From Pasture to Production

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hey you all farmer jesse here so usually you would see this sort of video pop up in the spring when starting gardens or expanding gardens is fresh on the mind but i wanted to do something a little different with this video and its timing and release it when many people here in the northern hemisphere at least are not necessarily thinking about starting gardens but should be so in this video i'm going to discuss fast ways to start a garden in case it's spring where you are or when you see this but i'm also going to discuss some optimal ways to start a garden in case you have a little time including my ideal method for getting a garden started on the right foot or the left shout out to southpaws and i promise to keep my digressions down to a minimum so let's do it minimum does mean a lot though still right [Music] first things first if you're not subscribed to this channel make sure to hit the subscribe button and if you are subscribed you already did that and that makes you awesome and if you gain something from this video or any of our videos or any of our work you can always support it at patreon.com no-till growers or by picking up a copy of the living soil handbook at notillgrowers.com specifically where the proceeds go to making you more content like this and we're back to shipping internationally in case internationally is where you live and you want to support our work as well rad alright so i'm going to divide this video into two different approaches the ideal fast ways to start a garden and the ideal slow ways to start a garden the fast way would be like you need the garden ready to plant absolutely as fast as possible like within a few weeks and the slow wave would be like you have several months maybe even an entire season to get your garden going i'm going to just say that the fast way is almost always if not just always always going to come with some issues that said i get it sometimes you just got to get a garden going quickly yes even the professional growers from time to time have to start gardens really quickly a lot of us for instance had to open up more garden space in early 2020 when demand skyrocketed in the spring for the pandemic we moved at the end of that year in december of 2020 and needed to be selling by june of that next year so needing to get a new garden space up and running very fast just happens sometimes so in the first part of this video i'm going to talk briefly about site evaluation but if you have your site your garden site's already selected and you just want to skip to the methods of breaking ground you can click one of these two times here oh i like this it's sort of like a choose your own adventure except i don't think anybody ever chose the just read it straight through option with those okay now that those nerds are gone let's have some fun and evaluate a potential garden spot this subject could be an entire video on its own so perhaps i will do that this fall or something but for now let's just run through it real quick generally speaking your site should have plenty of access to sunlight some shade is okay especially in the summer for greens and such but for the most part you want as much sunlight as you can possibly get on your crops it's perhaps easier to add shade than it is to take it away though if you want to leave a few trees around i think that's a fine idea especially in hotter regions on severe slopes you may want to think about terracing watch this video here we did with sage hill ranch gardens to get some good insight on how that could be done in lower rainfall regions you can cut straight across the slope with your garden beds to slow rainfall down and let it seep into the ground in places where the rainfall can be heavy like here in kentucky and zone 6b you will want to build your beds so that the water can escape during big rain events like how we just had three inches the other day in a few hours and did a little damage from it those beds were trapping too much water and weren't allowing enough to run out but you can see that a lot of our beds are turned slightly downhill to allow the water to slowly drain out this does create a little weird these little weird triangles and the plots that we call our hedge wedges and are mostly there for the birds and the bees the literal birds and bees get your mind out of the gutter [Music] placing a garden closer to your house is this an important note is always better even if your soil is worse there you simply are not likely to visit a garden further away from your house as often as you need to plus the travel time will add up preferably your site would have water access as well a well county water whatever both water is essential to life including garden life but if you've watched basically any of my videos i've emphasized it quite a lot and you know that once you have your spot you need to evaluate the compaction and the drainage i discuss how to do that exactly in this video here so i'm not going to go in depth in this video that you're watching because redundancy is just no fundancy no you can't fire me why are you asking that get a soil test from a good lab to see where you are on nutrients and organic matter and things like that i like logan labs for my basic tests but there are several good ones as well that may be closer to you i also really enjoy the haney test well again i'll talk about that later i don't use the university tests that you can get from like your extension agent really for our purposes they don't quite give us a good evaluation of what nutrients are available they will give you the soil organic matter percentage which is helpful if you find that you have really low soil organic matter which arbitrarily let's say is like three percent or less consider adding a nice nutritional compost before you do any site preparation as for nutrients before opening up the soil is where a lot of professional growers will balance their soils under the guidance of an agronomist using mostly you know rock minerals and those sorts of things because you want to do that in the beginning before your gardens are up and going so that you don't have to work those sort of materials into your soil as the garden is going and risk bringing up weed seeds and ruining soil structure and killing worms and all the things that tillage does what i personally do is i look for deficiencies and if grave i will address those before opening up the soil otherwise i wait for a year to really start thinking about what rock minerals if any to apply because the available nutrients uh the ph and the soil organic matter will all change slightly as you add plants and compost to the mix um so important to think about that some regions will have pretty common deficiencies and excesses however so a soil test is a good place to start consult with an agronomist before adding a whole lot of rock minerals or really much of anything also before you open up the soil is a great time to add things like compost like i mentioned and activated biochar if that's your thing because you will likely one way or another be working the soil up a bit biologically or mechanically and it may be the last chance you really get to work in some soil goodies that's the scientific term if you detected a lot of compaction then i'm going to recommend either plowing or committing to the broad fork for a few years to break it up compaction is just far too detrimental to crop production to simply leave it alone in most areas maybe in a sandy soil you could get away with it but for most of us on denser soils not a good idea are we going to get a visit from my cat so a lot of time could be spent on all of those ideas and indeed i spend a whole chapter of the living soil handbook on breaking new ground so if you want more info and want to support this work that's a great way to do it go to notelgrows.com and pick it up okay now that you have your site figured out let's first talk about the fast method to get into soil and get growing we have started gardens in basically every imaginable way on our farm and i have talked to dozens of small-scale growers about how they started their gardens but i just want to make sure you know that even still i do not have all the answers so make sure to put your own thoughts and insights into the comment section or read the comments for an even greater perspective so like i said i don't recommend the fast approaches but sometimes a fast approach is what's needed ideally you are never trying to start a garden quickly taking your time and will set you up for long-term success but again i get it i've been there so i'm going to try and give you the best way to get into a garden quickly first we'll just talk mechanical methods and then we'll talk compost mulching both of those can be used for a quick garden start some lighter soil types like sandy soils can be broken up directly with a rototiller but for the most part you're going to need to plow first especially if there is a well-established sod in the garden area and yes i'm recommending a one-time tillage event to get into the soil quickly here on the no-till growers channel because even the best no-tillers i know often start gardens with plowing and or tillage the reason is that you can shape your beds inject any nutrients and organic matter you need into the soil as a as i talked about a minute ago and set your beds up for the best chance possible at succeeding uh remember it's not one step back and two steps forward it's one step back so you never have to step back again you can just keep moving forward indefinitely and honestly sometimes it's not a step back at all sometimes the soil you're starting with is not in good health anyway with ample soil structure and drainage and soil life that you need so injecting some compost even with a little tillage event is in fact an improvement in certain situations remember dogma's not going to help you at all in farming what machinery that you use will depend on what you have access to we often use this rotary plow on the bcs bcs being a walk behind tractor brand we use that to break ground as it tills and it plows sort of simultaneously then we use it again to raise the beds to form large sort of raised beds but you may just have a small plot that you could flip over with a broad fork and then use a tiller on top of that or perhaps you have a neighbor who you could hire to plow and disk or till your field either way the most important piece of advice i can give you is that you should never till up wet soil what you want is you want soil that sort of crumbles like if it does too much slicking like that it's too it's too um too wet yeah so you really just you want it to kind of crumble but still feel wet you know like not slick get a visit hi kitty cat i'm not apologizing now keep in mind that sod can be very difficult to break up as in it will stay in chunks and reroute um you may actually have to harrow it that is to say just lightly till the first few inches you know a few times over the course of a few weeks to get it ready plus you will have not just the sod but weed seeds to contend with if you do not mulch over the surface or use some sort of weed barrier like landscape fabric if you have a few weeks you can throw a tarp over it for a while before planting that helps to kill those weed seeds and as the soil warms up more seeds are going to germinate so you really want to keep that tarp on for as long as you can i would say this plow till plant method is how most gardens are made every year but that is perhaps why most gardens just get mowed down in july because of weeds if you don't manage the weeds with a tarp or with maybe landscape fabric or consistent harrowing and cultivation they will become a problem especially in a quick garden one modification you could make to reduce weed pressure and remember we're talking about fast gardens here is to simply mulch over the top of that newly exposed ground with a minimum of four inches or ten in centimeters of compost or some other carbonaceous mulch like hay or straw the pros and cons of which i've discussed in other videos probably the idea here is that you have a nice loose soil for roots to break into and the mulch serves as a well growing medium if it's a compost but also a weed barrier to stop the sod below from re-rooting or any weed seeds from coming through landscape fabric with holes for plants is also a fine way to start a garden though it can be a lot of plastic and a decent expense so your budget may determine if that's the right call for you can you start a quick garden with just compost and no tillage yes though chances are that it won't do all that great at first unless you really have superb compost so in this approach you would mow an area very well and place a weed barrier like cardboard or mulch paper down and then cover that with eight inches or 20 centimeters of compost and plant immediately into that this is possible and i have done some i've had some success and a lot of failures because it is just takes a lot of good compost for things to go well in this system especially right off the bat that compost can be hydrophobic hydrophobic just meaning that it does not retain moisture very well this is usually pretty visible attribute if the compost is super mulchy it will likely be hydrophobic and any flaws in that compost including persistent herbicides pathogens weed seeds uncomposted pockets will become very apparent when it is serving as more or less the sole growing medium now eventually the roots will hit the native soil but at first the roots will simply use the compost for nutrition and then hit your weed barrier the cardboard or whatever there they will more or less stop at least for a time cardboard does break down rather quickly with adequate moisture but then next the roots meet up with rotting grass neither of those barriers are ideal for plant growth now i do generally think this deep compost or no dig style is a fine way to start a garden if you have some time like an entire winter or a few months for it to sort of settle but for a quick garden it can be a bit risky and both methods run the risk of having grasses and weeds poke through the compost and become an issue more than the slow methods will so your quick options are essentially till and manage weeds till in a light compost mulch if possible which would be my preference of these or just cover with a thick layer of compost and plant directly into that b-roll break [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay so let's talk about some slow garden starting methods uh because it's summer and we have the time to do it right uh i want to begin the slow method section by describing my ideal method of starting a garden from scratch first and then break down some simple variations that could be made first i go through the process of evaluation as described here at this time in the video in case you skipped it okay hey so i'm reshooting this part because i can right and the first time i did it wasn't very good but i want to now switch over to slow methods in this section and i want to begin the slow method section by describing my ideal method of starting a garden from scratch first and then break down some simple variations that could be made it used to be that i would simply tarpon area for several weeks or even months and then once the sod was dead i would pile compost on top of that usually in like eight inch beds and often with some cardboard below and that's like your no dig method and it works great but lately i have been leaning more towards raising my beds first because the raised beds seem to help a little bit with our heavy rainfall events that we have here in kentucky so what i've been doing more lately to great effect is actually plowing then raising the beds and then tarping to kill weeds for a few warm weeks after that if i have compost i will cover those beds with four to six inches of compost and plant a cover crop for several months um if i don't have the compost i will still well cover crop cover crops work well on their own but that compost and cover crop combination is definitely my ideal this creates low weed pressure really nice soil tilth but of course it does take a lot of time like you have to put that area out of production for an entire season but i did say it was my ideal so anyway i'm going to kick it back to my old dorky self so i'll see you later when done in the fall this combo of compost and cover crops to me really creates the perfect soil for spring or early summer plantings the cover crops slowly work the compost into the soil and boost the requisite microbial populations it also keeps weeds at bay while pumping the soil full of energy in the form of carbohydrates in my opinion you cannot buy better soil than that of course you can do a similar thing without compost especially on a larger scale where the economics may not work out to use that much compost you could simply break the ground raise the beds if desired tarp for the weed seeds for several weeks and then sow a cover crop after that that works too having plants growing is always the best and most valuable thing you can do to your soil in terms of soil health just think of plants as like little power plants oh power plants that's clever just literally pumping energy into the soil that's essentially what cover crops and all plants do they fill the soil with energy that your crops can later tap into just do your research with cover cropping every cover crop is different and you will need to select the right one another alternative is just to form deep compost mulch beds with a nice compost put a weed barrier down layer about eight inches of compost and then let that sit over the winter then plant early in the spring super easy that's a fine way to get into a garden and allowing even a meh compost to rest will provide many benefits to the spring crops and will help it just kind of break down a little bit now could you plow a field then tarp it for several weeks and then just go ahead and plant a crop sure i like the cover crop edition because they get everything in better balance and also can show me where my deficiencies may be because the cover crop could be stunted or thin or yellow in those areas poor cover crop portends a poor cash crop woof did i just invent a tongue twister and i like that a cover crop really gets a garden spot off on the right foot but you could do it without the cover crop a couple risks are that there are some weed seeds that require light to germinate so you may still have to contend with those and also if you leave the tarp on for the requisite amount of time to really get rid of all those weed seeds you may end up with a little bit of compaction and it may not be super easy to plant without a light surface tillage or something so those are just things to consider hey me again one method i totally forgot to mention when i first shot this video but can be really great is the lasagna method of gardening where you essentially make layers of compost then you make a layer of some carbonaceous material like straw and then you add more compost and straw it's like lasagna appropriately named and you then allow that to break down for some time someone who does this really well and on a really good scale i think three acres last i checked was jared smith of jared's real food down in san diego and i've seen his gardens they're beautiful we did some videos with him it's just a really cool method that i was originally surprised to see you know it happening on a few acres as i kind of think of it more of like a backyard gardening style but it works either way and we've had decent success using that sort of lasagna style with hay instead of straw in some trials and grew some really superb garlic in that method though i think i still prefer straw to hay the hay can come with some weed seed issues obviously which is a problem but actually the bigger problem seemed to be that the hay seemingly just took a really long time to break down like more than a winner creating a weird sort of dry matte below the compost anyway just wanted to throw that method in there for you yep there's certainly more i could say about starting gardens but let's stop there for now there are a lot of different ways of slow and fast ways so make sure to shout out your favorites in the comments section don't forget you can support this work at patreon.com no-till growers or by picking up a copy of the living soil handbook specifically from notelgrows.com in that book i add all the details i can't possibly fit in a youtube video shot at six in the morning before a long work day great for that otherwise like this video if you liked this video subscribe to the channel to see the next video that you could like thanks for watching we'll see you later bye [Music] [Applause] [Music] feel like somebody's going to ask what this shirt means [Music] yep [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: No-Till Growers

Views: 1,481,721

Keywords: no till, no dig, starting a garden from scratch, how to start a garden from scratch, no tillage, mulching, where to put my garden, do I need a tiller, market garden, market gardening, grower, professional farmers

Id: wm4cM6ZOe-w

Length: 22min 22sec (1342 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 17 2022