It was so beautiful! I would almost grow it again just for the aesthetics. I think one of the reasons I wanted to do a second video about this was to show more footage of the growth ;)
Thanks. I really like how you try to "do the math". That really goes beyond "this is so great and that is so good". In the end, it has to make sense in energy in (money, work) and output (improved fertility, yield, less work etc) out.
Amazing content. You've really put in the work and crunched the numbers on something that's been chewing away at the back of my brain. I just became a Patron at sprout level. I'll probably up it soon just because this info is so valuable.
RED Gardens You should introduce worms, isopods, springtails, and millipedes to your polytunnel to help break down all that green manure and to keep your soil fertile over time. They self regulate after breaking everything down too. I would love to see a polytunnel full of decomposers! They make great pets too :) Also having a container where you breed all said decomposers, and showing their growing numbers overtime would be interesting and entertaining to the viewers. Thanks for all your hard work!
very interesting... i would feed that green manure to my rabbits and they would create the cool compost for me, cutting out the 6-8weeks of composting time.
An exceptional follow up video, thank you for taking the time and effort to not only fully consider all you've learned from this interesting experiment, but to document both your results and ponderances upon the topic. I could not agree more that putting any space to purposeful growth is an excellent use of time, money, resources and effort. I regularly crop small side areas of pasture and other mixed cover crops to fuel my compost making, keep my poultry happy, feed to livestock who I could not risk releasing directly onto those areas for fear of mishap. Anything which is left over from the livestock not eating it is added to the compost pile, anything deposited by the livestock in the way of manure is likewise added. Bare soil is quickly covered by nature presumably for good reason, even within the protected environment of the tunnel I think your experiment was very worthwhile and so thank you for taking the time to document and share it! 👍🏴
Thank you for the massive amount of time you put into this. The green manure crops are something I have not tried yet. So far I am only using chicken and pig manure and small amounts of compost, as I do not have alot of complete compost ready this year.
One thing I think is missing is that hot compost loses about 66 percent of volume whole cold compost can lose less that 40. And cover crops are cold compost
Dude, your knowledge surpasses me in the first two Minuit your videos. One must have a real grasp of soils and farming to understand. Your highly intelligent 🤓
Hi Bruce, just wanted to say I thoroughly enjoy your videos and I have learnt a great deal from them and I enjoy your thorough analytical style. I am in my first year of establishing a vegetable garden here on the east coast in County Louth, a reaction I suppose to something that you have mentioned before about our rapidly changing world and an uncertain food future. I can really relate to your struggles and successes in this sometimes tricky climate. Hope you're season is going well and keep up the good work. I will joining as a patron to support your work from next month. Patrick.
Thanks for commenting Patrick, and thanks for even considering becoming a Patron! It can be a tough climate to grow in , but so important to figure out how to do it. Best of luck with your garden.
Nice analysis. Soil that always has something growing in it is a goal to strive for. Scale and timings in the garden are things I'm constantly trying to figure out. We have really cost effective OMRI certified compost available in bulk here, so that helps. Your soil looks really great!
Thanks. I have come to realise how important it is to always try to have something growing, and appropriate timing is still a struggle for me. Here in Ireland, good quality compost is still a relatively difficult and expensive thing to get.
I'm a long way behind in your videos (only just discovered your channel) but loving the content. Agricultural extensions have done alot of good work analysing cover crops and their impact on soil and I think you might enjoy reading their findings re. Bacterial vs Fungal dominated soils and corresponding levels of organic matter!
Your research is impossible to put a price on, your an amazing asset and teacher, I've learned so much from your experiences. I live in mid west america and plan to implement nearly all of your methods for most of my up coming projects. For what you explain in great detail my local information center on agriculture charges by the hour to consult a professional. Thank you so much for all of the amazing insights of your trials and results. My garden and farm land will prosper.
For polyhouse try sunn Hemp (Crotalaria Juncea) & pigeon peas along with other locally popular cover crops. They fix nitrogen from as early as 30 days of growth, and generate far more biomass while digging much deeper into the soil bringing minerals to the surface, 5ft-8ft deep in my personal experience! (Although online resources for these cover crops are not very helpful in terms of depth of information)
I definitely support your use of green manure and currently opt for Hungarian rye over the winter season. I probably create more work for myself by cutting down the rye, trenching it and place Cow manure on top. However the purpose is to improve the fertility and micro organisms in the soil and can say a year later it has done this. I have noticed a increase in the amount of worms and the structure of the top soil is a lot more manageable.
To your point around 9:00 --- you could also try to find a seed mix for plants that that grow more material in the time available (more carbon material for soil/compost). There may be a tradeoff of water usage/nitrogen fixing.
I think the mix could definitely have been refined some more, especially with the protected microclimate. The mix I used was developed to do well in typical wet and windy weather, and i am sure other plants could do better.
I think there is one thing you left out. The cover crops would have connected to mychorrizal fungi, which would have then connected to your tomato plants. This would extend the root system of the tomato plants significantly and given them more nutrients. There would also be more glucose in the soil from the cover crops' photosynthesis, and would have fed the soil life. So there is more than just the biomas. Compost would create a delay in which the soil life's food would be decreased. And, the network of fungi would be less if you had compost lying on the soil for a period, rather than living roots in the soil.
ahh this analytical approach has a soothing effect on me. good info. its like your perspective is both achievements and anticipation for creating better ways at the same time. so as with one(?) of the greenhouses, this content sharing way is also scalable in a nice way :)
Your soil is so FINNNEE! The way you just dug it out like that. My soil is clay and it takes a stomp and a lever to pull a chunk out. I’m working on my soil, but the wet weather seems to destroy anything I do because it drowns the soil.
Flavius Nita - Definitely! A good idea - You might not get as much of a crop as with some other low growing legumes since chick peas don't flower well in part sun. MIGardener just put out a vid on tomato companion planting.
I grew field beans as a green manure. I harvested the growing tips as a spinach substitute from December until April, left the roots/nodules in to feed the brassicas and chopped up the tops to feed the squash : all the best - Steve
@@REDGardens more than 'a bit' of harvesting Bruce, field beans are amazingly productive harvested this way, we met the spinach needs of 6 families all through winter and early spring from 20 m2 patch. : All the best - Steve
I have been watching your videos for awhile and just wanted to say thank you for sharing them... I have meant to comment in the past but alas life keeps me busy... so just wanted to say "thank you" ... I live in Canada and have been trying some of the methods you are using in Ireland ... on a smaller scale and they work fabulously :)
Thank you for commenting. It is so good to hear from people who watch my videos, and try stuff out! Where in Canada are you based - I am originally from Caledon, Ontario.
I have grown A LOT of different cover crops bc I have clay slippery and mucky soil. I find that radish grown in the winter and left to winterkill brings a nice tilth to the soil in the spring. The problem with growing solely radish is it does not support the Mycorrhiza SO you HAVE to mix OF CEREAL WITH RADISH. I grew alfalfa hoping that my surface soil would be mellow but it isn't. Alfalfa does relieve compaction deep down below. I grew oats but it was a rat/mouse magnet. I grow Buckwheat bc I have acid soil and it drops hard seed which comes back again. I like Hairy Vetch bc it brings up phosphorous and it knits plants together like David Phlox. It also drops a hard seed and returns so it too is a good investment. It is a wonderful forage for the bumblebee. Now that June has come Hairy Vetch being a cool weather crop has made it's seed pods and all it's purple flowers are gone. It was beautiful when it was fresh and green but now it is dry, brown, and ugly. I planted some mustard seeds just to have yellow color. Dutch White Clover has also gone to seed and it too looks dreadfully dirty. It did not support my raspberries. I found that they require alkaline soil. My Crimson Clover has long gone to seed. It made a light brown fuzzy curled over tail so it doesn't look as bad as Dutch White Clover. I am growing Annual Ryegrass but so far it is just another grass to cut. I tried to grow Phacelia but the slugs ate the seeds, all of them and it requires alkaline soil. There is definitely a learning curve when planting cover crops. I have a wealth of earthworms everywhere.
i've seen some people successfully growing tomatoes and cucumbers and similar cultures by planting directly in a living constant green manure of perennial clover varieties. keeps the ground covered at all times, is supposed to suppress the weeds, and adds nitrogen and fertility by letting decompose the sometimes mowed clover on the ground. needs more water though and some nutrients for the clover as well. never tried it - yet.
I agree that regarding your conditions, green manure might not have been the best option. I think its main use is for areas where an additional seasonal crop just isn’t viable due to the climate or other factors. I believe most people do cut the crop back and/or turn it under sooner so there’s less biomass to manage and so it can decompose quicker. These strategies are better for people who don’t want to manage the full crop, but can still provide benefits to the soil. Thanks for another thought provoking video!
Terrific effort and well worth watching! Scientist tend to dry the vegetable matter before weighing it because some plants have a huge amount of water in them while others have very little. My favourite green manure crop was cow peas but always inoculate the seed before planting and then as soon as you see the first flower you have to put the crop to use. if you don't do this the plants starting using the nitrogen to flower and produce seed and you don't get the benefits.
I did take a sample and dried it in my oven to see how much dry matter there was - only about 12.5%. I left that out of the video as it was getting too long, bu might do another video about carbon sequestration.
you need to think about tillage radish. you can also sell part of the radish if you really want to and keep part in the ground to die off. we make and sell kimchi with a part of it and chop and drop the rest.
Having just purchased a load of green manure seeds I think it is still probably worthwhile as my application is for open soil, my intention with the first selection planted this month in southern England, is to cut down the crop in October and leave on the soil over winter. I have other seeds which I will plant in October elsewhere to slowly grow over winter and harvest for silage in the spring. Other space will of course have crops growing over winter. Thank you for your valuable videos, very much appreciated.
Sounds like a good plan, especially if it is only part of your growing space. I think green manures work well if you have more space than you need, so that part of the garden is rebuilding fertility, which you grow food on other parts.
You need to bake the cover crop and dry it down. Then you weigh to get the dry pounds and you get an accurate quantity. Wet weights vary with moisture content. Thanks for a great video!
Yes, I did dry a sample and found it to 87.5% water and only 12.5% dry matter. I didn't include this in the video as it was getting too long and I didn't know how to make a comparison between this and the amount of compost i would be equivalent to. Wet material comparison made more sense to me as i use it to make compost in other areas.
@@REDGardens have you considered growing the cover crop on a larger scale and then composting it? I do a version on this: I use the silage refusals from our heifer herd as mulch. I theorize that this gives the soil beneficial microbes as well as some npk ang organic material. Have you tried this?
@@reliefquinn7504 I haven't tried that. Having finished this videos and read a lot fo the comments (including yours) I realise I really should be investing the time to grow more cover crops specifically for composting, over a large area.
Awesome video. So impressed with your content! Are you scything your cover crop as your main "mowing" method? Do you prefer doing it by hand rather than with a mower (like a walk-behind) or is it a matter of just not having access to a mower?
Another factor is all the root left in the soil will help the soil to be less compacted. If you have clay soil, it's the best solution to grow cover crops
It's true, clay soil with a reasonable amount of compost addition doesn't seem to work fine at the end. In a long rainy day I've noticed it turns into cob anyway.
If you are already going to wait for the bio mass to break down. You could also harvest your lawn clippings to add to it. Just a thought. Also you would want to wait for the matter to compost down if you dig it in. As not to borrow the available nitrogen from the crops your trying to grow. But you probably know that. Your hard work sure is something to speak of. Great videos too.
As a fan of no-dig (thanks in part to my laziness these days), I think I'd pass on green manure. The sight of that tunnel full of plants exhausted me! In my younger days I'd have been giving it a go. Great, well researched vid Bruce.
Thanks. I didn'treally mention it in this video, but a big reason for taking this approach was to see if it was possible to mix green manures and a no-dig approach.
Very nice breakdown and discussion. I love listening to you work through theories and choices. Do you think if you had cut back the greenmanure halfway if it would've grown noticeably more? If it would've that might have been a game changer in reference to value of the return bioload.
Thanks. I think there might have been a significant increase in the amount of biomass produced if I had cut a few times, and it would be interesting explore how often to cut and how short each cut would be in order to maximise this gain.
One aspect to consider is nutrient accumulation in the soil. In my area (North Carolina, USA) we have clay soil which significantly retains nutrients to the degree that adding compost year after year can allow potassium and phosphorous to build up to unhealthy levels. A green manure helps to add organic matter to the soil without contributing to nutrient buildup, which can be a big plus in situations like mine. Not sure if this is applicable to you but at some point you may notice your soil is topping out in its capacity for nutrients.
that is a really good point. We need to be careful about what we bring into the gardens. And you are right about the benefits of a green manure in this regard. I have this idea that a strong green manure will soak out and make available the nutrients that are in shorter supply, and make them more available to the following crops, but don't really know the extent to which it would/can happen.
Looking at your experience with this, I suppose a good recommendation to someone asking about it would be to use their greenhouse to grow overwinter crops while growing cover crops outside where they can more meaningfully protect the soil and suppress weeds; It could be mown or threshed high several times for multiple yields of biomass; the farmer can focus their labour on what they can grow indoors; the cover doesn't tie up greenhouse nutrients; and, assuming their open-air space is larger than their greenhouse, they can get a better yield out of it all. Perhaps a deep-rooting rye could be grown in the greenhouse once to establish some root biomass in deeper soil layers.
One of the biggest benefits would actually be the fact that you built a mycelium network underground. This will help your plants capture micronutrients from your soil without needing to add additional soil amendments such as manure as well as providing some food for beneficial microorganisms living underground. This, along with pest control, along with building an extensive root structure may actually be enough as others have mentioned. What i would have done however is to mow and plant the seedlings on the very same day. Mycelium can quickly die off once the host plant dies, so if there is an overlap where you plant directly into the minimally tilled soil your seedlings could have been jumpstarted by piggybacking on the existing fungal network. If you are interested in learning more, take a look at the books by Paul Stamets. Check out _Mycelium_Running_ at your local library and focus on the first few chapters on mycorrhiza fungi. Finally, there is another RUclips-er i would like to recommend - @iamnjorganic ruclips.net/user/iamnjorganic. He is a commercial farmer in New Jersey who runs a 100% organic farm without adding soil amendments (other than wood chips or compost). Years ago I had a chance to meet Paul Stamets so I've been employing even some of his fungal spores optimized for gardens prior to hearing about I Am Organic - but I found his feedback just as valuable as yours!
Agreed i also plant a small perennial every six feet such as a fruit cordon or comfrey or a nitrogen fixer like broom so that there are always living roots year round. This joins up vegatable beds with forest gardening. I do this outside and in the greenhouse.
Yes, I think you are right - I didn't mention that specifically as I have limited knowledge, but my hope was that a combination of a diverse green manure combined with a general no-dig approach will really help with creating a mycelium network. I need to read Mycelium Running again. Thanks for the link.
I have found that planting green manure species in their own rows or blocks has some advantages. One is that the difference in seed size requires different planting depths, and better germination can be obtained by planting one species per row. The second is that the species don’t have identical growth rates, and segregating them to their own row or block means that they are not directly competing for light and moisture.
that is an interest gin approach. I hadn't though about sowing drills or blocks rather than broadcast sowing. the roots of the plants will completely intermingle anyway.
Yes, Bruce, the above ground biomass would have been significantly less: at 1430 pounds at 60 percent moisture converting to finished compost at 40 percent moisture, and 80 pounds per cubic foot of finished compost, the result would be about 14.3 cubic feet of finished compost (not counting any additional materials added during the process). Multiple cuttings and composting in place would provide somewhere in the vicinity of 25 cubic feet, which is not even half of the amount that you are wanting to add for high intensity growing. Given the economic advantage of keeping your polytunnel in production, growing green manure in it does not seem like the best use of the space. A site set aside for growing clover, vetch, and ryegrass with an area of 2.5 - 3 times that of the tunnel, with regular cutting and bin or pile composting to feed the tunnel might work better, if you can find the space for that. Comparing your results with the system that I have been working on, it is clear to me that I will be accumulating a carbon deficit over time, unless I make some modifications to allow for additional composting space. This is going to save me from a large hit to the pocketbook in a few years, so thank you very much!
Thanks for the comment and the calculations - very useful. I think I agree with everything you have said. Basically, don't try to build organic matter in an intensive growing space using green manures - grow the carbon elsewhere. But green manures can serve other purposes, with a bit of extra organic matter being a bonus.
Perhaps soil scientist Dr. Elaine Ingham might have some root zone data and evidence of improvement other than tilth using green manures. Just a thought. Nice work. Love your observations and thoughtfullness, but above all, your sharing is cherished. Thank you!
No doubt Elaine would have a lot of really useful input on this. I would love to be in the position to be able to explore the microscopic world within the soil a lot more, especially for comparisons like this. Thanks for your support, and encouragement.
I'd add that the medieval practice of allowing the soil to remain fallow probably allows soil biota disturbed by plowing time to re-establish their habitat in your garden. So maybe that's an additional benefit of cover cropping?
Great Video, thank you very much! I have one question: most of your videos have english subtitles available. Can you keep up with that? As a non native speaker it really helps me to understand the content of your videos better. I havent found a gardening channel even closely as good as yours and I really enjoy it. Keep it up!
Thanks. Glad you commented about the subtitles. I always try to get the subtitles up on the videos, though it sometimes takes me a few days after posting. Glad to know that some people find them valuable, so they are worth the effort.
I think you should dig one last time and turn your grow area into a Hugelkulture mound to build your soil's water retention and to make nutrients more readily available seeing as the wood in hugelkulture is a sponge that will keep you from having to water as much if ever at all
The polytunnel is a good space to do biochar trials of different percentages, helping to both solve fertility issues and see firsthand the fabled effects of biochar. I would advise growing a nitrogen fixing plant for such trials, being that they are not so affected by the early absorption of available nitrogen by the bio char in the initial seasons.
Have you considered growing green manure in the space between your individual gardens? Since the soil there would be designated for only green manure to harvest and move to the adjacent garden beds, it wouldn't need as much attention as the soil for vegetables. Or perhaps delving into planting flowers that attract pollinators and beneficial insects.
If you fed this green manure to rabbits or other critters, then added the animal manure to your beds. You could have meat production in addition to vegetables. How much time would you lose in production if you let the animals in the tunnel and deposit their manure naturally. Just a thought
This is an interesting idea. Would take some planning to keep the animals fed on a daily basis if they required fresh greens. Maybe alfalfa for alpacas if you have the space for both... lots to think about.
Introducing animals could shifted the balance. I didn't mention it in the video, but i was thinking of putting in my flock of hens to eat the biomass, but a fox or other predator killed them before I had a chance.
Thanks for another nice video! Somewhat offtopic, but I'm curious whether you've considered to make a video about tracking information related to your garden. I'd be really interested what kind of things you usually write down and what kind of tool you use to do that. I suspect you have something like an excel-sheet for yields, since you have shown nice graphs in videos. I've also seen some gardening-apps, but I'm somewhat sceptical whether they're worth using. I'm asking from the perspective of someone who will hopefully get a garden soon. And I really organizing and writing down stuff, but it's hard to not overdo it. Otherwise, information is outdated or inconsistent. Also, from my experience, you need some tricks to make it easy to write down what happenned. Or maybe you just remember most of the information? I hope you get the gist of what I'm wondering! Thanks for reading ;)
So what exactly is the purpose of green manure? From my understanding, it increases soil biomass and makes nutrients more readily available to other crops, but it doesn't add nutrients. Is this correct? Also, how do you input new nutrients to soil naturally? I live in Florida with really nutrient deficient sandy soil. Suggestions?
Some green manure crops (of the leguminous family) host bacteria in their roots that fix nitrogen but I don’t know how much of it is available for subsequent production crops considering that the cover crop uses it too. Sandy soil is good if you have a watering system and provide fertilizer with the water, in other cases it’s perhaps one of the most problematic. I don’t know what you mean by “naturally” but manure or manure based fertilizer is an excellent way to add nutrients. Some people use chicken. They set up a chicken run in the area they want to improve an the chicken eat the weeds and enrich the soil with their waste. After a year or two they move the run to another area and the “treated” one gets cultivated.
You said the green biomass in the tunnel could be cut and composted separately, giving an approximate quantity of finished compost. Did that quantity include any brown(carbon) material needed to create a properly balanced compost pile? Hope this doesn't confuse the issue. As an alternative, you could have collected the cut biomass for composting, then tilled the cut stalks under, incorporating them with biomass(roots) in the soil. Endless experimenting, aye?
I didn't include the addition of any brown material, but that is a good point. i wanted to make a the comparison to estimate what would be produced by the decomposition of the stuff on the surface of the soil, without any additional material. Thinking about it some more, because I had left the green manure to become quite old, I imagine that the Carbon to nitrogen ration would have been closer to the 30:1 'ideal' for composting, so additional brown material might have slowed things down a lot. If I had cut it earlier when it was more 'green' then more brown material would have been good, but then the volume would have been less. Yes, endless possible experimentations.
This is why farmers had pastures and cows the pasture grows the green manure, the cow collect the green manure and grows, then deposits the manure which the farmer collects and compost, then the cow feeds the farmer and fertilizes his garden and pasture. It is the circle of farming that was lost when chemicals and poisons were introduce to farming.
It is a really interesting process of using animals to collect and partially decompose fertility and carbon from broader fields so that it can be concentrated in the garden.
I wonder how many lawn care and tree trimming companies are careful about composting all the green waste they gather? Seems like they could be a gold mine as long as they were careful about avoiding anything contaminated by herbicides.
Brilliant idea but with ground level foliage it's likely impossible to sort out the contaminated material without it coming from your own yard/garden/whatever. I do know some municipalities in the US(and likely elsewhere) will just give away wood mulch from yard waste if your willing to haul it off from the dump. Considering that almost all of the tree is above spraying height that'd be a safer bet and it's free.
I mentioned a scenario in the previous video on building up soil, ask local services to provide materials for composting all the waste from supermarkets, restaurants, lawn mowers, tree services, home owners, schools the list goes on. If it was once alive it can be composted
@@BESHYSBEES Will composting neutralize herbicides? I've heard some herbicides are damaging to certain plants even after being eaten and excreted by cattle and horses. I'm surrounded by large corn/soy bean farms and the occasional golf course so I might be a bit overcautious.
SomeDust most herbicides have residuals they break down with exposure to sunlight or heat, by composting and ensuring a high internal heat of the biomass you would usually kill any thing in the mass including the seeds of most plants (weeds), most cereal or soy crops use glyphosate for weed control or desiccated with glyphosate and I believe there would be residual chemicals in the plants composting will not remove these chemical as it’s not hot enough however the very little amount left behind would not likely have any effect on the plants your going to grow with it as Glyphosate is taken up by foliage not roots and is not used as a preemergent herbicide.
I tried a winter mix last year with various types of mulches. It would seem green manure and mulches doe not go together well, especially wood chips, it can just not penetrate them the way that some weeds can.
Thanks for yet another stimulating video. Your conclusions match our experience pretty closely. We tried green manure at a previous garden and the "clean up" can be quite hard work, and it is not growing you food. We now have roughly 6 times the area down to grass compared to food. This can make enough compost for our Charles Doding-esque no dig. Except we need to import far more brown carbonaceous material. Woodchips work well if not too coarse. A few straw bales go quite a long way too. We usually end up with two bins, 2mx2mx0.75m in total. If spread out on a need-to-sow basis, then we just about manage. I have a few binliners left, that goes round the sweetcorn etc, The sub ground biomass would have been invaluable and totally worth the time and effort in certain soil conditions, like a previous garden on very dense and heavy cold wet clay. Thanks again for the video.
Thanks. It sounds like you have a good balance between fertility building space and growing space. The point about the underground root systems being especially valuable in clay soils is interesting, as I have never grown in heavy soils like that.
@@REDGardens Much of the English Midlands has heavy clay, so if you want the experience... Digging is an experience, a spit about 3"x3"x the width of the spade is about all you can lift and turn after a while. Most villages had their own brick works, with back streets called Claypit Lane, or something to do with bricks. Quite a few pubs called Brickmakers Arms too. Once our predecessors had chopped down all the trees, bricks became the only available permanent building material. But in the garden, thing many will take for granted, weeding is a real chore, every weed has to be dug out - pulling gets you a handful of leaves. Same with your crops too, and many crops don't like the cold wet in spring at sowing time which changes to a concrete texture in summer. Pickaxe gardening just to plant out seedlings. The one advantage is clay is supposed to have good fertility and mineralisation, and some plant do like heavy soil - easy to get brassicas firmly rooted.
Looks like a fast growing and high biomass plant like SunnHemp would yield a lot more green manure. But if you're to grow something like that in the field and the bring it into your greenhouse, you won't get the benefit of the deep roots decomposing underneath in the soil.
Don't forget that the roots decompose too & seeing as these green manures were deep rooting you could add at least another 1/3 biomass, plus the mycelium you grew from leaving the ground sheltered & fed by the roots, plus the bacteria that are symbiotic with the roots, & the insects & other soil life that came into the space because of the lush vegetation. All of these factors add up to much more organic matter than you've calculated
Quite possibly. I made a basic estimation that the total amount of biomass and organic matter (including everything you mentioned) that was produced underground would be roughly equal to what was produced above ground. I wonder if that is an appropriate approximation, or if it was less, or more.
@@REDGardens personally I think they produce more as it's as close to natural systems as possible, and grasses are actually the fastest way to fix carbon from the atmosphere, as they can send sugars in almost all conditions to their roots & into the soil which then get locked up in fungi & bacteria as well as their dense fibrous roots.
Thank you so much for this - and all your videos - I'm new to the channel and am not sure if you will look at comments like mine this far back in time. In my situation, I don't have access to manure - some prepackaged potting mixes are all that are available. I live on a small island and choose to live very simply (aka low funds) so although I would buy finished compost after watching this video I don't have that option. I have tried a number of the things you showed in the video - but not as intensely so will try that. I really would like to have a minimally-tilled garden - for the earth, for the worms and for my ageing body and my time - and after your video now I realize why I've failed at growing right after tilling...and I even removed some of the green manures with roots into a pile thinking there was benefit still...now after your video I realize what I did compounded my problem of low fertility! I now see a number of errors (aka learning opportunities :) ) I made and why I got the results I did over the years. I am going to try some green manures again and incorporate some of the helpful info you've mentioned here. Thank you so much!
Hi there, thanks for the comment, and glad you found and appreciate my channel! The idea that removing a cover crop for composting also removes the fertility (for a while), is an interesting one. One of those things that once you realise it, it makes sense, but not something many of us would think before hand.
I love your videos they give a lot to think about. A great idea but maybe not the best use of time and space where a restricted space makes the space so valuable. I soil build with cover crops to break the soil, naturally fix N and add organic matter but I will only yield 2000-5000 lbs of forage a season per acre where if I fertilize and plant a brassica blend (assuming the soil is suitable)or high yeild mixture I can produce 40 000-50 000 lbs of foriage per acre which is left for browse and decomposition. (this is information gathered from food plot for deer research not the results I have achieved yet 3 years in, but looks promising I have 3 test plots) What I'm getting at is maybe an "intensive" non-traditional green manure focused on mass rather than the traditional style of beneficial companion plants might give more value or mass for time.
Any tips on where to start learning the skills required to manage a successful garden? I recently started getting into gardening. I enjoy watching the interesting videos you and others provide but as a beginner I found myself quickly overwhelmed by all the available information. Where to start? Where to go from there? Is there anything like a reasonable "progression" aspiring new gardeners should go through? Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for all the wonderful work you are doing.
Oh, very interesting questions, something I have been thinking lot about. I have come up with a number of different ideas that may be of help (essentially different paths). 1/ Find one book that that is relevant to the climate you are in and follow the advice and ignore all the other information out there until you are feeling more confident. Your success will depend on how good the one book is. 2/ Grow one new crop each year. Prepare one garden bed and grow one crop in it for the first season - I recommend garlic (assuming you like it and it grows well in your climate). The next season prepare a second bed for growing garlic and ground second crop in your first bed. Continue adding a new bed and a new crop util you have filled your space. It will take a number of years but you will get there. 3/ Grow only carrots, several batches a season, with different varieties and methods, for as many seasons as it takes to be able to consistently produce a good crop of carrots. If you can produce good carrots, then you will have developed skills in variety selection, bed preparation, sowing, appropriate density, thinning, weeding, preventing pest damage, harvesting - all of which will be useful with other crops. 4/ Start small, really small. Start growing microgreens, as they have a 2-3 week turnover, and with such a shot cycle between start and finish it is much rapid learning cycle, and you get things to eat right away. After you feel that you have becomecomfortable with microgreens, start growing baby leaf salad crops, then after that grow fast growing root crops (radish, turnip, beetroot), and only start growing the longer growing crops when you feel comfortable. Hope those help. Good luck with the growing!
I just heard about this book and thought it fit your paradigm of the new garden. completely self sufficient. I need to compare and contrast it with the "three fields" system. The Clifton Park System of Farming and laying down land to grass a guide to landlords, tenants and land legislators by Robert H. Elliot
Seems like the green manure's dry matter will be a deciding factor in how much fertility you are actually adding to the soil. That dry matter would be hard to measure except for the aboveground portion. The roots add something special. Biodrilling, possible more nutritious matter for soil biota than the stalks and leaves, and possible nitrogen fixing. You could grow a calorie and compost crop like fava beans or the like. That might make it more worth doing.
I did dry a sample for determining dry matter, and found that it was only 12.5% dry matter. I didn't include it in this video - mainly as it was getting too long, and I think it would be more interesting to include it in a video about the amount of carbon captured.
There is various ways to look at the pros and cons of your green manure cover crop. The amount of compost you could make from the biomass, and looking at how much that would cost you to buy could be 1 way to compare it to how much you could make from the sale of crops you could have grown in the same space instead. Personally, I think growing the green manure looked worth it to me, and still add compost/manure anyway. Then with all the biomass, I would chop it down, run the mower over it and chop it up and stick it under black plastic or in black bin liners to break down even quicker. Then either wait for it to be compost, or in the very short space of time it would be a great mulch to use. Looking at your videos and growing space, you're surrounded by grass...if you don't already...mow the heck out of it and get even more organic matter to compost. I have an Allotment, and I mow the entire site and collect all the grass clippings to compost and use as a mulch. People look at me like i'm crazy, but I think they are crazy for not using a free resource that is right in front of them. Your videos are great, I always enjoy watching them. I wish I was in a position to be able to show you some support financially, but currently I am not able to do so sadly.
I agree with you about adding the compost and growing the green manure as well. I do collect a lot of grass and other material but not as much as I need for the number of gardensI have. i need to mow some more.
I used to curse the areas I had to mow and now I love them. I never think of it as a chore but think of it as harvesting. I help out a couple of people by mowing for them and my tip is that I get to keep the grass.
Green manure does more than just feed the soil and build it... depending on what you grow it can help with pest control such as nematodes. The green crops have a different chemical composition to compost... so there are a lot more things to consider... Another possibility is to lift the whole green manure crop out... roots, soil and all, pass it through a shredder/mulcher and then turn it into your beds. You would have a smaller particle size and use the whole of the plant grown.
There seem to be lots of interesting possibilities with green manures, and so much to explore. The shredder could be useful to incorporate the material quickly if I was willing to put in the extra work..
@@REDGardens the quickest way to do it is, pull up a meter square, munch, and have it spit it out right back where you need to dig it in, move muncher over a meter and do that block and so on.
Do you think if you mixed a carbon source like sawdust or fine chopped straw with the green manure before you covered it, you'd have noticed more of a benefit?
Great information and analysis. I am going to build high tunnels on my property, and managing fertility will be important. I keep chickens, and I find them to be very little trouble, so planting something like Austrian winter peas or fava beans in a tunnel, harvesting the crops for human use and then running the birds through for fast nutrient cycling seems like a win. Outside inputs will always be welcome, but I will probably run them through the chickens first. Right now,my 7 birds can keep up with the all the free feedstocks that I could acquire, so paying for finished compost would really bother me.
Great video as always. Interesting numbers on how much mass was yielded. You have data on water requirement for the green manure crop? I am considering assigning acreage specifically for organic matter compost, appreciated the 2x garden size ballpark.
that last point sold me. A way to improve the soil and control the weeds in a bed I don't have time to fool with. what a good idea
Yeah, it is a big one.
@@REDGardens 100%!
I can't express how much I love the look of the green manure though, like a mini jungle! Love your videos!
It was so beautiful! I would almost grow it again just for the aesthetics. I think one of the reasons I wanted to do a second video about this was to show more footage of the growth ;)
i realize it's kind of randomly asking but does anyone know a good site to stream newly released tv shows online?
@Fabian Tucker flixportal
@Zayn Archer thanks, I signed up and it seems like they got a lot of movies there :D Appreciate it!!
@Fabian Tucker No problem xD
Thanks. I really like how you try to "do the math". That really goes beyond "this is so great and that is so good".
In the end, it has to make sense in energy in (money, work) and output (improved fertility, yield, less work etc) out.
Thanks, glad you appreciate the approach I took with this.
Am I the only one who’s going to comment on how amazing that soil looks with all the roots in it?! That alone made me want to grow a green manure.
It was really wonderful to feel the soil with all those roots in it!
Keep uploading. Your narration is hypnotizing and very interesting!!
Cool!
Amazing content. You've really put in the work and crunched the numbers on something that's been chewing away at the back of my brain. I just became a Patron at sprout level. I'll probably up it soon just because this info is so valuable.
Wow, thanks for the support!
RED Gardens You should introduce worms, isopods, springtails, and millipedes to your polytunnel to help break down all that green manure and to keep your soil fertile over time. They self regulate after breaking everything down too. I would love to see a polytunnel full of decomposers! They make great pets too :)
Also having a container where you breed all said decomposers, and showing their growing numbers overtime would be interesting and entertaining to the viewers.
Thanks for all your hard work!
@@MinesanityServer Sounds interesting, though a bit more than I can manage at the moment.
very interesting...
i would feed that green manure to my rabbits and they would create the cool compost for me, cutting out the 6-8weeks of composting time.
that would probably work well.
Such a dense and thorough video without being bloated. Truly thankful for such amazing content.
Thanks!
An exceptional follow up video, thank you for taking the time and effort to not only fully consider all you've learned from this interesting experiment, but to document both your results and ponderances upon the topic.
I could not agree more that putting any space to purposeful growth is an excellent use of time, money, resources and effort. I regularly crop small side areas of pasture and other mixed cover crops to fuel my compost making, keep my poultry happy, feed to livestock who I could not risk releasing directly onto those areas for fear of mishap. Anything which is left over from the livestock not eating it is added to the compost pile, anything deposited by the livestock in the way of manure is likewise added.
Bare soil is quickly covered by nature presumably for good reason, even within the protected environment of the tunnel I think your experiment was very worthwhile and so thank you for taking the time to document and share it! 👍🏴
Thanks. I appreciate your feedback. makes my efforts seem more worthwhile.
I've only discovered your channel a week ago and have already learned so much. Thanks for the uploads and future uploads! :D
A RUclips hidden gem to be sure!
Thanks!
Thank you for the massive amount of time you put into this. The green manure crops are something I have not tried yet. So far I am only using chicken and pig manure and small amounts of compost, as I do not have alot of complete compost ready this year.
Glad you found it useful.
One thing I think is missing is that hot compost loses about 66 percent of volume whole cold compost can lose less that 40. And cover crops are cold compost
Good point.
As always, a very thoughtful and educational reflection on growing. Thanks!
:)
Need more time-lapse videos of you scything grasses. Also 10/10 content, been learning a lot from you.
Glad you like the time lapse - and my content!
Fantastic cost benefit analysis and well presented information, thank you.
Glad you appreciate it.
Appreciate the imperial conversion. Liked and comment for algorithm.
Thanks. I figure it makes sense given that there are so many people who aren't familiar with the metric system.
Dude, your knowledge surpasses me in the first two Minuit your videos. One must have a real grasp of soils and farming to understand. Your highly intelligent 🤓
Thanks, though I still feel ignorant of so much!
The true inteligent people are the ones that are aware of their ignorance. Keep it up!
@@hermesthegreek5247 :)
Hi Bruce, just wanted to say I thoroughly enjoy your videos and I have learnt a great deal from them and I enjoy your thorough analytical style. I am in my first year of establishing a vegetable garden here on the east coast in County Louth, a reaction I suppose to something that you have mentioned before about our rapidly changing world and an uncertain food future. I can really relate to your struggles and successes in this sometimes tricky climate. Hope you're season is going well and keep up the good work. I will joining as a patron to support your work from next month. Patrick.
Thanks for commenting Patrick, and thanks for even considering becoming a Patron!
It can be a tough climate to grow in , but so important to figure out how to do it. Best of luck with your garden.
This channel is absolutely fascinating. I adore your videos!!
Thanks.
Nice analysis. Soil that always has something growing in it is a goal to strive for. Scale and timings in the garden are things I'm constantly trying to figure out. We have really cost effective OMRI certified compost available in bulk here, so that helps. Your soil looks really great!
Thanks. I have come to realise how important it is to always try to have something growing, and appropriate timing is still a struggle for me. Here in Ireland, good quality compost is still a relatively difficult and expensive thing to get.
You are a scientist
I'm a long way behind in your videos (only just discovered your channel) but loving the content. Agricultural extensions have done alot of good work analysing cover crops and their impact on soil and I think you might enjoy reading their findings re. Bacterial vs Fungal dominated soils and corresponding levels of organic matter!
I appreciate your well thought out experiments and am benefited by hearing the results. Thank you for the efforts! Keep up the good work!
Thanks!
Your research is impossible to put a price on, your an amazing asset and teacher, I've learned so much from your experiences. I live in mid west america and plan to implement nearly all of your methods for most of my up coming projects. For what you explain in great detail my local information center on agriculture charges by the hour to consult a professional. Thank you so much for all of the amazing insights of your trials and results. My garden and farm land will prosper.
Wow, thank you!
For polyhouse try sunn Hemp (Crotalaria Juncea) & pigeon peas along with other locally popular cover crops. They fix nitrogen from as early as 30 days of growth, and generate far more biomass while digging much deeper into the soil bringing minerals to the surface, 5ft-8ft deep in my personal experience! (Although online resources for these cover crops are not very helpful in terms of depth of information)
I definitely support your use of green manure and currently opt for Hungarian rye over the winter season. I probably create more work for myself by cutting down the rye, trenching it and place Cow manure on top. However the purpose is to improve the fertility and micro organisms in the soil and can say a year later it has done this. I have noticed a increase in the amount of worms and the structure of the top soil is a lot more manageable.
Love your videos, cover crop is the real deal. It only gets better my friend so keep doing cover crop.
subbed to your channel... happy gardening 🙂
Thanks! I agree with you about the benefit of continual cropping.
Smart and simple way to determine the amount of organic matter!
Excellent experiment!!!!
Thanks.
To your point around 9:00 --- you could also try to find a seed mix for plants that that grow more material in the time available (more carbon material for soil/compost). There may be a tradeoff of water usage/nitrogen fixing.
As you are covering with a heavy sheet anyway, you don't have to worry (much) about aggressive growers.
I think the mix could definitely have been refined some more, especially with the protected microclimate. The mix I used was developed to do well in typical wet and windy weather, and i am sure other plants could do better.
The backdrops of your narration are always so beautiful
I love them too!
I really enjoy your videos Bruce. Thank you for sharing your knowledge, especially your analytical approach to gardening.
You are welcome. I am really glad that you and so many others like the approach that i take with all of this.
8:37 LOL! I thought I had bird shit on my computer screen!
Lol - yeah, I only noticed that when I was editing the video!
I think there is one thing you left out. The cover crops would have connected to mychorrizal fungi, which would have then connected to your tomato plants. This would extend the root system of the tomato plants significantly and given them more nutrients. There would also be more glucose in the soil from the cover crops' photosynthesis, and would have fed the soil life. So there is more than just the biomas. Compost would create a delay in which the soil life's food would be decreased. And, the network of fungi would be less if you had compost lying on the soil for a period, rather than living roots in the soil.
ahh this analytical approach has a soothing effect on me. good info. its like your perspective is both achievements and anticipation for creating better ways at the same time. so as with one(?) of the greenhouses, this content sharing way is also scalable in a nice way :)
Thanks for that comment. A really nice way to describe my approach to these videos, and my work.
Your soil is so FINNNEE! The way you just dug it out like that. My soil is clay and it takes a stomp and a lever to pull a chunk out. I’m working on my soil, but the wet weather seems to destroy anything I do because it drowns the soil.
Yeah, it was a nice treat to be able to dig it out in that condition. I haven't grown on clay, but I hear it can be really tough.
I put chickpeas. A tomato and a chickpea in same place. Until now seems they fill well together!
Flavius Nita - Definitely! A good idea - You might not get as much of a crop as with some other low growing legumes since chick peas don't flower well in part sun. MIGardener just put out a vid on tomato companion planting.
Sounds like a good fit.
Bet the smell in there when you was cutting was lovely!
Yeah, it was lovely
I grew field beans as a green manure. I harvested the growing tips as a spinach substitute from December until April, left the roots/nodules in to feed the brassicas and chopped up the tops to feed the squash : all the best - Steve
Sounds like a good approach. green manure and a bit of harvesting.
@@REDGardens more than 'a bit' of harvesting Bruce, field beans are amazingly productive harvested this way, we met the spinach needs of 6 families all through winter and early spring from 20 m2 patch. : All the best - Steve
@@SteveRichards27 Very cool! I will have to try that out.
learn another totally awesome gardening skill I wont put to use - check
hypnotized relaxed and ready for sleep - check
night night lol
Night night :3
lol
Saame! Night night
I have been watching your videos for awhile and just wanted to say thank you for sharing them... I have meant to comment in the past but alas life keeps me busy... so just wanted to say "thank you" ... I live in Canada and have been trying some of the methods you are using in Ireland ... on a smaller scale and they work fabulously :)
Thank you for commenting. It is so good to hear from people who watch my videos, and try stuff out!
Where in Canada are you based - I am originally from Caledon, Ontario.
Great video, it's great to see a deeper look at this
Thanks.
I have grown A LOT of different cover crops bc I have clay slippery and mucky soil. I find that radish grown in the winter and left to winterkill brings a nice tilth to the soil in the spring. The problem with growing solely radish is it does not support the Mycorrhiza SO you HAVE to mix OF CEREAL WITH RADISH. I grew alfalfa hoping that my surface soil would be mellow but it isn't. Alfalfa does relieve compaction deep down below. I grew oats but it was a rat/mouse magnet. I grow Buckwheat bc I have acid soil and it drops hard seed which comes back again. I like Hairy Vetch bc it brings up phosphorous and it knits plants together like David Phlox. It also drops a hard seed and returns so it too is a good investment. It is a wonderful forage for the bumblebee. Now that June has come Hairy Vetch being a cool weather crop has made it's seed pods and all it's purple flowers are gone. It was beautiful when it was fresh and green but now it is dry, brown, and ugly. I planted some mustard seeds just to have yellow color. Dutch White Clover has also gone to seed and it too looks dreadfully dirty. It did not support my raspberries. I found that they require alkaline soil. My Crimson Clover has long gone to seed. It made a light brown fuzzy curled over tail so it doesn't look as bad as Dutch White Clover. I am growing Annual Ryegrass but so far it is just another grass to cut. I tried to grow Phacelia but the slugs ate the seeds, all of them and it requires alkaline soil. There is definitely a learning curve when planting cover crops. I have a wealth of earthworms everywhere.
That is a lot of exploration. your descriptions make me realise the ti have so much more to try and learn!
Best wishes to you and other people alike, finding peace in doing hardworking activities for the sake of teaching others.
i've seen some people successfully growing tomatoes and cucumbers and similar cultures by planting directly in a living constant green manure of perennial clover varieties. keeps the ground covered at all times, is supposed to suppress the weeds, and adds nitrogen and fertility by letting decompose the sometimes mowed clover on the ground. needs more water though and some nutrients for the clover as well. never tried it - yet.
I agree that regarding your conditions, green manure might not have been the best option. I think its main use is for areas where an additional seasonal crop just isn’t viable due to the climate or other factors. I believe most people do cut the crop back and/or turn it under sooner so there’s less biomass to manage and so it can decompose quicker. These strategies are better for people who don’t want to manage the full crop, but can still provide benefits to the soil. Thanks for another thought provoking video!
I think you are right. Especially at this scale, the benefits of a green manure are not so much about fertility as other factors.
Terrific effort and well worth watching! Scientist tend to dry the vegetable matter before weighing it because some plants have a huge amount of water in them while others have very little. My favourite green manure crop was cow peas but always inoculate the seed before planting and then as soon as you see the first flower you have to put the crop to use. if you don't do this the plants starting using the nitrogen to flower and produce seed and you don't get the benefits.
I did take a sample and dried it in my oven to see how much dry matter there was - only about 12.5%. I left that out of the video as it was getting too long, bu might do another video about carbon sequestration.
you need to think about tillage radish. you can also sell part of the radish if you really want to and keep part in the ground to die off. we make and sell kimchi with a part of it and chop and drop the rest.
It would be very interesting to try radish.
Having just purchased a load of green manure seeds I think it is still probably worthwhile as my application is for open soil, my intention with the first selection planted this month in southern England, is to cut down the crop in October and leave on the soil over winter. I have other seeds which I will plant in October elsewhere to slowly grow over winter and harvest for silage in the spring. Other space will of course have crops growing over winter. Thank you for your valuable videos, very much appreciated.
Sounds like a good plan, especially if it is only part of your growing space. I think green manures work well if you have more space than you need, so that part of the garden is rebuilding fertility, which you grow food on other parts.
Fantastic information. Appreciate your honesty
Glad you appreciate my approach.
You need to bake the cover crop and dry it down. Then you weigh to get the dry pounds and you get an accurate quantity. Wet weights vary with moisture content. Thanks for a great video!
Yes, I did dry a sample and found it to 87.5% water and only 12.5% dry matter. I didn't include this in the video as it was getting too long and I didn't know how to make a comparison between this and the amount of compost i would be equivalent to. Wet material comparison made more sense to me as i use it to make compost in other areas.
@@REDGardens have you considered growing the cover crop on a larger scale and then composting it? I do a version on this: I use the silage refusals from our heifer herd as mulch. I theorize that this gives the soil beneficial microbes as well as some npk ang organic material. Have you tried this?
@@reliefquinn7504 I haven't tried that. Having finished this videos and read a lot fo the comments (including yours) I realise I really should be investing the time to grow more cover crops specifically for composting, over a large area.
I think I got a headache from attempting to absorb all that information in just under twelve minutes . Some how I got your point 😳
Awesome video. So impressed with your content! Are you scything your cover crop as your main "mowing" method? Do you prefer doing it by hand rather than with a mower (like a walk-behind) or is it a matter of just not having access to a mower?
I have access to a mower, but not something powerful enough for this. And I prefer to use a scythe.
Another factor is all the root left in the soil will help the soil to be less compacted. If you have clay soil, it's the best solution to grow cover crops
It's true, clay soil with a reasonable amount of compost addition doesn't seem to work fine at the end. In a long rainy day I've noticed it turns into cob anyway.
I have heard about the roots helping with the compacted soil, though I have quite open sandy soil.
If you are already going to wait for the bio mass to break down. You could also harvest your lawn clippings to add to it. Just a thought. Also you would want to wait for the matter to compost down if you dig it in. As not to borrow the available nitrogen from the crops your trying to grow. But you probably know that. Your hard work sure is something to speak of. Great videos too.
Thanks. The option of piling additional material makes a lot of sense.
Its very satisfying to watch grass getting cut.
:)
This is an exceptional excellent channel
Thanks!
As a fan of no-dig (thanks in part to my laziness these days), I think I'd pass on green manure. The sight of that tunnel full of plants exhausted me! In my younger days I'd have been giving it a go. Great, well researched vid Bruce.
Thanks. I didn'treally mention it in this video, but a big reason for taking this approach was to see if it was possible to mix green manures and a no-dig approach.
Very nice breakdown and discussion. I love listening to you work through theories and choices. Do you think if you had cut back the greenmanure halfway if it would've grown noticeably more? If it would've that might have been a game changer in reference to value of the return bioload.
Thanks. I think there might have been a significant increase in the amount of biomass produced if I had cut a few times, and it would be interesting explore how often to cut and how short each cut would be in order to maximise this gain.
One aspect to consider is nutrient accumulation in the soil. In my area (North Carolina, USA) we have clay soil which significantly retains nutrients to the degree that adding compost year after year can allow potassium and phosphorous to build up to unhealthy levels.
A green manure helps to add organic matter to the soil without contributing to nutrient buildup, which can be a big plus in situations like mine. Not sure if this is applicable to you but at some point you may notice your soil is topping out in its capacity for nutrients.
that is a really good point. We need to be careful about what we bring into the gardens. And you are right about the benefits of a green manure in this regard. I have this idea that a strong green manure will soak out and make available the nutrients that are in shorter supply, and make them more available to the following crops, but don't really know the extent to which it would/can happen.
Looking at your experience with this, I suppose a good recommendation to someone asking about it would be to use their greenhouse to grow overwinter crops while growing cover crops outside where they can more meaningfully protect the soil and suppress weeds; It could be mown or threshed high several times for multiple yields of biomass; the farmer can focus their labour on what they can grow indoors; the cover doesn't tie up greenhouse nutrients; and, assuming their open-air space is larger than their greenhouse, they can get a better yield out of it all. Perhaps a deep-rooting rye could be grown in the greenhouse once to establish some root biomass in deeper soil layers.
Yes, I think that would be a good recommendation.
One of the biggest benefits would actually be the fact that you built a mycelium network underground. This will help your plants capture micronutrients from your soil without needing to add additional soil amendments such as manure as well as providing some food for beneficial microorganisms living underground. This, along with pest control, along with building an extensive root structure may actually be enough as others have mentioned.
What i would have done however is to mow and plant the seedlings on the very same day. Mycelium can quickly die off once the host plant dies, so if there is an overlap where you plant directly into the minimally tilled soil your seedlings could have been jumpstarted by piggybacking on the existing fungal network. If you are interested in learning more, take a look at the books by Paul Stamets. Check out _Mycelium_Running_ at your local library and focus on the first few chapters on mycorrhiza fungi.
Finally, there is another RUclips-er i would like to recommend - @iamnjorganic ruclips.net/user/iamnjorganic. He is a commercial farmer in New Jersey who runs a 100% organic farm without adding soil amendments (other than wood chips or compost). Years ago I had a chance to meet Paul Stamets so I've been employing even some of his fungal spores optimized for gardens prior to hearing about I Am Organic - but I found his feedback just as valuable as yours!
Agreed i also plant a small perennial every six feet such as a fruit cordon or comfrey or a nitrogen fixer like broom so that there are always living roots year round.
This joins up vegatable beds with forest gardening. I do this outside and in the greenhouse.
Yes, I think you are right - I didn't mention that specifically as I have limited knowledge, but my hope was that a combination of a diverse green manure combined with a general no-dig approach will really help with creating a mycelium network. I need to read Mycelium Running again. Thanks for the link.
I have found that planting green manure species in their own rows or blocks has some advantages. One is that the difference in seed size requires different planting depths, and better germination can be obtained by planting one species per row. The second is that the species don’t have identical growth rates, and segregating them to their own row or block means that they are not directly competing for light and moisture.
that is an interest gin approach. I hadn't though about sowing drills or blocks rather than broadcast sowing. the roots of the plants will completely intermingle anyway.
Yes, Bruce, the above ground biomass would have been significantly less: at 1430 pounds at 60 percent moisture converting to finished compost at 40 percent moisture, and 80 pounds per cubic foot of finished compost, the result would be about 14.3 cubic feet of finished compost (not counting any additional materials added during the process). Multiple cuttings and composting in place would provide somewhere in the vicinity of 25 cubic feet, which is not even half of the amount that you are wanting to add for high intensity growing. Given the economic advantage of keeping your polytunnel in production, growing green manure in it does not seem like the best use of the space. A site set aside for growing clover, vetch, and ryegrass with an area of 2.5 - 3 times that of the tunnel, with regular cutting and bin or pile composting to feed the tunnel might work better, if you can find the space for that. Comparing your results with the system that I have been working on, it is clear to me that I will be accumulating a carbon deficit over time, unless I make some modifications to allow for additional composting space. This is going to save me from a large hit to the pocketbook in a few years, so thank you very much!
Thanks for the comment and the calculations - very useful. I think I agree with everything you have said. Basically, don't try to build organic matter in an intensive growing space using green manures - grow the carbon elsewhere. But green manures can serve other purposes, with a bit of extra organic matter being a bonus.
What a great thought! Thank you
:)
Perhaps soil scientist Dr. Elaine Ingham might have some root zone data and evidence of improvement other than tilth using green manures. Just a thought. Nice work. Love your observations and thoughtfullness, but above all, your sharing is cherished. Thank you!
No doubt Elaine would have a lot of really useful input on this. I would love to be in the position to be able to explore the microscopic world within the soil a lot more, especially for comparisons like this. Thanks for your support, and encouragement.
I'd add that the medieval practice of allowing the soil to remain fallow probably allows soil biota disturbed by plowing time to re-establish their habitat in your garden. So maybe that's an additional benefit of cover cropping?
Makes sense.
Great analysis thank you
Great Video, thank you very much!
I have one question: most of your videos have english subtitles available. Can you keep up with that? As a non native speaker it really helps me to understand the content of your videos better.
I havent found a gardening channel even closely as good as yours and I really enjoy it. Keep it up!
Thanks. Glad you commented about the subtitles. I always try to get the subtitles up on the videos, though it sometimes takes me a few days after posting. Glad to know that some people find them valuable, so they are worth the effort.
I think you should dig one last time and turn your grow area into a Hugelkulture mound to build your soil's water retention and to make nutrients more readily available seeing as the wood in hugelkulture is a sponge that will keep you from having to water as much if ever at all
I am sure you have seen in America growing cover crops to supplement the use for fertilizer
The polytunnel is a good space to do biochar trials of different percentages, helping to both solve fertility issues and see firsthand the fabled effects of biochar. I would advise growing a nitrogen fixing plant for such trials, being that they are not so affected by the early absorption of available nitrogen by the bio char in the initial seasons.
It would-be a good place for a trial.
Have you considered growing green manure in the space between your individual gardens? Since the soil there would be designated for only green manure to harvest and move to the adjacent garden beds, it wouldn't need as much attention as the soil for vegetables. Or perhaps delving into planting flowers that attract pollinators and beneficial insects.
That is a possibility, and I do that in a way by mowing the grass around the gardens.
If you fed this green manure to rabbits or other critters, then added the animal manure to your beds. You could have meat production in addition to vegetables. How much time would you lose in production if you let the animals in the tunnel and deposit their manure naturally. Just a thought
This is an interesting idea. Would take some planning to keep the animals fed on a daily basis if they required fresh greens. Maybe alfalfa for alpacas if you have the space for both... lots to think about.
Introducing animals could shifted the balance. I didn't mention it in the video, but i was thinking of putting in my flock of hens to eat the biomass, but a fox or other predator killed them before I had a chance.
It would be interesting to figure out how to manage the hens or other animals, to give them only part of the green manure at any one time.
Great video (as usual). Using a Scythe above those watering hoses would definitely scare me of cutting to them ;-)
Thanks for another nice video!
Somewhat offtopic, but I'm curious whether you've considered to make a video about tracking information related to your garden. I'd be really interested what kind of things you usually write down and what kind of tool you use to do that. I suspect you have something like an excel-sheet for yields, since you have shown nice graphs in videos. I've also seen some gardening-apps, but I'm somewhat sceptical whether they're worth using.
I'm asking from the perspective of someone who will hopefully get a garden soon. And I really organizing and writing down stuff, but it's hard to not overdo it. Otherwise, information is outdated or inconsistent. Also, from my experience, you need some tricks to make it easy to write down what happenned. Or maybe you just remember most of the information?
I hope you get the gist of what I'm wondering! Thanks for reading ;)
So what exactly is the purpose of green manure? From my understanding, it increases soil biomass and makes nutrients more readily available to other crops, but it doesn't add nutrients. Is this correct?
Also, how do you input new nutrients to soil naturally? I live in Florida with really nutrient deficient sandy soil. Suggestions?
Some green manure crops (of the leguminous family) host bacteria in their roots that fix nitrogen but I don’t know how much of it is available for subsequent production crops considering that the cover crop uses it too.
Sandy soil is good if you have a watering system and provide fertilizer with the water, in other cases it’s perhaps one of the most problematic.
I don’t know what you mean by “naturally” but manure or manure based fertilizer is an excellent way to add nutrients.
Some people use chicken. They set up a chicken run in the area they want to improve an the chicken eat the weeds and enrich the soil with their waste. After a year or two they move the run to another area and the “treated” one gets cultivated.
You said the green biomass in the tunnel could be cut and composted separately, giving an approximate quantity of finished compost. Did that quantity include any brown(carbon) material needed to create a properly balanced compost pile? Hope this doesn't confuse the issue.
As an alternative, you could have collected the cut biomass for composting, then tilled the cut stalks under, incorporating them with biomass(roots) in the soil. Endless experimenting, aye?
I didn't include the addition of any brown material, but that is a good point. i wanted to make a the comparison to estimate what would be produced by the decomposition of the stuff on the surface of the soil, without any additional material. Thinking about it some more, because I had left the green manure to become quite old, I imagine that the Carbon to nitrogen ration would have been closer to the 30:1 'ideal' for composting, so additional brown material might have slowed things down a lot. If I had cut it earlier when it was more 'green' then more brown material would have been good, but then the volume would have been less.
Yes, endless possible experimentations.
Perhaps another polytunnel would be beneficial to use to grow both produce and greenmanure simultaneously then rotate at harvest?
This is why farmers had pastures and cows the pasture grows the green manure, the cow collect the green manure and grows, then deposits the manure which the farmer collects and compost, then the cow feeds the farmer and fertilizes his garden and pasture. It is the circle of farming that was lost when chemicals and poisons were introduce to farming.
It is a really interesting process of using animals to collect and partially decompose fertility and carbon from broader fields so that it can be concentrated in the garden.
I wonder how many lawn care and tree trimming companies are careful about composting all the green waste they gather? Seems like they could be a gold mine as long as they were careful about avoiding anything contaminated by herbicides.
Brilliant idea but with ground level foliage it's likely impossible to sort out the contaminated material without it coming from your own yard/garden/whatever. I do know some municipalities in the US(and likely elsewhere) will just give away wood mulch from yard waste if your willing to haul it off from the dump. Considering that almost all of the tree is above spraying height that'd be a safer bet and it's free.
I mentioned a scenario in the previous video on building up soil, ask local services to provide materials for composting all the waste from supermarkets, restaurants, lawn mowers, tree services, home owners, schools the list goes on. If it was once alive it can be composted
@@BESHYSBEES Will composting neutralize herbicides? I've heard some herbicides are damaging to certain plants even after being eaten and excreted by cattle and horses. I'm surrounded by large corn/soy bean farms and the occasional golf course so I might be a bit overcautious.
SomeDust most herbicides have residuals they break down with exposure to sunlight or heat, by composting and ensuring a high internal heat of the biomass you would usually kill any thing in the mass including the seeds of most plants (weeds), most cereal or soy crops use glyphosate for weed control or desiccated with glyphosate and I believe there would be residual chemicals in the plants composting will not remove these chemical as it’s not hot enough however the very little amount left behind would not likely have any effect on the plants your going to grow with it as Glyphosate is taken up by foliage not roots and is not used as a preemergent herbicide.
SomeDust if it’s still green it’s not likely adulterated with herbicides 👍
Have you ever tried vermicomposting?
I tried it a bit in the past, but need to do it again.
I tried a winter mix last year with various types of mulches. It would seem green manure and mulches doe not go together well, especially wood chips, it can just not penetrate them the way that some weeds can.
That is interesting.
Thanks for yet another stimulating video.
Your conclusions match our experience pretty closely. We tried green manure at a previous garden and the "clean up" can be quite hard work, and it is not growing you food.
We now have roughly 6 times the area down to grass compared to food. This can make enough compost for our Charles Doding-esque no dig. Except we need to import far more brown carbonaceous material. Woodchips work well if not too coarse. A few straw bales go quite a long way too.
We usually end up with two bins, 2mx2mx0.75m in total. If spread out on a need-to-sow basis, then we just about manage. I have a few binliners left, that goes round the sweetcorn etc,
The sub ground biomass would have been invaluable and totally worth the time and effort in certain soil conditions, like a previous garden on very dense and heavy cold wet clay.
Thanks again for the video.
Thanks. It sounds like you have a good balance between fertility building space and growing space. The point about the underground root systems being especially valuable in clay soils is interesting, as I have never grown in heavy soils like that.
@@REDGardens Much of the English Midlands has heavy clay, so if you want the experience... Digging is an experience, a spit about 3"x3"x the width of the spade is about all you can lift and turn after a while.
Most villages had their own brick works, with back streets called Claypit Lane, or something to do with bricks. Quite a few pubs called Brickmakers Arms too. Once our predecessors had chopped down all the trees, bricks became the only available permanent building material.
But in the garden, thing many will take for granted, weeding is a real chore, every weed has to be dug out - pulling gets you a handful of leaves. Same with your crops too, and many crops don't like the cold wet in spring at sowing time which changes to a concrete texture in summer. Pickaxe gardening just to plant out seedlings.
The one advantage is clay is supposed to have good fertility and mineralisation, and some plant do like heavy soil - easy to get brassicas firmly rooted.
@@nickstraw1952 Yeah, that would be a radically different experience to what I have had so far.
Looks like a fast growing and high biomass plant like SunnHemp would yield a lot more green manure.
But if you're to grow something like that in the field and the bring it into your greenhouse, you won't get the benefit of the deep roots decomposing underneath in the soil.
Don't forget that the roots decompose too & seeing as these green manures were deep rooting you could add at least another 1/3 biomass, plus the mycelium you grew from leaving the ground sheltered & fed by the roots, plus the bacteria that are symbiotic with the roots, & the insects & other soil life that came into the space because of the lush vegetation. All of these factors add up to much more organic matter than you've calculated
Quite possibly. I made a basic estimation that the total amount of biomass and organic matter (including everything you mentioned) that was produced underground would be roughly equal to what was produced above ground. I wonder if that is an appropriate approximation, or if it was less, or more.
@@REDGardens personally I think they produce more as it's as close to natural systems as possible, and grasses are actually the fastest way to fix carbon from the atmosphere, as they can send sugars in almost all conditions to their roots & into the soil which then get locked up in fungi & bacteria as well as their dense fibrous roots.
@@seanconway1154 that is interesting.
Thank you so much for this - and all your videos - I'm new to the channel and am not sure if you will look at comments like mine this far back in time. In my situation, I don't have access to manure - some prepackaged potting mixes are all that are available. I live on a small island and choose to live very simply (aka low funds) so although I would buy finished compost after watching this video I don't have that option. I have tried a number of the things you showed in the video - but not as intensely so will try that. I really would like to have a minimally-tilled garden - for the earth, for the worms and for my ageing body and my time - and after your video now I realize why I've failed at growing right after tilling...and I even removed some of the green manures with roots into a pile thinking there was benefit still...now after your video I realize what I did compounded my problem of low fertility! I now see a number of errors (aka learning opportunities :) ) I made and why I got the results I did over the years. I am going to try some green manures again and incorporate some of the helpful info you've mentioned here. Thank you so much!
Hi there, thanks for the comment, and glad you found and appreciate my channel!
The idea that removing a cover crop for composting also removes the fertility (for a while), is an interesting one. One of those things that once you realise it, it makes sense, but not something many of us would think before hand.
Hey! thanks for the subs!
I love your videos they give a lot to think about. A great idea but maybe not the best use of time and space where a restricted space makes the space so valuable. I soil build with cover crops to break the soil, naturally fix N and add organic matter but I will only yield 2000-5000 lbs of forage a season per acre where if I fertilize and plant a brassica blend (assuming the soil is suitable)or high yeild mixture I can produce 40 000-50 000 lbs of foriage per acre which is left for browse and decomposition. (this is information gathered from food plot for deer research not the results I have achieved yet 3 years in, but looks promising I have 3 test plots) What I'm getting at is maybe an "intensive" non-traditional green manure focused on mass rather than the traditional style of beneficial companion plants might give more value or mass for time.
Interesting though. The difference in the numbers you quote are really something. Brassicas are such amazing plants for growing mass.
Love your informative scientific videos...thanks🌞⭐
:)
Any tips on where to start learning the skills required to manage a successful garden? I recently started getting into gardening. I enjoy watching the interesting videos you and others provide but as a beginner I found myself quickly overwhelmed by all the available information. Where to start? Where to go from there? Is there anything like a reasonable "progression" aspiring new gardeners should go through? Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for all the wonderful work you are doing.
Oh, very interesting questions, something I have been thinking lot about. I have come up with a number of different ideas that may be of help (essentially different paths).
1/ Find one book that that is relevant to the climate you are in and follow the advice and ignore all the other information out there until you are feeling more confident. Your success will depend on how good the one book is.
2/ Grow one new crop each year. Prepare one garden bed and grow one crop in it for the first season - I recommend garlic (assuming you like it and it grows well in your climate). The next season prepare a second bed for growing garlic and ground second crop in your first bed. Continue adding a new bed and a new crop util you have filled your space. It will take a number of years but you will get there.
3/ Grow only carrots, several batches a season, with different varieties and methods, for as many seasons as it takes to be able to consistently produce a good crop of carrots. If you can produce good carrots, then you will have developed skills in variety selection, bed preparation, sowing, appropriate density, thinning, weeding, preventing pest damage, harvesting - all of which will be useful with other crops.
4/ Start small, really small. Start growing microgreens, as they have a 2-3 week turnover, and with such a shot cycle between start and finish it is much rapid learning cycle, and you get things to eat right away. After you feel that you have becomecomfortable with microgreens, start growing baby leaf salad crops, then after that grow fast growing root crops (radish, turnip, beetroot), and only start growing the longer growing crops when you feel comfortable.
Hope those help.
Good luck with the growing!
I just heard about this book and thought it fit your paradigm of the new garden. completely self sufficient. I need to compare and contrast it with the "three fields" system.
The Clifton Park System of Farming
and laying down land to grass a guide to landlords, tenants and land legislators
by Robert H. Elliot
Thanks for the recommendation. Sounds interesting.
Seems like the green manure's dry matter will be a deciding factor in how much fertility you are actually adding to the soil. That dry matter would be hard to measure except for the aboveground portion. The roots add something special. Biodrilling, possible more nutritious matter for soil biota than the stalks and leaves, and possible nitrogen fixing. You could grow a calorie and compost crop like fava beans or the like. That might make it more worth doing.
I did dry a sample for determining dry matter, and found that it was only 12.5% dry matter. I didn't include it in this video - mainly as it was getting too long, and I think it would be more interesting to include it in a video about the amount of carbon captured.
Proof is in the pudding tho. How well did the beds do that (and subsequent) season/s?
There is various ways to look at the pros and cons of your green manure cover crop. The amount of compost you could make from the biomass, and looking at how much that would cost you to buy could be 1 way to compare it to how much you could make from the sale of crops you could have grown in the same space instead.
Personally, I think growing the green manure looked worth it to me, and still add compost/manure anyway. Then with all the biomass, I would chop it down, run the mower over it and chop it up and stick it under black plastic or in black bin liners to break down even quicker. Then either wait for it to be compost, or in the very short space of time it would be a great mulch to use. Looking at your videos and growing space, you're surrounded by grass...if you don't already...mow the heck out of it and get even more organic matter to compost. I have an Allotment, and I mow the entire site and collect all the grass clippings to compost and use as a mulch. People look at me like i'm crazy, but I think they are crazy for not using a free resource that is right in front of them. Your videos are great, I always enjoy watching them. I wish I was in a position to be able to show you some support financially, but currently I am not able to do so sadly.
I agree with you about adding the compost and growing the green manure as well. I do collect a lot of grass and other material but not as much as I need for the number of gardensI have. i need to mow some more.
I used to curse the areas I had to mow and now I love them. I never think of it as a chore but think of it as harvesting. I help out a couple of people by mowing for them and my tip is that I get to keep the grass.
Green manure does more than just feed the soil and build it... depending on what you grow it can help with pest control such as nematodes. The green crops have a different chemical composition to compost... so there are a lot more things to consider...
Another possibility is to lift the whole green manure crop out... roots, soil and all, pass it through a shredder/mulcher and then turn it into your beds. You would have a smaller particle size and use the whole of the plant grown.
I like the shredder idea. Good point.
There seem to be lots of interesting possibilities with green manures, and so much to explore. The shredder could be useful to incorporate the material quickly if I was willing to put in the extra work..
@@REDGardens the quickest way to do it is, pull up a meter square, munch, and have it spit it out right back where you need to dig it in, move muncher over a meter and do that block and so on.
Flail mower.
A benefit you might have overlooked and does help your crops down the line: keeping mycorrhizal fungi alive and well
A definite possible benefit, and one I don't know enough about yet!
Do you think if you mixed a carbon source like sawdust or fine chopped straw with the green manure before you covered it, you'd have noticed more of a benefit?
Brilliant. Have you consideres planting nettle in that tunnell and using that as compost the same way? Best regards from Norway,
I have loads of nettles in the areas around the gardens, so not keen on growing them in the polytunnel as well.
Great information and analysis.
I am going to build high tunnels on my property, and managing fertility will be important.
I keep chickens, and I find them to be very little trouble, so planting something like Austrian winter peas or fava beans in a tunnel, harvesting the crops for human use and then running the birds through for fast nutrient cycling seems like a win.
Outside inputs will always be welcome, but I will probably run them through the chickens first.
Right now,my 7 birds can keep up with the all the free feedstocks that I could acquire, so paying for finished compost would really bother me.
Thanks. The combination of peas/beans and chickens sounds like a good system.
Great video as always. Interesting numbers on how much mass was yielded. You have data on water requirement for the green manure crop? I am considering assigning acreage specifically for organic matter compost, appreciated the 2x garden size ballpark.
Thanks. I don't have any data about water requirement.