- Good day. I'm Mark from Self Sufficient Me and I love to bury things in the garden. It not only helps the
environment by reducing waste and landfill, it saves
on buying fertilizer and other expensive additives
to improve your soil. So here are seven of the main things I like to bury in the garden. Let's get into it. (gentle music)
(bird chirping) Number one, animals. As an animal carcass
decomposes in the garden, it turns into a rich fertilizer that can be utilized by your plants. The root system of your plants, in this case, banana trees will literally go through and suck out the nutrients it needs. I've buried my fair share
of animals in the garden, such as chickens,
pigeons, toads, fish heads and now even a kangaroo. At the end of last year, Nina, my wife was driving to work early in the morning when out of nowhere, hopped a kangaroo right in front of the car. She did everything she could to avoid it but unfortunately, just like
many Australians experience, at least once in their life, she hit the kangaroo and
it couldn't be revived. Of course, Nina rang me
and she was a big shaken so I drove out to check that she was okay. And instead of leaving
the animal on the road, I took it back home and the only thing I had at the time, which was a reusable supermarket bag, which I never reused
after that I might add. Then I buried the kangaroo
in the pet cemetery and it came back to life. No, that part isn't true. I buried the kangaroo right here underneath the banana trees and since then we've had a banana boom. Just a few points to
note when you do this. Make sure you dig a deep enough hole and cover with enough soil relevant to the size of the animal to prevent any bad smells. And I recommend covering
further with a barrier such as boards or rocks to stop
wild dogs or other animals, trying to dig it up. Also for large animals, this method works best with fruit trees or large plants like bananas. And of course, I'm not
saying you should knock off a perfectly healthy animal,
just to use it in the garden. But if the circumstances arise such as an old chicken
drops off the perch, well, you might as well get
that one last use out of it. Yes, it is sad when animals get ill or come to a premature end like young Skippy, the kangaroo here but on a positive note,
he did make good bananas. Number two is eggs. As we know, eggs are so versatile, they can be used to make
mayonnaise, cakes, pasta, hatched out to make more birds or simply eaten as is
in many different ways. But did you know that eggs also make an excellent fertilizer for plants? It's true. Eggs contain calcium,
phosphorus, magnesium, nitrogen, zinc, copper and many other nutrients
beneficial to plant growth. You've probably heard about the benefits of egg shells in the garden but whole eggs are even better, except who wants to waste
whole eggs in the garden? Well, firstly, you might
find using eggs in this way, cheaper than buying commercial
fertilizer pound for pound. However, we tend to use
eggs that have been soiled, cracked or old. I'll you take in and show you a really
good example real time. I left out duck to
collect her eggs in a hope that she might sit on them and hatch out some ducklings for us but she's a little bit young and instead she's collected some of them but most of them have been
scattered around by the chickens and she's not sitting on 'em. So instead, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna collect them all. They're all around the place. One, there, three here, one over there, one there where you are. I'm gonna collect them up
and use them in the garden. And the last one, check 'em out. Look how dirty some of there are, just rolling around on the poop floor. Gardeners will often dig a hole like this about 30 centimeters deep, bang a few eggs in, break 'em and then cover that hole
over, nice and good. Pat it down, then use a stick so they can identify where
that hole is for later, then come back in about several weeks, maybe a month or two and then they know that they
can plant a tomato, capsicum or any vegetable really
over the top of that and they don't even
need to use fertilizer. Personally, I just bang
them anywhere in the garden, dig a hole at random, don't
even bother marking 'em. And often I will just plant tomatoes, straight directly over newly
seated eggs into the garden and I've had good results with that. Number three, animal waste or manure is one of the most common and natural ways to fertilize the garden is by using animal manures that have been left to break down and compost and get really old in a nice, cool spot like this under some hessian for several months until they've broken down
and then they can applied into the garden. You can bury fresh manure in the garden, you just can't grow anything
in that spot for several weeks, possibly months until it breaks down. If you get processed
commercial manure fertilizer, it's usually sprinkled on
the surface around plants but when we collect our
own manures from animals, the material is larger
and less concentrated. Often this form of manure
is best dug into the garden and combined with the soil, essentially buried into the garden bed so that it does not
clog, burn or crust up, making it better overall for the plants. My favorite manures
are cow, horse, poultry but other farm animals like sheep and even rabbits, et cetera are good too. Cat and dog poop can be composted down but not buried directly into
the garden, on purpose anyway. I'm not a big fan either
way of cat and dog waste. It's too close to human waste
for me to use in the garden and I'd be worried about
spreading nasty pathogens throughout the veggie patch but that's just my opinion. Whereas farm animals
have a vastly different manure consistency because
they eat less protein and have a more plant based diet. Number four is kitchen scraps. You might remember my video, "What happens when you bury
kitchen scraps in the garden?" Well, in this spot here is where the beginning of that video was and where I poured a heap of
kitchen scraps in a trench here and that very season, I grew
a bumper crop of tomatoes. So what we should do is dig this up and see if there's anything
left of those scraps that are put in there. Getting there, I can start
seeing some eggshell. Well, that's probably the last thing that would ever break down. No, practically nothing
except for a few eggshells but you have to remember, this was buried a good 12 months ago and it's not surprising to me that you won't find any
real remnants of anything except for a few calcium
pieces of eggshell, which are a lot harder to break down but it gets still utilized
by plants, believe it or not. And they only need a
little bit micro nutrients to boost their own immune
system and grow better. Yes, we also compost the
kitchen scraps in the usual way in a compost pile or a tumbler but this cuts out the middleman and I reckon is a fantastic way to do it. Number five is coffee and tea waste. Both coffee and tea are
good to use in the garden, either dug in, sprinkled around or buried completely into the garden bed. Most people know about the
benefits of used coffee grounds and whether you use your own or get them from a local
cafe, it's all good. Honestly, we use coffee pods and just chuck them into the garden. However, we do use tea. Tea leaves have about twice
as much nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium than coffee grounds. All these elements are key fertilizer ingredients for plants. Tea also contains calcium,
magnesium, iron and zinc, which all are good for plants and help them to absorb nutrients. Therefore burying coffee
and tea waste in the garden is worth the effort but do go
easy on the brew in the garden because a little bit is good but too much in one spot might up the acidity of the soil and if that happens, that can make it difficult for plants to actually absorb the nutrients. So it has the opposite effect. So I would recommend, if you are gonna add coffee grounds and tea leaves into the garden,
spread them around a bit. Number six is garden waste. The first instinct of most gardeners is to compost this down and that is, a top way to recycle but green waste like this can also be buried directly
into the garden bed. Old plants and even weeds that have knocked on to seed can be dug into the
ground as a green manure to enrich the soil. I even go one further and
bury larger green waste such as sticks and logs to create hugelkultur
style raised garden beds that help to retain moisture and create a healthy environment
for beneficial animals, microbes and fungi. Digging in certain plants can
even help to eradicate pests. For example, digging
in a crop of marigolds can reduce nematodes in the soil. Number seven are worms. Yes, I know that worms
are technically an animal. I could have covered them in number one. However, when I put these
worms into the garden, they're alive, so I think it's different. I also wanted worms to be last to make this one
particularly important point. One of the main reasons
I bury all this stuff in our food garden is to feed our worms. I treat our whole garden
like it's one big worm farm and now I'm gonna put
these fellows back in so I don't stress them out too much. How do I use these worms in the garden? Well, whenever I find a
worm outside of the garden, such as digging around the property, I'll collect them and bury
them into the veggie patch but I've also found another
way to grow and add worms and that's through inoculation. I buy some worm eggs and
seed them into a pile of dung for them to hatch out
and have a worm party. This does two things. It breaks down and works the manure over to become better plant food and then when I go to
use it in the garden, it populates the beds with extra worms. Now I'm not an expert
on worms, thankfully, and I do know that composting worms are often different to the worms that you get in the regular garden but there is a common belief out there that compost worms won't
survive into the regular garden and that is simply wrong. There are many different types of worms, including different types
of composting worms. Composting worms will happily
live in the regular garden as long as they have food and burying things in the
garden gives your worms all the food they need for
them to turn those items into better soil, structure
and nutrients for your plants. You don't have to buy worms. Most of the time, if you have a dung pile that's open or a compost area
that's open to the ground, you will attract worms
from around your property and they'll multiply in those areas. Although if you do want a headstart or if worms are scarce in your area, buying some worms or worm eggs and adding them to your
manure, compost pile or garden bed could be worthwhile. Just remember to feed them. One last point about burying
things in the garden. Don't overdo it. Don't turn your garden
bed into a minefield of decaying matter because that won't do your plants any good as that material breaks down in mass creates gases and heat and that's not helpful
for your plant's growth. So throw all your excess waste in here. Besides my top seven, do you bury other things in the garden to make a plants grow better? If you do, work 'em down in
the comment section below so we can all read and learn from them. And don't say your grandparents. I've heard that one before. If you like this video, make sure you bury that thumb right up and give YouTube the
biggest shock of its life as the most liked gardening video ever. Make sure you share it
around and subscribe if you haven't already. Thanks a lot for watching. Bye for now. (mumbles) going, Riley.
Just think about the kangaroo from his wife's perspective. "I was freaking out because I hit a kangaroo, so I called my husband, and all he cared about was putting it in a carrier bag and burying it in our back garden!" 😂 (I'm sure it didn't go down that way, but I can't help laughing at it.)
Oh I really like this guy's videos! Discovered it from a video of his on rainbow corn and stuck around
Edit: though I might be biased because I'm also an aussie 🐨
This is so Queensland and I love it
He's like the Crocodile Hunter of gardening.