Deep Mulch, No-Till, Garden at Prairie Road Organic

Tips, Tricks

1. Ive had a disaster by mulching for the 1st time in my vegetable garden over winter, the purpose of mulching was to prevent weeds from growing and improving soil fertility. This year was an unusual year of high rainfall in Sept [1st month of spring],the mulch was a haven for inoculating early blight, especially hard hit were my tomato,potato plants and slight leaf curl in the grapes vines. The tomatoes were replaced with new plants and sprayed with copper based fungicide.
2. I can't win,  I can't find woodchips, nor can I find a weed free hay!
3. Hi, thanks for sharing. Do you imagine this could be easily scaled up to a 1-2 ac garden (or more)? What other fertility do you use in the garden? How do you manage fertility in your hay field to keep that part of your system sustainable? Thanks again.
4. how does this compare to back to eden style I wonder? it seems very effective. 37 years is a massive advantage either way so its probably hard to compare. 37 years of any organic based method is basically a guarantee of excellent soil. much love for any method that works and makes amazing black gold soil such as this. I achieved much smaller scale of black gold soil but it cost me...I am fascinated by the methods that cost very little, recycle goods, require very little outside input and adhere to organic and permaculture style methods. It's the way of the future
   ...it is our only choice...unless we can get our households to commit to a fourth bin. by this I mean we have recycling bins, normal waste bins and green waste bins (domestic). What if we had a fourth domestic bin that was "kitchen scraps, green leaf waste from hedging etc, weeds weeded before seeding, woodchips etc". just imagine the possibility. it would take people being honest about what they put in it but the same could be said about early recycling efforts....i.e education. peace
5. what about using pine needles?  over here on the east cost people use it as decoration to keep weeds and grass out.  the only hay I can get around me is wheat straw or long leaf pine needles.  I'm wanting to do this to make my life easier next year.
6. Doesn't this mulch suck up the nitrogen in the soil.
7. Thanks for posting a great video!
8. good
9. How do you manage the snails, a lot of mulch attract a lot of snail.
10. Great mulching video, Thanks for showing the detail of how you lay out the mulch, then fluf it up and work it in. I found that part very helpful.
11. Can I ask why you use hay over straw? Hay in our area seems to be full of seeds and I can't imagine using alfalfa in our garden to reduce weeds.
12. Great vid! And DAMN sunburn much!?! ;)
13. Would this system work in Minnesota? I am afraid it would keep the soil to cold to plant in the spring.
14. thx for sharing
15. thx for sharing
16. The oldest mythology (what they say) has life and the gods created from water and mankind created from soil. Cain was a terrible farmer so he killed his brother Able ( as in ability) and went hunting. If animal bodies (usually vegetarian) are so full of nutrients, why not eat what they eat and end all this political, religious, ignorant greed violence in a garden, where mythology says we began? Huh!?
17. Subscribed :)
18. good stuff!
    
    you could hugely increase traffic back to your website if you put your link in the description above in addition to mentioning in the video
19. You should never use coastal bermuda hay to mulch with! All others are good and straw too. But that coastal will come up so thick that you will never get it out of your garden. I have been mulching like this you 30+ years and one year I got some free square bales that turned out to be coastal and I had to give up that garden and start all over in a different area because of the coastal bermuda. Dreadful stuff. I love the fall as everytime we go to town we get leaves and grass clippings and boards, fencing material and all kinds of free stuff that is out by the road on trash day. The last time a guy was moving and putting all his dog kennel fencing out. We scored big on that one. Used it for my chickens. You can shove your hand down at least a foot into my soil without much effort. I never have to weed and it always looks good.
20. we have been using this method in my garden for two years. I had a problem with hornets! I was stung four times in a couple of seconds. That was a very traumatic experience. We washed the nests out with dish liquid. I will mulch soon when I do my fall cleanup. I also have a keyhole garden in the center of my garden. We will use mulch for that garden and cover the fruit garden again with mulch. Thus is the first year renewal of that garden. Thanks for the video!