Mulch vs Compost - An Accidental Experiment
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
- Over the past few years, we've been producing a lot of garlic and experimenting with a number of natural growing techniques. As a result, we ended up accidentally comparing 4 slightly different growing conditions, all at the same time:
1. Fresh hay mulch covering natural topsoil
2. Old spoiled hay mulch covering natural topsoil
3. Fresh hay mulch covering composted-amended topsoil
4. Old spoiled hay mulch covering composted-amended topsoil
In this video, we discuss the surprising results.
---
Consider supporting our channel on Patreon, to help us create more frequent videos. / backtoreality
I so love this channel! No distracting music, just the always well-thought-out message.
the lack of loud bass beats startling the heck out of me and waking up the house does mean I love this channel a little extra
Same
Maybe the new mulch is stealing nutrient to help break it down, where the old mulch is already inoculated. Mycelium in the aged mulch has a symbiotic relationship with the garlic. Just a thought. :)
Awesome thought!! It's a two for one (negative) because it isn't breaking down as fast and is taking up some nutrients/beneficial bacteria in order to start to break down
totally correct. The most important of the nutrients it depletes initially (then later adds back more than it took of) is BIOAVAILABLE nitrogen
The bacteria would be increasing to break down the nitrogen in the new mulch so you would get some nitrogen draw down until the nitrogen was used up, and then you would get more green tops and less bulb I would imagine. It's a fine balance getting nitrogen to work for you and not against you. lol
I've always been told that when compost is breaking down the micro organisms doing it pull nutrients out of the soil. When it finishes composting it returns the nutrients to the soil with what ever is in the compost. Thus the worst thing you can do is put unfinished compost into your soil and immediately plant. It you plow in clover or the like you need to wait for it to finish breaking before planting. Thus why you want to compost/plow in your cover crop before it gets woody.
Interesting. Ruth Stout always used "ruined" hay on her garden, although she stated that she did that because she could get it free. She also stated that it didn't matter what type of mulch was used and that compost was unnecessary. This kind of proves your results. If you compare new hay to rotted hay, you can see the worms and other beneficial nutrients that are ready to be released into the soil. Well, that's my 2 cents! Love your videos. Thank you for making them.
As a professional soil scientist I suggest one be careful of drawing too many conclusions without using strict scientific methodology. Observational experiments have severe limitations.
But isn't old hay just hay that is in a state of transition to becoming compost as it breaks down - I liked the French guys answer backed up by the Spanish guy about how garlic grows better in poor soil.
@@poppete, yes you are correct about the ruined hay being closer to being compost. I heard the same about garlic liking poor soil.
Ruth Stout also started her project on land that had been heavily manured (I don't know if it was composted) for ten years previous.
@@ideotek You are correct. She had been using the same ground for her garden for years, so it would have been amended the whole time. Ruth was a big believer in putting nutrients back into the soil. The only thing she did different was to quit tilling and cover with hay.
I've been composting for 50+ years.....I find this to be interesting in the way that it turned out. I would have ranked them just as you did. The only thing that perhaps I could see happening is that perhaps the newer combination could be due to trace minerals vs compost. I have raised garlic that came from the "old country"....the steppes of Russia for nearly 40 years and I find that it likes more freshly broken soils, generally. This is by no means a given as differing years have surprised me. Let us know what happens in the future.
Tom Nekuda, that is interesting information about growing garlic. There is so much we "used" to know that has been forgotten. Trace minerals are key too. food for thought.
Derek,
If only it were just for promoting this high enthusiastic level of productive experienced comments as a tribute of your excellent work, Kudos!!! Subbed.
I don't have any brilliant ideas for why you got the results you did, but I sure am happy to see another one of your videos! I always learn so much and I really, really like how you carefully lay out your discussion points. I hope we see more of your videos during this long winter season! Thank you for posting this and welcome back!
Fascinating! Have you had a chance to taste the garlic yet? Would be interesting to hear if the smaller bulbs have a more intense flavour, or whether there's no real difference.
After reading some of the comments it got quite confusing, but there are also a few good tips the most beneficial system is to cover the ground with what ever you have. If you use cardboard that is often thrown away it will weaken and kill what ever is growing below. The covered ground will entice earth worm that will come and till the soil for you and you should place your compost or manure on top of the cardboard, cover it if you have a problem with the nutrient washing away or leaching out. In spring or about 4 months later you will be smiling because you do not need to dig just plant and do remove the persistent weed they will be easy to pull out an this is NO DIG.
YUP. Sheet mulching.....it just WORKS.
"Hay bale" farming is similar - haven't tried it my self but it appears to get good results. Take bales of hay, pour nitrogen fertilizer on them and they allegedly compost in a few weeks, about the same as hay with an organic source of nitrogen. THen you just plant directly in the top of the bale. The composting kills seeds in the hay, the plants are at the top of the hay and what's beneath the hay was killed by the lack of light. That's the theory. Haven't tried it myself.
There are bunch of gardening channel on RUclips, but this is the only channel that I'm subscribing. Really well organized, good visual information, clear and easy to understand voice. (I'm Japanese, not English native)
Many thanks. The illustration is brilliant and the approach and analysis are scientific.
I love it. This is exactly the kind of experimentation that I find awesome!
How very interesting! I wonder if the same would be true for potatoes! Fun fact, in Toronto I still have kale and collard greens that survived almost 2 weeks under snow (and very mild frost). Kale has become almost candy-sweet!
I must say, having binge watched your videos for a week now I am amazed at the level of detail without unnecessary talk.
Secondly, to fully do a valid experiment on this video content to avoid any issues with soil base and such consider doing four rows of each experiment and then follow up by another four rows the same. Resulting in 8 rows interchanging the soil types between each row.
This discards matters such as watering, running of water and such.
If you try different crops on the same soil, interchange crop types of different varieties of garlic in a 90 degree angle over the soil types.
Thus making a true test bed with soil types varied north to south and crops varied east to west. Thus testing all crops on all soils.
Love the shows. Now I just have to dig a bit deeper finding some energy to weed out my own field of 61 acres to get creative spurs going.
I just want to say for an unintentional experiment you guys have a great record keeping
I can't really comment on the different composting methods, but I sure am liking that winter wonderland view! 😃
Wow its really interesting, I toally agree with your theroies :) And btw I love your way to build your videos, love your way to explain and how u do your animated explenations :D Keep on mate :D
I am literally two weeks into gardening - so not much insight from my end. I live in the tropics and just so decided - out of plain curiosity, to see if I can get my bell pepper and melon seeds to germinate - ok, mostly because I bought tomatoes that had already germinated seeds inside.
Nevertheless, without any prior knowledge - I am city slicker from continental Europe - i laid out the seeds onto kitchen paper and the seeds started sprouting within hours! Now, I didn't know what to do next and youtubed my way into seedy adolescence - i separated most but ran out of containers to plant them in and left some huddled together - the roots had already penetrated the kitchen paper, so, I left that as a whole package. - Some I left sitting in water, others I put as a bunch into a relatively large pot.
Despite coming from the same parent and all of them growing under the same conditions - they do NOT grow at the same rate - some are in small pots, some in plastic cups all are equally exposed to UV and warmth and humidity (despite it being the rainy season and the sunny hours are limited; the ones growing in small plastic cups (red) grow the fastest - however, not all of them do. The ones in little pots grow nearly at the same rate - alas the smaller sized cups seem to retain more warmth and are thus more conducive for growth? But the ones i didn't separate grow the fastest - again - not all at the same rate, some are just lagging behind. The only difference between the ones in soil and the ones in water is, that the ones in soil stand strong like little soldiers while the ones in water spread out like freedom loving hippies - again, some are lagging behind.
The soil I used for this was soil I had lying around for a couple of years already, I had it stowed away in a larger container (in its original plastic bag (opened) on the balcony - not sure what time would have done to the nutrition).
My melon seeds are much faster - all the same parent, all the same conditions but I had already run out of soil for the bell peppers - so I bought cocopeat - which I later I ran out of, too and then topped up with what is called potting soil - nothing special, the cheapest bag of soil I could get - I am not blessed with green thumbs and have a tendency to even kill cacti, so, let's not go overboard with super soil - so, i used that soil to mix with the cocopeat and some to just top up and others to plant the seeds in it straight - those that have just the soil without the peat do nicest - but again - not all.
After two weeks of growing over a hundred seedlings on my balcony - I am observing some of them growing faster than others - though the conditions are mostly the same - the medium in which they are growing, seems to make no particular difference, as some are doing just fine, if not better with just cotton balls and kitchen paper - in short - I've been doing this for only two weeks but my observation thus far is, some are just stronger than others - regardless of the medium.
I love this channel's thoughtfulness, curiosity and desire to share knowledge for the benefit of all. Keep up the good work!
To sum up the comments...we applaud and encourage your efforts. There is a true bond growing here , in truth. My 2 cents. :)
You guys are awesome! It's really interesting to listen to you talking about potatoes, garlic, or battle between hay and compost ;)
Hi..what a great presentation..clear n without dithering...I'm new to gardening and have never planted garlic but I gotta say bro..u made it so interesting..excellant analysis of the situation u stumbled upon..keep it up sir.thank you
Awesome! I too would have guessed add you did. Perhaps the difference is that the nutrients in the compost were used up the first year and the old hay had more nutrients as a result.
Hi, I might share with you some tradition of planting from central Europe, namely Slovakia. We have rather poor soil here and some specific techniques to compensate for it. First, we tend to avoid planting the same or even similar crops at the same place the next year. They take the nutrients necessary for their kind from the soil and leave there less of it for the next year. In addition, the harmful insects and microorganisms might be residual and highly concentrated from the previous year. So first, the difference might be at least partially be due to the fact that on the part of the field the garlic has been planted previously.
This gets me to the other technique used in Slovakia which means adding compost or manure into the soil not every year but only before specific "first year" crops, like cabbage, potatoes or tomatoes, which need a lot of nitrogen. Next year no manure/compost added and planting there "second year" things like carrots etc. And the third year planting onions or garlic which do really need poor soils. When you have not enough compost/manure for even third year, you can plant beans or peas in order to enrich the soil at least a bit and plant "first year crops" again. Also Buckwheat is said to improve some poor soils, which is being said to "pull up" the minerals from the deeper soils and leave it in its roots in the upper soil for the next crops.
That does not explain better result with the older hay, I think.
On more thing. In order to have good results we tend to look for varieties that come (or are said to have come) from Russia. All crops that can survive in those harsh conditions usually thrive very well in more moderate climate of central Europe. So usually when you find local variety of something with adjective "russian" in the name, it is a resistant and well yealding variety to plant.
I’ve just bought garlic to plant and come home to this video just by chance. Now I’m inclined to plant in different ways to see if there’s a difference. I have a clay soil with rich dark topsoil. Some raised beds and access to hay, homemade compost and manure. I’ve never grown garlic before so this should be fun.
Since the old hay won out over "nutrients", I'd suspect that the life-forms in the old hay (fungi, presumably) made the significant difference.
Beautiful graphics. Appreciate the effort
Man you did a great job of explaining all of that. It was really easy to follow and understand the differences between the various plots in spite of the fact that it was pretty complex
Wow, this comment section is awesome!
So much knowledge, mostly polite.
I've subbed two channels since I started reading!
You are going to have some seriously amazing soil next year.
What a well explained video. Terrific.
Very interesting results! I think it would be interesting to include an additional trial of the sod flipping method with the new/old hay sandwiched underneath. I just wonder if there are major differences between top level composting vs subterranean, and what differences that might make in crop yield. Thank you for all of the amazing content!
Maybe the old hay had fungus in it?
A massive bloom of ergot could explain everything in this video. (I'm just joking. I actually think this is a great video. just having some fun too)
What the old hay provided that the new hay instead soaked up, was BIOAVAVAILABLE nitrogen
That guy is highly knowledgeable. Good job
Well produced and explained
Excellent presentation!
Excellent video, excellent graphics. Subscribed!
Great video as always, Derrick! I love the animations in your videos so much and every time I watch your channels it inspires me to make more of my own videos! Thank you and keep it up!😃😁
Owen :)
Thanks Owen! I've just subscribed to your channel, so please do make more videos! :)
@@BackToReality thank you so much! I certainly will, I'm trying my best to juggle school exams and RUclips!😁😁
@@TheWelshGardener I get that, life is busy for us too. And school is pretty important, so RUclips can wait until after your exams. ;) But you obviously have a lot of garden knowledge (and passion) to share, so do keep it up when you have time!
@@BackToReality thank you! I might try and go to university to study Geography then go from there. I'm trying to follow something similar to Huw Richards (Huw's nursery)!😁
about 30 years ago I raked 30 plus leaf bags of old decomposed leaf matter from behind a garage on a hill and bought new stuff from a store because I thought it was dirty! yeah. i still shake my head about that.
I've found that by using the same straw I mulched with during the growing season to then cover my plots over the winter, I get increased yields the following year. I do sometimes add new straw on top of that to kill any straw seeds in the new straw, so I can then use that straw to mulch my plots the following growing season & repeat the entire process. I'm in Denver Colorado, so I deal with extremely high temps with extremely low humidity.
Love your videos! The animations make everything so easy to understand!
I love it when a person is completely aware of the logical fallacy that is letting them see what they think they see, and couldn't care less.
The reason that the old straw was the deciding difference is because it is better able to hold water right away vs. the new straw being water resistant until it begins to break down. Think of a brand new dish towel or sponge and how it needs to break in before the natural fibers can begin to absorb. The fertility and nutrients in your soil mostly show up for garlic in the flavour but constantly available water is really what determines yield size.
If you watch the MIGardener channel, Luke will tell you the benefit of old, rotten hay. It holds moisture so much better than new hay. He uses old hay as a sponge in his core gardening method. I don’t know about the poor soil requirement as suggested by the French guy. He may have something there. But the old hay keeps moisture and, by capillary action, keeps the surrounding soil moist. Could have something to do with your results. Hope that shines some more light on the mystery. Cheers!
I'm actually not surprised at these results considering the things Ruth Stout wrote about! It's cool to see in action though! :)
Just found this channel, brilliant lovely and well produced
Interesting and direct to the point ☺️
Thanks for great video. My guess is that the nutrients need to be on TOP for the rain/water to carry them down to the roots. If the nutrients are at the same level as the roots they are soon used up and the water coming from above is not carrying dissolved goodness to the plants roots. No dig and using compost as a mulch is a common method to grow veggies with. I am about to change to using SIP self watering wicking beds so it will be interesting to see how this changes how I grow food, but I want to go away during summer hence the change.
Gratitude love your video. I leave in the Caribbean land. I will try.
This is so beyond awesome!
Wow that's interesting. Thank you for the thought !!!
Always looking forward to your videos, I find it really educatinal (but not boring) 😊
You mentioned that they hay was from different sources. It would then also be possible that the ground where the old hay was grown was more nutrient rich, for whatever reason, and that could contributed to the difference. Also, much like topsoil, the microorganisms in the old hay could have played a larger role than anticipated. Either way, super interesting situation that you ended up with.
I have wondered about this. They say look at nature. Ok, in the forest there is only natural made compost on top. The floor of the forest has grass, weeds, little trees, etc growing. Then you have various big stuff. So that which survives has roots in dirt fertilized from the top, not mixed in. It is almost like the second best results you came up with. I wonder if your second place results, adding to it yearly or so never mixing in, would eventually become first after a few years. Great info and videos!
amazing video mate! loved it. very informative
Best channel ever.
My suggestions to make your table much richer - plant perennial onions ,rhubarb for early season harvest (for cakes, juice...),sea buckthorn, blueberrys( they need acidic soil ,peat)...I`m from Estonia and this year i got 15 buckets of potatos from 1 bucket of seedpotatos from hay covered bed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allium_fistulosum en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chives en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhubarb
Interesting method I will surely make use of it
You mentioned that the older mulch had mold on it. Maybe it was the introduction of fungi into the soil that helped. I did experiments for my undergrad research in college involving mycorrhizal fungi. It makes the most sense. Both groups containing the old mulch did the best. I suggest including a group treated with fungi in your next experiment to test that possibility.
Neat experiment. I would have guessed the results mainly because garlic is not a deep crop so the decomposing mulch was more available. Deeper rooted veggies probably would have favored the buried compost
Excellent video!!
I use old hay. Get it in the fall. stack it for the winter 2 bales high. Over the next summer you will see mushrooms start to grow. Wait one more winter and then use it as mulch. I think it helps to get more fungal rich soil over the years.
Nice observation
Just discovered this channel while searching for Charles Dowdings Aspargus video. :) Love the way your videos are made and love your flipping over technique!! Will try for our sweetcorn later this year, as we have a huge area ready to be expanded but not enough compost for the “no dig/no till” method. :)
Use what ya got lol... Nice snow... Nicely put together...
I love these vids. Can't understand who is disliking them? Freaking vampires?
Maybe the old mulch, where it's decomposing, is generating heat, and the heat/warmth is helping your garlic crop.
Great video. I am getting ready to grow garlic.
That is very interesting. My thoughts are that the old hay would still encourage microorganisms and decomposers whereas compost would be a finished product. I could be wrong because in my area our cold compost always has an abundance of worms, but its just a thought.
The old hay added the specific nematodes/bacteria/fungus or other soil participants that really benefited the garlic. Check out The compost professor Elaine Ingham...
Love love love your channel
Seeing is believing! Either pics of the bulbs or the statistical analysis 🧐
Great video, but I do love to see the data/differences in weights. For future experiments if there's a chance you can weigh them out that would be super helpful to measure the overall difference. Thanks and God bless!
Great suggestion! Thanks!
Very well done.
If you look at Paul Gautschi he is using woodchips like the canadians are doing, the french also do this they call it BRF, and have very good results. Probably you might have better result if you take straw because hay is allways containing seeds, Ruth Stout who was the inventer after Fokuoka even had good vegetables, and did not work too much in her garden.
The old hay, already breaking down, is probably chock full of microbe exudates which gets washed into the soil for the roots.
If you folks have the resources to continue this over a few years, it would be very interesting to see the results. Also, that type of experiment would be wonderful with plants that have different needs?
It takes nutrients to decompose fresh material. The bacteria and fungus pull it out of the soil in order to digest and access all the fresh carbs in the fresh hay.
Ok, so more repetitions, soil analysis, proper stats, etc. would be best but this is what I see (I guessed the order correctly based on this). 1- old compost, so while that soil had the benefits of previous amendment, the characteristics of it such as high levels of nutrients were also partially used up. 2- old mulch means it is already being broken down even if it is slow and releasing nutrients at a steady pace, not too much (which could also be a problem for some plants) but they had a little boost from the get go.
The second one is a characteristic mentioned by some vermicomposters as to why the best compost to use is the one that still has some (very) small scraps, there is still food for the microbes to break down and for native worms to move in and consume releasing more nutrients long run; rather than using the fully broken down, matured, pure coffee ground looking stuff that might have been processed by the worms a couple of times already. It’s fully broken down and the nutrients are accessible, but since it may have made its way through the worms a couple of times (feeding the probably growing population) then the nutrient content can be a little lower. Still helps establish good microdiversity in the soil that will break down future organic waste and help maintain the soil quality.
If you watch Elaine Ingham and Gaby Brown's separate youtube videos it may be that no-till plus mulch is the answer.
Well, that's what I'm tyring on my new-to-me allotment: when I took it over I hand scatter a mixture of grazing rye plus vetches having llightly racked the soil surface, then with the back of the rack consolidated that broadcast sown seed. Germination (here in Littlehampton, West Sussex) has been good.
Incidentally, the 5rod half allotment had been rototilled just beofre I took over.
Additionally, I've planted rows of pease, garlic, broad beans and, both, red and yellow onions, with that green manure mix described above over them, with plasric net over all to help deter mice.
More anon.
How’s your leg doing? I recall you slipped on ice on the steps as you headed out for an evening in the woods a couple of years ago. Hope it mended well.
Its my understanding that the first stage of mulch break down is bacterial, which isnt great for plants. The second stage is fungal, which is where more nutrients are released making them available to the plants. Also, many plants need particular fungus available to their root systems to help them get to the soil nutrients. So logically based on that, there are simply more nutrients available in the old hay vs the new. It reminds me of making sauerkraut actually. Some people want to 'cheat' by adding what they consider to be starter from previous jars of kraut. Basically dumping the bacteria from existing jars into new cabbage trying to reproduce the same flavor. The problem with that is, there is yeast on cabbage leaves. And the yeast has to go through its own life cycle before the sour producing lacto bacteria can take over. The lacto bacteria steps in once the yeast has almost run out of food and reached a certain level of maturity in the jar during the fermenting process. It needs to go through these stages and you can taste it in the product. First it has a wine type flavor as the yeast levels increase, then as the lacto bacteria begins to eat up the yeast, it starts to turn sour. By adding 'starter' from an old jar your attempting to skip that process, and it really doesnt work very well, sometimes even ending in disaster as khams yeast may step in (different from the yeast found on the cabbage leaves) which IMO ruins it by giving it an overly savory meaty flavor.
Anyways, so yeah the old hay has more fungus in it which many plant root systems needed in orderr to properly absorb nutrients and by providing more available nutrients into the soil as it breaks down the plant matter.
You have a wonderful speaking voice. The video went for more than 6 minutes without a missed word or a stutter. All this with perfect grammar. You should be in TV or radio. At least do some training material. That aside, this is my first year doing a little garlic patch. I dug up the area, filled it with compost, and then placed grass clippings after the sprouts came up. When I harvest them next June, we will see what happens. It appears from your “anecdotal” analysis, that I didn’t need to use compost. We shall see....
TY for this great video!
I'm curious how you turned the topsoil plates with an eye to the effect of "no dig". At first blush, it appears the soils that were dug in were the weaker producers, although without knowing more about the techniques you used, I am just guessing. Is this a possible explanation?
I think microbe population had to build up on the fresh straw to get working on it, and doing so, they locked up much more nutrients (nitrogen etc). Aka carbon nitrogen ratio stuff
Nice. I assumed the old hay with no compost would come up 2nd because it had time to breakdown and perhaps grow a healthy community of beneficial microbial life.
Good info
my opinion is that the old hay is easier to discompose and more resources are available for the plants in that area / the fresh hay is more solid so it discompose slower and there are less resources available for plants. (example: old apple vs fresh apple: both fallen in the same time from the same apple-tree, the old apple started to discompose and "feed" its small area / the fresh apple started to discompose after it started to reach the similar form as the old apple, so it took more time. in fresh apple case if winter got there fast, the fresh apple had frozen and stopped to discompose and "feed" its little area; in case winter is lazy, both processes had ended and the fertility of the soil continue with the same results: old apple is in the 1st place and the "distance" between old and fresh apples is the time needed by the fresh apple to reach the old apple's "level").
One thing I know from experience is old hay or old straw loses the shiny covering therefore it holds much more water. So if you have to leave your yard for a long time with no water. Or for just some reason you can't water the more old hey you have or rotten straw the better. I have had Gardens grow the whole entire summer in extremely hot weather was just soaked rotten straw black nasty stinky rotten straw. Okay and it's defense it didn't smell that bad I'm just allergic to mold it was just damp decomposing, wasn't sitting in a pool of rotted water. But once I applied it of course I had soaked the ground underneath it and then I soaked the very thick straw and everything that was good grew up through it and everything that I didn't want to round it did not. I put it in a good spot that time. But I came home to a mass of a garden and more Tomatoes than you can ever imagine they went about 20 feet towards the Sun and they had chicken wire to go across so there was tons of air under Neath it so there was no mildew. Just so many tomatoes. All the rest of my garden had done fabulous. There was a lot of rabbits that people had let go in the neighborhood. Domestic. They did eat a lot of lettuce but there was still a lot left. A lot of huge birds lived in the area and coyotes so the rabbits didn't have time to just sit and eat 24/7 luckily. Not that I wish anything bad on the rabbits LOL just glad to have some lettuce left. Once I came home and kept growing. All of this was just to say that rotted straw and hay holds water so well that anything you have going on underneath that's good is going to be kept properly damp and watered enough to make it through a lot without water Amendment. Of course you have to watch it if you can. But that's my story. keep in mind where I lived it was very hard to find rotted hay and when I buy new hey to let it rot the neighbors would call code enforcement. Please picture that country cottage rustic is it maybe. I need a private piece of land that someone will work with me so I can live out in the country I'm in even a worse situation now 15 by 15 piece of cement for the person upstairs who dumps things on my head. It gets worse but this is about hay in compost. Thanks for the great video! if anybody has that piece of land let me know it's going to take a lot of figuring as Jed Clampett would say. So I'm going more for the house before The Beverly Hillbillies moved slightly larger.
Om Ah Houm
Yummy episode! This is the love I have with science plus the multitude of other factors...
I hope to see one about the different kinds of crystals and their effects on all different kinds of plants, with emotional/music (vibrations/vocals)... or meditating around the plants with mantras, be it silently, in groups/self. Lol, fun times!
Cheers to a more Utopic way of living...
That's a great experiment so many different ways to think about why the bulbs were bigger with that old hey but you had all the different factors possibilities I live in the Santa Clara Valley in California where they grow lots and lots of garlic so I don't know much about it myself how they grow it but they grow big gigantic beautiful garlic not the elephant type but just regular garlic that's like this size of a tennis ball I've grown my own with two garlic cloves and it just seems to grow good over here I don't know why it's just a soil Factor but anyway that was a very good experiment very interesting keep up the good work keep us posted on your new experiments in the springtime at Harvest thank you
Patreon supporters paying by the month or video might be let down by these last two months.
Nutrient availability is king.
You could do weekly garlic updates to keep their channel going, just have it not apply to Patreon.
Not just different nutrients, possibly different beneficial fungal and or bacterial levels?
I would think that the reason the old compost worked so well is that the garlic bulbs are actually modified leaves, not roots. So the fresh nitrogen from the contact of the mulch helped your production.
That’s my theory anyway.
The one thing I know about garlic (or I think I know 😁) is that you don’t rotate throughout your garden. It likes to grow in the same spot every year, I’ll be going on my fourth year coming up, this past year was my best year so far.
do another experiment?
compost plus old hey in the fall VS
compost new hey in tbe spring
Do you have to do crop rotation with your Ruth stout gardens? I’m trying to get hay to do what you did with my open garden and do the sod flip with other areas. I’m learning a lot from you guys.
Wow great findings
Always love to see your videos! :D
I would think the new hay would leach out some nutrients from the soil, as it decomposes. Then as old hay gets closer to being decomposed, it would release those nutrients back into the soil?
compost is a great source of some nutrients, but not all. The soil itself still holds the vast majority of the nutrients the plants need. The combination of the cover on top (hay) and that it has started to break down (old hay - turning to "compost" and the soil is likely why you saw some results that made higher yield from the soil alone, without compost. Only a guess, but it stands to reason the same thing happens with trees... their roots reach deeper than any soil we could amend and they utilize nutrients from deep in the soil... but they shed leaves, bark etc at the surface that breaks down and leeches back into the soil. By putting old hay on the surface of un-amended soil, you've mimicked what nature does on it's own.