I Stopped Buying Compost for Two Years

hey nerds farmer Jesse here so it may sometimes seem like I suggest that everyone just solve all of their problems with large amounts of compost got weeds covering them in compost fertility issues try some compost credit card debt compost it still kind of feel like that one should work however from the beginning of Noel Growers we recognized and tried to be sensitive to the fact that not everyone has access to good uncontaminated commercial compost ourselves now somewhat included in that so effectively I did a self-imposed trial to see how long I could go without buying in compost and simply making my own amendments and compost by hand largely creating our own fertility for the farm and still maintaining decent production and well I learned some things so let's do [Music] [Applause] it say to run a good Farm you need a lot of stuff on the ground just at your feet to trip over first let's get some of the caveats out of the way uh I do Buy in a soil mix for plant starts from tilt soil that contains compost and I don't own a tractor with a bucket on it but when I say we do compost by hand I actually mean with a digging fork or shovel technologically speaking I have at least Advanced that far but indeed other than what I make here on the farm we have not bought in any compost since the summer of 2021 now why would someone on a production scale want to do something that ludicrous is to not buy in compost um like what even is the point of this trial well the reality is that not every one has access to worthwhile compost or if they do maybe the price does not actually justify the return moreover and perhaps more importantly over the last few years we have seen a dramatic uptick in herbicide contamination or at least a dramatic uptick in the awareness of it from like generic commercial composts if you watch this video that I did last year with my buddy Troy hinky about the issues of compost you can get more details on that but effectively there are some herbicides that are resistant to microbial decomposition and will persist in compost if not composted properly or for a long enough period of time there has also been uh another chemical family of ominously named forever chemicals also referred to as pasas or poas which are also resistant to composting and have been making their way into compost all that to say we have been wary of purchasing compost from a couple of nearby producers so as not to contaminate our soil and I needed some perspective on what exactly to suggest to people that do not have access to much if any compost so that was effectively the Genesis of this particular trial uh let's start with the challenge of mulching because to me that has been the biggest obstacle to over the last few years without buying in bulk compost first about half of our beds on this new Farm were initially set up with compost mulches in 2020 and early 2021 but if you don't refresh that compost Mulch and compost slowly starts to blend with the soil you get this sort of grayish mulchy material on the surface that is not the most attractive thing to be honest especially not when you're used to well clean dark fluffy beds of compost and I always say that the depth of your mulch layer is almost directly proportional to your weed pressure so therefore as that original mulch layer recedes so Returns the weeds and like a new t-shirt slogan face tattoo so without recovering my beds in compost these past two seasons what we've seen is a steady increase in weed pressure now the weed pressure is not nearly to the level of tilled soil which I that's how I learned to farm is on tilled soil but it is a noticeable uptick the soil has likewise not started to crust in the same way it does with tilled soil and it still feels somewhat mulchy on the surface but weirdly but not surprisingly the germination is honestly a little better in these beds now than it was when it was compost mulch because the water retention in the top layer is better that is to say there is better seed to soil contact in this broken down soil compost IM mix than in just straight compost which can be a little hydrophobic hydrophobic just meaning terrified of water that said the water retention below the surface of this broken down mulchy material is seemingly not as good as the beds with compost mulch like it Wicks moisture more readily and in case it's not obvious I cannot possibly make enough compost by hand to mulch all of our beds uh the compost I make by hand is strictly used as fertility and a lot of it ends up in teas and extracts to spread it out as much as I possibly can that said I have tried to make up for the lack of compost mulch in other ways because necessity is the birthplace of invention I found some different ways to utilize cover crops in and around the high rotation crops which would be like your lettuce and your carrots and arugula and that sort of stuff for one crimson clover is a nice cover crop uh because it is so easy to sew on top of the soil and still get good germination plus it's largely easy to eliminate in the spring I've also been sewing peas in between our Salon NOA lettuce rows after the first harvest neither of those luminous cover crops make the most incredible mulches but will help and will improve the soil and keep it covered over the winter time and all those good things and obviously we are still using rye and fetch wherever we can which do make slightly better mulches than the other cover crops but are also not ready to terminate until May here in Kentucky Zone 6B and I should say I go into really great detail on literally everything I discuss in this video and on this channel in the living soil handbook which you can buy from no till growers.com when you get it from us the proceeds go to making more content like our summer farm tour series or these videos yeah on the slow rotation beds We are continuing to use non-treated hay which works wonderfully um in terms of weed suppression and water retention and we use that in combination with cover crops uh the soil in those beds is incredible and if it wasn't for how difficult it is to transplant large volumes of plants into hay mulch I would honestly cover the entire outside garden in hay and then reserve my compost mulch for the tunnels uh hay beds take double the time maybe even triple the time to transplant into especially for things like lettuce but switching to Hay on every bed is very tempting and hay costs less than half of what compost costs per bed anyway that's perhaps for another video or for you know a world in which I don't actually need to make money now I mentioned fertility a second ago so it's probably more like hundreds of seconds ago but anyway let's talk about some of the ways I have made up for fertility loss for one like I said fertility is where all of my homemade compost is going I put a couple of buckets of homemade compost on every bed before we transplant uh a heavier feeder or I make different teas and extracts uh in one overnight ferment I've mentioned before called JMS or jadam microorganism solution I use that mixture to saturate our compost to increase its microbial populations before applying it in my context and my experience few things have shown uh a more positive crop response quite like JMS um basically bake a potato smash it put it in a cloth bag or compost bag then add a pinch of garden soil and some compost in another bag set both bags suspended in non-chlorinated water for about 24 hours at room temp mix that resulting liquid with your compost and then apply the compost to the soil that's it just bag with mashed potatoes and another bag with compost and water basically anyway we always add that particular mixture to our potatoes and the furrow at planting and and the crops are incredibly healthy um look to the jadam books for more guidance on this and other preparations that they recommend I'll link all that in the show notes uh one thing I have not increased my usage of is folar sprays but that is more a matter of the complications with Organic certification regulations than a lack of desire to I've generally found foler applications to be effective in managing nutrient deficiencies and diseases um in Organic certification I have to prove the nutrient deficiency via a test or by demonstrating a deficiency via photographic evidence cross referenced with a scholarly publication that shows indeed that I have the nutrient deficiency I'm treating um and it has to be for every nutrient contained in the solution it's just it's possible but it's not something I have a lot of time for so I can spray compost teas and extracts but if I want to purchase a specific nutrient spray I have to show the specific deficiency so that regulation is a little inconvenient for someone who grows 50 to 70 day crops as opposed to 120-day corn or perennial fruit trees where the expense of a sap analysis may make more sense organic regulations are built around corn and soybean production largely so they can be a little frustrating when well you're not growing a long season monoculture storage crop [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay another type of popular amendment that folks use is things like dried out falam uh for its nitrogen but instead of just buying that sort of stuff in uh in place of compost I wanted to see if we could create something similar on Farm uh so I started drawing wasted vegetation from say harvest in our greenhouse and then crumbling that and spreading it on beds fun fact I have no idea if it helped at all because it was not exactly a thought out experiment as much as a random idea that I had indeed I would actually really love to do that same trial as an experiment rather than a whim because I could see Farms having drying tunnels or areas where turning out a lot of dried material would be efficient and could make a really nice homemade fertilizer especially on harvest day we wind up with several pounds of just discarded greens um dry them could make a very fast way to reutilize them uh the labor required to make all that dried vegetative material was pretty high but could be a system that could work out with the right design and I could see adding chopped up comfrey and grass clippings and those sorts of things to really flesh it out and make it a nice diverse amendment I did see some more nitrogen deficiencies since I stopped buying in compost that led to things like spots on our beat greens or yellowing in certain crops I also noticed more unevenness in the beds uh so one side would be growing really well and maybe one side would not be growing quite as well because there was a different distribution of nitrogen within that bed if I were going to do this for any longer I would have to find more material to make compost out of preferably something with some manure in it um and spend significantly more time on that a tractor with a bucket in a situation where you do not have good compost access but do have access to large quantities of compostable materials like manures uh would probably be a worthwhile investment if I had a better nitrogen Source like a manure that I could trust I would almost certainly make that investment myself it would make a lot of sense and it would probably save my back which also makes a lot of sense but right now our compost is mostly vegetative material and wood chips and leaves um which are a vegetative material I just need access to more of that slimy poopy stuff to use the technical terminology uh hey I'm jumping in here real quick several days later because the original ending I did to this video simply did not add enough value and also who doesn't love a costume change so anyway I'm redoing it to make sure you can walk away from this video with a good idea of how to approach a situation in which you don't have a lot of compost access first I learned in these past two years that it is possible to go without purchasing compost it just requires a lot more creativity and thoughtfulness on your part uh yields might decline a bit weeds may increase moisture may be a little bit more fleeting but I did not see a lot of disease issues or honestly a lot of nutrient deficiencies it just you have to be thoughtful about it I was actually impressed at how well the gardens did overall All Things Considered uh if you're going to take bulk compost out of the picture you just have to have a plan for replacing the mulching element and the fertilizing element in particular uh but as we talked about in the mulching video this one not all mulches are safe and not all mulches are created equal so as for fertility making some of your own compost perhaps using animals to supplement like chickens um and even employing some foler sprays could help I did not shout out Neptune's Harvest for their fish fertilizers earlier but those have helped us a lot in our tunnel and in our compost te's and Etc uh there's even a discount code in the show notes if you're interested and like me don't live close enough to an ocean to make your own Fishy Stuff uh ordering in those dried meals like alfalfa meal um where compost is too expensive is also a decent option as it can be emphasis on can can be more cost effective obviously cover crops have been a huge part of our system and will continue to be so um in fact if I had enough space to take half of my garden out of production every year I would just cover crop it and I would have no real need for compost for the most part in terms of mulch or fertility uh but space is limited here in the end for us on our scale of roughly 3/4 of an acre in production we have to make a decision to either Buy in compost or buy a tractor with a bucket to help make compost but since we don't have access to a good manure Source yet the tractor does not make sense for us ultimately it was a good interesting trial and it taught me a lot about how little you need to grow food even on a decent scale but because our farm is a business we have to maximize our efforts and frankly I will take compost over any Amendment any day I just need a little bit more of it last I should say we are working on improving the state of compost in this country with shows like the compost or podcast so if you're interested in starting a compost company hint hint uh check out that podcast for some guidance anyway I think that's enough rambling from me for the day if you'd like to support more videos like this pick up a copy of the living soil handbook or hat or some merch from no growers.com become a patreon member at patreon.com Growers or just hit that super thanks button that works too otherwise like this video If you like this video and if you are not subscribed to this channel hit the Subscribe button and if you are subscribed you're awesome thanks for watching we'll see you later bye shout out to our neighbor Bill who brings over this giant pile of leaves every fall it's amazing

Channel: No-Till Growers

Views: 242,114

Keywords: no till, incoorperating amendment, vegetable, professional, frith, health, farm, ag, maine, hedgerow, hedge, intentional, regen ag, composting, compost, amending, no dig, no tillage, organic

Id: od4PlQDuLmI

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 05 2023