They thought I was crazy to Backyard Garden this way with Cover Crops | When | Why | How.
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More great info Mark, THANKS!!!
How's your young Marine doing?
How do you terminate it? Just pull it up?
You are the best teacher on this stuff!!! I would have learned so much more in school if you were my teacher!!!
In october i plant white clover and alfalfa in all the beds. by december here on long island its lush and I let my 6 chickens out to start having access to my backyard. As these cover crops were growing i thinly mulch w leaves /grass picked up w mower. Cant wait to retire to a longer producing climate like 7 mos of year.
We call it green manure in the UK.
Your ARE the Professor of 'Good Soil'….
I just randomly ran into your videos the other day. I like your simple straight talk style of sharing your method of soil care. I clicked on this video because I thought to myself " Oh yeah everyone out here thinks I'm crazy when I tell them I don't till anything under…" LOL
I don't blame people though. It takes guts to go against the grain of conventional ideas. This area gets a pretty heavy snowload and compresses the top soil considerably so it seems like you HAVE to till. One day about 7 or 8 years ago I said to myself " Nature doesn't till. All I see is leaves, living plants and rain with no irrigation. It can't be normal to grind up the soil uniformly like this "
Then over the winter I asked Mr Googlepants about this and found a surprising amount of info. I was naive and didn't even realize this was a thing lol Now I'm a complete zealot of of low disturbance methods. After the 3rd and 4th year of cover cropping, mulching with leaves and broadforking the aggregates in the soil area amazing. Never thought I'd be so excited about soil structure lol
Thanks for being " crazy " and not being afraid to go against the grain. Cheers brother. Subscribed
Goodwords
In that case weeds are also doing good to the soil to some extent. Is that right?
I live in Arizona and we are just starting our fall planting. We don't get cold enough for my raised beds to be empty, so I always have something planted in them, I have often wandered if I should interplant some clover or do I not need to worry about this? Thanks
Great video Mark I have been observing the leaf litter a little more closely lately specially under the fir trees for mycelium there is a lot of it. I have a glut of edible wild mushroom in my garden this year. I will be sowing my green manure soon as ground cover. Thanks for the video
Perhaps you covered this but: Since I am in zone 9a I grow all year. I put cover crops like Cowpeas, Bulldog Alfalfa (for Florida), Ladino clover (to prevent cyanogenesis). Sunn Hemp, and Austrian Winter peas. I terminate these by tarping for a month. Should I not tarp? I also add a little soil from a rooty forest on top (perhaps I do not need this). Is tarping an inefficient way as it might bring down the living matter in the soil? Should I just chop and drop, and sow in the rows? The reason I tarp is there is always weed pressure and can never get my cover to crowd out the weeds. Thank you.
Hi Mark. Great video. I am taking some of your thoughts and doing a raised bed ( 4 ft x 8 ft ) over grass. I started by laying down cardboard, then about 3 inches of compost. Then about 1 and 1/2 feet of leaves. Then I put down on the leaves about 1 1/2 inch organic soil. Seeing that it is a small area I sprouted the winter rye seeds in the house and then planted them in the soil top.
One thing I think I should have done before laying down the soil on the leaves – I should have wet down the leaves first. What are your thoughts on this? I suppose that any rain we do get would seep through and wet the leaves. I was wondering if the winter rye roots would need the leaves to be moist after they start to grow initially.
How long does it take before the winter rye shoots up after you plant it? I am in New Brunswick Canada and we are in zone 5b . Thank you for all your videos! The Lord bless you!
I see those beetles sometimes. Thanks for the video! I'm always learning when I watch your videos.
I love your experiments or trials or whatever you want to call them. I hope you keep up the good work
Thanks so much. After being burned out in the Camp Fire I have had to start all over. The new place is hard pan clay, the worse I have ever seen so your gift of giving the information I need to address this is so valuable to me. Maybe someday I can bless you back. There is a saying that goes, "When the student is ready the teacher comes." is so true for me. Thanks again.
Love your videos, I started back to eden and am finding it increasingly valuable to have a living root in the soil. Some ground ivy has taken over some areas of woodchips, do you know if ground ivy supports mycorrhizal life? I can't find anything online about it, thanks so much!
Your videos are so informative and enjoyable, Mark. Thank you for all this great info. Inspiration too I might add. I have several acres available and you have motivated me to try market gardening the way that you do it. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for all your great videos Mark. Last fall I planted winter rye. Squirrels are every seed. Not one seed sprouted. Will try to do snap peas this week.
Mark, you have become my favorite Youtube gardener. You have helped me understand so much and I just want to say thank you for all this priceless information.
Thoughts on crimson vs balansa fixation clover?
Great information! Thank you!
I learned about no-till threw food plots for deer about 2 years ago now. I had a very vague understanding of soil but I just knew tillage was bad for the soil. I've read and researched a good bit about soil but until stumbling across your channel I never really understood it. By far the most informative channel on soil and how it all works iv found hands down…and its not even close! I watched all your multiple part series and its really all finally started clicking.. Thank you sir!
I NEED beetles in my garden!!! My climate gets soooooooo many slugs and I do use arborist wood chip mulch in my garden. Fortunately, it harbors beneficial insects that hunt slugs, even though it also harbors slugs. Glad you mentioned beetles!
In your other videos you talk about aggregate, I thought you were talking about gravel and sand. Now I know what you are talking about
How would you handle fire ants?
Excellent video. Subscribed! Great information
if the "secret" is just growing a root into the soil, then cutting it and planting what you want to plant, why bother with cover crops… you can just let grow all the types of grass that nature provides by itself and when it's time to plant you just cut the grass and plant.. ok, you need some mulch to increase the quantity of fungi/bacteria into the soil (retain humidity, temperature stability and so on) but you can just lay it down on the grass and let the grass grow through the mulch until the planting time. what do you think? Basically it's the method used by Ruth Stout