10 Questions after 5 years in the Simple Garden 

Really like your "kg per hour" choice of metrics. For comparing the different gardens it's really insightful! I assume all these numbers would be higher in larger gardens due to fixed cost degression of the time efforts needed to start and stop work. If anyone else has more of these "kg per hour" metrics for me to compare, I'd appreciate!

I've found your channel to be an absolute gem here on RU-vid! I tend to have a hard time enjoying the learning process of things, but with your videos it's been immensely fun getting into gardening and I can't thank you enough for bringing this hobby into my life, and from such an interesting and insightful perspective too. Keep up the great work!

As always, you have my gratitude for your high quality content. I especially love the scientific approach where you measure everything and are very open about issues and causes. You don't subscribe blindly to any gardening dogma, so we don't see you glossing over certain issues you encountered. You're able to question everything. In that process I as a viewer learn a lot. So thank you!

Bruce, your yield, fruit number and hour estimates are pure gold nuggets!! thanks a lot for your videos. Also, the hourly perspective is very interesting to me :)

I feel like I’m dropping in on an advanced agriculture class each time I stop by. Your meticulous work is very much appreciated!

The Simple Garden is one of my favorites of your various projects. It often makes me think about how this could be a very practical application for many households, a way to achieve meaningful food security, perhaps even if the land you were growing on was borrowed or rented away from home. Thank you for sharing, as always.

I’m so glad to watch your videos after winter)))

I love this garden so much. I appreciate the analysis of growing calories with minimal effort, a very important question that I think is not addressed enough. We are moving into a new home in an ecovillage this year once our home is built. We have access to irrigation dams and are in a Maritime Mediterranean Climate. so we can grow all year round with irrigation. I've been thinking of doing a squash - potato - sweet potato - onion/garlic in a two year rotation. I trialed sweet potato with sheet compost and it did not like it. Carrots we can grow year-round so I've left it out of this system

Always fun to see your process, progress and results. Thanks for sharing as always!

For better carrots in heavy soil growers in Germany often use dams or hilled up rows. This method leads to a much better quality crop, maybe und should try it ones:)

Thank you for your videos!! Great to listen to your experiences ❤

Respect from Africa 🇿🇦

This seems like the best way for newbie gardeners to start producing crops.

Thanks for sharing your videos

I really appreciate your content

Such detail! Thanks for your consistency.

I enjoy how in depth you went with all the information, you explained it very well. Also I'd like to see an inter- cropped bed maybe having the onions will deter pests from the other plants. And disease and pest issues may be lowered by having the plants "social distance" from eachother.

Hello, I have a small tip that helps well against the flying away of the landscape fabric: At the edge of the bed with the spade pierce 5-10 cm deep gap. Once around the bed. Then stuff the fabric in. Finally, tamp it down briefly. I use this to secure my foils and no additional weighting, such as with stones, is necessary. Greetings Nils PS really interesting channel!

Thank you for another informative video.

“Perhaps it only takes a closer look to discover many more questions”. Such true words! Loved that hint of a smile about it.

Lordy you do pose so many questions, but all of them are relevant! Really interesting vlog.

Thanks RED Gardens. I have never seen sheet composting done in that way and it was very interesting.

Forking in carrots can be caused by excess nitrogen or low pH, both a consequence of enriching garden soil.

It has been great watching your experiments, once I get organized, I'll apply what I've learned here! Thank You!

Thanks for the insight! 👍

Those are gnarly looking carrots. Why is a mystery.

Root nematodes will make carrots fork. Plant Marigolds next to the carrots then pull the marigolds and dispose of them at the end on the season to remove the nematodes. That you so much for your very informative videos. 💗

When I top my onions I found I get bigger bulbs. I also chop the onion greens up and spread them around my cabbage and other plants which seams to confuse the cabbage worms and cucumber Beatles. If you grown mint chopped mint also helps deter pests. I need to start covering my garden in winter. I'm thinking a heavy mulch each spring and I will see how that goes. Great content as usual! We have a big deer problem in my area so I have to fence in my garden or I won't get anything.

Another excellent video. Lots of great information. As far as carrots, please take this with a grain of salt, as I'm very new to gardening. I think the subjects are linked. It may be as simple as too much fertility for the carrots. Onion roots are fairly shallow, so when you follow them with carrots, the tap roots essentially don't have to dive down deep into the soil to find nutrients, couple with the fact that the sheet mulching still wouldn't be fully decomposed the tap roots could fork when they hit the "more solid chunks of soil". A possible trial of following potatoes with carrots may reveal interesting results. Again, I'm no expert, just an observation, and will be interested to see how you evolve with this. Cheers from Victoria, Canada

In my vegetable garden I have flowers as well, partly because I love flowers, but mostly to attract pollinators and pest predators. Try to plant some cosmos in rows of carrots and onion, calendula is another flower that is good to have, marigold as well. To store well onions the best time to harvest them is when leaves close to the ground become yellow, also stop watering them and push green top to the ground. When half the leaves have dried it's time to harvest them. You have really nice looking onions for selling fresh, but for storage they need to be longer in the soil. Last year my carrots stayed two weeks longer in the soil and they became hairy and lost taste. Potatoes do not like wet soil, once the top is dead it's time to harvest them. Good luck.

Question 8: Sheet composting without cover fabric: I practice a similar style for my Garden. For Reference: I live in south Germany so your climate is not quite as mild as yours I believe. I exclusively grow Tomatoes, Peppers and Pumpkins (Hokkaido). Across the street there is a small organic hay field and I have permission to take whats left after their harvest. Also I get all of one neighbors hedge trimmings which I put through the wood chipper. This is enough to sheet mulch very thick in the late spring. By late summer most of the hay is gone, so I sow green manure (mainly mustard and related things like oil radish) for the winter after the harvest. In spring all that's left is a thin layer of the woody parts of the hedge trimmings and weeds start to take over. If the green manure is growing well, the weeds get suppressed pretty good as the mustards are winter hardy here but that depends on how early I sow it and the weather (last year was a dry fall so not much grew). Ideally I would have a source of mulch in the early spring or late fall, negating the need for green manure (although that has other benefits that would be lost) but that would mean having to store it over summer/winter as no fresh mulch is available to me at these times. The only weed I consistently have problems with is bindweed as it can easily penetrate the mulch and starts to choke my tomatoes.

greetings from Croatia squash prefers deep mulch due to easy root spreading and constant moisture carrots require equal texture and moisture throughout the depth of the soil for example it is better not to loosen the soil than to loosen the top 5 cm I am still impressed by your studiousness

This is my fave garden which i have copied, i'll admit. It's a clever design. Great concept and video..!

Would love to see basil variety experiments, with the strains between varieties experiments (like Italian large leaf ill2 vs nufar or napoletano vs lettuce leaf etc) with different planting spaces very close vs normal and what’s an excess of space if watered vs natural rain and what fertilizer works best for them vs no fertilizer which are more tender etc

I've seen the diagram of the different types of gardens you do repeatedly and I was always a bit curious what the simple garden was. Now I know. I love your channel and you are one of my aspirational heroes. If he can successfully run a market farm in coastal Ireland than I surely can grow something anything here in Ohio. I'm doing a container grow along with another youtuber and am trying to germinate some blueberries this year.

I love you numbers that’s epic!

Carrots might fork if you have a heavy clay soil. At least in my (limited) experience, they don't seem to like clay soils.

In NY, USA- your the only patron I support on RU-vid, as always... very informative. (I'm a raised bed gardener)

Good quality seed will definitely promise good yield provided they are grown at a suitable time of season. If seeds are grown before their suitable time they end up giving week plants that are more likely to catch pest, very humble suggestion.

Great review, thanks. We are very much looking forward to our garden plan for the next year...

Seems to me there is a lot to be said for simplicity. All very interesting, thanks.

I still maintain that you are criminally under viewed. Fantastic content.

Great video! I've always wondered how effective saving seeds would be at producing disease resistant varieties. It makes sense that even If a plant is disease resistant it would be most resistant to the varient that is dominant where said variety was produced. Your variant of the same disease may be more or less effective and or lethal so it would make sense to save the seeds from the plants that faired the best. But also the more resistant you become the more effective the disease will become possibly limiting future variety trials. Idk its easy to go deep into a rabbit hole once you begin to ask questions regarding gardening

Thank you for honest a great video 🙂

Thanks so much Bruce! To me that's some pretty impressive yield per hour of work. Only the moles, squirrels, possums, coons, deer, birds and bugs could tell you what my yield is.

Try Ox Heart Carrots. I had great success with them in my clay soil. They did not fork on me, and create a more bulb like shape.

This is really impressive you do such wonderful record keeping

Your are an amazing expert, a doctor / professor of note!

this is such a wonderful channel.... I can really appreciate the way your mind works in relation to experimentations and observations leading the way to real knowledge on these subjects... thank you for your efforts my friend

This really inspires me to put more effort into tracking my garden metrics

thanks

Hey Bruce, I dont think you need to worry about seeds when you compost tall grasses under the sheets. The heat should kill most seeds that would otherwise be sprouting, if they're not dry. So most of them would simply also decompose.

Red gardens is such an awesome project. I want to help run something like this.

Perhaps raising question about having questions means you have more questions ? ;) As always, glad you walk us through the process.

AMAZING BRO SIS

I love all your videos! You pay great attention to detail and seem to document everything meticulously. Have you considered getting a microscope and looking at the microbiology of your soils? It would be fascinating to observe how different plants encourage different populations and ratios of bacteria to fungus. This might also shed light on the areas of the garden experiencing blight and pest pressure. You could also work on moving your soils further along in succession which might eliminate the problems (make them where the plants love the soil but the pests and parasitic fungus do not). Thanks again! always look forward to seeing one of your videos pop up, i don't know if it's your voice but they always bring be a sense of peace. Thank you.

A great reflective film. Onion wise we're growing Santero this year for the first time (from seed) its marketed as being unaffected by mildew. I notice you don't seem to use any fertility building phases in your rotation. Have you considered including these in your research? They form a big part of organic production systems (although not so much at a domestic grower scale) but their role in soil health/ fertility management is fascinating.

I am not a pro, but I read the article about "why the plant grows special". about the red carrot.. is that NPK, the K(potassium) is too much, will cause the plant to grow too fast. although the right amount of K will be stable in the growing stage. *sorry for my poor English and thank you for keep sharing your idea with us... thank you!

Hello from New England. The reason why my carrots fork in my garden is because of root rot nematodes and I control them by planting french marigolds. Hope this helps.

Carrots may be forking due to compaction of soil? You may wish ti use a large pot for a test sample with fluffy soil to compare to the plot planted carrots for that variety.

. Afternoon, I'm just about to watch your video, however, this just came up on my list and I thought of you straight away. It is from Vasili's Garden and it is Casting made by soldier fly larvae. Absolutely fascinating, so I'm going to follow and see what happens :)

Possible causes for forked carrots: - too cold temperatures in the first few weeks - too much water - root meeting interference/obstacle as it grows. This could be from pests or pathogens; from a compost that hasn't rotted properly; from remains in the soil of previous crops, of roots, of clumps of soil, small stones, etc ... It seems carrots are a bit fussy with the texture of their soil.

you should look into beneficial nematodes to try and reduce the carrot fly larvae

love these videos. Always look forward to them. The simple garden has inspired me 4 years ago to start my own. I have one question, what are the onion spacing?

I wonder about the seed from weeds, too. I wish there was a way to heat the grasses cut, to kill the seeds, that was easy and efficient! Mind you, practically, not possible. but, wishing still!

I've never tested the theory but I've always heard that forking of carrots is caused by excessive nutrition in the soil.

Just thinking out loud here for the carrots forking issue. 1- most likely is root damage from pests causing the plant to fork 2- Could soil texture/depth be a possibility? Anything that could disrupt the roots path. 3- Does forking occur at any particular time for your plants? Perhaps having a few sacrificial carrots to pick out during the year at their various stages could lead to some insight.

you mentioned carrots flies, apparently they can also cause carrot forking. maybe its related? other causes are frost and other pests, but the former should be obvious and the latter should also result in other symptoms. at this point in the rotation I would also be shocked if there were many organic debris left over from the compost that could cause it.

Since you are going to grow a large number of onion varieties from seeds you have the perfect setup to let the best of each variety flower and to essentially evolve from a population of different varieties into a smaller group of varieties that are most suitable to your environment. It takes a bit of time to get there, but it would be a perfect experiment and a good experience for you and for the communì as well. Population evolutions are finally coming back after many years of variety segregation

My yard-waste has a high 8.1 PH & your plants look a little yellow so you're probably having a similar issue(iron lockout). Elemental Sulfur doubled the darkness of green on my plants in about 90 warm days. It's expensive but it's a necessary soil amendment for the results it creates. I'm in the American Subtropics & when we use black-tarps it's only in the hottest 90 days of the year, starting about July, & is called Solarizing the Soil. The Universities claim temperatures of 180f can be reached in the top six inches of soil to destroy seeds, parasites, & pathogens. The larger the tarp the hotter the soil might get. I don't think my soil has the same nutrients as what they tested b/c I can only reach 164f.

Does mulching with hay attract slugs? Thanks for a very interesting video.

I loved the work hours per kilo and will find the onion trial fascinating. I think we all had a short spring due to the cold May too, but 2017 seemed to be a good year for you with that garden, I wonder if that was weather-related? In Wales, we had an amazing spring and it was quite hot, or do you think the bug and slug problem may be some kind of build-up? As you say, so many questions, That's the compelling thing about gardening. Mind you, it was great that the squash tasted better, what a fabulous result. A cool video - Thank you. Everything looked very lush, I can't wait to see what you do in 2022.

Can you do a video about winter storage?

I find that squash plants (I grow crown prince, uchi kiri and spaghetti squash) produce around 3x the amount of squashes when grown over black plastic, even when all other inputs are the same. I believe it's due to the extra heat the plastic absorbs. This year the slugs ate all but 1 of my crown prince plants but that remaining plant produced 9 ripe fruit of 3-4kg each. The previous year I tried without plastic and got 2 squash per plant and the second one didn't ripen fully. As for the carrots, have you checked for root knot nematodes? That would explain why this one garden is worse than the others.

Dear Bruce thanks for the really informative videos - they are really helpful. I’m planning to try a version of your simple garden - . In terms of timings, I am planning to plant the potatoes/onions/ beets (instead of carrots) from mid April, and then the squash plants from June. is that about right? does that mean you keep the squash bed covered with plastic right up to their later planting? also have you have any problems with rodents using the sheet composting?. Thanks for your help. John

I’m curious why seeds would last longer than sets. I’ve heard the bulbs get bigger with seeds, but I hadn’t heard about the storage issue. I want a long storing onion and I prefer yellow, so I’m adding Patterson to this years crop. F1 hybrid, sooo maybe not sustainable. But I really love large, long storing onions.

Could your method somehow be pleasant for root knot nematodes? You could try a variety that’s resistant to it and see if forking reduces. Or potentially solarization with clear plastic.

Carrot forking is highly related with different soil structure. In can all be soft oder hard soil - no problem, but there should be no change in soil structure

Some gardeners say carrots fork when there is too much nitrogen in the soil. I can't say ifthey are right, but it makes sense to me... as carrots are substantially only the taproot of the plant. What do you think?

Insulation is very possible

What is the idea of the white water containers amongst the squash plants? Also, what did you make the small hand weeding tool from? ❤️ your work 👍

For potatoes, have you tried the variety Sarpo mira? (I see that your trying Sarpo una) It has good late blight resistance and it tolerant of some abiotic stress.

✌️😎

Bruce I think the reason for forking is damage to the tip of the root during growth

Not sure of it's validity, but I've heard that soil that is too workable, will cause forking in carrots. This could explain why your yield has decreased as you cultivate the ground.

What is going on with the forking carrots? What the fork?!

A fallow period might be a good opportunity to focus on removing pests from your soil. Starve those slugs!

Have you tried growing bunching onions. I know very little about them other then there a few different varieties.

Awesome video, and I have two questions. First, how much seed are you planting to get that potato yield, and second, what database/spreadsheet/software are you using to track all that data?

The soil in my back garden is sandy and loose, the carrots never fork. But out at my plot the soul is heavy and clay-ie so I dare not grow 🥕🥕🥕

Hey Bruce at 4:48 should the heading be 'carrot yield' for that graph?

I am not sure if this is in line with the videos; but, i would be interested in a review of the tools you have used over the years, and why you choose to use your current selection.

I would love to know how you keep your crop free of squash bugs. It seems like it could be an entire video.

Did you ever get your soil tested for Northern root-knot nematode (Wikipedia)? It is known to cause forking of roots.

That’s a humongous amount of food for the time spent. Pity about the carrots but it doesn’t seem to take much to disrupt their growth and those pesky carrot flies are so persistent. I grow pumpkins on compost heaps and they seem to grow with relish on half rotten stuff!

I wonder if the carrots are forking because of the high organic content of the soil.

Last year nearly everyone's onion's on our allotments, went to seed quite badly, probably due to the cold snap in May. These were grown from sets. I grew mine from seed and did not have any go to seed out of over a hundred onions grown. I have had better results since growing from seed rather than sets.

Great video Just an idea. I've heard apparently legumes might fix nitrogen to soil and add fertility (I've read stuff either way). Rather than "rest" two beds, why no plant a crop of broad beans/french beans/peas (could opt for a variety that doesn't need support). Potentially a really simple way to add fertility and add crop?

i have heard that too high of nitrogen can cause the carrots to fork.

10:50 for doing this standing: weeding hoe