The garden is made up of around 3,000 square feet of growable space and
believe it or not we rarely water. Even when days get into the 90’s the
beds stay damp and the rain and underground moisture is enough to
fulfil the water requirements of the entire garden. This is truly hands
free gardening at its finest. This method is ideal for those with
expensive water, a lack of water, or those wanting to just be more self
sufficient and ecological.
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Currently building five 4×8 raised beds (20" tall b/c it is on a pasture that is mostly rock/boulder/ledge just under the surface) for next years garden (relocating and expanding from this year). I saw you mention coir gardening in a different video weeks ago and came back to learn more now that we are ready. This video is 4 years old, are you still using this method? Going to try it anyway, have lots of sticks/branches down from some huge windstorms. nThanks!!
The plants freaking out behind him… "DID YOU SAY SOMETHING BAD ABOUT HUGEL CULTURE??!!"
Well, I just put a rubber tarp pond in the center of my garden and it always seems to be nice and moist nowadays. For my area in Los Angeles a dry area like mine it's been helpful.
Thanks for sharing. I am in Michigan also and I don’t live far from you. Would you be open to having someone stop by to see your garden in person?
I just saw this. I built 10 raised beds about 2 weeks ago. I filled them half or more full of wood chips and added soil to the upper part. I think this s the same process. My beds are 20” deep. I use drip tape buried 2” deep for watering. I’m looking forward to this. Watering is my biggest challenge. I live in southern Utah and the heat in the summer is brutal. This may help. Thanks.
I going to do this we are dry here in SD along with other things
How about sowing seeds direct, beetroot for instance… would it work if I put a small trench of clippings etc in the soil first then a layer of soil on top for sowing into.
I have a row of 16 bales per raised bed, then about 6 -8 inches of soil and mulch atop them. Last four years. holds the water into the area so very well. and the plants do wonderfully. I also have plants in the ground that I added layers of straw on when I first moved, and it helped so much.
A solution to nitrogen sequestration is to just urinate onto the garden bed. It should balance out the N lost to the carbon and supply extra phosphorus and potassium.
core gardening is what he does. done for thousands of years….he digs a trench and places 6-8 inches of straw. he makes it half the size of the bed. so his bed is 4ft wide and he places the tranch about 2 ft wide of old straw (but can use new straw) then plants on top. the moisture will wick over a foot each side. make sure to have nitrogen rich soil around it
Cool I will try core gardening on my next raised bed!
Show us what you're taking about!!! We NEED to see it.
We have well water which is great but in Florida we were burning up our pump trying to keep everything healthy, especially in mid summer. We mulched everything, took a couple seasons to get the system in place as it should be but it definitely helped. We also catch rain water from the roof and use that when we need it
I tried it last year and it worked awesome
I'll give it a try this year, because I bought some straw for that purpose because we're Rehabilitation a logged lot and there's not a lot of soil we have a lot of erosions so raised beds are a must and I was worried about nitrogen sequestering because we tried to go culture last year and there was some nitrogen sequestering. And so here I have all of the materials perfectly so let's give it a shot why not. I'll let you know how it turns out.
We are trying core gardening this year. Thanks for the tip
Ty we can try this method ! Question ..what growing zone are you in …thanks great videos ! I'm in Canada zone 6-7
Oh wow! I used this method for my first garden. I'm 70. I didn't know it had a name. I had almost total clay but wanted to garden so I decided to do containers and a large, above ground potato row with a variation of Ruth stout.
I used several water wicking things in the containers… First cardboard, a few sticks, some regular leaves, mixed with shredded paper. This layering for about 2" at the bottom of a 14" deep container. Then 5-6 inches of leaf mulch from the local city recycling facility. Free. WATERED well.
Followed with about 1" of compost from the store. Next about 2-3 inches of miracle gro potting soil. Planted my little baby veggies and mulched. Heavily. Some I mulched with a combination of wood chips and shredded paper. Then I switched to straw. WaTERED well.
The results: plants are growing beautifully. Almost zero weeds. Limited watered. It's June 9. I started in early April. I have harvested Collards twice, cabbage once, Squash once.
I have about 25 containers, 20 different items, plus 2 grow bags which are 100 gal, 1 pea, 1 bean
Potato row w/ 30 sweet potato and about 40 white potato. Everybody looks hale, hearty and happy.
You mentioned this method in one of your previous videos about a year ago. I decided to try it in my onion bed and while everything was dying of thirst, the onions were super green and happy!! I couldn't believe it was working so well!! I could definitely see a big difference between the I beds that had no core. I will be expanding the core gardening method to more beds!! I've been watching your videos for years now, and I always learn something new. Thank you for sharing all your expertise with us!
Do you have to prepare the gardens every year with the straw ?
Thank you for this video!! I just started a vegetable garden this year and have had moments where I struggle to keep it watered well. I am going to try this method moving forward 🙂
Do you replace the straw each year?
He’s in Michigan where it rains during the summer. Does anyone know if this works in a dry climate like California? We can go months without rain.
I really like the way you explain and the topics you choose. I tried your lettuce spinach and kale seeds and got them planted late summer, the yield was fabulous. And produced thru November, I am planning to try this method for Spring 2022
I grow all my plants hydroponically in a deep water culture raft system that uses the beaver board rafts. And I use organic nutrients for my raft system but I never have to water because of it. Also the beaver board rafts are awesome because they have built-in holes where you just put in a plant that was grown in rockwool in the hole and it stays there so you don't have to use any actual soil or anything like that. And the coolest thing about it is that each raft is 2 ft wide x 4 ft long and each individual raft has 28 planting holes. So in a 6 ft wide x 60 ft long raft you can grow 1,260 plants and my greenhouse holds 4 of those rafts which is over 5,000 plants per a greenhouse. And because of how the holes are spaced apart you can grow even tomatoes in there really close together with no problems.
Hi Luke. Now five years later how do you feel about this method.