From Pasture to Production 

Hey all - I usually try to take an hour or so on Mondays and answer everyone's comments but holy cow there are a lot of comments on this video already! I will try to get to more but I gotta get to work on the next video. Just know you all are awesome.

"Dogma is not going to help you in farming..." perfect advice. Great channel. Smart man.

Thanks for your videos. Iwas born in a small village located around Cameroon 🇨🇲 and Nigeria 🇳🇬 border centre/west Africa. Growing up there was no Internet connection nor roads we had to trek for 3 hours to get to Nigeria or 9 hours to get to Cameroon, in other to see good roads or sell our crops, but trust me it was fund and it really made me stronger. My parents where small farmers till 2009 i lost my dad, we had to moved to Lagos Nigeria in 2011. I can remember in my small village my parents didn't have to go through a lot of stress because the land was very fertile and any crop they ever planted was doing extremely well, without fertiliser or watering the crops. 2 years ago I started watching alot of videos on how to farm, because prices of food stuffs in Lagos for the past 2 years has really been going up, and I realised how blessed my small village is lol. I'm happy because my dad's houses are still there. I'm 26 years old and I've been saving up, I can't wait to go back to my village and start up my farm with all this experience I've had in watching different videos and learning more about different virity of crops. I'm really greatful🙏

I quit my job to become a market gardener a month ago, took out small loans for living expenses and starting the gardens. I am doing the quick risky method of no-till-->paper-->compost-->seed in midwinter Zone 7b. Sod was mostly eaten down by horses, manured, and had years worth of oak leaf grounds on the surface, full of earthworms. I laid down two layers of builder's paper, and built beds 4 ft wide with 4 inches aged horse manure/bedding compost that my neighbor cooks up in huge piles. I would be more apprehensive if it was hydrophobic mulchy stuff, as I had hell trying to grow in that stuff before. This specific horse compost is some of the most friable I have ever seen. It almost never loses moisture and drains well. I then immediately broadcast a "cover crop" polyculture of mustards, carrots, turnips, beets, radishes, chard. I am starting indoors heading brassicas, cilantro, lettuces, peas, green onions, spinach to plant into the polyculture after thinning. I admit this method will be difficult for predicting yields/quick harvesting, but my hope is that the reward will outweigh the risks/cons. Will report back in a month.

One of the most dense, no bs, educational channels out there. Keep it up y’all. And thank you for sharing all this hard earned knowledge!

I'm an experienced flower gardener but completely new to veggies. Started my first two veggie beds this year. One is ridiculously slow-growing. The other is taking off. Almost double the growth in the second bed. Bed 1, the slow growing disappointment: Started with overgrown lawn that tended to flood, broke up the clay soil with a fork. Added bagged black earth (2-3 inches), built my raised bed frame on top of that and tossed in some yard waste and more bagged black earth. Planted immediately. Bed 2, the efficient success: Started with overgrown lawn directly beside bed 1 on a drier day. Mowed down the lawn, forked it, added 1-2 inches of yard waste, dug it in very slightly (I'm on clay soil working with hand tools), covered well with cardboard, soaked and let sit for a week, covering holes with more cardboard when a few small weeds made it through. I then brought in 4-5 inches of rich, living compost (filled with worms and other life) from my boss' manure heap. (Benefits of working at a stable, bonus that my boss grows his own hay, chemical-free). I let the bed sit for around a month before I planted into it at all. Bed 1 does not retain water well. At all. Seeds took forever to get true leaves, growth is slow and disappointing. Weeds aren't bad though, almost nothing came up through the soil, only what blew into the bed to remove. Definitely will need to amend the soil this fall though. Bed 2 holds consistent water levels without becoming flooded but does require a lot more weeding unfortunately but I just chop and drop the weeds for more organic material. Lots of dandelions so at least they're not competing too badly with what I have in there. My plan for this fall is to put in 1-2 more beds doing the slow method and redo the failed bed entirely. I definitely will not be using bagged soil for in ground growing or raised beds ever again. It's just dead dirt. I'll use fresh, living compost that I can source locally. Way cheaper too.

First time garden. I took a 50 year old lawn, tilled it, spread 4 inches of manure/ mulch and tilled it again in the late fall. Planted garlic and now I have 60 of 70 sprouts growing well in February. I think this is going to work. Thanks Jesse.

One method I have had success with is using potatoes as a sort of cover/food crop to prepare new ground. You can disturb the soil or not. Potatoes love fresh decomposing sod, and they seem to attract such a plethora of microorganisms and earthworms that you get a decent tilth after they crop. I simply lay the potatoes out at a decent spacing, and I might make a slight hole and dig them into the sod, especially recently as the vole pressure has gotten out of hand, then cover with ideally a weed free mulch like straw or second cutting hay or compost, but usually I use a combination of compost and hay I can acquire cheaply. Hill the potatoes with hay or compost throughout the season, and after harvest the grass will be totally dead and worked up by critters, and the beds can be planted into a cover crop, or fall crop. This is pretty much the ruth stout method of growing potatoes, and lends itself to breaking new ground while growing a crop.

I've experimented with 3 different types of beds thus far! The deep compost, beds built with native soil from around the farm, and then building beds in place with the soil that is there! I'm adamant about bringing my native soil to a standard that will grow any crops i want to grow and that crop be healthy!! So far I rather enjoy building the beds in place. Having 100 acres of farmland i am able to go i to the woods and gather leaves as well as leaf mold at will whenever I want. This is proving to be a great way to add organic matter and microbiology to the native soil i am turning into garden space!! I am also adamant about making my own liquid fertalizer and have been studying the jadam techniques alot. I think the inspector will be pleased when we finally do go to get our organic certification!!

I have always been a very visual learner. So your videos coupled with your book helps it to sink in. Then applying cements the lesson. Thanks Jesse and thanks Hannah for sharing your soil nerd!

I would have liked more talk about the damage to soil micro organisms as a result of covering beds in plastic, and the damage to soil structure caused by even one till.

It took me 2 weeks of intense manual labor to dig up a 12x12 area of my lawn for a tomato garden with a shovel & my hands. I moved about 30 wheelbarrows full of thick, heavy, compacted, clay soil. The soil had an insane number of rocks, which I used to line the garden for drainage. I recall ONE hole for one plant taking 10 minutes to dig! I thought I was escavating a rock the size of a massive bowling bowl at one point. I then moved many more wheelbarrows full of composted horse manure to use as topsoil & hand built tomato cages with old metal farm fence. Then tonight, I dug up a 10’x4’ area of sod to build another garden beside it & it took less than 2 hours! It’s amazing how different areas of the yard can be SO different to work with! We live on a huge hill & I can’t afford to buy the lumber to build raised beds for root crops. I find that growing potatoes in old chicken feed bags works amazingly well!

Looking forward to this one!

I've started many gardens due to career moves. Those I started in the late summer early fall were always the best having 10 mos or so for worms, compost, covercrop & mulch to do its thing. I never had great success with gardens slammed together in the spring unless I was at least able to cover the area in deep mulch some months ahead.

How don't you have a million subscribers? Your content is great👍

This is my favorite gardening channel. Yep, I have an autographed copy of your book. I would like to see more cover cropping for idiots and the time-deprived type of content. Tarping tips and tricks. The different depths and levels of soil loosening and cultivating, and appropriate techniques. The pollinator/habitat rows, and keeping varmits off your crops. Troubleshooting mid-season. Living pathways updates.

Warning about straw: lately there are increasing numbers of gardeners who get hay/straw tainted with GrazeOn and other persistent chemicals that totally destroy gardens and orchards. Do your research and know your source!

Well I’ve subscribed for his humour, been laughing the whole way through, and learning! Brilliant 😊

I find the double dig method, it's a form of plowing, but found that extremely effective especially when you have poor soil and are in a hurry. It's hard work without machinery but it works.

Endlich mal jemand der das super erklärt, ich weiß das zwar alles schon, aber einigen ist das bestimmt eine große hilfe.🤠🙏

It's hard to believe how much great information is on RU-vid. Just discovered your channel and subscribed. I want to offer a humble addition: wet the cardboard! It starts the decomposition method quickly without relying on the damp compost or hoping for rain to come through.

Not to throw a fly into the ointment but be careful where you source your cardboard from. A lot of it is sprayed with chemicals that you may not want in your food gardens. Flowers or ornamentals may not be an issue. Great videos! My wife and I just purchased our future homestead and plan to start working it asap. Thank you for all the great advice.

I followed your example on the cardboard method and it’s been a good first year so far. We just moved here around the first of the year so I mowed the grass down to the ground, used all our cardboard boxes from the move, and put a garden soil mix from the local landscape nursery on top of that. So far we are doing well and hopefully next year even better.

I fought to sign in to leave this comment. That compost is absolutely lovely. It looks very very healthy. I cannot lie, this does make me somewhat jealous. I thank my nan especially for showing me many gardening and agri techniques. Happy growing. Peace and Blissings

Love seeing the kiddos helping out. Our three-year-old granddaughter, who lives with us, helps me daily with planting, weeding, and eating the fruits of our labor. Great stuff!

Man this is such a ripper of a video! Thankyou so much for putting this one up! Some of the best information I’ve come across in my years of gardening.

Amateur grower at 7,200' in Colorado here. Thank you for emphasizing location dependencies! For example, we laid some cardboard down in an attempt at a fast living pathway. Two years later, and you can still read the labels on what were the boxes. We just don't have the decomposition rate in the high desert for that to always pan out

Loved the longer video! I know it takes a lot of work to make so thank you! I have had luck with just a couple of layers of cardboard covered in compost and left to sit over the winter, by spring the cardboard is soft enough to plant right on top of.

Another very good and easy way is to simply 1. chop and drop (or use drop as mulch at step 4 (depending on amount of weed seeds), 2. decompact (broadfork), 3. sheetmulch (Cardboard/ newspaper etc) and then 4. a thick layer of mulch (6inch +), ideally nitrogen rich mulch + carbon rich mulch on top. 5. Pull aside the mulch, 6. poke a hole in the cardboard, 7. add a handful or two of compost in the hole and 8. transplant into this.

I love your quick start method, because in my opinion, no matter what, second and third year gardens produce like crazy.....but you have to get the first year garden started! (I'm on my third year garden at the location!)

I really appreciate that you provide multiple methods, calling out the ideal, yet knowing things are not always ideal. I moved cross country and was able to put a garden in starting in June. Well, it has been a humbling experience. I went from lovely loam to yellow clay. I now realize much of my garden prowess was the soil I had. I expect I can get there again with a multi-year approach. Happy growing.

Best gardening video by far! Thanks! Zone 8b here. We squared off our large garden with logs cut from our yard. That holds all ingredients in and keeps weeds out. Then, we cardboarded the area with thick layers, overlapping generously, found free chick and/or horse manure as a bottom layer. It was quite a stench for a while there, but worth it. 💩 After that, we covered it with about 12" of free mulch (branches, bushes, etc) from the county. We have done this twice now. When it sits over the winter, covered with a tarp, it is just right for spring and beyond and the soil is beautiful not to mention the behemoth worms and a couple of snake surprises. When we do this at spring time instead, the wood chips bind up too much of the nutrients before beginning to compost and the plants struggle to start off, sometimes becoming to an early demise, but most get there eventually. All the shoveling is worth it. Soil is great and weeding takes about 5 minutes per week.

No question…Farmer Jesse is addictive to listen to. Always enjoy and learn and am motivated

Thoughts on solarizing? I removed hoop house plastic last week and put it on the lawn to give it a rinse and wash it off. That was at noon. Forgot about it until the next day when my wife realized what I had done. By 2 o'clock on a bright sunny day in July it had totally cooked the grass in a perfect rectangle, killing it completely. I was pretty impressed by 26 hours of solarizing! I am now trying this on a couple of weedy garden beds, it probly won't do anything at all...

Perfect timing for this video, thanks! :) I am in the Southern Hemisphere (NZ) where we are in the depths of winter and I am planning an expansion, starting nowish to be ready for planting early summer (December).

gosh, your videos appear exactly when I need them. I am severely handicapped but determined to convert my quarter acre to a no-till permaculture garden. A few days ago I laid down some painters plastic to solarize an area, just like you recommended it in a video. I'm so excited to watch this video because this land is super fertile, but has hard summer-compacted clay weed soil. I think the soil is actually quite healthy, when it's slowly moistened with a soaker it smells great and clings to roots properly. But in the summer it's too hard to get a pickaxe through, so I wanted to do something to prepare it for the coming winter planting season. Location -- Northern California/Sacramento valley

This is certainly on a smaller scale, but has anyone discussed Hugelkulture? I have done a somewhat modified version of that in raised beds - some homemade using wood and roofing metal, some dozen more in 100-150 gallon livestock troughs. Both methods began with a layer of well rotting (old firewood) about 1/3 of the depth of the bed. Then we put in a mixture of 1 year old passively composted horse manure and bedding mixed with shredded paper, with the top 1/3 being well composted finished horse manure and bedding compost. Absolute black gold. The inground raised beds - vs the trough ones - began with a trench about 1 ft deep with walls about 24” on ground level around the trench. This still allowed the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 layering. Each late fall after cutting the dead plants off at ground level leaving the roots, I topped the beds with finished compost and put down a bit of grass clipping mulch which meant the ground was ready for planting in the spring. Given that we are in Northern lower Michigan, our last frost date is typically Memorial weekend or the first week in June. We moved last winter and while we left a few of the homemade raised beds, we did build a few more at our new farm. We also moved, at great effort with only having a neighbor witha tractor available to load but no equipment here to UNload. 100-150 gallons of soil in a trough which already carries some weight are HEAVY. OMGosh heavy. Crazy for a 63 yr old significantly physically disabled person and her 73 yr old “I can do it!” husband to attempt. Which lead to 4 of the dozen+ troughs tipping before we got help and displaying the absolutely amazingly wonderful contents of gorgeous soil and the barely there remnants of the rotting wood. I will ALWAYS garden this way. Did I mention I get AMAZING yields too?

Love your channel. Great content, and very, very relevant. I've always agreed with the notion of no-till. Your experience helps folks like me understand the "whys and wherefores" when it comes to getting the details nailed down.

Don’t worry take your time if people don’t understand that’s crazy there’s so many people asking questions a little bit at a time and you’ll get through it don’t go crazy because then you won’t like it now it’s enjoyable I’m enjoying watching you a little bit at a time we will all get our questions and answers so far. I’m enjoying you thank you very much Connie from Staten Island, New York.

Thank you! So excited to start my garden!

"I'm not apologizing" AWESOME!!!

Thanks for the chuckles, and for the good information.

Funny enough, I'm looking to start a garden NEXT spring, and am doing research now in order to plan and make sure it had the best chance of success (as it's going to be a remote garden on a peice of land I own about 15 minutes from my house, and thus I can't be there EVERY day.) This is been a GREAT resource and I'll be Coming back through the next few months as I get stuff going!

Just started watching you, and i feel like I hit the jackpot to what i needed, I've always always loved gardening and always wanted own farm. over the course of 4 years my father in law has introduced me to plants and crops and i've falling in love with it. I've been jotting notes down all day, looking forward to drowning myself in learning. Also really digging the cardboard method as well and can't make to start making my own compost tea

It just hit spring here. Perfect timing. Great advice.

Wish i could like this twice, just came back to watch a second time and learned even more. Thank you!

Thanks! This is my very first time homesteading and just threw stuff in the ground in the spring. I will start working on my beds for next year!

Moving away from heavy rototilling. Listening to you Farmer Jesse is great and you sure are awesome!!!! Making compost and have garden divided in to 6, 4*12 ft beds,plus few larger areas. Bought my first broadfork this winter and excited to see how compacted the soil is.. thanks for your inspiration!

I garden in Western KY on land that has laid fallow for years. Our "soil" is pretty much yellow clay and we got very poor results this year. I tried to dig up the few potaoes that actually grew and the shovel bounced of the surface. I just ordered your book and I will be applying your methods ASAP in order to get better production for next year.

My favorite gardeners! You guys make the absolute best videos for no till. Great content, thank you for sharing 😊

Very good video with a lot of great info. I've switched from hay to straw because of the seeds issue, it's made a big difference. Just had to up inputs a bit to compensate. It's good to see someone talking about tillage to make no-till beds, we need more of that!

Super awesome info. Changing the world and saving soil.

I just wanted to say thank you guys for the knowledge and expertise when it comes to no till growing. I can’t believe I just found your account, I’ve been nonstop catching up on all the vids I’m behind on haha!

Loved the information and the since of humor. I will definitely be watching more videos.

Excellent garden. Perfect timing!!

You grow it and your neighbors take it. Chaos is just around the corner. Lead Up Fred

Your videos are extremely informative. Thank you so much. Keep up the amazing work 😊

Jessie I’ve been watching for the last two years (subscribing on patreon too) and I just wanted to say thank you for the time and effort you put into your videos. I appreciate you and your team. 🧡

Started another 3x50 ft bed this year with just a 1" till and a bunch of grass clippings, planted right into it. Added 4 last year in the fall with free hay and a shallow cultivation till. Both are working great, expect both to only increase in fertility next year. Also I finally have compost finished--been using that for stuff I want to direct seed into (remove and compost the mulch, put down finished compost, plant). I love my living pathways btw, it's like I kept the utility/mobility of a yard, while turning the whole thing into gardens.

Great video. In my four years of gardening I believe this video can help anyone from the backyard gardener like myself, to someone wanting to start a farm.

Coleman Shepard told me a method i'm going to try. he instructed me to mix a cup of molasses and a tablespoon of sea salt in a gallon of water (you might want to double or triple the recipe) spray that all over the grass that's growing where you want your garden to be, give it a good dousing. the tarp with an old bill board tarp (black backed tarps are best for this) leave it covered for 3 weeks to a month, when you remove your tarp all that will remain is mycelium; you can plant into that or spread a mulch and plant thru that.

growing at 8500' in Colorado, 20 years and loving it !!!

Superb Video!! Thank you so much for sharing. You are a wealth of Garden knowledge.

I'm so glad to find this video! We're hopefully closing on a large property and I'm moving from my raised bed gardens in the city. The new property has a giant field of hay that I want to use a portion of for a big garden, and a grassy area I want to start a smaller kitchen garden in. I'll be starting with the late summer-fall crops. This is a helpful video for me.

OUTSTANDING video. Thank you so much !

I love using cover crops and compost in combination. Also I love the lasagna gardening method, all these things have built my soil health in a short period of time.

You're so entertaining! Great info too! Thank you

Excellent content. Thankful -- soooooo thankful.

Amazing videos, love the humour ...

July is a great time to do a pop up no dig garden for a fall crop. It's a perfect time put together a hoop house too to get ready for the fall and winter. Also i tried reading those choose your own adventure books straight through. It's SO disorienting lol

I do all my garden rows that way.. I dig ditches between rows .. I learned this from gardeners from other countries.. was worried about droughts.. plus most my property is down hill and washes away.. when I did get rain.. and man the amazing difference it made.. 💯❤

My kids and I did a garden bed for them which was compost on brown packing paper with woodchips on cardboard for paths. It worked really well in the same season. Need plenty of water

Well said and excellently put together. Thank you

This is perfect timing :-) We have cut our last hay today, baling in about a week and then, veg beds prep :-)

Great video! Another option to get a garden set up quick in a turf covered lot without tillage is to use a sod cutter. It can also get out some of the bad weeds right off the bat and you’re not inverting any soil. Generally you’ll need compost after if you want raised beds though. Thanks for all your videos, tons of great information!

loved your explanations!

Wow! Many info. Thanks!

Did my quickest garden this year..im 60 and was given small plants unexpectedly and late in spring...more like start of summer..mowed on shortest setting..then sprayed weeds with trimic waited 3 days and used drill auger and plated..not best garden ever but doing pretty well..and I used fish emulsion after 2 weeks from start..i love that stuff

I Like your humor, I learnt heaps great info and I am experienced in garedning. KEEP THESE UP PLEASE

I had a newngarden area picked on when we moved to new home. The soil is clay, so I layed dark tarps down at end of summer, left on til spring. I applied compost and mulch, and used raised beds for some crops and planted directly into soil for others. It worked great! I continue to add leaf mold to level.area and the soil is much improved.

Just ordered your book. I can't wait

Nice delivery dude, and lots of goof info. Thanks!

Excellent video! My mind is blown absorbing so much information and the possibilities! 🙌👏

Super informative video, thanks so much! 👍 we are trying our hand at growing plenty this coming spring-i use my hens manure and spilled feed with the used straw and pine shavings for compost material. I find it amazing.

Hi from internationally! Mid winter here in Australia. And of course, garden expanding is under way. Is there ever enough space?! Thank you for sharing your knowledge. It's so very appreciated 😊

Excellent!

Very informative, entertaining and a cat, what more could one want 👍🙂

Really good video. So much information, I watched it twice.

Hi, great info. Glad to know I am on the right path. Started a new garden this spring on an overgrown field of brambles and grasses. Originally, I wanted to create a lasagna bed to plant in but couldn't find affordable supply of compost, so ended up getting the plot tilled. Had it rototilled twice about 1 week apart and then put in landscape fabric 4' wide/bare earth 4'/landscape fabric 4' repeat all the way across. I planted in the fabric with transplants and then in between the fabric rows for direct seeding. The fabric helps to keep the weed pressure down. I also planted lots of melons and squash this year so the plants are helping to keep the weed pressure down too. Its going good so far. At the end of the season I plan to add manure and cover with straw so it will be ready to plant next year without tilling again.

Hey thanks for all the content!! much appreciated

Love your shirt! Their bagels are so good!

What's great about your content is the principles you emphasize work in those lush deep black soils in KY, but they ALSO apply to desert farming poverty grass dryland no-till and gardening at a mile elevation and days in the 90s and 100s with no water.

Awesome. Love your style

Love your video and Bought the book. Can’t wait to read it.

Perfect timing for me. Great information and I like your presentation. I am a new gardener at 80. I wish I had started earlier but chasing the almighty dollar I lost out. I am in zone 6b and have a hard pan about 6” down so I am trying to overcome that issue. I already tilled 900 Sq ft. With a front tine tiller but had little success with that. I think I have found a tractor with a big tiller and was wondering if I could do this in spring and still have some success as I lready have a cover crop planted. I woul appreciate any help from other commenters since I know your busy. Thanks ahead. Y’all havagudun and God Bless.

From the Philippines. Thanks!

By the end of this summer, I will have had experience with multiple ways to start gardening. I have grown food in containers for the most part but this season will be my first in permanent raised beds. I put down cardboard straight on top of the lawn and filled the bottom with twigs, branches old compost material, then my bokashi mixed with bought compost. I have planted directly into this as well as sown directly. Also, I made a lasagna bed last season for my strawberry plants from runners, which really did well. This summer will be my first time having to dig a little since I'm putting in a plum tree and a blackberry bush. Again, into the lawn. I have also started a hot compost bin that I'll fill over the season. I use wood ash, urine, ground-up eggshells, bokashi liquid, nettle, and comfrey tea, and some leftover all-purpose pellet fertilizer to amend my beds. Not all at once but since it all went into my old compost of last year it all gets in there somehow. I'm super happy to have a record-sized growing space compared to before.

Thank you for the shared experience. Will card board with leaf mulch for the winter.

Awe....we love your digressions.😆

Hey there thank you for your videos I just watched my first one it's entitled from Pastor to production dated July 17th of this year so I love gardening so I'm looking forward to watching lot more of your videos I'm sure I can learn a lot once again thank you and happy gardening