I don't understand how you don't have a million followers! I love that you analyze both successes and failures. Your plans give me creative ideas for my own garden and your energy seems boundless! Congratulations for a great channel!
Thanks! A million subscribers would be great! Really glad to hear that my work and plans help with your own garden. Hope you have a good growing season.
Thank you for everything you do. Indeed, it’s extremely worthwhile. The quality of your content is completely unmatched by any other RU-vidr I’ve come across. Your data driven approach and willingness to try new methods (rather than dogmatically push a single preferred method) are truly commendable. I hope you consider adding labor to the mix so you can stay up on all these projects and avoid wrecking your body…but I understand any hesitation with doing so as labor exploitation, especially in farming, is far too common. Keep up the great work!
Thank you for the comment. I means a lot to know that people really appreciate the work I do! Getting in help is a tricky one for me, for the reasons you mention, and also that managing people and organising all the tasks for others to do is a heavy task for my brain. At the moment, I suspect my mental capacity to deal with more people involved is possibly more of a risk of being wrecked than my body with the work! But I do plan to call in help from friends when I have a lot of heavy work to do.
Thanks again Bruce for another fascinating video. It makes my allotment plans for 2023 seem minuscule. I wonder if more local young people could join you as there are some many educational aspects to your work , knowledge and skills to share. Finally, it would be useful to know what impact all the food you grow has had on your local community in terms of affordability, variety etc. A big subject I know, sorry. Good luck for 2023.
Just know, To some of us you and your efforts are educational and an inspiration to us. Thank you. We look forward to this years trials and experiments along with the results.
Huge thank you for all of your hard work and more importantly, inspiration! Love every video, tip, success, failure, analysis. This channel is enormously powerful. I still remember back when you challenged all of us to also be teachers, mentors, providers etc. doing my part and so stoked for 2023 gardening season from Philadelphia PA
If you are going to use the chickens to produce compost ....you're going to love it. That's how I do it and I keep my rabbits in the run as well for all the manures to blend with the soil. I'm excited to see the progress.
Really appreciate you sharing your time and plans with us. Especially, this video seeing the whole of Red Gardens and Black Plot, which I didn’t know existed. Wishing Red Gardens wonderful success and experiences for 2023 onward 😊
So much to do, so little time. I really appreciate your approach of testing / trialing to see what works in your setting without being dogmatic about it as other commentators already said. But what I am most thankful for is your showing and accepting failures / mishaps or "running out of steam". That gives your channel a unique authenticity I see in very few others. And it definately helps me coping with my projects that don't work out as planned ;-).
Thanks for the comment. Good to hear you appreciate the failures, it is tough to present that stuff to the whole world, but I think it is important, especially if it helps other people deal with their own struggles.
I love what you’re doing, your ethos, studies, and the way you present it. Thanks for sharing it through RU-vid for those of us far away. I’m in the state of West Virginia in the Unite States
Thank you for that comment. It means a lot that people appreciate how I approach all of this. Hello there in West Virginia! I went on a camping holiday to your state when I was a boy, don't remember much apart from enjoying it.
Wow, Bruce. You will certainly have lots of work on your plate this year. Always a pleasure to view your plans and thoughts for this large garden area. Thanks for all the work and videos.
Im very excited to see how the new (old perennial plot) goes. this is the way I am moving with my own garden. also exited to see the development of the black plot. looking forward to more marvellous content, trials, and insights this year. thanks dude.
I'm also interested in how that new garden will develop, though I think it will be quite a few years before I get any real sense of being able to self sustain.
Looking forward to watching your progress over the next year, you present the most knowledgeable and down to earth gardening videos on RU-vid. Thanks and continued success.
I have an allotment, and I love the learning that it provides me more than maybe the actual doing part of it. So your videos are very interesting to me. I think you're providing a very balanced and realistic form of learning and adapting that even small gardens can consider.
You have a brilliant channel that is immensely useful to me as I help start a community garden in Scotland. Thanks for all the honest and valuable information. You’re an inspiration 👍
Love thinking about the next season during the cold wet months of winter. We have slightly less ambitious plans - HA! - but will be installing two more raised beds in our very limited inner city plot this spring. We'd just installed four raised beds last year and had good results and some lessons learned. Truly appreciate your content - the methodical approach and insights gained.
Bruce, I hope some day you're going to write a book about your experiments with different small-scale gardens types. Plenty of in-depth books about, say, "No Till" but I don't think a work comparing 6 fundamentally different gardening concepts exists. Of course you channel is a chronicle/testament to your brilliant work. Rock on!
Every once in a while, I stumble on something worth watching on the internet. You're it my friend! I have always loved gardening, but haven't really been successful at it. I think I just need to put in the work and learn. Thank you for all you do!
Thank you. This was awesome, I look forward to seeing your results. I have a much smaller set of ambitions in my garden for this year. potatoes, an herb garden, and getting berries established.
That's LOT ow work! I hope your team grows with the scale of the project! As always, very ambitious, extremely data-driven, it will be a pleasure to watch your progress this year!
Yeah, it is a LOT. one of the main limitations for the project is my ability to work with other people. I like having people around but I find it difficult managing people especially with lots of little tasks.
@@REDGardens Perhaps some form of structure for example a board with task that need to be done would ease the management? Then all you need to do is update the board, let's say divide it by the importance to tasks that need to be done now, tasks that can be started and upcoming tasks? Then it would be easier for additional people to pick up tasks on the go? Assuming they have the skills and knowledge required. Just a suggestion:)
@@Reyvinn92 Thanks for the suggestion. My own experience working with people in boards, and organisations has been frustrating, and something I am definitely trying to avoid these days. The tis one of the issue living in an intentional community, as we do, there are loads of meetings and groups, and possibilities to get frustrated! I am currently taking a break from all of that.
RED Gardens. Nobody will do as good a job as you yourself. I prefer to do it all myself so I can learn from whatever I am seeing. Love your videos and your gardens. Some great ideas. This has been a very unusual season for me here in New Zealand. Climate change is showing itself and a lot of plants are quite confused. Hope you have a great season.
It is going to be a fantastic year! My goals are to go big on pickling cucumbers and to ferment pickles using several different bacterial cultures with a few sour beer yeasts as well. My experiments the last couple of years with spontaneous ferments haven't been what I had hoped for with lots of bad tasting pickles. So here is some hope that pure cultures will make all the difference! Can't wait to see your progress with the gardens in the coming months!
If there's one thing that reliably brings me excitement every winter, it's planning next year's garden. I could jump out of my chair and do a little dance after hearing about your plans 😄
The extensive method has become my favorite, with the exception of double digging. I'm happy to see the switch to just forking the extensive plot. Also, organic matter falling into holes left after root crop harvest, should help compost and surface ammendments fall in deeper.
Yes, I got tired just listening. Now that I'm pushing 70 I've decided this year to retire from market gardening and just focus all my growing on the things my partner and I like to eat, reducing quantities and getting rid of some things Ive grown for market. As part of that I'm taking my biggest greenhouse, about 10mx20m, and converting it to fruit. In our climate cherries, peaches, apricots, almonds and such are hard to grow due to disease caused by the constant winter rains, and figs are marginal and get eaten by birds, so I've planted rows of all those fruit trees in there and Im really looking forward to seeing how they do in my giant "fruit cage". Figuring out how to reduce labor over the long term is a key component to being able to keep going as long as possible, it does take its toll on you over the years.
Oh, I do look forward to the time when I can just grow for my own self and enjoyment. I think that will be quite a few more years, but I think I would also grow a lot of fruit and more interesting things in the polytunnels!
Thanks for posting your high quality content. The data you share is so valuable as are your experiences. I'm having a hard time imagining how you have time to do all this work with only one other person helping you. And now you are planning for more. Irrigation will be such a time saver, once you have it dialled in. It could also be a way to deliver fertility. Its important to keep monitoring it though as sometimes there are failures and especially with subsurface weepers it can be hard to timely detect. In recent years I've been moving more towards minimising reliance of off site fertility in-puts in my small veg garden by utilising one time inputs like biochar, and zeolite and then utilising things like lacto acid aided compost tea amendments and of course hot composts. But I will still take advantage of being able to bring in off site materials like horse manure or leaves etc as I run into them. The one thing I do rely on horse manure for though is to heat my tiny green house with. Depending on availability, I will count backwards about 4-6 weeks from anticipated plant out date to start the approximately 3/4 cubic metre hot compost. If I have enough for a second batch, I will stockpile and start 4-6 weeks earlier. Ideally from about now forward ( USDA zone 8b ) I can start baby greens and other cool weather tolerant plants.
Thanks for sharing your own experiences and methods. It is so great to hear what other people are doing, especially using horse manure to heat the growing space. That is awesome!
Any name ideas for the new garden area in place of the perennial garden? "The Regenerative Garden" has a decent ring to it. Thank you as always for all of your hard work and dedication
Have you thought about an inexpensive mulcher for the garden waste? Mulching the compostable material prior to adding it to the pile should encourage it to break down sooner.
The new garden (old permaculture garden) really intrigues me. What it calls to mind are the recent things i've been watching about the liquid carbon pathways and quorum sensing. The point being that life begets life. More solar collection, more species.
A good side-of-tunnel gutter system is simply trenching along the side, laying the plastic down in the trench and putting field drain down that plastic lined trench to a sump at each end.
Thank you, Bruce for sharing your very ambitious plans for 2023. Your content is very interesting to me, as I have been active on my own 100’ x 115’ plot since 2018. My own struggle to compile and generate compost, control weeds, minimize plastic, irrigate, and to extend the growing season through the use of a poly-tunnel are all topics which you have always addressed in your increasingly extensive canon of videos. Thank you also for turning me on to Crown Prince f1 squash, which doesn’t seem to be available here in Canada. I’ve been ordering seeds from overseas and had good success initially, but my 2021 crop suffered cross-pollination/unreliable seed results you’ve also documented recently. Keep up the excellent work!
While we definitely need irrigation in this cool Mediterranean climate, the biggest advantage of it in my view is automatic memory. The timer always comes on, and if you notice a deficit a simple adjustment fixes it. Drip irrigation, which I use, is very efficient, though it is fiddly. Someone called it "Lego for gardens".
@@REDGardens Actually, come to think of it, I would think automatic watering was almost obligatory when you are trialing vegetables. Eliminates a critically important variable. On another topic, I am surprised at your lack of success with Festival, a Delicata - Acorn squash hybrid, which has always done well for me in a climate much like yours. I think you should put it in your squash trials again. I'll get you some.
Lovely. It’s heartwarming to see such productive gardening. Did you say if you were going to add in any grain crops? Like millet, amaranth or buckwheat etc. You’ve got plenty of space.
How do you manage to keep track of all these projects! Amazing work. I've been developing my little plot for 8 years now. It's on a terraced mountainside in the Italian alps, very acidic and free-draining, shallow soil over bedrock. Lots of organic input, largely home produced compost. Wood ash to increase the pH, home produced hay mulch to keep the soil moisture in the summer, drip lines (gravity fed) and 10,000 litres of water storage from rainfall and a spring. I have a 25 square metre poly tunnel with sides that open, because it's much too hot in the summer otherwise but keeps tomatoes, etc. disease free. So far I have found that a no dig system is good, but not perfect. So I use a combination of low tillage, with some soil aeration, no dig, and crop rotation. This winter I tried some cover crops, but with little success as a really sharp frost damaged most of them irreparably. Plus, I do seed save, and have developed a couple of good, reliable landrace varieties (peas and tomatoes), largely by accidental cross pollination. I'm limited in the amount I can do, there's only me doing it and I'm not far off 70!
It does take a lot of planning and spreadsheets! Sounds like a nice setup you have, thanks for sharing your experiences. I'd love to have a place in the alps!
You seem to use a lot of extra fertilisers,like Charles Dowding I rely mainly on home grown fertilisers,compost rockdust,charcoal and liquid manures,plus a little bought in b,f,b , liquid seaweed,and a couple bags of organic compost,I'm only small scale,not very intense,but my soil quality seems to improve yearly,with abundant results,and not too many failures,I'm moving towards no dig,as it makes complete sense now,but I was initially resistant to it,luck plays its part and we all learn a lot from each other,keep going,and good luck.
I manage quite a few different growing spaces, and each one uses a different source of fertility. Some rely on compost alone, and others have a lot of concentrated amendments. But I have been shifting to using more concentrated fertiliser because of the scale I am working at, as it just makes things easier and more predictable.
Absolutely love this channel, I can highly recommend putting in a 'Landrace garden' it has been pretty incredible for me, zero amendments whatsoever just mow the grass short and rip rows into it for straight sowing. Gather as many varieties/cultivars of whatever vegetable you want to grow with no inputs (in my case kale and peas) then let natural selection do the work for you, whatever survives and makes viable seed gets added to the next generation. I'm on my 5th season and now have bomb proof upright tree like kales and abundant shelling peas with absolutely no inputs, not even water or mulch.
I've been researching this since I saw your message. I found Joseph Lofthouse on RU-vid and several videos about Landrace Gardening. This is an amazing topic! Very much looking forward to trying it out myself!
@@REDGardens I found this video if you're interested, which gives a good rundown of the general principal of the Landrace Garden, as stated by Joseph Lofthouse. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-SyXaSeCIl2A.html
@@Marialla. Joseph Lofthouse has been a big inspiration for my shift in thinking, he’s doing some brilliant work with tomato’s and garlic too. I’m expanding the Landrace selection into several bean species this year, especially Soya and Runner beans. I’m in northern England so I want to diversify what I can produce here with minimal inputs.
hi , for the tomato, we can say that the N=2PK rule for growth stage and 2N=PK for flowering stage works well. If you want to go further during flowering at the beginning, for the production of flowers: P=2K, after 30-40 days when there are flowers and fruits at the same time P=K and at the end, when it remains in majority of fruits that ripen: 2P=K (In summary, it makes P=2K, P=K, 2P=K). Example for flowering, the NPK ratios are 2-4-4 or 4-8-8 for 2N=PK. For trace elements, one dose in growth and two doses in flowering. Calcium & magnesium ratio: 5:1 (Dolomite, 1-1.5gr/L of substrate + epson salt 0.1gr/L water in flowering). It lacks more than the sulfur that you can find in epsom salt which is also rich in magnesium (I imagine that you know it), I add some in the water, from the formation of the first fruits during watering (0.1gr/L) one watering out of two. Ph of substrat/soil : 6.3 - 6.8 . Your youtube videos are great. So Polyter, cellulose crystals that absorb water, what do you think? Best Regards
The ratio NPK 2N=PK for flowering works for all dicotyledons 😉. Below pH 6.4, calcium and magnesium are blocked . Pay attention to the pH of your soil. calcium and magnesium lime are good. See ya
Thanks for the recommendations. We have calcareous soils which are naturally high pH of about 7.4 to 7.6, which really can't be shifted without a huge amount of sulphur.
@@REDGardens you can try ph down bottle ( "pH Down is a powerful pH corrector 75% phosphoric for nutritive solution" and is P rich solution ) or Streptomyces bacteria ( Like compost tea concentrate : Soil Balance Pro , in europe i think is sepixa ) Best Regards
I feel tired just watering my window boxes. Lol. Thanks for your great overview of the growing areas. Great good luck for the season and best wishes, Bruce.
I'm planning on trying the Three Sisters this year too! I'm using Oaxacan green dent corn, Tarbais beans, and buttercup squash. I'll be interested to see your take on the method. I'm not entirely convinced it's going to be the miracle method it's touted as, but I'm curious to see how it performs.
Excellent plans for this year. I'm looking forward to your findings. I'd like to know how you process and store all the grown food, and it might be a nice short video to cover your methods. Thanks for all your insight, and keep on keeping on.
I am especially interested to see the results of your fertility self-sufficient garden! What I see as a problem with organic gardening methods is a failure to incorporate the negative material and energy externalities of their methods. Although these comparisons could be remedied with better accounting, this kind of a garden will also be a good way to understand how much fertility gets imported.
Hi Bruce love the work you do. I have three questions for you which could be video topics of their own: 1) Polytunnel ventilation/temperature management. I'm in the Canadian Prairies, and keeping things cool is as big of a challenge for much of the summer as keeping things warm, and I'd love to hear about your experiences on that front. 2) Finding suppliers or developing alternative materials. I've been having trouble finding affordable cover fabric and netting and what not, and I'd love to know your philosophy on these tools, and ways you go about finding alternatives when things are hard to get. 3) Organization. I'm an agent of chaos and I'm envious of your ability to keep things so tangible and uniform such that the space is optimized. My main garden helper's primary job is to reign in my chaos. I'd love to hear more about your organizational strategies for things like e.g. determining bed layout and keeping plants clearly labelled and the like.
Hi there. 1) I don't have much experience with polytunnels being too hot, as we rarely have that kind of heat here in Ireland. I have heard that putting shade cloths over even part of the tunnel can really help, but it seems that ventilation with fans is the main option other people use. 2) I am fairly fortunate as I have a supplier in Ireland who brings in a lot of stuff I might need, so it tends to be a one-stop-shop (online shop with delivery), for most things. There are a few things I want to try that they don't stock, so I usually just end up buying online from Germany or Holland. 3) My brain likes order, but I don't always follow through and a lot of things tend to get messy. Having Kris working with me has helped this, as she is also very focused, and we need to have everything tabled and laid out properly so that she can keep track of things. Getting it all out of my brain, and into spreadsheets, and planting plans, and keeping things in a fairly straightforward system really helps with that.
If you want to establish a perennial garden, don't you think it would have been a good idea to cover the ground with something (permanently), to inhibit the weeds? :) Ideally in the fall, but spring works, too - well - in climates where winter is winter :) - so, I guess, anywhere in between fall and spring :) Weed fabric, a foot of wood chips, 2-3 feet of straw... I really wish you had more on the 3 sisters.
Planning to try to grow the three sisters both inside a polytunnel and outside this year, but I don't have high hopes for good results from the plants outside because of the cool climate here in Ireland.
Clean the weed layer,cultivate+fertilise and then plant your crops.. You won't see much weed problem. Btw, Marigold remains when put to ground for decomposition process controls weed growth.
Your take on cover crops would be interesting :) Maybe with a control without cover crops, and soil tests (before and after + control) to get some sciency facts as well?
Very nice. Have you seen Patrick with OneYardRevolution on Polyculture? He doesn’t make new videos, but I learned nearly all I know from him, then some from Gaustchi (Back to Eden) and Dowding (No dig). I tried companion planting for AGES and found no benefit other than flowers do help! Which shocked me. I only used to focus on things I could eat. But some flowers really did help. Happy Harvests Bruce! And I get burnt out at the end of the growing season too (Western Washington- so I believe we’re a similar maritime climate).
Maybe grow a small bed with the compost you produce yourself, that way you'll know if it's the no dig or the municipal compost. Does the municipality says what's in that compost and if any component has been sprayed?
I'd be interested to see if tiller/daikon radish does a good job of helping to prep unbroken ground, as part of the "growing your own soil amendments" idea. No pressure of course! You've got enough going on. But I've always been curious about its potential.
I wish you were my neighbour! I'd be a good source of next to free labour. (Free as long as you don't count taste testing veggies after they've been weighed)
Wow So exciting! Glad to got some help! In business we would say Automate automate automate. Hopefully you have some time to have some fun too. I mean i find this fun, too =)
You seem to be growing in what seems like compost with some additions, if so you shouldn't need to double dig at all. Diego Footer did an experiment and eventually concluded it's not worth it if you have enough good soil deep enough.
I do know it's not really any of my business but I do wonder about how much money this all costs you, and your thoughts on what is worth the money and what isn't. As always love the channel.
Interesting question. The way I approach this project is that it is something that I need to do because I think it is very important and hopefully useful. I am in a position in life where I can dedicate a lot of time to this because our financial outgoings are quite low (mainly due to luck, privilege, some good decisions, and a lot of sacrifices). The project needs to be able to bring in enough money so that I don't need to get distracted trying to get additional income from elsewhere, and continue to have Kris work with me. If I was to compare the amount of work that I put in, and the amount of money I have been able to earn over all of these years, it would be way below minimum wage!
Do you grow at your house? I feel like, if you did it would be kratky hydro or something. Low to no maintenance. Thank you for the content throughout the years!
You have rodent issues. Do they ever damage the drip lines in your hoop houses? Voles, rats, squirrels and insects all bite holes in my outside driplines in the dry season. I greatly reduced the rat and squirrel damage by setting bowls in the ground under the driplines in a few places. The drip is enough to keep the bowls full for the rats and squirrels. The voles dig tunnels along the length of the lines and bite large holes in the underside of the lines. If it weren't for two house cats and a family of barred owls, I think the voles would have destroyed everything.
After I saw how great the soil under your composting facility has become I wondered if you could place it in one of the gardens and move it every year?
