AMAZING Century Old Composting Technique Taught to Pilgrims from Native Americans

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the in my gardener channel i am so excited about today's episode because i think this is going to be an absolute game changer for a lot of you that don't like to have compost piles can't have compost piles or just don't just don't like taking the effort of cleaning out your beds dragging your stuff off to a different part of your yard then bringing it back once it's composted back to the garden and moving things around twice i'm someone that does not like working harder than i have to and i'm constantly reminded of this century-old composting method every single time thanksgiving rolls around thanksgiving is not too far away i don't know how far exactly because i don't have a calendar in front of me but it's pretty close and i think it's maybe about two and a half three weeks away or so and every single time thanksgiving rolls around i'm reminded of this method because it was actually a method that the native americans taught the the pilgrims and that were living in that area how to reamend their soil this is something that we actually learned i learned in fifth grade in a in a history book and i actually am able to use it today and i love that i can actually reference stuff that i've learned from the past from a long time ago that at the time i thought was completely pointless and not necessary at all we actually are using it again and it was actually because we were talking about it was a soil it was actually a environmental science class and we were talking around thanksgiving how the pilgrims were taught to amend their soil we were going through the different methods that were taught to them such as putting a fish underneath their corn plants or this method that i'm going to talk about which is trench composting and so there was a bunch of different methods that they talked about using seaweed from uh from the the nearby ocean to put around their plants and stuff like that indians have been doing that for thousands of years and taught the pilgrims how to do that so they could have food security and survive the winter and i think that's just so incredible and such an awesome story especially around thanksgiving when we're being thankful and that's kind of the the original reason why we celebrate thanksgiving so what we're going to talk about today is kind of the thanksgiving story of composting so how do we do what the indians taught the pilgrims it's very simple and why i love this method so much and why it actually is probably going to be one of my preferred methods of composting in the fall time is because it's so simple and it's as close to a closed-loop system of composting as you can get where i'm getting at is this bed right here had squash it had beans and it had uh some well it still has some rosemary and stuff in this bed this bed has bok choy peas radishes rutabaga things like that they're still growing i'm not going to pull those out yet but every single bed that has dead plants in it those plants all had specific nutrient requirements to grow the bed behind us had sunflowers and okra the bed over there had peppers every single plant has different nutrient requirements and different nutrient uptakes and what that does is it creates imbalances in the garden and what the indians found is that when you took these plants that were that were dead their reasoning for doing so is that the different nutrients would actually be given back to the bed that it was taken from this is a fascinating concept and something that you know as gardeners we struggle with all the time where you plant a really heavy nitrogen feeder right here right and that nitrogen like let's say it's corn corn is one of the heaviest nitrogen feeders of them all okay so we talked about how then the next time we have to rotate our crops well what the indians found is that they did not necessarily have to rotate their crops if they turned the corn into compost right where the corn was grown because most of the nutrients that were taken out were given back to that exact area now crop rotations were done for disease and pest resistance and and kind of overall area health but what they found is that nutrients were not depleted as fast if you composted right in the exact location you grew the plants this is an absolute mind-blowing concept and i'm so excited about it because it makes so much sense you know if you were to take corn here compost it and then put it over in that bed you know the compost is kind of mixed up it's all homogeneous it all becomes compost at the end of the day but each thing has a different nitrogen phosphorus and potassium ratio you know when you compost down uh leaves they might have a npk of like 1 1.5 right for your npk but if you break down and compost uh corn stalks the npk is more like three one two they have much higher nitrogen and much higher potassium in relationship to leaves and so if you take that compost and move it over somewhere else you're always having this imbalance where this bed had a lot of nitrogen taken out of it but not a lot of nitrogen is being given back to it all right so the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to pull out all of these plants and just set them aside almost done now i know you guys are going to ask this luke isn't this really similar to core gardening and the answer is yes very good observation this is very similar to core gardening and i wouldn't be surprised if there's some type of correlation there so yeah this is basically core gardening with plants that were left over from the growing season essentially instead of using leaves or straw or grass clippings things like that to make your core this is just going to be plants left over now they will be broken down completely by spring so they will have actually completely decomposed and there won't be much core there so you'll probably have to come back in the spring if you're using core gardening if you're using the core gardening method you'll probably have to come back in the spring to put the straw back in the core but you at least will have really good fertile soil where your plants where your plants were decomposing i never like taking off pole beans off their trellis because it is difficult to say the least they're all wrapped up and you only get little if there's an easy way to get pole beans off their trellis let me know i've never quite found one you just got to kind of pull and untangle and just kind of get what you can get but you eventually get it cleaned up it just takes a while now there's one point that i just cannot get away from which is why i love this method so much and i just i constantly gravitate towards it and that's that this method actually emulates a closed-loop system as close as possible you know as gardeners we always strive for a closed loop system or as closed of a loop as possible because it reduces your inputs and your cost as well as your impact so a lot of times we talk about a closed loop versus an open loop system and if you don't know what that is a closed loop is basically that there are no external inputs everything that is on the property is used to grow a garden and then all the the waste and all the refuse goes back into uh basically re-amending and re-fertilizing to regrow uh crops everything is cyclical and usually this is done with like animals you know you'll feed the the food scraps to animals the animals will create the animals might create meat or eggs for you or milk and then you know their manure also creates fertilizer and and so you have this this closed-loop system where you have you have fertilizer you have food everything is kind of being contained within one one uh one area and when it becomes an open loop is when you have to bring in let's say animal feed to feed the animals but you get manure to feed your garden you know that's not really a closed loop you're bringing in a a resource but with an organic garden and you know not a homestead you know we don't have a homestead that has chickens or or goats or horses which would love all of those we just don't have those yet you know in a garden you can also have an open and a closed-loop system composting is a way to kind of close that loop because if you're bringing bagged soil or potting soil back into your garden in the spring you're actually buying that it's that's an external source of of material and so that actually causes people to uh you know there's there's trucks that are involved with trucking that in there is um you know there is machinery that is used to to harvest that soil and process that soil there's um you know there's there's your money that is involved in spending money there's gas to go get it from the store um it's just there's a whole lot of other uh things that that add to the footprint and the cost of a garden but a closed loop can actually help you save money and reduce that that footprint um all in the same time all right now all i'm going to do is just dig a trench right in the center of the bed here i'm just going to dig a trench that's about oh eight inches deep or so eight ten inches deep no need to really worry about depth just you want it buried deep enough to where it can really break down quickly the closer it is to the surface the uh the more the more slowly it'll take to break down because a lot of the bacteria and fungi they actually survive the winter under the soil that's why when you add a mulch layer to your beds which we'll be doing with leaves later on in the year when you add a mulch layer it helps to insulate the soil so that the bacteria and fungi can survive through more of the soil column if the soil is not protected you'll actually have a lot of the bacteria and fungi that will uh that will kind of leave that that top one to two inches of soil or will or will completely go dormant to where they are no longer active and then obviously they'll be active in the spring but if you want things to continue breaking down throughout winter you got to bury it deep enough to where uh you know the cold weather does not does not affect it immediately all right now we've got our trench all we're going to do is just fill it with our material just like that it's your squash plants your bean plants all that good stuff throw it all in there and that'll all break down before spring and then the last thing we have to do is just cover it up cover it up with uh the soil we that we took off the that we took from the trench and that's going to be about two to three inch layer once you put that soil back there you go now you'll probably notice through doing this that i have greatly increased the amount of soil or the appearance of soil in my beds and that's because i have all of this volume all of this organic matter is now going to become the soil and my beds are now probably probably 10 25 more full than they were when i began that means that i have less soil to men in the spring and there's more nutrients in the bed than there would have been so there you go there is a century-old composting technique that i hope you all will try in your garden to help you grow bigger go home and work smarter instead of harder if you did enjoy and you learned something new make sure to throw a like up there and comment down below with something that you learned if you've been using this method before let me know as well i think it's really cool we share the experiences that we've had if we've been using these methods to let others know how they've worked for you and also i really do hope that you guys have a wonderful thanksgiving season i always like to say that if you're if you're thankful for one day out of the year then that's okay but i want to see you guys being thankful for every day of the year every single day has its challenges but every single day has something to be thankful for and focus on those things that you're thankful for and your life is so much better your life is so much more uh bright and exciting and i just i'm i'm always thankful for something so i'm thankful today for you for tuning in for today's episode and as always we'll catch you all on the next episode grow bigger go home bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 285,290

Keywords: trench composting, garden trick, easy compost, fall garden prep, open loop, migardener, thanksgiving, Premiere_Elements_2018, how-to, tip, how to compost, Native American indians, technique, how to, gardening, closed loop, pilgrims, spring garden prep

Id: c6gSvdfx310

Length: 13min 13sec (793 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 06 2019