Create Living Soil, Good Compost, & Intensive Growth in your home garden.

hey tom bartels from growfoodwell.com i'm in durango colorado where i've been using biointensive methods since about 2001 and i hope to give you some good information about how to grow more food and to grow it more easily i'm in southwest colorado in the high desert at about 6 500 feet so some of the stuff i'm going over today is directly applicable to zone 6b but the baseline methods can be directly used in just about any place you're growing food at any scale so keep that in mind as we go over some of these methods and i wanted to show you some quick images of the kind of yields i'm getting here using biointensive techniques i started growing this way back in 2001 and it just gets better each year i just keep finding easier ways to grow lots of food outside my door using these methods i only weed once a year and i'm actually gone for large parts of the growing season so this really is an easy way to grow food and in my online workshops i show people how to get their gardens to grow food density like this with half the work and most of it begins with the methods i'll show you today what i'm going to do is instead of bringing my typical classroom materials that i teach my food gardening students i'm going to go over some baseline methods that tend to lead to success regardless of other variables once you get a handle on these baseline methods everything in your garden becomes easier and your garden just improves it's that simple so i'm going to free form here at first to introduce the concepts then i'll be getting into the soil food web what that is how to feed it then i'll be jumping into how to align the design of your garden beds to increase success and reduce your labor and i'll be touching on how diversity in many forms can add to strength and resilience in your food gardening efforts so let's start with a comparison let's look at the human body and who lives here in and on our bodies a healthy human body has more non-human microbe cells than human cells living in it and on it by a factor of 10. so there are 10 times as many other cells living in our bodies than human cells microbiologists estimate there are about a thousand species more or less they've only identified a fraction of them but they can prove they're there most of them are in our intestines they help us process food protect us from disease and pathogens and in general work in a symbiotic capacity to keep us healthy we need them to survive and we've co-evolved with them for millions of years when we reduce the diversity of these organisms in our system by taking antibiotics for instance our systems get weaker and more vulnerable when we increase the diversity of those organisms our systems get stronger and more resilient to many of you this is not a new concept but for some of you may get a bit squeamish thinking about all these little organisms living in your body but you need to just get over that it's the way life works it's actually quite powerful once you gain an understanding of how you can foster health by enhancing those relationships in one of the more elegant examples of how connected we are to the biosphere the soil works in much the same way it's a major digestive system for the biosphere and all the success and failure of your garden starts with the soil it's actually pretty easy to improve just about any soil type by aligning with these helpful populations of microorganisms they run the show they provide the baseline for what's called the soil food web and i'd like to give you a visual on how that works the reason you want to collect and compost organic matter is to feed these little guys there are a surprising number of helpful critters living in the soil the amount of life in a teaspoon of healthy garden soil is pretty staggering and even though organic farmers have known for eons how important it is to return organic matter to the soil it's only recently with the help of electron microscopes that scientists have been able to figure out what's exactly going on down there if you feed the soil it will feed your plants and they will in turn feed you in that teaspoon of healthy garden soil there are over a billion bacteria and 10 000 different species of microorganisms the scientists have only identified about 3 percent of the species present and these bacteria and fungi are the baseline of the food chain in the garden soil supporting them is a key concept to understand once you make it a practice it will profoundly change the way you approach gardening all these microorganisms make up what's called the soil food web and the soil food web is truly amazing there's an invisible world thriving in garden soil and much like the microorganisms that keep your digestive tract healthy in your own body they are critical for strength and vitality and once you build a healthy soil food web in your garden everything improves a healthy soil food web can prevent disease attract beneficial insects feed the plants extend water to plants break down organic matter strengthen plant growth and provide resilience now the billions of bacteria and fungi are at the base of the food chain they consume the organic matter and minerals in the soil at the smallest level they're then preyed upon by the nematodes and protozoa which then excrete wastes that the plants use to nurture growth but how that system works is pretty fascinating so hang on with me for just a second we're going to go deep into microbiology but this is more fun than high school science because it leads to great food right outside your door so let's look at how this works this is another root profile the area near all the tips of the roots is called the rhizosphere now here's the cool part the tips of the roots can actually jettison what are called exudates these are chemical compounds composed of both proteins and carbohydrates in the form of sugars this sets in motion a chain of events that is nothing short of astounding to me anyway and i think it's the single strongest element of my gardening success so to mention that again the plant releases these exudates these sugars and proteins it's like releasing cookies for the bacteria and fungi which then flock to the rhizosphere and they eat this sugar and protein mixture and then because they're colonizing that area that attracts the other predators which are bigger these are the nematodes and protozoa which feed off of the bacteria and fungi now the waste products from the nematodes and protozoa and everything else happening in this relationship is excreted and then the plants use those nutrients to grow and this party is happening all the time in healthy soil and all you have to do is add the finished compost to the soil to begin with the amazing part is when given the right conditions and opportunity the plants are in control of the process their release of exudates varies during the growing season adjusting to the population type and the numbers of organisms it needs for different nutrients so it controls what nutrients are generated at any one time down there by corralling all these organisms around their roots so the plants are the orchestra leaders of this whole system this is basically how forests work or grasslands you don't see anyone running around with liquid fertilizer to keep the plants alive forests don't need our help to feed the soil because they drop leaves every season that decompose and feed those organisms that decay organic matter keeps the system going in the case of your veggie garden you have to create the conditions for this to take place in the first place you have to align the design of your beds to set up the basic building blocks you have to initially feed those bacteria in your garden soil and when you do you get this here's a section of beds in my garden this year i haven't added any plant food or liquid fertilizer or anything i just worked the soil once in the spring added the compost and let it roll once you get these natural systems going and there are enough populations of bacteria and fungi feeding the baseline of your soil food web you consistently get robust growth like this and this you don't have to worry about micromanaging the soil or worrying about npk levels of certain plants or beds if that plant can grow well in your climate conditions it will and it will do so with enthusiasm it really is fun to watch it happen this is how vegetable plants want to grow if given the proper conditions in the soil the microbiology works in concert with the plants and you get resilient growing systems one note of warning though chemical additives disrupt this balance when liquid fertilizer is used the relationships with the soil food web are severed the plant stops releasing exudates and the colonies of helpers are reduced the plants become dependent on you for feeding schedules so that's more work for you and a weaker plant so what can you do to create that diversity make living soil and feed this system compost it really is the main component in turbocharging your soil but everyone's situation is different different spaces different constraints i'll be going over three quick categories you can use for different types of composting i use all three but you can choose what basic methods fit your particular situation you don't have to use them in the same scale or design that i am but the basic concepts are the same and if you don't have room for any of these systems you can still buy compost just make sure it's organic now the first type of compost i'd like to talk about is a worm bin and vermicastings or vermiculture basically worms breaking down organic material this works really well for um smaller batch compost the type of quantities that you get out of your kitchen i like to use a countertop pail that we just keep in the kitchen for all the scraps that come out during the daily processing of food and the reason it works really well for worms is as you add this material they keep breaking it down in layers and then it gets deeper and deeper just two of us throughout the year using kitchen kitchen scraps in this particular bin generates about 600 pounds of worm castings per year so i empty it twice a year i get about 300 pounds per batch this process is all year because i'm using a top loading insulated old freezer this circa 1974 probably i don't typically advocate those plastic bins in the garages for worm bins because they tend to crack they break down they freeze in the wintertime so i like to get answers that are more long-term that save you a lot of time for decades there are plenty of old refrigerators and freezers in the dump that can be repurposed for this sort of thing i like to have the insulated version so that i can do it year round this is going to be the highest intensity compost material that i'm going to be spreading on each garden so what i do is i would spread a thin layer of this on all the beds and then the bulk of the rest of the compost comes from the main piles and the leaf piles i'll show you later but this because it's mostly just vegetable matter that breaks down and the worms process it is very plant available mineral content and lots of good nitrogen in here so this is going to create like i said about 600 pounds of worm castings and throughout the winter one of the secrets to this if you have a worm bin yourself to keeping this going all winter long and keep it from freezing so these worms keep active which is what you're looking for is i create what's called i call a bio furnace and it's basically about four or five gallons of material that i put in the center of the pile once a month during the winter months and that's a mixture of coffee grounds that are fresh coffee grounds from coffee shops some chicken manure to add some quick hot material and nitrogen and bacteria a little bit of soil and a lot of leaves to add that carbon to get things jump started so that the bacteria have something to feed on within about four days that central bio furnace if you will gets up to about 110 degrees or so that is too hot for worms but this temperature gradient goes throughout this bin so it might be about 110 in the middle but then it transitions to about 60 degrees on the edges so these worms will actually migrate through this pile to find their sweet spot which is what you want because they're basically grazing through the pile and processing that all that material throughout the winter months that's how i get an entire bin that's processed each spring which is when you want that fresh compost another great function of the bin is it creates a nursery where there's thousands and thousands of worms and generations of worms that keep growing out of this bin each year so i can transfer these worms and the worm eggs to other piles and other leaf piles that i want to get them to process including the traditional bins that we'll get to next one of the great things about worm bins of any size is it helps us create value in that food waste that's happening in most american kitchens uh our aggregate food waste is somewhere around 30 or more of the food that comes to our homes we throw it away so when you throw it away and it goes in the landfill it's just a waste of all that material so the worm bins allow you to capture those small batches little bits at a time that the worms love having this replenishment of fresh food come in so they can have new material to feed on as opposed to a regular compost bin which typically the most efficient way to do it is having a lot of material all at once so you turn the whole pile at the same time this is how you get the best advantage out of that kitchen waste so i really would invite you to try vermicomposting in any scale whether you want to start with a small bin in a bathroom or find your own freezer or refrigerator it's a great way to enhance the soil food web in the garden the worms add a lot of enzymes when they break down this material they get rid of pathogens they get rid of toxics the worms do magic things to this stuff and you end up with a material that's the closest i can describe it is black grape nuts it's just incredibly rich it supercharges your soil and you want to spread that throughout your gardens any annuals or perennials will do really well with it so worm bins are one really easy way to create compost without turning you only have to move it once a year when you filter this through a screen and then you save the worms and sort of like a sourdough starter you just turn those back into the new bin and start again i use a ton of leaves as my base material for carbon a lot of people use shredded newspaper or other types of carbon cardboard etc but you can use so many different things in here and i do details on my workshops about worm bins but in general they they are really nice way to process all the kitchen scraps that you might have coming out of your household so let's move over to the second type of composting now over here i've got a more traditional set of compost bins i've got four bins here they're about four foot by four foot by four foot tall so a considerable amount of compost you don't have to build them this big you could have just a wire cage on a single compost bin and work it that way the difference here between the worm bin and this style is you typically want all your materials at once to turn the whole pile all at once it works really well in larger batches compared to the worm bin and i'm not going to have enough time here to go through a full composting workshop with you like i do in the programs but i will talk about a couple concepts that i see as universal challenges for people trying to get compost dialed in so a couple of things um one is your carbon to nitrogen ratio should be about 35 to one roughly 30 to one thirty five to one that's by weight so you can have a lot more of the brown carbon material than you will nitrogen one of the things to consider is the materials you use in your compost are going to end up in your garden so i try to sway people away from getting straw and hay from outside sources unless they absolutely know that there was no synthetic chemistry or why broadleafed herbicides sprayed on that material because a lot of people had trouble with their compost when they brought in straw and hay and manure as well from outside locations and then that consequently after it was composted burned most of their plants were killed outright a lot of the vegetable plants because they still had a pesticide or herbicide carryover in that material so i use deciduous leaves because it's a pretty clean carbon source most people that bagged leaves in residential areas don't aren't spraying their deciduous leaves with chemicals as long as you don't get too much grass in those leaves that's important because a lot of people do add quite a bit of chemistry to their lawns that you don't want in your compost so keep that in mind also when you're layering materials you want to try to get as many different types of materials into your compost as possible that diversity generates a mirrored diversity in the types of microbiology that you're attracting to this pile and feeding some microorganisms are really good at breaking down lignin in woody plants like corn husks and the more stocky plants in your garden other microorganisms are better at processing nitrogen materials etc the consequence of that diversity is then when you put that finished compost in your garden you're adding the diversity of all those different types of populations to your garden bed and that's just going to really supercharge the soil food web that we talked about earlier so keep diversity in mind with your materials if you have woody materials and leafy materials and different types of carbon add it all mix it all in there it's going to enhance your compost quite a bit some of the typical questions i get from the students regarding compost uh refer to four different categories food air water and shelter just like we need all those things so do all the bacteria and microorganisms that you're trying to attract into this system so if you have a compost pile that's not functioning right go over those categories separately and think about where you may be adjusting the materials or the situation to enhance that that composting material so you'd start with air am i getting enough air infiltration into the system to keep it in the thermophilic capacity of hot compost if you don't get enough oxygen in there you run the risk of it becoming anaerobic those aren't the type of bacteria you want to attract it gets smelly and slimy you've also probably seen that especially in those plastic compost bins and i typically don't advocate for those because they tend to get anaerobic a lot faster they overheat as well and then they dry out so there's some problems with those compared to the open bin systems like this one so that's air water same thing if there's not enough water in the compost and it dries out a lot of that activity just shuts down you're not you're going to end up six months later with dry material that didn't break down because the bacteria requires moisture to do its job food of course is that actual material that you're putting in the compost you need enough of it in sufficient quantity to create the mass that allows that compost to take place and insulates it from the elements so you want to make it at least four by four by four is what i typically would inspire people to design their bins around that basic scale and then shelter you want to make sure that you have a cover i usually put burlap once the pile is set and it's got enough moisture on it to create like a rung out sponge type of feeling to it shouldn't be dripping and saturated but it should have quite a bit of moisture in there and then i typically will use burlap to cover a fresh compost pile that just keeps that moisture in and adds one more layer to hold that moisture in and then i typically put my pro panel or some plywood or something on top of the entire bin to keep the weather out so that it doesn't get over saturated if it's snowing or raining that's how you control what's happening in that little micro universe that you're creating for this bacteria now out of these four bins i'll end up generating about 25 wheelbarrow loads of finished compost twice a year so i'll turn these piles twice during the course of an entire year and a neat secret is the way i've been composting in the winter now is i don't turn these piles anymore i used to do the traditional three turns on each pile once every three weeks or so which is typically the case when you reconstitute the compost back into the center and the unfinished compost and turn the entire pile so you'll get those three bell curves so when it heats up and then the heat dissipates over about three weeks you turn it it goes up again and then the third turn it's usually a smaller uh heat peak and then it drops off again that requires a fair amount of labor and i'm always looking for ways to reduce labor so what i do now is i take worms my red wrigglers from the worm bin i add these to a finished layered compost right when i set it up so last fall when i saturated all this got it all ready layered it out it was ready it was heating up already i threw in thousands of worms into these four bins and i let them go they will process this entire four bin system over the course of the winter so not only is it composting in the traditional sense but those worms are migrating again to their sweet spots depending on heat and what temperature gradient is happening throughout the winter in these piles and then by spring i've got about 20 wheelbarrow loads of worm castings so it's it's mixed with compost but what happens here is it eliminates the need for me to come in and be turning these piles all the time so the worms do the work for me they're actually adding enzymatic properties that help condition soil there's a lot of benefits to it so these two systems work together pretty well now that i've been adding worms to this system and i don't have to turn it by hand one thing to keep in mind if you're thinking of doing that is you need enough mass in the bin to insulate the pile when it does get cold at some point this pile heated up initially to about 145 or so and then it starts dissipating over the course of the winter of course but it never froze and that's important because it freezes you're going to lose your worms so you want to have enough mass enough quantity of carbon in there to insulate from the cold winter temperatures if you live in a cold area and that way the worms can survive the winter you simply just add some more moisture in the spring if it's drying out that gives the worms another area to migrate to that was dry that's now moist again so they can go into that new area and by the time i need this compost for spring planting these bins will all be full of worm castings so keep that in mind that's a really interesting way to make a traditional compost bin that much easier if you don't want to come out and turn compost generate the worms in your kitchen worm bin then bring those populations into here they will in turn lay a lot more worm eggs and then consequently when you bring that finished sifted compost into your gardens you're going to be populating those gardens with thousands and thousands of more worms the more worms you can get all over your property the better off everything becomes now if you like this line of thought and you like using worms in the compost to save you time i've got a third type of compost that i'd like to show you next so what i've got going over here is basically a pile of leaves but it's not your typical pile of leaves this pile when it started over a year ago was about six feet tall off the deck and it's maybe 15 or 20 truckloads from a local landscaper that rakes people's leaves and bags them up i think it's a little crazy that many of us in this culture will take this carbon resource bag it in petroleum bags and bury it in the dump where it can release methane over time it just doesn't make a lot of sense what we're doing here is layering this leaf pile in such a way that it has enough moisture contained in it and enough bacteria it's been inoculated with some soil to start out and a ton of worms i put several thousand worms in there from the worm bins into this system and they have taken off and been composting and processing this material for almost a year now it's a slower way to compost but again it takes very very little labor you set up the pile once and if you have some place to stash it on your property and come back to it in a year it's ready-made compost for your garden let's dig in here a little bit just under the surface and here where it's really still pretty wet you'll see all this finished worm casting material that's pretty much ready to go it's got a lot of worms in it and probably going to get 30 or 40 wheelbarrow loads of worm castings out of this so here let me walk up to the camera with this and show it to you it's just incredible stuff so if you grow food this is what you're looking for that's jet fuel for your plants check that out this is just leaves but given time moisture and air these worms work magic with it and they turned it into an incredible resource for your garden i like to think of this as stockpiling fertility you're taking what was a negative situation where this carbon resource is typically thrown out in the dump and eventually releases methane and instead by handling it in such a way we turn it into this incredible resource full of nutrition for the soil food web in the garden and that helps us grow better food so if you have any extra space on your property a corner of your yard where you could dedicate it to a leaf pile that's layered and watered and worms are added just kind of put it over there forget about it leave it open to the weather it doesn't matter if it's big enough again mass does matter here you want to create a big enough system that's got enough depth in it to insulate the worms through the winter if you live in a cold climate that's the key here if you just have a one foot pile of leaves this isn't going to work this started six feet tall initially and was initially it heated up to about 140 degrees uh and then it stayed that way in the center for months and so these worms had this great ecosystem where they could travel around that's an important uh component of how this pile was made has to be big enough so you need a little bit of space but what's really nice is once you dedicate that pile to that location in about a year year and a half you'll have this incredible fertility just sitting there so let's take a look at a couple other ways you can align the design of your garden beds to increase fertility and save yourself a lot of work two of the main constraints i see in most people's gardens that are holding them back are compacted soil and planting in rows which has its own set of associated problems neither of these are helping your plants but if you align the design to create the conditions plants need to thrive you can increase your yields while reducing your work let's take a look at what happens below the soil in a compacted garden the plant only has access to the top portion of the bed and has a hard time accessing the lower soil profile then the roots spread sideways and compete with neighboring plants and you get lower yields when you aerate the lower part of the soil to about a two foot depth either by double digging or in a framed raised bed you allow the plant to send roots deeper into the soil and it has a much easier time growing here's a side view of a bed with the same problem there's about eight inches of soil and then everything below it is compacted so the plant roots will hit the compacted soil looking for resources and spend energy trying to fight through it and eventually grow laterally and compete against each other all of this stunts the vegetative growth during the season it also gives the plants less access to water since the roots can't move through the soil as deeply so the plants are put in distress and stress in plants creates all kinds of exposure to problems and more work for you when a bed is deeply worked to a depth of two feet and amended with compost the plants have a much easier time getting the resources they need and consequently compete with each other less and grow faster during the season and fast growth is what you're looking for in garden vegetables especially in shorter seasons like we have in colorado here's a quick reminder of what your roots can do if you let them have really good soil to work with this is part two for fixing the roe garden issue i use rectangular beds that have narrow pathways between the planting areas the beds are planted with what's called intensive spacing wall to wall since the work soil can now allow for that and the beds full of growth create several advantages that i'll talk about in a second i make most of my beds about 5 feet across so they can be reached from the sides and 20 to 25 feet long it also happens to fit my yard dimensions so everyone has different constraints but the point is to not make them more than four to five feet wide so you can reach the middle of the bed from the sides for planting and weeding many gardeners who want framed beds start with a size of four foot by eight foot because that's the easiest size for pre-cut lumber but the options for what size is appropriate are pretty endless here are some examples from my garden beds most of mine are just in ground beds with no frames the paths are just wide enough to move through and work in the garden but none of the soil in the actual beds is exposed once the plants come up here's another example notice how the leaf canopies completely cover the soil in the beds this living mulch creates a great microclimate below the canopy that helps the soil stay in great condition it reduces the temperature and moisture swings and since here i'm using the entire square footage of the beds for growing it increases the yield per square foot of garden space notice how little soil is exposed in this block style planting you can also get the same effect in framed raised beds as i did here the same rules apply in that the soil is worked to a two foot depth and amended with compost so that this kind of intensive planting can be supported another key benefit here when combined with a healthy soil food web is that the microorganisms that are feeding off the plant exudates surround the roots and protect those plants from pathogens it's nature's own pesticide the same goes for attracting as much insect diversity above ground since the vast majority of insects are beneficial to the garden the pests are kept in check by all the beneficial insects once you get this kind of diversity into the system there's little need for any intervention since most pests and disease problems are minimized choosing a diverse mix of plants also adds to the stability of this backyard ecosystem and there are many ways to do that but we simply don't have time for that today if you want to learn more about this and a host of other organic methods i'm offering a major discount on my online gardening workshop just for the participants on the workshop today in the workshop you get to watch over my shoulder as i guide you step by step so you can learn how to grow intense amounts of food in small spaces using natural systems that reduce your labor so if you want to get a deeper understanding on how to grow more organic food successfully and more easily click the link and i'll see you on the inside thanks for listening today and i hope you got some good ideas to use in your own garden now get out there and grow some food

Channel: GrowFoodWell

Views: 277,059

Keywords: organic gardening, raised bed gardening, how to grow vegetables, when to plant seedlings, making compost, worm bins, vermiculture, How to plant a garden, open pollinated seeds, drip irrigation, organic compost, soil food web

Id: ohjK6gqYBNc

Length: 32min 38sec (1958 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021