve seen from other channels. Thanks!
Thanking u for the reminders absolut compost as well as saving and enriching our soil...stay blessed
New(ish) to the channel, but I've watched almost all your videos now. I really enjoy the content and it has changed the way I look at gardening, and I'm even getting some of your Rachel mulberrys. Thank you David!
Awesome - thank you.
Thank you David, you are the man!
Awesome and simple guide to a first time cover crops. Background information was rock solid. Loved all the acting you do a greatjob job. Thanks David.
Thank you David- this is great!
All your videos are very informative and fun filled too. A big like from India
Love the music!!! Love all the knowledge we get from your videos. Thanks
I couldn’t sleep last night and I think I watched your video in the wee hours of the morning. Can’t thank you enough for keeping me awake, seriously. When you were raking your potatoes, I was thinking, “that’s our side yard.” By the time you got to the explanation of the cover crop, I was wide awake and mentally planning how to fix the long stretches of sand/dirt along my side yard. I was getting tired of mulch and searching for a better way. A thousand thanks to you for your advice. It was worth losing sleep over! :)
Wonderful video full of very helpful information. This is my first year using cover crops. I've always mulched with cardboard with something on top like grass clippings or pine bark. I'm excited to learn about and use cover crops. I love your sense of humor!
3:11 had to replay numerous times and experience the full rage 😂😂
Thank you for another wonderful video!
Very good how to David, thank you.
Not something I'd ever considered ... a good lesson learned. Thanks "Good Guy".
Love your channel content and you how you tell it like it is, and have overcome adversity in so many of your homesteads, Someday hope for a small plot to grow our food and connect with the earth. You really are an inspiration. As a worm farmer I find it very fulfilling to dig in the soil and see what's there. I love my worms and know without them we would be screwed. Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge and experiences. I would love to have all of your books to just suck up all your knowledge. Thanks David for being so good. You are awesome. A++++++++++++
My Dad would always grow rye grass at the end of the summer growing season in the garden to help keep the soil vibrant. It definitely worked. I like this idea of creating an ecosystem with a mix of plants. Thanks for sharing this approach 🙏
Thanks for the info-tainment. Nice editing. I watched it twice!
Love the channel. Keep up the good work buddy!
We are close, between zone 8a and 8b. Our potatoes we planted in some grocery rows that we first planted a cover crop over and ran our sheep through did descent. When the potatoes were growing and got too close to the blueberry, blackberry, pear, persimmon, etc., we harvested some early and were very impressed. About a week and a half later we harvested more, waiting for some of the leaves to turn yellow, and the pests got a lot of them. We still had a bunch to give away and eat, but the ones we pulled early with no sign of being ready to pull seemed to be so much better looking with less of a pest problem. We took note and will pull early next year. Some of the older gardeners at church looked at us like, "yeah, you didn't know you were supposed to pull potatoes early around here"...
Thank you for taking the time to write this comment. It was an "ah-ha" moment for me after doing potatoes for the first time this year and experienced the same.
@@bonnieshelley9072 when my wife and I pulled the first few our eyes got huge. We filled a 5 gallon bucket with great looking potatoes and only took out maybe 5 to 6 plants. I was like, "wow, and they aren't even ready yet. I can't hardly wait to see how much better they'll be when they are supposed to be harvested."
A few yellow and droopy leaves later a little over a week down the road and we were pretty disappointed. Loads of bug holes, empty skins, and that wonderful puddle of ooze that used to be the mother potato. Next planting we decided to harvest at the first sign of slightly sad looking leaves and experiment from there. We really did still get a great harvest though and they taste amazing. Way better than store bought and we even had some for breakfast today.
Thank you Maan... That is going to be the way forward....I like your style 😎
Thank again
Thank you for this video it gives me hope, I am trying something I have a tomato plant growing I even got brave and decided to put a strawberry plant into my small area in a plastic tote, with all the info you and others have given out so unselfishly we have to try something. So Im going to take what I've learned and work with that. Thank you and may God continue to bless you and your family, by the way your videos are funny and serious at the same time your songs and your voice speaks volumes of who you are, a very nice voice you have. Thanks again.
Inspirational as always.
Thanks for the Great tips sir.
You're so funny! 🤣 That saved my day before it started . Good morning from Portual. 🌷
Absolut beginner with terrible bad soil here and yes I cryed and I hated it!
Will try it. Thank you.
I love your videos, David. You do so much to give back in such simplistic & useful ways.
I was temporarily plopped into a 2 acre hot desert sandy rock with almost 100 mesquite, Verdes, ironwood, more...plus wonderful well water. I can compost, & grow my little heart out.
It's 107 today & wrens are working hard at plucking out my plants like juicy eyeballs, but you keep me on target. I have 3, apx 30x40 fenced horse areas I am free to practice & grow anything I like. We are bringing 2, six wk old nubian baby goats home next week...mainly for weed control & manure. I'm so looking forward to melding your advice with Joel Salatin to see what I can bring back to life. Thank you for all you do.
I can even show your videos to my small grandkids with confidence knowing they'll enjoy & learn something from you too. My grandson loves it when I tell him to go outside to pee & fertilize!
You are a blessing.
I am ordering a compost your enemies tshirt! Thank you!
Absolute total, total beginner here. Live in Northern Arizona and getting ready to start small 64 sqft bed for personal consumption. Lots to learn for sure, but hoping that in 2 growing seasons I can start to produce at least one crop consistently. Hey, I miss Florida, but I can't imagine how nice & drenched you must get gardening in your location! I miss the humidity!!!
Moar diversity!!!
The benefits are consistent: the more species and varieties of plants you have, the healthier they all will be.
Moar diversity!!!
Been binge watching your vids for the last few weeks. Love it when your vids pop in my feed. I love your relaxed view on different gardening methods. I get sucked into the dogma of the "perfect way" of doing things. Your humour is os funny. Thanks for the lol😂😂😂
laughing at "you can cry about it or get angry"..thanks for the great content
You are one of the most important teachers I’ve found in my life recently. Thanks man. This was very enlightening and helpful
Thank you
Your videos are always entertaining along with education. Great!
You David, deserve 100million subscribers
Your a mind reader David. I have just beent thinking about cover crop
Very funny. You do however really get your points across.
I have extremely poor soil of rough sand and rocks. Where I've been growing plants the soil has improve remarkably in just 6 months.
I have a bag of birdseed which I will plant out tomorrow in another bad bit of soil and see what happens..😊😊
A neighbour I have bought a machine that I find almost indispensable, a leaf shredder. If there are clippings from pruning, grass that's too long, or basically anything else, dry it out, run it through the shredder. It has to be dry, twigs etc removed, and I can almost immediately use it for a compost base or mulch.
I use dried green peas and great northern beans from the supermarket (They grow just fine), and some old Kale seeds I hade in a drawer, and chicken scratch that has unbroken barley and cracked corn or what ever... I am in upstate NY and I do this after potatoes. All of this stuff grows in the fall even if its cool, and then winter kills under a meter of snow...The trick is I want anything that grow in the cold fall and then will die in the winter. He is right about the compost, even with 5 chickens, it hard to make enough to cover my potatoe patch unless you spend a small fortune at some garden center.
Just found your channel. Have some of the worst soil on earth. New to growing vegetables, but from what I’ve seen so far, I’m in the right place. Lots to learn. Thanks for doing what you do.
Thank you - we are probably neck and neck on horrid soil.
Thankyou for the encouragement ... 👍🌱
I'm having a rough year in the garden.
Just got home from 2wks away and the summer heat destroyed sunflowers, cucumbers, corn, squash etc. The only things thriving are the okra, many varieties of peppers, sweet potatoes and the bee balm. The birds ate my blueberries and the bugs and heat got my tomatoes. The everglades are thriving too. There are positives. Now I'm stoked to go throw out seeds tomorrow! Whoot! 💦🌱
I like to use sunflowers in mix warm season cover crop mixes, because they root deeply and really activate the myccorhizal community. Also, okra has been making it's way into my mixes as well. Kool Kids Kover Krop.
If you can find it, I love Eagle Pass okra - not only is it tasty but the stalks get 6 - 7 foot tall and put down massive deep roots! It’s helped break up my gumbo clay so much
@@goosegirl941 yeh they are like tree stalks etc heck
Your information has been invaluable to me. God bless you and your family. I love your channel.
Thank you. Homeschool moms rock!
@@davidthegood 💃 🌻
Great video David , I love it .
EXCELLENT ADVICE 👌👌👌
I’ve got my side yard growing birdseed as a cover crop will be fun to see how it works I feel that it will get the job done superbly! Lol
This is what I was thinking of doing, as I was listening to him list off the different seeds he was planting. 😁
Yes! I actually do have mung beans in my pantry right now! WinCo has them in the bulk bins and I bought a scoop to see what they taste like.
They are the "bean sprout" bean, but also do great growing in the heat.
Wow those were BAD potatoes ! Really wow. I like that you use ’failures’ and teach how to fix it.
🤣🤣you always make me laugh! Love your videos..You are full of knowledge & are not uptight & so serious like some others..Cheers from Australia!😁I just did a few cover crops in my garden beds with legumes & beans & barley from my cupboard.Thanks4 the reminder & the inspiration!!
Did a cover crop of buckwheat and cowpeas last year on a plot. I let them go to seed. This year I planted potatoes there. Between the rows the buckwheat came back and as I hilled the potatoes, once they grew a bit, I cultivated the buckwheat back in between the rows. So far, the potatoes are looking great. Time will tell. I'm feeling pretty optimistic at this point. I just planted mustard in one of my orchards with the plan of chopping and tilling the mustard back in as a biofumigant and green manure. It's a bit of work, but really exciting learning how these things work together.
One of my favorite tunes
Thank you David. Something clicked in my head today. I was considering covering my massive beds with tarps to stop weeds or anything growing in them so they are plant ready, but that's a bad idea. Last year i cut the plants down to the soil and left root systems to rot. It remains to be seen how effective it is.
That’s how nature does it.
I use cardboard a lot for that. It keeps weeds from growing, but it also acts as mulch and helps protect the soil while it breaks down into it :)
Just make sure the soil underneath the cardboard is moist when you put it down, and also put mulch on top of the cardboard if you want to really add to the soil
Much love and blessings to the family. Got here late..
Thank you.
The song in the beginning is my new favorite song! ❤❤❤
OMG David you are a hoot!
FOUND IT! I've been searching your videos looking for this song. Thankfully it only took 30 or so minutes. This intro song is Amazing.
@royrodgers567 Ahh! I cannot find it. Do you have a link to the song? Is it David's?
@@mx-k Yup, David created it. Sugar Pie is the name. Spotify has it.
I was pacing bets that you were going to talk about biochar, this is good too :)
Good cover
I stopped “putting my gardens to bed” in the fall. Instead I leave the dead plants in beds I don’t have live crops. Because, even dead roots are better than no roots. Still working to find crops that survive zone 6b winters.
I agree. You might try Siberian kale and winter wheat.
@@davidthegood Thanks
We have a part of our Land (about an acre) that we planted in sorghum to fix it. I also tossed in some beans and turnips, which we have been harvesting.
We will cut the sorghum sudan for hay, let it grow out again, if there's time, and cut it again. We plan on doing that for 2 to 3 years and then plant green chili.
Keep going my dear friend
God made a nifty system! I only put stuff together like the hired help. He makes amazing things grow!
Loved hearing u mention WEEDS, I love weeds. The perfect mulching crop. Never let go to seed. Hoe them down at 4-6 inches high. Perfect. Everyone sees weeds as the enemy, I love them as they do so much for my soil.
I loved the crying part.
"i am going to take a payday loan, to fight the commies....' That is the best lyric i have heard in a while. The production value on this video, is way beyond youtube ser.
WHAT IS THE SONG WHERE CAN I BUY IT
OMG I NEED THAT SHIRT
Missed the Goodstream David, but here listening in and enjoying the replay, and glimpsing the chat, seeing a name and remembering to contact Derek Clawson!
Awesome thanks for sharing
Great video, very informative. I can’t believe that patch of potatoes turned out so bad.
It was shocking. Almost all worthless.
Haha “I can’t tell you yet…. The algorithms…. Anyway it’s cover crops” haha great content
God bless you 🙏😇🙏!!! Awesome content!!!
Thank you!
Take Action! ☮️ I love it.
you make me laugh and also give great information. you and The Weedy Garden are the best. thank you for showing how to fix my soil and also give me laughs which is the bestest.
Shlum,
My garden is about 25' × 40' I have not much of a way toake a compost pile. I descided to take the 2/ 35 gallon trash cans I have and make compost tea. I add food scraps of all kinds. Quite often when I pull up plants and weeds I place them in the cans which is filled with water, biochar water, fish emulsion and epsom salt have also been added along with the bugs which were on my zucchini and pumpkin plants. I like your method of composting everything.
I am starting cover crop planting soon first I have to make mole proof beds without making them raised beds.
Very good video David, Though you might be doing seed balls from the thumbnail, but cover cropping is an awesome way to bring life into the garden