How to Use 90% LESS Water With Core Gardening

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the my gardener channel in today's episode i'm going to show you just how simple it is to set up a core garden not only that but i'm also going to go through some of the questions that you all have asked throughout the years about core gardening now i know that we did core gardening we did a whole series on core gardening about three years ago but since then we have amassed so many more subscribers and followers of the channel so i want to kind of bring everybody up to speed and because i have to get this bed prepped for garlic anyways i've got to get the cores put in because i won't have an opportunity to do it in the spring so because i have to do this right now i thought what better opportunity than to bring you all along and show you just how simple it is to set up but also kind of answer some of those questions that have come up over the past two to three years about core gardening now core gardening i first want to talk about kind of what it is because obviously i have a lot of new people that say core what core who what what do you what i don't know what he's talking about so i got to bring you up to speed so core gardening is a method of gardening that we adapted from a gardening method that was actually well more or less a farming method used in sub-saharan africa the aborigine tribes in sub-saharan africa don't have a lot of growable soil and because it's also very arid because it's semi-desert you don't get a lot of rainfall very very little rainfall in fact and so what they would do is they would actually take this tall wispy sahara grass and they would chop it down and they would bury it in trenches in their soil and then they would apply some you know manure or compost whatever type of growing medium they had on top of that and then they would literally just plant right on top of their their core beds right on top of that trench they just buried all of that sub-saharan grass they would bury it with like six to eight inches of growing medium soil compost manure broken down stuff whatever they had available and then they would simply grow on top of that and what would happen is as the uh as the grass broke down it would actually be able to hold on to moisture hold on to water so that in between rainfalls or in between their irrigation cycles the water would stay in the soil longer to allow the plants to obtain it rather than just have it evaporate into the air so the plants could utilize it longer it allowed the plants to grow bigger more stress-free and healthier and so there's huge benefits there but also because it's organic and because it can break down it would actually generate compost you know additional growing medium additional soil for them to grow in but also it would generate nutrients for their plants to use so it was kind of like a three-fold benefit that they were able to uh to obtain from using these cores and so when i learned about this i uh i said well i don't really have sahara grass here but i do have things like straw i do have things like you know straw or leaves grass clippings garden scraps and stuff like that i do have those at my disposal and those are kind of the midwest equivalent of sahara grass then what i did was i simply dug a trench just like they did eight to ten inches deep i buried the straw in uh about 12 about uh eight to ten inches wide maybe 12 inches at most wide i'll show you this whole process but i'm just kind of describing it to give you guys a mental image and then i'll give you guys an actual image so uh about eight inches eight to ten inches deep eight to ten inches wide maybe twelve inches wide at most and then as long as you need it and then i buried i just basically placed the straw in that trench and then buried it up buried it over with uh with fresh soil and then all i do is i plant right on top of it and that way the roots can actually go down into the into the straw as it's breaking down use it as a use it as a water reservoir it actually will hold on to nutrients hold on to you know beneficial bacteria and microbial life so it's a huge benefit to your garden but also what it encourages is deeper root development deeper root development is so critical to having stress-free fast-growing plants the reason why is because when you when you surface water roots are encouraged to go wherever water is and so if you water very regularly like very frequently roots are not encouraged to go deeper they're encouraged to just stay where the where the water is coming so you get a lot of surface roots while the surface is the fastest part of the soil to dry out it's exposed to the most sun the most wind you know it has the most the most weather conditions hitting it and causing evaporation and so the soil can actually dry out so much faster on the top versus 8 to 10 inches down so the roots that are surface roots they dry out the plant is stressed it just does not produce well the roots that are down deeper those ones have access to water they have so much abundance of water that they can grow stress-free they can produce you know lots of fruit they can yield tons and they're ultimately going to be healthier in the long run so deep roots are the secret to having a healthy plant subsequently you also don't have to water as frequently because in between rain cycles you know if you have you know say eight to ten weeks without rain you might have to come in and water once or twice to kind of keep those cores charged up but once you know once you have those cores charged they can last three to five weeks without without them really drying out and uh needing to be recharged so here in michigan we pretty much can guarantee we're gonna have a rain just about once every three to five weeks or so at least if not more frequently and so because of that we rarely have to water it's gonna sound crazy when i say this but we had to water only three times this year only three times and most of that watering occurred in the very beginning of the season when we put seeds down or new seedlings and we wanted to make sure that they got well established once the root systems were established and the seedlings were growing there's no need to water those roots are heading down and when they head down they find that straw they tap into that straw and they just they get all entangled in it and they use it as a water reservoir that is what the secret of core gardening is all right so it's this simple all we're going to do is just dig a trench we're going to take the soil and we're just going to move the soil to the side all right and then we took our straw here and we're just going to place some straw into oops not all of it but place some straw into the trench here now straw will naturally come off in what's called flakes these flakes are like about two to three inches thick and that makes a really good that makes a really good amount of material to pack into your chorus here so there we go that's about all i need for for that little trench section there but again i fill this completely up so i have about roughly six to eight inches of straw in this uh in this trench here so there's a lot of straw you can stomp it down if you want to compact it the more compacted it is the longer it'll take to break down and the more water it's going to hold so it's fine to compact it then all we're going to do is simply grab our rake and pull it the soil that came from the hole or the trench i should say pull that right back onto the straw and now you can go ahead and you can actually water this in you can water this in really well and you can plant right now you don't have to worry for the straw to break down much further because the fact the straw is already kind of breaking down it's already kind of beginning to weather so you can go ahead and plant seeds on this if you want you can take you know you could if you're doing this in the springtime you could take a tomato plant pop your tomato plants in right on top of that straw because the fact you have a good four to six inches of soil on top of that straw it gives them plenty of soil to use until the roots tap down into the straw so there's lots of soil for them to use you're not like growing in straw you're growing in soil and because the fact that um the straw is underneath it's going to buy the plants time to kind of get established in the soil while the roots are working on going down so a common question that we get asked is luke can i use anything other than straw and the answer is yes you definitely can you can use things like mulched up leaves you can use grass clippings heck you can even use things from around your garden like if you have old zucchini plants old old tomato plants pepper plants corn stalks you can use all those things just make sure you kind of chop them up a little bit maybe run them over with a lawnmower to kind of break them up just a little bit but those are all great things to throw in your core in your cores in your beds just know that the smaller the particle the faster it's going to break down because grass does not have a lot of surface area things like straw you know you get there's tons of surface area on straw because it's so big and bulky you know grasses is very very thin whereas straw is you know three to five times thicker than a blade of grass so it's going to take three to five times longer for straw to break down than things like grass clippings another question we get asked all the time about using straw is luke i'm really worried about things like fungicides being used in being used on the straw and getting that in my garden and to that i would say just get your straw from a reputable source a lot of places are turning away from using things like grazon grazon is the herbicide that a lot of people are concerned about getting in their garden many farmers no longer use grazon because it's it's a highly regulated herbicide it gets into waterways it destroys water aquatic life it just really wreaks havoc on a whole host of um on a whole host of ecosystems and so a lot of farmers are turning away from it so you find you see less and less of it but also if you go to a really reputable source you can find really safe straw and one of the final questions that a lot of people ask is the time of year that you can apply your cores so we always do ours in spring unless we're planting fall garlic so that's what we're doing right now because the fact i don't want this to break down a lot over winter because if it breaks down over winter by the time i plant it in spring it's really defeated the purpose i'd much rather start fresh in the spring with fresh cores for you know my summer crops than to do it in the fall but if you're doing things like fall garlic obviously you can't do it in the spring because your garlic is already planted so that's where that's kind of one of those exceptions as to when i would do it in the fall um you know so that's kind of when to do it the other question that gets asked the final question that gets asked is you know how long do i have to let my straw break down before i can use it you can go ahead and use completely fresh straw it's just there's a fine line between a little too fresh and just right what you want to look for is you want to look for that waxy shimmery shiny coating to be gone from the straw if it's gone you know that most of that waxy water repellent coating is gone off the straw straw will kind of have this kind of waxy look and if you you know if you uh just pour water on top of it it'll beat up and run off it's very water repellent so for a core you want your cores to absorb water not repel it and so by simply letting it weather for one to three months outside before you use it that's going to ensure that it's going to absorb that water rather than just you know let it beat off and run away so just let it weather a little bit i typically will let my straw weather like i said over winter i'll just keep it out let the snow fall on it let the spring rains fall on it and then i use it so you should be fine uh with just letting it set for even a little bit but that's all there is to uh to core gardening how to do it what it is and bringing you all to speed so there you go i hope you guys enjoyed i hope you learned something new it's really that simple if you guys have any more questions though feel free to post them in the comments box below that's what i'm here for i'd be happy to answer any questions that you have but go ahead give it a shot in your garden and also if you've used it in the past let me know in the comments box below how it worked for you i hope you guys enjoyed i hope you all learned something new and as always this is luke from the my gardener channel reminding you to grow big or go home and we'll catch you all very soon when we're planting garlic all right catch you guys in a little bit bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 95,948

Keywords: Premiere_Elements_2018, core garden, gardening, how to, howto, migardenner, simple, tip, tutorial

Id: OBRocCwjFJA

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021