19 Things I Learned In 2023 

As a single farmers market gardener, I base most of what I do against time. For instance, I set cages on peppers vs string weave methods. It's a "one and done" thing that I can do when the season is slower, and not needing to do string weaving throughout the season when i need to harvest. I use a lot of resuable plastic mulch. 45 minutes invested in a 4ft by 50ft sheet for me to insure practically no weeding. Pull the sheets and roll up after frost type project, gives you a winter project. Also succession crops are mostly weekly, biweekly, and 30 days. My last frost date is May 10th, so without spreadsheets I know every 10th of the month my 30 day planting is due. On 2 week succession, I split the month, so 1st, 15th, 1st, 15th... For me, every Saturday after market is my 7 day succession planting day. Easy on my brain. Thanks for the great videos and hard work!

What a great summary of a year's worth of learning. Your work and sharing has made a significant, positive difference in my own garden over these years. Many thanks, Bruce.

Pumpkin vine and strawberry patches get along very well. The pumpkin vine helps deter birds and the strawberry plants act as a living ground cover for the pumpkin. Next growing season I am going to see how well strawberry plants and melon plants coexist with alliums.

I love your yearly synopisis videos. Thank you Mr Context. I hope you get a lot more financial supporters this year so you can contiue the work.

These summary type videos are some of my favorite videos you put out, it's great to see how all of your learning is coming together and I love that you're sharing your work! Do you think you could inculde one or two "take aways" at the end of the videos you normally produce? It seems like there's always a bunch of us in the comments asking "so if you could only grow one variety, which would it be...?" type questions. And I know you have a million of your own research projects to work on, but what are your thoughts on companion planting for pollinators and things like bee habitats? With the... abundance of uncultivated land around you, it may be something you don't have to plan, but as a suburban gardener, I do think about it.

@10:20 Perlka. I dont know is it available in Ireland. It is produced in Latvia, Lithuania. The method is to mix Perlka with soil up to 10 cm deep, make it moist and cover for 3 weeks with plastic. There will be I forgot the name some kind of gas which will sanitize soil and later Perlka also is source of calcium and feeding plants. There suppose to be manufacturers information online if need more precise information, how many grams to use on 1 square meter etc.

I continue to learn so much from your videos, and very much appreciate you spending the time to put them together and share your knowledge.

3 SISTERS METHOD Your biggest problem I can observe was the regular spacing of the individual corn plants. Sow the corn kernels in clusters of four (4), with regular spacing between the clusters. Sow four (4) pole/climbing beans around each corn plant cluster when the corn plants are a hand-width in plant-height. Train the pole bean plants around the cluster, like a living green binding, in an anticlockwise direction. Sow the squash seeds at 2/cluster at about the same time as the pole beans.

What amaizes me the most in my 6 years of gardenning is how much i disregard soil (mineral soil), the most natural and rich medium to grow plants, and how much money, work and time i spend on external inputs like mulchs, compost, peatmoss, manures, and fertilizers in general. I know that vegetal growers, specially for markets, are more demanding, but, even so, the mineral soil have been seriously underapreciated.

Thanks for this. Good luck in the new season and managing things more by yourself. Love your experiments as I was a scientist before retiring and have always run little experiments of my own in my garden. It's hard to run a really good one because there are so many different variables, but it is fun nonetheless and always gives you some kind of useful information.

Three sisters methods work best, in my experience, with with varieties of corn that are more similar to corn that Native americans grew: su corn types (dual purpose) with smaller winter squashes (acorn) and corn field beans (climbing shell beans which grow "knife like"/pointy) which can be picked regularly for green beans but may need to be snapped & strung.

I can totally understand the issues surrounding the organization of people to work around you. No one can see your vision, not really. I discovered that I needed a person that wasn't necessarily an in depth gardener but more of a task oriented organizer as a partner. The person I work with, keeps me moving and any helpers that may come by. They are task oriented and can focus on those details while I get to work. Of course, the person is also working along side me but it's ok when they are not because they are dealing with getting others on track and are able to delegate and train people really well. This will leave you to do what you do best and still gets you the help you need, when you need it. Food for thought. I guess it is kind of like a project manager but different. ☺

I know the Soil Food Web School would recomend a soil soak AACT for the fungal issue, with additional spraying during the crop cycle, the problem would be accessing a known good source of starter compost to brew it without a microscope etc. (I only know 2 sources in the UK) NOTS is running Johnson-Su compost courses all over Ireland, maybe they can supply a few ILbs to get you going (2lbs per acre!). I recently attended a seminar with Johnson & Su presenting one of the lectures, if a full size bioreactor is too much hassle you can do one 2.5ft dia with only 1 air tube in the middle, the key is following their recipie/instuctions as closely as possible, dried greens for starting and maintaining 70% water content/watering lightly every day for >1 year can be a bind, I put mine next to the chickens that I had to see to every day anyway but it still became a chore. You mentioned tomato/cucs stringing with J hooks took a lot of your time in an older video, have a look at the Qlipr system, one of the market garden presenters in a recent seminar said he could do a 100ft polly tunnel in an hour using this system, which got my attention! Love these summery vids, nice work Bruce, cheers.

Exactly what I'm doing with my container grown potatoes using drip irrigation it will save a huge amount of time. It will remove inconsistent watering fingers crossed for 2024

Can I suggest an experiment with onions? There are 2 factors to the way you can grow them, that I'd like to understand better. One of them is early sowing, the other is multi-sowing. General advice is that multi-sowing produces better yields, and rational is that earlier sowing could produce larger onions. My theory is that multi-sown onions don't need early sowing because the limiting factor on their growth is their spacing, while single-sown onions will produce a better crop if sown early, because the limiting factor is their time in the ground. If you're interested in that experiment I'd love to see the results from a 4-way split trial (early+multi, early+single, late+multi, late+single).

Thank you!😊👍

We eat the sweet potato leaves! They are my favorite leafy green!

Great content. Love the channel. Great work and inspirational as usual.👍

Nice review. Good luck with the garden in 2024

Thank you for providing rigour to small scale gardening. Many sources are hearsay or guesses couched with certainty. In a way I have an opposite issue to yours and it may be helpful. I'm developing a permaculture property to support those living here. Lots of upfront work, but I see that soon I won't need to do much...except that science in the last decade is discovering a great increase in the benefit of regular cardio and weight training. Permaculture setup and annual gardening can cover that if you run everywhere while gardening. So, rather than going to a gym, I've been trying to help neighbours with an hour of intense work daily because I'd have to do it anyway, and lifting iron creates nothing but iron filings while gardening creates so much especially outdoors. However, this is middle America and there is not enough interest from neighbours to stay fit and I have a small, but real fear of getting shot should I approach more. But Ireland is not N. America. Perhaps there is a fitness conscious local crowd that exists or could be created that you could enlist to give cardio, strength training and nature exposure, possibly food. Cycle to the garden, squat, lift and carry heavy things around. Honestly, it's a bit hard to schedule a full hour of such things, but you operate on a larger scale than I. And maybe the crowd will accept a bit less intensity for a bit more fun and community. For me large hand dug earthworks projects can provide lots of exercise and are big enough and simple enough to provide consistent chunks of exercise without a lot of messing about. Ironically, skilled work is not what's wanted as it's hard to build a poly tunnel well and safely while keeping your heart rate above 70% of max.

I've also had recurring powdery mildew affect my squash and cucumber plants over the years. Diluted milk spray has provided some control of it. This winter I picked up on some news that silica soil amendment may provide systemic resistance to mildew for these particular plants. So, I'll be applying some to most of those crops' raised beds. I may leave a few square feet untreated and observe them as a "control". I may be trying diatomaceous earth as a source of silica. My only concern is that the silica may not become accessible to the plants until it is absorbed by the soil microbes that process mineral nutrients and in turn feed the vegetable roots, thereby delaying the hoped for benefits.

Great reminders and advice, thanks for your work and this summary video Bruce. I must look out for some netting like you have there, I haven't much if any at all butterfly netting here or at least in big/long enough rolls like we need. I may resort to scaffold netting which is a little on the heavy side.

There is so much value in the work you do!

great video,i learned many things,thank you.i use 3 or more layers of cardboard for the weeds(pathways) mostly 2 layers to have some flow from the ground.

I didn't have luck with the 3 sisters either. Great list!

Please share which sweet potato variety may do better in colder climates. I live in the Netherlands and there are no slips to buy, so I have to raise them myself from store bought tubers and while they start off ok, they simply won't grow large and produce no roots to eat.

I love trying different beet varieties. My favourite are the touchstone gold. They just taste the best to me. Interestingly enough, at the farm-stand it's the red ones that sell first and fastest as I think it's what people are most used to. Even the cylindrical varieties sell slower. It's come now the golds are mostly for me and the reds for everyone else.

I have always been a "do it myself because it will be done right" kind of guy. It took a return to farming to realise that asking for help is the way to go. Farm machinery is so fkn heavy, to do it all yourself would cause a lot of injuries. Now I realise that asking for help when its not a big job makes things way easier too. Only took me forty years.

I tried the three sister in the Norwegian inland 2023, and it failed spectacularly. The squash did well though, but the beans and corn struggled. We had early draught, followed by mostly rain for 2-3 months. Not my best season. 😅

As a backyard Maine USA gardener I really enjoy your videos. I was fascinated by your discovery that hybrid peppers might grow better in cooler climates. Also you mentioned solarizing a piece of ground to get rid of perennial weeds. Does this also kill the microbes in the soil that feed the future plants you grow there? I have been reluctant to solstice for that possibility.

Hi there, I have found that using mesh for cucumbers was a lot easier to suport them as they will attach themselves. Only sometimes I have to run some cheap cotton twine across to keep them against it. For the capsicums, this year I tried the sweet capsicums banana which are a lot smaller but incredibly prolific (30 to 40 on the bush all the time, I just cant eat enough of them and they are just in containers), they also only need one stake along the main stem to support them. I also had that soil disease and it took me 2 years to work it out.. I did solarisation and planted tomatoes again to see if it worked (FYI I'm located in Sydney Australia). I love your videos, you must be very busy to manage this veggie garden!

time is money. i had a calcium and potassium deficiency crash this year, but mostly recovered quickly after finding it and applying. for fast results with potassium i applied foliar potassium acetate, which is much more available than potassium carbonate liquid from garden store. to make: 1:1 ratio of the potassium carbonate liquid with double strength (8%) vinegar. seems to help with fungal stuff as well, as a bonus. seems that calcium and potassium leech readily and in high demand during warm season cropping. i'm still trying to work out if additional dripline runs between existing 3 foot (90cm) spaced rows, will help, as the dripline watering doesnt spread much moisture at all, in my soil/climate conditions.

grafted tomatoes peppers and eggplants are solution soil desieses.

Great video 💚💚💚

Verticillium wilt is so common I'm finding. Patches of it all over allotments for absolute sure. I've just taken ownership of a 3/4 acre garden and I swear I'm brining in nothing soil based that isn't sanitized, beautiful mature garden and untouched soil I'd never forgive myself if I ruined it. Everything garden-tool related is getting very thoroughly bleached twice before we move from the allotment and I'm throwing out my "allotment" shoes. They're breeding pts lol. We learn so much from them though :) Biosecurity and disease management if nothing else lol.

Thanks again for sharing your information! Do you have a list of companies in Europe to buy seeds from? I am strougling to find good variaties for some crops.

Passive solar greenhouses may help in extending your crop. I have seen it improve an area by several growing zones. May help with your hot loving crops.

7:02 sweet potato greens are edible

For your verticillium wilt, have you tried peroxide? Might help.

Thanks for a very (helpful video Bruce. I think that you should get some help this year to reduce the load on you and perhaps mentor someone else. Not sure if the local kids get involved in growing food or visit the RED gardens project? Seems to me like a live biology and science class sometimes. All great for learning.

Hi just wondering what varieties of sweetcorn grow best outdoors in Ireland??

Off topic but do you grow any berrys or other fruit there?

What usda zone would Ireland be?

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Would you consider adding some perennials to reduce workload? Asparagus? Fruit bushes or canes? Fartichokes?

You could try Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) to sterilise and oxygenate the the soil to get rid of the wilt.

Should organise a weekend of visitors from your subs when you need a workforce

Sweet potatoes do not perform well in good soil. To much nitrogen will make loads of greens witch are edible but less potatoes

Use flowers and crop rotation to help with disease. 3 year minimum rotation. Zinnias are a great flower. Maybe cover crop with a legume as well.