I watched one of your videos last year and decided to forego landscape fabric and placed a very thick layer of 6" of leaves and arborist mulch and my garden looks fantastic this year. No weeds and tons of earthworms. Thank you for this information.
We just took out the plastic on our entire property. We discovered that there were actually MORE weeds where the plastic was. It seems to be that the weeds thrive where the soil health is low.
Another benefit o leaving the stems in place is giving some hibernating insects a home in winter. Ladybugs, for example, hibernate in hollow plant stems. Lovely video ❤
Leaf mulch really is the way to go. My trees don't give me nearly enough to make all the beds I want to make, so this Autumn I will put out a call to folks and see if I can get donations! To help hold down the leaves, the best thing I've found to do is use the little twigs that fall off trees. None of the twigs are bigger round than a pencil, but they're just a little heavier than the wind can pick up, and easy enough to pick up and move out of the way when it's time to dig. I did this on an exposed slope bed that I made up this past Autumn and it's still holding leaves about 6" thick, whereas the bed I made around the oak tree that's on flat ground.... the leaves are barely more than an inch deep and weeds are everywhere! Little limbs make a big difference.
@@chrissyblais2254 I don't think so, except that it makes more work for you. I've seen people put their leaves through a shredder to break them down a little bit so they lay flatter and pack down. That's good, imo, because it makes it harder for the wind to pick them up and blow them away. Also gives a more uniform look to the beds. What I do is simply rake/blow the leaves on to the bed and then use twigs to hold them down since I have twigs aplenty. If you put the leaves in a pile somewhere else to "age" a bit, you then have to move them to the bed eventually. Seems to me like that's 2 moves instead of just the one to get them on the bed as soon as they fall. If they have to compost or break down, I'd rather they do it right where they are going to spend their lives, building up the soil in the bed itself instead of in a bin off in a corner of the yard somewhere.
I am so grateful for the timing of this video! My husband and I just bought a home and I have my first garden space. While working to pull up the old landscaping fabric yesterday I found a layer of plastic sheeting a couple of centimeters underneath. I’ve never seen that before, and can’t imagine how inactive my soil is from that point down. I have lots of learning and work ahead of me, and I think this was a great start. Thank you! ☺️
I've spent a season removing stone & plastic sheet. There is no life. So compacted I had trouble getting a pitchfork in the ground. Good news though. Eventually tilled it and added 1" of top-mulch and 100+ starts. One month later I have soil life.
@@tomallison7416 I’m all ears (eyes?) if you’ve got any great tips! All of my seeds I planted before this discovery have sprouted, but seem to really be struggling. I scattered a bunch of buckwheat seed in a section of my garden to start tilling in once it does its thing and it has already greatly improved the hydrophobia of that area so I scattered more yesterday! I read that it’s a nitrogen fixer, and it adds a lot of great organic matter to the soil when you till it in. Bonus ground cover if the deer will give it a bit more of a chance to take root! 😂
Where in Colorado? I'm in Windsor, SE of Fort Collins. I am so excited to find more Colorado farmers and gardeners. Thanks for using organic methods and telling everyone about how to do it!
Mulch! We use this technique extensively in the high desert because it's essential to combat the wind and super high UV indexes. It's a bonus that it's so effective at controlling weeds. Great information in your video.
I may have missed it but I was eagerly waiting to hear your tip for bindweed :D :D my nemesis! Any info or tips on how to conquer this weed would be amazing - thank you for showing all the steps of the mulching rather than just talking about it! Very helpful!
So glad I "stumbled" upon your channel a few weeks back. Surely not a stumble so much as an algorithm, but I'm glad I found you regardless of how. I'm actually just finishing up an online lecture series at a local university all about biodiversity & regenerative agriculture. Love your channel. Nice to see someone else who gardens with her bare hands. I own more gloves than I should yet always end up carrying them in my pocket as they just get too annoying.
Here in Louisiana I can add my green grass clippings straight into my garden in little thick piles around plants and fruit trees and the heat, humidity, crickets, worms, pill bugs and microbes quickly break them down into rich soil and I have to mow about every 3 to 4 days so I`m constantly adding more. I also mow over leaves in spring and fall and add pine straw, forest soil, leaf mold, twigs, weeds etc. I scattered organic fertilizer with 20 added soil microbes and bone meal and some organic lime pellets too because our soil is acidic and I wanted to add some minerals to the mix. I noticed tubers needed these to form. I`m slowly building layers of rich soil and I don`t till. I may loosen the soil some if needed to mix in very rich leaf mold some or dig a small hole for transplants but that`s it. I also leave the roots of plants in the ground and cut the plant stems when I need to remove them. And something is always growing 365 days a year and usually a variety of things are planted together because I`m always experimenting and filling in empty spaces.
It's an interesting idea. I tilled some ground last year and failed to maintain it and Johnson grass or whatever popped up that I couldn't tell from the corn in tried to plant. I let it grow super tall and then mowed it over at the end of the season and it's done a good job of suppressing weeds in year 2. This year I'm looking for cover crops to go crazy with at the end of the season and hope to create a mulch next year. I've thought about running around on garden waste days and fill my truck with bags of people's leaves.
Thank you! Wow this vid spoke to me and was so informative. I’m a fan of bagged leaves, leaf mulch and composting. Great tips and demos using Myco, planting seeds and plants. Can’t wait for the upcoming lessons on bindweed control. Much needed! God bless you!
Thanks for your Information,always appreciated! The leaf mulch Idea is almost a no brainer,since my Property is 80%Bush I too will go back to mulching!😄 Thanks for reminding me ,Nature knows best. Hello from Canada Ontario.😀
I had gotten some landscape fabric and am now returning it. I am so glad I saw this - just in time. HOWEVER, I have tried leaf mulching in the past using my own leaves and ended up spreading a huge problem of spider mites! I am going to look for arborist chips to mulch my rows as the woodier product does not seem to spread insect issues.
I’m so grateful for you and your work on real conservation. I’m currently reading the book;”THE LIGHT EATERS “ by ZOE SCHLANGER. She goes into the micro study of what is good for our soil and the communication of our plants.
I prefer chopped leaves since they seem to stay put better. I just use my push mower to mow once and then put the catcher bag on to pick them up when I mow a second time.
Love this. Thank you. My friend is a farmer and uses plastic cover and then burns holes in it. I don’t agree with that method. I know why they do it… horrible weeds. But it just doesn’t seem earth friendly. I also have to mention that your outfit is so amazing. Where do you find such beautiful clothes?
Thank you maam. The bindweed in my area looks like morning glory. What kind of bindweed is it you seem to have. Also I've been using wood mulch for years but the squash bugs and other pests seem to winter over in it. What to do about that. Thank you
Great information as always -- thank you! Mulching my garden is one of my favorite things to do! ;) What are the flowering shrubs in between your garden rows? Gorgeous farm, thanks again!
Great video!!! it left me feeling both inspired and a bit overwhelmed. Over the past week and a half, I’ve distributed wood chips throughout my extra-large backyard perimeter garden. My motivation stems from the poor state of my soil-compacted and predominantly composed of Colorado clay. However, I constantly remind myself that soil improvement takes time and patience. I eagerly signed up for a substantial wood chip delivery through ChipDrop this year. In a friendly “fight” with my husband, I successfully advocated against using landscape fabric in our walkways-thankfully, he now understands its drawbacks. My current concern revolves around whether I’ve inadvertently crowded out and compromised my planting areas. Could I have unintentionally created a nitrogen-deficient environment? While I lack a designated compost bin, I still distribute /bury kitchen scraps and covered the perimeter with leaves and grass clippings all throughout last fall. My hope is that this organic layer between the soil and wood chips will provide viable planting options, but I remain apprehensive about the well-being of any plants I attempt to grow. If you have any insights or suggestions, I’d greatly appreciate them 😊
I love what you are doing! Would you ever use grass clippings as a mulch too? I have been driving around my neighbourhood collecting leaves since watching this 🍁 😊
Regarding putting the leaves on in the spring, rather than spreading them in the fall - I'm curious why you use that timing? I have always put them on in the fall, allowing them the winter to compost in place. In the spring I'll pull them back from perennial beds or if I'm sowing annual seeds , leaving the leaves in the walkways and putting the excess into a compost pile.
Hi! Do you have any suggestions for remeding a plot that has a really serious horsetail infestation? Thank you for your interesting and educational channel😊🌷
I used to do put heavy mulch on my garden and was very content with how it worked. HOWEVER, all that has changed now that I have an infestation of Asian Jumping Worms.😫😩😖 Any time I put organic matter down I just felt as if I was providing a buffet for them to grow and reproduce. 😡 SO now I have metal raised beds and weed barrier on all the other areas. Would be interested in hearing from others who have these horrible worms and how they are managing the problem.
Greetings, your work is beautiful. Thank you for the information. ❤️ I live in South Carolina where the soil is sand, and if there's grass, six inches of loamy sand. Do you believe your methods would be effective here ? Many Blessings ☯️🌷💜🙏🕉📿
Hello! I'm thinking about using sweet peas as a cover crop:: at what point in their growth would I need to mow them to release the nitrogen? Thank you!
I really like the idea of deep mulch - but we really struggle with slugs and snails. When we started the garden we didn't have enough material for an overall deep mulch cover, so i set up clover path ways, and mulched the beds with hay and straw - but I really struggle with slugs and snails - I really don't mind the weeds - you get those out pretty easily. I wonder how the snail/slug situation is in your area and if commiting to deep mulch overall (and getting rid of the clover path ways) will do the trick.
Depends on the crop but yes many work that way! Peas are great because they don’t like the heat so whacking them down basically at any point heading into summer, they may regrow but barely. Other crops can be killed this way and planted into too, but they need to be at the right stage-typically they need to be just starting to flower when you cut them down for them to be killed by it!
What do you do with the plastic bags that the leaves are stored in after you use them? Don't they start to break down in place as well while they are storing leaves? Looking for more sustainable solutions myself so just curious.
We typically only store them in there for a few months so that’s not long enough for me to be concerned about breakdown. We just dispose of them, they would have ended up in landfill if we didn’t take them so it’s still better-we get donations of the disposable bags but I usually put those in our lead towers as those bags break down before winter is over.
These are called Tribulus terrestris . And the burs are called Rununculus falcutus. No, they are not edible they are poisonous to us and animals. Goats, cows sheep, etc. Thanks for your reply though.
@@v1kohle my grandparents have sand burs. They get into the carpet. I suggested they remove the carpeting. They did except for the bedrooms. It's terrible to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and step on one of those monsters. I always stop by a gas station on the way home and pick everyone I find off and throw in the trash can. I try to get them all before I leave their house but I usually miss some. I look at my carpet in the car. I don't want to bring those things home!
I've got very mixed feelings about the suppression of ALL "weeds"... Isn't a regenerative garden supposed to be biodiverse? In my garden at the moment the only flowering plants to attract pollinators in my garden are the so called weeds (dandelions, dead nettle, nettle, some perfumed nettle, clover ) which are in fact medicinal plants and by being perennials we know that they dig deep, loosing hard soils and bring nutrients to the neighbours plants, fixate nitrogen plus the dandelions are known to be pioneers who volunteer to fix the soil problems and they disappear once they've done their job? So now why should we be killing or suppressing them, it doesn't really make sense to me... What I do I leave them for now, as I said being the only flowers in the garden until the planted flowers bloom, and then just cut them and use them as green mulch. So I don't know how to integrate what you're talking about with what I'm doing...I'm proper 😕😕🤔
It depends on the weed. As I mention I don’t really worry about dandelion but most of our weeds are nonnative and outcompete anything native we are trying to establish, especially in this scale. Bindweed for example is classified as one of the worlds most noxious weeds and if you have it, you know why. It will climb, suffocate, and kill any plant you’re trying to establish! Hoary cress, clover are also nonnative and can become incredibly detrimental to ecological gardening. We have native “weeds,” plants such as chokecherries, American plums, hyssops, asters, and yarrow that sucker and spread aggressively but the difference is they are native and don’t threaten the plants we are trying to establish. Plus, with over 200 varieties of plants in this space I’m not too worried about biodiversity 😆
Bindweed is my worst nightmare that coincides with Japanese Beetles. It is devastating to see all your efforts destroyed. I also think about my now nearly 90 year old aunt telling me “weeds are just plants we don’t want growing there” you’d have to know her to appreciate how cute her advice came across! But in the end she reminds me to give myself grace in the garden, listen and consider the advice of others, but savor your own journey and discoveries along the way. ❤. I’m far from expert and perfect, but relish the grounding and healing being in my garden provides to me. Happy 2024 growing season to all. 😊
@@ntur117I left a bucket of mixed weeds open. After it filled with water and fermented, I noticed that the beetles flock to it and drown. I can scoop them out and throw them into the chickens or just let them become fertilizer with the weeds.
@@almostoily7541 ohhhhh awesome! I discovered a couple years ago these devils love rhubarb and that annoying ivy vine too so I get my harvest of rhubarb just in time before they start to emerge and then it becomes a trap along with the evasive ivy. I try to collect them in soapy water but it’s tricky because the leaves are so smooth so once they get disrupted they just slide into the center of the stalks. I planted clarkia for the first time last year which I quickly discovered they also love, the upside was they left my Basil alone that was growing right next to it. Weird huh? This year I seed started and grew over 60 geraniums (for party centerpieces) and I’ve read they don’t like these either. Thank you for the tip!!!! I’m gonna give it a try in a far corner away from where I don’t want them and see how it goes.
@@ntur117 I hope it works for you! I just remembered that there's a sweet potato they're supposed to love and will leave the other sweet potato varieties alone. I ordered it but it hasn't come yet. It was from Sand Hill Preservation site and called Beetlejuice. I've found that wild amaranth is a good trap crop for flea beetles. I let a couple grow next to the squash.
My beloved Blossom & Branch: please sell your books for terminate cover crops, and making mulch for generative agriculture. Help me garden effectively. jtsdrd
Why are you not using stinging nettle for nitrogen? It hase a lot of it and its for free. I dont anderstand why people focus on that chemycals whe at the same time they have organic for free fertiliser! Everithing that you buy in the store - GOD is giving it to us for free in the nature. why easy when we can have it cimplicated
