What Happens When You Bury Kitchen Scraps in the Garden?

get a I'm mark from self-sufficiently and in this video I'm going to show you what happens when you bury kitchen scraps in the garden we'll dig down and find out how these scraps are going after being buried for a period not only that but we'll also check out the pros and cons of burying other things - such as pigeons chickens fish heads leftover meats etc let's get into it most of the time when people mention kitchen scraps and gardening they think of compost piles compost bins slash tumblers worm farms or chickens and they're all good but many people don't realize the other eco-friendly way to recycle your kitchen scraps and it could be the easiest method of them all depending on your situation and that is to simply bury them directly into the garden my grandparents buried their kitchen scraps in the garden just like I'm doing now and it used to be a really popular thing back thirty to forty years ago because you know it was practical it saved on garbage space but more importantly it was a no-cost way to help to enrich the garden beds for better crops since just about every backyard back then had a vegetable garden how does this process work though and honestly haven't we moved on to better methods of recycling kitchen waste second question first as I stated earlier there are other ways such as compost piles worm farms or feeding to the Chuck's however direct berry circumvents them all like a shortcut or cutting out the middleman by turning your whole garden into a recycling area whilst I reckon the direct berry method is an excellent way to recycle there some things that you should be aware of you should bury the scraps down at least 20 to 40 centimeters so that there's enough soil on top the subsequent vegetables to grow you must be careful not to bury too much kitchen waste in the one garden bed well you'll end up overwhelming that area or all that bed and turn it into a compost pile and then the plants won't grow well at all because of the decomposing matter and you do need a fair sized garden well you might quickly run out of space since kitchen scraps can take weeks to months to properly break down and get eaten by worms other small animals or microbes speaking of breaking down let's get back to the first question and that is how does this process work well think of your garden as a huge worm farm and when you bury your kitchen scraps somewhere in your vegetable patch you're feeding the worms the worms don't just eat and break down the scraps into matter that can be absorbed by the plants they also produce their own waste through castings worm poop and worm juice wimpy or digestive liquid and these elements are excellent for providing the nutrients your plants need to thrive you're basically growing your plants on top of a worm farm and I think that's cool the other thing about the dig and bury method is that you can practically bury any scraps not just fruit and veg but also meat and bones if the conditions are right where you are and what I mean by that is you probably don't want to be bearing mean and bones in great quantities because it might start to smell up the place or if you've got a dog that likes to dig it could become a real problem also but in small amounts and if you have a large enough space bearing some bones and meat leftovers won't hurt at all however trying to compost them down the conventional way isn't quite as easy and I personally don't recommend it I've known gardeners who swear by fish heads and fish bones in the vegetable garden they reckon it's particularly good for tomato plants they say if you bury a good-sized fish head about a foot down and then start a tomato seedling on top it'll grow like the best ever tomatoes you could ever imagine I've buried fish frames in our raised beds before but I can't say that I've experimented or tested the direct growing effects on tomato plants perhaps one day I'll test the theory out to see if there's anything fishy about it I buried a pigeon in this garden bed here that I found on our back lawn I'm not sure how it came to grief but I buried him here about 18 months ago and since then I've grown a ton of onions in this very raised bed so maybe that it's something to do with it let's have a dig down and see if there's anything remaining of our old pigeon mate all right it was right here I reckon she was about a foot down oh it's a nice big beetle grub check that I'll feed that to the chickens worms I'm diggin down with my hands because it would be so much more effective on camera if I grabbed a handful of something icky you know what there's nothing there I could probably go all day send another grub yeah nearly two years on and I didn't really expect to find anything to be honest the worms and the microbes would have eaten him completely by now and it's just turned into the surrounding soil there might be the odd bones scattered around somewhere but you know I'm not gonna go digging up a garden bed all day to try to find it but you know it's a good thing isn't it I also buried some banana peels about five weeks ago right in this very same bed after we'd made a fantastic banana cake bread from our magnificent bananas we've had a really good summer of nanos this year so let's dig down and see how they're gone right here they were that's another one of those beetle grubs that will go to the chickens you know what I can't find them either but banana skins are pretty soft so they probably got snapped up and and eaten by worms and these types of grubs pretty quickly we might have some better luck in this old timber bed here about a month ago exactly I buried some corn cobs in the base here and corn cobs are a little harder and more fibrous so I'm expecting that we should at least see something here after only four weeks so we'll give that a go the story behind this corn is I had some excess older corn that had dehydrated down a bit because it hadn't been eaten and it wasn't much good for us to eat so I rehydrated it and fermented it at the same time in some water for about a week to give to our hens as a natural probiotic they loved it but now I'm keen to see how this goes and from memory I think I also buried one full cob of corn that I forgot to give to the hands I could see plenty of worms already there's a piece of corn now I buried that a lot further down this has been pushed up for some reason but yeah she's a very easy to break up in the hand there's another piece but it's all hollowed out yeah found it look at the worms around it here's the cob you can seal this little red wigglers not sure if you can see the little red wigglers all coming out the side and there's even some type of maggot there it's probably it's on top of fruit or something maggot well that's a really good result I'm glad I was able to show you that because I was worried that I'd dig down and find nothing and I couldn't prove that at least look I can see right through that as you could see through the middle of it so they're eating out the core of it first and you can see how easy it is to break down a normal cob of corn there's a little worm there wouldn't be that easy to to break up but they're reducing down and they're getting slowly eaten by microbes and worms and yam reptiles able to show you that type of example because it just goes to show that even just after four weeks it gets to work pretty quick in your garden bed whereas you know you could be doing your compost pile or your tumbler and it can take a lot longer actually to break down there's plenty of worms here I'm just putting all this back there's lots of worms in this particular area of the garden but then there's lots of worms in our whole garden too but they're particularly concentrated of course where you have extra food for them and you can see what I mean now by planting on top of this there would be no problems at all for plants roots going down that wouldn't be impeded at all by the activity going on underneath the surface and that grow quite normally sometimes I use kitchen scraps as extra fill when I'm creating a new raised garden bed and this gets the soil ecosystem off to a great start by encouraging worm and microbes because remember the best and healthiest garden soil is alive and teeming with activity and that's what happens when you bury kitchen scraps in the garden hope you enjoyed this video if you did make sure you give it a big dirty thumbs up and also subscribe if you haven't already thanks a lot for watching bye for now now where do I put my glasses Oh buddy Jackie [Music] hey guys I've got a special trait [Music] okay Grady now there's enough for everyone

Channel: Self Sufficient Me

Views: 10,771,555

Keywords: bury kitchen scraps, bury kitchen scraps directly in garden and this happens, bury kitchen waste in garden, bury kitchen scraps in garden, bury kitchen scraps composting, compost kitchen scraps in garden, waste, bury, garden, compost, scraps, kitchen scraps, kitchen scraps composting, kitchen scraps garden

Id: yQFB9M2UdK0

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 06 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/medic_mace]

Love this guy

[u/condortheboss]

Why do people not just put their compost in a pile first? It decomposes faster if you can turn the pile and water it and it doesn't attract as many wild animals.

[u/technosaur]

So many comments about critters digging up buried scraps. I live in rural Africa - really rural - and that has happened to me only once; small python dug up a dead monkey. I don't usually bury whole animals.

I put kitchen waste in a black 20 liter bin with a very tight fitting, animal proof lid. Rice, pasta, sour milk, banana and potato peels, chicken and fish guts and bones. I let it solar cook a few days in tropical heat. Gets ripe. Then I dig at least 2 feet into loose, compost-like soil. Dump it and smush it with short hoe. Takes only a minute to whack it into a paste. Mix it with soil/compost, cover with more material, hose the area with water. (About a week ago I buried about a dozen spoiled bananas, lots of spoiled avocados, cabbage leaves, potato peels. Watched this video and went out to dig up what I buried. Nothing there except some avocado pits (seeds).

Pre-aged, depth, small volumes distributed, chopped to paste, bit of biochar, watered, topping of dry wood chips or chicken litter. It works.

[u/senorglory]

Compost? I give up. What happens?

[u/commiemonkie]

He’s the best.

[u/macphisto23]

This is great stuff!

[u/FifthofTurf]

It draws in every scavenging animal from a mile radius. Fox, racoon, deer, bear, squirrel, neighbor dog, your dog....

[u/FruitFlowerBasket]

Oh how cool! I'll definitely check out this other guy's videos.

[u/p-a-t-e-d]

This video is an example of why you should be careful with miracle methods on Youtube. Burying organic matter is generally a bad idea.
Ask yourself this question : when in nature do you see organic matter being buried except during catastrophic events like floods?
The natural decomposition process for the soil needs oxygen. By burying fresh organic matter you put it in an oxygen deprived environment where the usual aerobic microorganisms responsible for the natural decomposition, fungi and bacteria, won't be able to do the job. It breaks the cycle. The underground decomposition will acidify and reduce the oxygen level in your soil, a precious oxygen for your plants and for all the organisms in your soil. The fermentation by anaerobic bacteria (if no or limited oxygen) will produce methane (ecologically bad).
But sure it will decompose... except if you bury wood or anything that contains a good amount of lignin as lignin decomposition depends on fungi (unless your soil has a lot of termites like in Australia) and fungi need oxygen, there would be a risk of mineralization of the wood / lignin-rich matter and it would never decompose.