3 Ingredients to Fix ANY Soil, the Lazy Way

so an you're telling me this is what you started with yeah dude four years ago our entire Farm looked like this but you can't even like stick your finger in this stuff you can really grow just about anything in any soil let's go take a look at the Garden and I'll show you what I've done for the last 4 years to totally transform this place we're here in my garden in Tennessee at the beginning of the gardening season I invited a soil expert Carson from Redmond minerals to come and talk about soil and getting your started right because the healthiest plants the most nutritious things that we can feed our families start with the soil right correct let's take a look at your soil let's do it holy cow an the difference is amazing yeah like it is completely different than what we were looking at there this must have taken so much work how did you do this honestly I try to be as hands off with my gardening as possible and I think the true secret to my laziness is over here can I take you on a little field trip yeah I love field trips let's go we're in the middle of the forest behind my house there's daffodils blooming everywhere this is gorgeous but far more important than the blooming flowers is actually what's underneath so if we come down here and just start peeling back no one is weeding or watering or planting anything here nature is just doing what nature does like right on top of everything there's there's leaves and you can hear they're crunchy they're dry it it's obviously not rain in a while but if we literally just go back like right under those crunchy leaves is a bunch of other organic material it's already broken down it's a little bit moist but if we keep peeling back the layers here we soon get to actually um some kind of clay soil similar to the clay we saw in the field but the difference is is that it's wet and that it has life in it yeah you can see that this is really healthy soil especially for no no one taking care of it you know it's just what nature does is creates healthy soil no one is coming out here and putting bags of organic fertilizer I mean like you can even look like in these leaves there's bug holes like no one's out here spraying organic pesticide and what thrives thrives I love these daffodils because they literally like they spread daffodils make bulbs and then a healthy daffodil plant will make more bulbs and they literally will force the soil out of the way and like you can just literally have runs of of miles of daffodils like we have here which is so dang cool but amongst the daffodils we also have you know other stuff this guy again I just like pulled this right out of the ground and look at how easily those roots came up out of the soil like those are deep roots that are going to be able to go and get water from deep in the soil but like you know the soil hasn't compacted around the plant either what I love about it is is there's so much diversity too in the plants it might look like we're sitting in a field of daffodils but you look and there's all sorts of different plants there's all all you know it's all covered it's really amazing so Carson I am a a successful lazy Gardener but you're you've been on the science side of soil and and like conventional farming your entire career so let's walk around and you can tell me what you see perfect so and one of the coolest things that I'm seeing is there's no dirt here right like you can't see be dirt anywhere you look no and if you looked back at what we thought a success Garden would be it's usually a garden that is like just bare dirt no weeds and the plants that you planted in a very specific spot Tot so that's one of the cool things I'm seeing here in the forest I don't see dirt yeah there's there's ground cover everywhere yeah that just literally happens naturally like here we're under trees where the leaves fall down and that creates natural Mt so like here it's like yeah there may be nothing growing right now but you literally have to peel back layers to where you can then see bare soil but what's Wild is that like if I if I expose this soil and we walk away and we leave it nature will heal itself without me it's it's crazy and and one of the other things that's really cool that I'm seeing if you look here there is so much going on that it's going to be maybe even hard to see on the camera but there's little bugs moving around you know and that's usually what we're doing in gardens we're trying to get rid of every bug you know or every sign of life this is amazing the things that Nature's doing here yeah here's a snail s shell in conventional gardening I would be like get out of here right what kind of chemical could we put on you to make sure you're gone right exactly but the thing is that in nature every pest plays a part right every insect every bacteria every fungus has a purpose yeah and so trying to to to like get rid of it might not be the best solution it might be like let's fix the the problem yeah first of all like water evaporation off the soil like the reason we have to water our Gardens I don't by the way is because like we've created bare soil and water evaporates off of bare soil so quickly but like literally all you have to do is just cover it up with some leaves or mulch of some kind and then it it will keep the Sun from directly beating down on that black surface and evaporating the moisture off the surface so again does my garden look like something from Better Home Homes and Garden absolutely not but I'm growing enough food for two families in a tiny amount of space literally because I've learned how to work with the pests instead of even thinking that they're pests it's pretty cool so knowing more about your background too you used to do like chemical spraying and everything like that and you've you've since to kind of like changed your tune can you talk a little bit about that yeah so I can talk a little bit about that when I used to work in that industry we always focus more on inputs and taking care of things and killing the things we don't want and by inputs you mean like chemical fertilizer chemical fertilizer chemicals like pesticides herbicides any kind of sides as will Winters would say right so instead of doing that I've now taken the approach of like let's fix the soil and then everything will actually fix itself yeah and I've had way more success with that and I think it's actually a better way to live your life instead of worrying about like killing everything L worry about healing everything I love that I love that I think like the words bacteria and fungus have such a negative connotation in in our language but truly it is literally by learning how to use bacteria and fungus to our advantage instead of actually just sterilizing everything that actually makes this stuff work and let's walk and talk here cuz I'm looking for I'm looking for something in particular okay but something that is is something that was truly fascinating to me I've always thought like doubling our yields is going to make us money in the short term but what I didn't realize until we started talking was how expensive it actually is to to add the chemicals or you know even organic solutions that will double your yields yeah it's not cheaper to uh use the conventional methods it's cheaper to be a lazy Gardener oh like I have basically nothing in any of my plants or anything I mean I'm constantly stealing stuff from the forest and using it at my house right and and even on the time savings like you're not running a tiller you're not going to the co-op and buying more chemicals I don't have to buy gas for the Tiller that I don't use it's pretty amazing what you can do when you're just working with nature totally cool hey check this out over here so this is something that I think confuses a lot of beginner gardeners this looks like soil right correct like this looks like what you know we've learned on YouTube or reading gardening books or anything this is what like good compost looks like this looks like black healthy soil but there's actually a problem with it this is actually literally just rotten wood this is the inside of a log that has decomposed because it's sat here in nature long enough for that for nature to take its course so if I were to look at just this or if I was looking at at compost or mulch or soil at at at a big home store and I was looking to take that home and put it in my garden how could I know that this was not actually like viable until I'd put plants in it and then gone an entire season and then my plants didn't work out so in the past all you could do is simply what you're saying just go put it on your plants and hope it worked but now we've actually come up with a really cool test that you can actually test your compost your mulch and your soil to make sure you're actually amending the right things this is something I'm so excited about for beginner gardeners or Advanced gardeners because while I personally am really interested in the science I think that science can kind of get in the way of people feeling like gardening is as easy as it actually is for 12 years I told people don't bother with soil tests because the test that we used to have access to like literally didn't give us any actual useful information you guys just developed a test that literally will test exactly what's available to to your plant in whatever you have not just like what might be there that a plant might not be able to use correct like most soil tests you'd either get a piece of paper and you'd be like okay I have no clue how to use this information or it would be almost too basic when you're like okay now I know my pH and that's it yeah and even just for anyone here who's ever been confused by soil PH let me just tell you right now that like using a pH test to test your soil is a quick way to ruin your garden in a hurry because you could add a whole lot of stuff that's really expensive to buy even organically and fix the pH without actually fixing what's available to your soil so let's go back to the farm and take some tests let's see how you've done all right all right Carson before we actually leave every time I come back to the forest I take some leaves with me because leaves are like the best cheap free mulch they break down really quickly and they add a lot of just like layers of good stuff to the soil there's actually a bunch of weeds that I don't want in these leaves so we'll just pop back here where there's less and get some of these perfect oh look at all this melum woo oh this is what we want to take back to the Garden all right Carson we'll take our our Bounty from the woods howdy this is not a snack for you although I'm sure you'll try to stample it don't trip on my trip wire okay I'll try not to hey John joh it's just me buddy all right Carson truly I think that like there are a few things that make my garden really work like one of them is definitely compost this is like your classic three bin system you've probably seen stuff like this there's nothing fancy or different about mine except that I just kind of try to understand some simple silence it science it's like compost comes down to Greens and Browns greens are anything that was recently alive or inside a living things so manure you know green vegetables anything else and Browns are literally things that used to be alive and now aren't so like dead tree Parts um sawdust straw newspapers cardboard leaves and you know there's all kinds of stuff in here wood chips ash from my fireplace all kinds of donkey manure and other flavored manure kitchen scraps wood chips or wood shavings from the wood shop eggshells spent that the cows have wasted all right here we are in some finished compost and we know it's done because there's nothing recognizable but like even look at this we've got some worms bugs again lots of living things down here and I mean this this looks like my garden soil you got your test kit ready young man we got the test kit I'm going to add my soil we'll just grab this nice level scoop there and I'm not going to pour out the water inside just going to go like this perfect self addressed stamp and envelope that's my dream my gosh this the things that have sat in my glove box for like 7 years waiting for the stamp Okay so we've got this on lock let's go test the garden all right Carson while I prance around and grab a couple samples why don't you tell everyone what's going to happen with this perfect so you're going to register your test online send it in and when your results come back it comes back with an option to be able to see like chemical fertilizers that you want to use or organic fertilizers you want to use or we can give you some options on how to just amend your soil the natural way and that's why it's a great tool to actually test your compost so you can compare your compost to what your soil has going on and kind of make a match that [Music] way I think it's important to mention I'm not sponsored by Redmond I literally just wanted to nerd out with another soil scientist and I also wanted to tell you that like this took four years it took four years of of observation and and careful planning and knowledge that I've gained over the last decade to be able to create this but you can do this really quickly you don't need chemicals you don't need organic fertilizers or pesticides or fun fungicides you need to look at how nature takes care of itself and what will be revealed in this test will help you to get the secret weapon to fast forward your process so that if you're buying soil and starting your garden for the first time this year it's there like you can you can have this kind of result in year one if you are starting a garden for the first time and you want to fast forward your way to success check out my lazy gardeners beginner guide on my Squarespace website an ofal trades.com Squarespace has been supporting my channel for the Last 5 Years making making videos like this free for you to watch and possible for me to make I'm a farmer I am not super techsavvy so having a beautiful artist designer template that I can easily drag and drop anything that I want to share with you and then share it with you is hugely important to me Squarespace gives me the option to have an online store where I can sell my online classes my merchandise keep you updated about what's going on with the school of all trades and if you're interested in starting a website of your own you have a big idea you want to share with the world check out Squarespace and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com anaval trades for a 10% discount and if you are just started gardening or you've been doing it for a while and you're kind of stuck and need a little extra help or accountability or you want to meet some other gardening friends around you be on the lookout for my lazy gardening course which will happen in real time throughout this growing season on my Squarespace website future and popping in here too let you know that I just got my soil test results back from Redman minerals and it was exactly what this very nerdy heart needed a little validation and cold hard data to look at if you've seen any of the videos that I've posted in this Garden in Peak growing season it probably is not that surprising to find out that my SW is in fact very well balanced but in going over my test results Carson recommended that I run a few experiments in the garden this year with a couple different products so I'm going to put this in a couple garden beds and I'm going to put this in a couple other garden beds and then I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing in some others and I will report back as we go I have more than a sneaking suspicion that if you were to add either one of these products here to your garden it will probably be a whole lot more helpful than any other chemical organic approved or not that you could add to your garden so let's grow good food together this year I hope you stay tuned and I will definitely be reporting back on the results of this next experiment soon cheers

Channel: Anne of All Trades

Views: 373,957

Keywords: anne of all trades, gardening, lazy gardening, garden, soil testing, regenerative gardening, regenerative agriculture, composting, compost, organic gardening, soil fixing, soil, farming, farm, homesteading

Id: GicG2aDPfXw

Length: 16min 21sec (981 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2024