Living Pathways, Perennial Cover Crops, and More 

Last year we did thick cardboard on top of clay and just good compost on top. As they grew I topped up w compost. The harvest was so easy, and the potatoes were clean. Big harvest and healthy plants. It was a lot of compost but we used those super deep beds for winter carrots after and we still have beautiful 10 inch carrots in the beds. 💜 I’ll be doing this again.

We have for years done one of two things. First DO NOT lay them on the soil. Put 3 or 4 inches of old hay or rough compost down, then lay potatoes down. Cover with a heavy layer of old straw or rough compost. We have also payed down old feed sacks or old sheets or paper bags down pile 4 inches of rough compost lay potatoes on it and then old straw or old hay. It’s work very very well for us without fail. We use the old hay/bedding and goat poop that was cleaned out of our barns from our dairy goats each spring in March. It works the best!!

Love your honesty. Refreshing to watch a video with failures as well as successes:) one learns more from failures than successes!

Appreciate you sharing all your experiments successes and failures. This is how we all improve. Thanks!

My potatoes buried in 1 year old deep compost beds have done awesome! My wife keeps digging new potatoes and they are big! Planted seeds about 5” deep. Plants were so much bigger and prettier than my tilled potatoes that didn’t produce hardly anything as usual. They were both amended with composted chicken manure. Neither of them got hit with potato beetles which is unusual for me. Never had to weed the composted beds, the potatoes came up and shaded everything out.

For cuke beetles, I've been having AWESOME success by using tobacco, just plain dried & chopped ( sold as pipe tobacco in stores), put a palmful in w the hole at planting/transpl. time, or seems to work if added later as well. SO HAPPY NOW ! My bff on her OG dairy farm hasn't had issue w em, but everywhere i've lived in my married yrs, has , and I've never been long enough at any to get the place really great.. .

We use orchard grass for living pathways. It is a bunch grass and doesn't creep into the growing beds.

I have grown ginger and turmeric for 20 years. They love their own bed every time

I like that you show what has and hasn't worked for you

Hey buddy thanks for the video(s). My dad claims that one year he grew potatoes in an old leaf pile. He covered them with more leaves throughout the grow season. He said they were the best/cleanest potatoes he ever grew. I haven't personally tried it yet, but am planning on it. Good luck everyone!

" Hey (snap,snap) dingdong- out !!" Dog: " What? You're in here too!!"

Please make a video on how you grow ginger

Tried no till potatoes for the first time this year. One batch I put just under the soil to cover potato and the other batch I just put on the bed and all the potatoes were covered with hay. Three 50' beds in all. Spring was strange this year, hot and cold, so I took the hay away from the covered potatoes so they could warm up faster and come up. When they did I put the hay back around each potato plant. The taller the potatoes grew the more hay I put around them. Ready to add another layer of hay, (third application) that I made myself from raking a small field after mowing some tall grass and weeds and harvested it by hand. Three varieties, Red, yellow and fingerlings. No weed pressure, and only found one potato bug, then later one plant with the offspring but they looked like they were already killed of by predators. I did see some reds growing under the hay and the others I have to check. I'm hoping to see some progress in a few weeks ... keeping my fingers crossed.

Wow, I will always cheer for you in Korea I'm looking forward to a great video. Have a nice day.

Potatoes have done well with 2” of rough homemade compost. When the plants are 12” tall I layer with straw and then last falls mulched tree leaves on top to exclude light. They are planted 2 rows 16” apart 12-16” plant spacing on a 30” bed. It’s worked well on a rocky soil and a silty clay. I have some pictures if you are interested.

Mowing and planting directly seems to work decently with certain things. I've done it with zucchini and then pumpkins this year! On a flat of area that is not good for really anything because it is compacted clay. I have noticed that since last time the spots I put in zucchini the clay had really broken down in about a 6" circle around where they were planted. Pumpkins this year seem to be doing great!! Also have you ever looked into living pathways using a native moss?

I love your inter-cropping systems. I am playing with various similar combinations myself. Thanks for sharing your experiments!

Finally, there is a name for my instinctive "hunter/gatherer" form of neglected gardening, and it's "Fukuoka"! Great videos, as usual. There is some sense to planting winter squash and other curcurbits later in the summer to avoid cucumber beetle damage, even in my zone five environment. I am not a market gardener, though, and would fail miserably, because any potential customer would be so tired of my late offerings, they would only take them for free. I'd have to make free delivery, also!

transplanting corn helps give you a earlier crop Start them early inside the greenhouse keep roots warm, corn hates cold feet

Thanks for this Jesse. It is invaluable and quite interesting to see how these various experiments are panning out and evolving.

I have never cover cropped or used living pathways...until this year. Last fall I over seeded with white clover and turnips. I enjoyed the turnip greens and some of the turnips (most of which were allowed to return to the garden composting in place). Come spring I shallow tilled where my planting rows would be and have been mulch mowing and occasional bagging (for garden compost) the walkways. The clover has done well at retaining moisture in the garden and I have had some clover migration into my growing rows (easily taken down with my scythe). In the evening times the pathways are cool to bare feet, something I translate into cool ground retaining moisture. Overall I am happy with the results and look forward to compounding benefits in years moving forward.

I can’t stop watching your videos! You really explain the WHY of no-till and I’m super excited to try it on our flowers and garden! We’re in KY too :)

If I plant my rows I have to push a mower. Waaaaugh. When you reach 80 you must take an easier route. Lol really sounds like a great idea to provide more nutrients to the soils. It is always good that we see the failures as well as the positive results. We learn from them. Thanks. Havagudun bud.

I'm in zone 7b high desert az I tarp the 3 acres plant two weeks before last frost date the Ruth Stout them with hay 18 inches or so has worked great for me I don't water at all only get ten inch rainfall a year little snow in the winter. good luck I grow 3 different types per year last 7 years

My most successful no-till potato year involved penning my cows up on a 1/4 acre field for the winter (say, mid-November through late February) and feeding them hay in piles all around that field. They waste quite a bit, and manure plentifully. When it came time to plant I raked the spoiled hay into windrows, put my seed potatoes down on the soil surface, then raked the windrows back on top of the potatoes. I then added aged wood chips as the potatoes grew, though I probably could have better managed the labor aspect and added them right after planting. We've never had much of a problem with potato beetles, though for the past couple years we've had blister beetles move in and just about completely defoliate our French Fingerlings. Thankfully they come in late enough in the year that the actual yield is still fine. Amaranth is supposedly a trap crop for blister beetles (or at least their preferred food), for what it's worth.

For a living mulch or pathway plant in Texas, use horse herb. As for no till potatoes, Charles Dowding has vid on it, but he doesn't grow them on a market scale. He uses a trowel to dig a 3 or 4 inch hole for the seed potato, then adds compost as the season goes on.

I have found it's hard to do no till potatoes on a large scale, without watering with supplemental nutrients at different stages. We did an acre of Blue Sapphire potatoes this year, fully organic, but on poor clay soil. I found you also can't plant potatoes and then just be done with them. To get large yields, you have to cover the plant higher on the stem as it grows up. We use a high nitrogen fertilizer like pelleted chicken manure in our waterings after the first spuds begin to appear, every 2 waterings. Then once flower start to form, we water with a potash supplemented chicken manure mix for blooming, rich in potassium and phosphorus. Potatoes need a tonne of potassium to form large spuds, supplementation is vital and we mix potash into the soil before planting. After the flowers form, we add straw to the top of the rows, to maintain moisture and ensure no light - you could do this sooner, I just don't cover my potatoes until they're already 6 inches tall. The strains I've grown also don't like to dry out. We harvested about 7000lbs of beautiful purple fleshed, anthocyanin rich potatoes by hand. Next year, we're doing 4 acres 😅 Hope I was of help in some way

On potatoes: No great idea other than deep compost, but just wanted to suggest that u save the resulting crop - the best ones from the best plants, that did ok in spite of adversity- to plant next yr. The potato version of Mark Shepard's S.T.U.N. that he does for his trees ( and other plants too i think).

This is a great video. I had to grow into these concepts. I started high intensity gardening in tanks because the rats and the song birds were eating all of my food. It turns out that you have to be more clever about growing if you don't want to destroy your soil and have a piss poor harvest. Cover crops, multiple plantings, and lots of inputs appears to be my only hope. We are going to have to learn fast if we want to afford good quality foods in the future.

At 7:40 I thought he was about to start saying "One potato, two potatoes, three potatoes, four. " LOL Just kidding... Cool video, bro. I like the idea of a living mulch but it seems like here in Alabama it would be tough to keep the weeds down in the walking lanes. However I would like to try it sometime just to see for myself. Keep up the good work!

For a no-till potato you should lay down newspaper for the area you want I would start this in the fall. Cover it with compost because you will need a soil and lay it down thick. When that is finished lay down wood chips. Call the tree company and ask them if they are doing a project near you and they will bring it to you more than likely. This is a way to copy the natural way forest make mulch to protect its soil. Just go and look in the woods and you will see the natural mulch. This happens all around us and people just don’t give it thought that soil is just plant matter broken down. But if you have time seriously go to you woods find a place where the natural mulch is and try to mimic that for your crops and within a couple of years you will not need to do much to it other than keep adding the natural mulch and make sure the wood chips are on top I’m sure you know that it takes extra nitrogen to break that down if it’s mixed in.

I’ve been trialing late summer / fall planting as we harvest. Taking a few potatoes from each plant we harvest then Inter plant between head lettuce (or anything really). So far it’s worked great. Easy to Inter plant, no saving seed all winter, and you can run a crop of baby greens over top after the head lettuce or whatever finishes and the potatoes won’t germinate until spring. I did an overwintered spinach on one bed and cropped it for a few weeks before it bolted / the potatoes sprouted as well. Curious if anyone else has played around with fall planting of potatoes. (Zone 4b in SE Idaho here)

RootMaker containers are meant for avoiding rootcircling and binding. From small ones to big ones for trees as option to winstrip containing.

Thank you for doing these trials and for sharing the results with us. Great stuff as always. I look forward to Monday's podcast. You're the man Jesse!

PS anywhere near the coast? Seaweed good mulch for taters (old Irish trick)!

For two years I've planted potatoes into bales hay and It seems to agree with them the hay that I use is mostly grass in the future I want more alfalfa in the hay for increase in potassium the bales I used were baled late fall and used as banking hay it's good for weed management I also didn't have as much pressure from CPB and I think drip tape would be a good way to water but I haven't tried on the bales almost forgot I used nettle tea and tea from other weeds for fertilizer and some compost on top of the bales.

We grow tulips in crates of promix over the winter. The crates are empty all summer so this year we tried growing potatoes (for our family, not commercially) in the spent media in our empty crate tunnel (small Haygrove style just to keep rain off). We used straw bales as walls to make hilling easier. No potato beetles but pathetic yield. We think the medium wasn't nutritious enough plus we're not sure if we chose appropriate varieties for our area. We're going to try again next year with different varieties and virgin 50-50 soil/compost landscaping mix that we'll then spread farm beds. It's viable on a garden scale. Not sure if it could scale up due to the cost of planting media.

I’m growing wild in a meadow this year and it has major challenges but it’s definitely an experimental approach with little by way of guidance so I REALLY appreciate you out there with your trials! Every screw up in my garden is a win ... next year... hahaha Thanks for your videos and your dry, honest wit.

I saw a video about planting potatoes with peas to prevent beetles

I like your weirdness! Some really great ideas. Thanks, from Nova Scotia

Great video mate! Regards from the UK :)

We grew potatoes on landscape cloth with mounds of seaweed

Thanks Jesse this was so on point, I've just bought a retro 12" push mower (it will out live me) to plant my pathways as it feels wrong to have bare soil scraped weekly that is so compact and it's wasting photosynthesis. I'm awaiting seed arrival but I'm going with 20% red clover, 50% selfheal and 30% thymus serpyllum to hopefully smother out any grasses. I was wondering if this would work and you've just made me realise, just do it!

Thanks!

Your potato comments made me laugh. Could it be they just need deeper planting into the soil plus compost and mulch? IDK but it could be worth a try. Thank you for sharing Peace and Blissings

The potato loss is a real disappointment. Last year 2020 I was lacking my own seed potatoes and purchased seed potatoes from a seed and farm supply I had never bought from before. I will never buy anything from them again. My potato bed was over taken so bad by potato beetle. I had never had potato beetle until last year 2020. The interesting this was I did have a handful of my own potatoes left that I cut eyes off from before using them in my dinner. I planted those out in another bed about 50 feet away and never saw one potato beetle on them the entire summer. This year I did not put out and potatoes in the spring and left that bed set all summer with nothing in it. I even kept the weeds out of that bed. I decided to put in some potatoes in a new bed this year at the end of July. Keep in mind I live in Northwest Minnesota, zone 3. By the end of August they were flowering. It has been shy of two months now and I have never had a more healthy vigorous bed of potatoes. If my harvest turns out to be as amazing as the top growth, I will never again plant potatoes in the spring. Also I have not seen even one potato beetle this year. I didn't do anything special with planting them out. I pulled back just enough soil to cover the potato and tossed a thin layer of hay over them to help with moisture control since we were having a severe drought this summer and it was in the mid to high 90's the end of July and most of August.. I hope you found what works for you this year will your potatoes.

I also having living pathways, I use yard grasses, would like to redo with white clover. Only mowed maybe twice, early summer. Love'in that concept. Crabgrass is a major pain in the butt. I see you have it also, Grrr. Could / should I "rotate" my living pathways with crop beds! Hmmmm. I think I saw in one of your videos your using a gas(?) edger on your pathway. How does that work out??? I don't have one anyway, don't know why I asked. Your videos are MOST helpful and a lot of thought provoking stuff.

I just subscribed! Feeling awesome. Love your humor and personality. I’m not giving you money yet though....to be continued.

🌱You could try a “stack” method of growing your potatoes maybe....like people do in tires (even tho they aren’t pretty) but u could stack “wooden frames” & add soil as the potatoes grow🌱🌿🌱🌱

nice tips

Good job great idea

I'm at the very beginning stage of observing my landscape, and have experimented with basic native cover crops. I haven't been able to get anything through the extreme squirrel/gopher/coyote/stray dog issue yet. Fencing is an issue due to the shape and easements. Glad you're doing this channel to show the difficulties and successes. I'm focusing heavily on natives for my landscape, drought resistant small scale food forest, and perennial market garden system mostly for my family. It's not easy to say the least sorting it all out, but, one trial and experiment at a time. I do find it very interesting how even trying to get native plants started from seed can be so difficult. Cuttings from native species doesn't seem any easier. 🙃

We would like to try a bed of extra early potatoes next year mulching with a layer of about 3" to 4" of wood chips. Followed by pole beans second half of May planted in the soil underneath the wood chips, followed by fall-sown fava beans, followed by a summer oats cover crop, crimped in the fall to plant garlic. Our hope is that at the time of garlic harvest (18 months after application) the wood chips would be decomposted enough to allow other crops to be planted. Final results expected by the fall of 2022.

Thanks for sharing all this stuff with us. It's almighty helpful. You deserve atleast your weight in blessings from heaven!!!

mow & plant sounds like a great idea. Hope you can perfect it.

Been loving your videos man! 1 suggestion for your no-till potatoes and your potato beetle issue: Check out Living Web Farms page. They have tons and tons of videos on no-till, composting, cover cropping etc. They have a video I watched in the last couple weeks about their no-till potatoes and how their cover cropping eliminated the beetles to almost nothing. I dont remember the video title but basically cover crops aren't necessarily all the ones you hear about. You need beneficial plants that bring in aphids and other beneficial bugs that will, in-turn, predate on the potato beetles. Also a suggestion based on other things Ive been preparing for cool season gardening is that you should try rolling or laying down your vetch etc and planting through that. When you flail, or regular mow, the particulates are much finer than whole stalks on the ground (so the soil isnt as protected). If you keep a cover crop on your soil at all times, you will get much better aggregation in your soil, get better infiltration, and hold more water, as well as increasing your organic content of your soil but up to 1% or so each year. You have to keep that soil cover (with vegetation, not plastic) to maintain the right ecology and soil microbiology. I haven't implemented any of this yet, this August will be my first go at improving my soil and doing no-till. Cheers and keep up the awesome videos. It is so helpful seeing people trial different ideas!

I grew the best crop of potatoes I’ve ever grown on a hugel bed this year. There was a lot of wood chips and the bed itself is two or 3 years old but it was a good success. Any way I just found your channel and I dig it, or I don’t dig it sense we’re no dig 😁.

Love the experimentation man as always. Good stuff :)

The potatoes really are tricky. I think the seed potato really wants to be planted at least 4” deep. That’s kind of how far down I usually have to dig to start seeing spuds. This year I planted my potatoes on a 30” bed I broadforked and amended in a small furrow and covered them with an inch of compost. Then made a small hill with a hoe over the top. Upon emerge I gave them a quick compost top dress and covered them with straw after weeding. I’ve certainly seen plenty of potato beetles but I’ve just gone through with a 5 gallon bucket and knocked the larvae in. Fed the larvae to the chickens. I’ve only irrigated once and that was after like 3 weeks of rain. The potatoes look healthy enough. I’m about to harvest my early red norlands this week for market. So I’ll see how much I actually get.

The Lamb’s Quarters is growing good where the potatoes are 👍🏼

This is the second year I've used an auger bit to plant potatoes (like the one in your No-Till Transplant Drill video). I go down a foot or more, and drop the seed in. I never have to hill, and use just enough mulch to cover the soil, but don't have to worry about tubers making an appearance towards the top. I've never tried planting anything else in the bed at the same time, but I don't see why I couldn't. The only time I tried side by side beds was last year (two 50' rows), and the drill and drop bed produced more poundage. Anecdotally, I think it was just because I got more consistently sized potatoes that were on the larger side, rather than more potatoes in total.

Maybe next time, try leaving the cover crop as is, mash down a 12-24" circular area, plant the squash in the center.

Thank you for your content!

I have to wonder if the grass ( in w the clover in the living pathways) would be negligible if this were done when the grass had already been eliminated more , like, my gramma's garden, tilled but always hand weeded throughout the season, w the weeds being hauled away every time, for years. In my experience, after just 2 seasons, you have wayy less, if doing this well. In my case, this has been w moving to no-til w mulches too. But, as Charles Dowding says they have an old saying in England " 1 yrs tilling, 7 yrs weeding" .. . I wonder if smothering pathways w cardboard, mulching with grass clippings etc. for a season, then sow clover into it next yr ..top w a little compost if need be ... how that would work. I plan to try several things when we get our own place again ( growing in pots in apt. for now).

The potato thing worked for me on small scale. 3 x 50 ft rows. At some point you have to remulch it.

Interesting video. Jesse, instead of mowing before transplanting, have you tried crushing the covercrop and then transplant ?

I love these videos Jesse! Question: Why do ginger growing tips fail to 'unfurl' properly? In this video, at about 5:13, I see what appears to be a ginger about 20 inches tall with it's growing tips curling back into previous leaves. I have the same issue with unfurling while growing indoors under lights, but once I transplant outdoors (Boulder, CO), the new leaves unfurl properly.

I do my potatoes in a raised bed, 30in x 8ft. Potatoes on the ground and then cover with soil, compost. Growing really good. Have harvested new potatoes already. Other half will be storage. I am having a heck of a time with cucumber beetles, they are everywhere. Yellow traps not working....any tips?

Check out Charles dowding no till potatoes! My potatoes were a complete fail also, the straw I layered heavy on top had many rye or barley seeds in it and took over. Had a huge problem with flea nettle also:(

11:26 my potatoes got destroyed by beetles this year, but I still got a lot of potatoes

Good job bro

Keep it rockin!

You can even eat the slips of the sweet potato. It is edible.

Lot of good stuff in this one. I think I'll be growing sweet potatoes next year so I'll be trying that trick. Can you tell me what spacing you're using? And I dig the hat, where did that come from?

Love your experimental approach to growing. Try some ideas, reflect, repeat. Do you have or recommend any videos on insect control? Would love to see what is and isn't work at your scale. Maybe learn a thing or two to apply. Thank you for the videos!!!

When did you mow the rye and fetch for the okra?

Ruth Stout method for no till potatoes!

Spray spray Spraaaaaay

Some o' that Homsteader Math, right? 20% extra on 200 pounds is 40 pounds extra per row, right? 240 ... not 220.

Do living pathways harbor pests, bad bug critters?

what do you use the blue barrels for? I have several!

No-Till Rapper "Sweet potato- Dent corn, Sweet potato, sweet potato - Dent corn."

Thanks for sharing! I'm surprised you could just mow vetch and rye and then replace without the vetch and rye coming back. Also, thanks for sharing the lesson of what not to do. These are extremely valuable as well. As for potatoes no till, I just used a dibber and popped potatoes into soil then covered. Added leaves as a mulch when needed for temperatures. Back to Reality used Ruth Stout's method with tons of straw or maybe hay--great success for them.

Woot! I did my sweet potatoes right! What variety of dent corn are you growing? I've been trialing different grain corns for baking and I'm still looking for Goldilocks. We give pumpkin seeds to our chickens and grow extra males out in tractors, so we get rogue pumpkins growing all over the place. We grow tan cheese pumpkins, seminoles, and old tennessee vining pumpkins because they are very resistant to SVB, cucumber beetles, and squash bugs. My best potatoes this year grew in a old fridge that we turned into a planter. It's under an apple tree and the volunteer potato was growing under some takinogawa burdock that we're trying. It was a yukon gold and it produced 8 good tubers with no help from me, whereas the ones I planted in the ground and mulched only averaged 4 per plant. Edibleacres up in NY is trialing 3 different ways to plant potatoes ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XYL4B6KlvyM.html

I have been told by an elder that they have had HUGE success growing sweet potato in nothing but woodchips. I'm sure this wouldn't be easy at your scale but something to chew on...

Prince Hairy potatoes.

Great video! Wish I could get away with dry farming...

Hey Jessie, whats in those blue barells ?

Have you read 'Gardening without Irrigation' by Steve Solomon?

watch out for that ant pressure in those fields. they spread aphids and are screwing you. always make sure you get fruit up when you can.

Treatment of cover crop before planting brassicas?

"just can't help myself..."

what is a good source for ginger to be used as seed?

The only living path. I always do a cover crop and keep planting into it. Since the seed is so damn cheap.

Also gotta enjoy that 200 pounds +20% = 220Pounds :D Age old rule. Don't math on camera! Never ends well.

“Hey Ding Dong!”

For no-till potato I suggest to look YT channel "Franz Grötschl". First video is here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OP-lCtMv30o.html , up to now he has 4 updates. It is in German language.

I doubt the (intentionally stunted, trod upon) living pathways make up a meaningful part of the overall photosynthesis of the garden, compared with (intentionally vibrant, fast growing, deep rooting) annual vegetables. Their biomass and growing conditions are just miniscule by comparison and the issues arising as a cost seem to be out of proportion. The fact that you mow the grass this regularly means it can't really root to any significant depth, barely secrete any sugars and so on. Its a step above dirt, but a small step for quite a bit of hassle. I think you do pretty good with mulched paths, they can still be rooted into by the crops and the mulch decomposing still builds soil.

Are you based out of Kentucky

hey look mushrooms