alright, this is john kohler with growingyourgreens.com,got another exciting episode here for you. and where i am today is my backyard garden!with this, i’m just doing an intro and i’m going to come in at brief spots in this video.this video is not about me today, but what it is about is about no till farming! so, i do a method of gardening called no tillgardening and this is actually one of my raised
heat tape for snake racks, beds. its about 4 feet wide and 16 feet long,and this does not get tilled. you know, i built these beds over the existing soil, ididn’t till the ground before i put it down, you know i put in all the soil and then basically,i’ve never tilled this. so, of course, you know i dig up the old roots.you know, which may not even be the best thing
to do. and i top it off every season withsome new soil, but i don’t till it. i don’t get in it with a rototiller. the only kindof tilling i do is let the microbes and earthworms do the tilling for me, and that’s what irecommend for you guys. so, this is how i’ve incorporated no tillgardening, which is pretty easy. i don’t really think you need to till in a garden,especially if you’re bringing in the soil, you know and have a nice soil mix. this bed,actually, is filled with dr. earth potting soil, organic mixture. itshigh quality stuff. and after every season the soil always dips down just a little bita half inch, depending on some beds, some beds go down an inch or more if i haven’ttopped them off.
so, then what i’ll do is go over to thewheelbarrow- its all the way in the back. and i like to mix up, you know, some moreorganic composts with some coconut coir, maybe some bernique collie, some rock dust, someworm castings, and some john and bob’s fertilizers… and then mix all that up. maybe some sealites,there is a lot of things i put in there. and then mix it all up and just top this [thebed] off with just a little bit to basically give back, and put nutrition back into thisgarden, into this bed. because, you know, after i have peppers inhere, i basically pulled all the peppers off and ate them. so all the nutrition came outof the soil, came into the leaves of the plants, came into the peppers. i ate the peppers andthe nutrition when into me. and then all the
top grow basically got composted in my composterto turn that back into soil that’s going to end up going back in here. so, we want to constantly, you know, feedand put nutrition back into this soil because we are constantly pulling it out. in addition,i want to encourage and remind you guys then even, you know, even though i grew crops inhere this soil is quite fertile, because i brought it compost in the first place. i’mnot just growing in the native sand here in the desert. so this is very fertile. but, the problem is we need to unlock thefertility locked inside the organic matter that happens from the microbial populations.bacteria, and fungi, and yeast, and all the
different soil microbes, the earthworms, andthe creatures living in the soil, the hematoads, the arthropods, i don’t know all these things.they create the fertility, they break the organic matter, create fertility that theplants can absorb. so this is how i do it, in a garden, you know,in my back yard. and that’s what i encourage all you guys who are backyard gardeners todo. but, what i’m going to get into next is actually a talk at the 2016 eco farm conferencewhere i heard paul kaiser from singing frog farms. he actually makes $100,000 a year onhis organic, several acre no till farm. and i only recorded part of this episode becausei didn’t want to film this whole thing. i wanted to take notes and what not, and iwas holding the camera with one hand. i filmed
part of this to let you guys know what he’sdoing, and then i’ll come back at you on the half way break to, you know, get intomore of this no till farming that paul’s doing. so, i guess without further ado, letsgo ahead and go back to the eco farm 2016 and the no till farming 102 class. conference paul kaiser: usually our csa and farmer’smarkets are about 50/50. and csa is kind of going down, gladly not in terms of productivity.our productivity is the same or better. so csa stays the same size, farmers markets haveincreased dramatically and with increased restaurant sales on top of that. so this pastyear we were doing quite a bit, over 300,000
in sales on about 2.5 acres approximately. and that’s important because one of thedriving factors for us is we are in a small county and land value is very high. not justthe mortgage on the property, but the property taxes every year as well. and to pay thatoff is a real struggle and challenge. so we had to innovate economically, but we alsohad to innovate because of what mattered to us and ecologically. as i said, our backgroundwas really in ecological aspects of rehabilitating degrading lands. so we started singing frogfarms, we really, our whole first year and our first month, we were really straight inthere, putting the perennial hedgerow, putting in the tree crops, putting in all the otheraspects to make it much more holistic, healthy,
ecological system. and then we also have tomake money on this too, so lets start the farming part and grow the vegetables. and as we began growing vegetables we said,“well, lets just use the equipment the last owner left us. lets use a disk, lets use aspader, lets use the plow and start getting these fields ready for brushing. and the actof doing all that tillage on an organic regime was completely upending all our investmentin the ecology. that tillage was just counterproductive to the ecological restoration of the gridline. and that was the ecological side of why webecame no till and we didn’t really know we were becoming no till, we just knew wewant to farm in a way that really benefited
all the perineal hedgerow, that benefitedthe snakes, that benefited the beneficial ensipes and the pollinators who are groundlisting, that benefited the water and the soil and everything else. so that’s kindof how we got started and what we’re doing. um, for those who don’t know our soil organicmatter 2.4% to 8 or 11 percent, or even higher, and that’s over the past 6 to 8 years, mostlythe past 6 years of doing no till. our water use has gone down to about a tenthof what it used to be for crops. we’ll talk about that a little later. and we’re havingdramatically more songbirds on the property, trying to get more snakes, more beneficialinsects, more pollinators. so all the ecology is coming to life while we’re making thisvery high level of productivity. and, i’m
going to go through the real fast some ofthe things about soil carbon and organic matter just because i feel the need to. but, i’’llbe about three minutes and then we’ll dive right into why you’re here. i know, somelaughter, thanks debbie. so, organic matter is roughly 5% of your soil.what’s critical to note is that is your carbon. carbon is half of organic matter.so, when you talk about sequestering carbon in soils, you’re talking about bulling upyour organic matter, half that organic matter is carbon. so it is very good to make thatconnection as you bull up that organic matter from 2.4 to 10%, you just upped that carbonfrom 1.2 to about 5%, because half of organic matter is carbon.
so, traditionally, many of our best agriculturalsoils a good 6-10% organic matter according to the usda. today, we’re down to 1-3%.in fact, the california average today i just heard two months ago from the cdfa ,1% organicmatter is the average in the state of california. so remember, half that is carbon. where isall the carbon going? in the atmosphere, right? so, we know this is due to tillage. almostprimarily and exclusively,but from how long long? roughly 2/3 of total soil carbon hasalready been washed from our planet’s cultivated soils. tillage is one of the major practices thatreduces the organic matter level in the soil, fao.
a quick little study that i love to show,you have erosion, this is back in the 80s, 70s-80s. we have no till fields moldboardtop field in tennessee. you can see it is a usda study, and 4,750 pounds of erosionper acre per year in the moldboard top field. in the no till field? 6 pounds of erosionper year. 700 times more erosion in the moldboard top than the no till field. and back in thosedates, 79-82, that was half the national average of the erosion rate. the national averagewas about 8,500 pounds of soil per acre per year. so, that was a good farm back then,and just compare. to give you an idea, that 4, 750 pounds per year is about a fourteenthof an inch. its not really visible, but year after year after year, that’s our top soilgoing away, that’s carbon in our organic
matter going away… that’s part of whattillage does. of course there are all kinds of conservationtillage. there are some great ways that tillage is being brought back into a more beneficialaspect, but, i want to keep going through this. so, every pass of tillage equipment can removeequivalent to a quarter of inch of rainfall from your soil. tillage- i love this one-tilling soil is the equivalent of an earthquake, hurricane, tornado and forest fire occurringsimultaneously to the world of soil organisms. simply stated, tillage is bad for the soil.the usda. that’s the usda saying that. they know, the scientists know, what works andwhat doesn’t. its a matter of application,
finding out how we can continue to restorethis planet without tillage. and that’s going to create a brand new struggle in allthe food sectors of agriculture, whether its pasture management, drainage line management,road crops, or rain crops, and now vegetables as well. how do we begin to reduce tillageto get back to real soil health. finally, i’m going to take briefly aboutthe bottom part here. you know, 1% of tilled soil organic matter has an average of tensof yard of fungi in it. while 6% of organic soil matter, untilled, an average of tensof miles of fungi in it. in a single teaspoon. so just again, the factor difference milesof fungi to yards of fungi between soils. so this is why, these are some of the manyreasons why organic matter is really important.
so, here we go, managing your soil healthcan be accomplished by… i usually combine these into three different things, but everyaspect of management on the farm, i refer back to this set of ideas. and granted, idon’t really refer back to them specifically because i have a more intuitive understandinglike many of you do, about how systems work and how the farm works . but, these are whatare the critical foundation to soil health. disturbing the soil as little as possible. growing as many different species of plantsas practical. keeping living plants in soil as often aspossible, and keeping the soil covered at all times.
pretty straight forward, i often combine thesetwo [2-3] and just say keep a good diversity of living plants in the soil as often as possible.but, think through these aspects of what the best soil management practices should be,and think through what tillage does to soil. tillage is the complete antithesis of allof those things, except maybe number 2 because of the diversity. so, tillages disturbs itheavily, removes plants form soil, and leaves it bare. and that’s how we have volatilizationof nitrogen and carbon on the soil combining with oxygen to form nitrous oxide and carbondioxide to most greenhouse gasses. so, we really need to be thinking about howwe not disturb the soil, how do we not leave it bare, and how do we keep those plants inthat soil, because what are plants? they are
the carbon pumps. they take atmospheric carbonand sunlight and make nutrient packets of which half of that exudes to the roots tofeed the soil, and the other half they use to feed their own bodies. so, starting your no-till fields. this isall new for me presenting on this. its very interesting for me too, i’m much more usedto presenting on the science and the whys, because that’s really important to me andthe ecology. but, i want to go through, i have a lot of photo slides in here. there’sprobably 80 or 90 slides for pictures. i want to give you a beginning and then we’ll endon this slide too as we go through. there’s a distinction to make between gettingyour no till field up and running and maintaining
it. so starting a field is very differentfrom maintaining it. starting, you only do once, and then you haveit up and running. and usually the first question from people well should i sheet compost ordo tillage to get the fields clear to start? there are other solutions too, but i thinkthe two easiest ways are to till and and do it a whole clean slate, so you have a blankslate to begin with, then you build your raised beds or your mounted beds or permanent bedsand then you begin farming it no till. and the other way is to do sheet composting,which is put down cardboard over everything. so you want to weed-whack or mow down yourexisting overcrop or grass and then put down clean cardboard and then build your beds ontop of the cardboard with pure compost. this
is more capital intensive. you need to havelots of clean cardboard and lots of compost to build those beds directly on top of thecompost, versus the tillage way. you say "oh my gosh but you're tilling." well,you tilled only once and honestly if you do a really good enough till, by the end of thevery first season, your soil will be far better than it ever was before you tilled it. soyou can heal all the damage done in that first round of tillage to clear the field. and thenyou put in those permanent beds and with a- we call this the magic wavelength. the wavelength would be the cycle of the bedsand pathways, so our beds and pathways. i actually have a, oh it's all the way in theback. so wavelength is really a space from
one path to the next path to the next path.and for us, we made our paths as narrow as we could and this was based on kind of likea horse's read end and railroad tracks. for us it was the wheelbarrow legs. so wheelbarrows- we got the really sturdy,contract grade wheelbarrows that are metal. inexpensive, but sturdy and durable and lasta long time. the legs happen to gladly be very narrow, so our pathways are just wideenough for wheelbarrow legs to sit down just on the shoulders of beds. but no wider, becausethe wider the pathways, the more space you loose to growing and the more you have tomanage the pathways with either mulch or weeding or something else.
so, after we figured out the pathway width,which happened to be about 1.5 shovels as we scooped it out, and the beds themselveswere roughly about 30 inches wide and30 inches have been a really good distance because formost people, they can reach across that without straining back muscles. we don't want to havepeople pulling back muscles or severing disks. so, we want to have healthy farm crew. so we like 4'9" from center-path to center-pathto center-path as our width. and then scoop those paths 1.5 shovels wide. lay drip irrigation;we don't do the t-tape we do a round hose with built-in emitters, those emitters happento be spaced about every 12 inches. i'll talk about irrigation later. and then bed lengthis really dependent, but i want to go through
a few pictures right now so you can look atthis. back to john so what did you guys think, man wasn't thatan awesome talk about no till farming? doesn't it make you guys go and do no till farming,i mean, to me it's just like a no brainer, duh! no till farming is the answer. it increasesthe soil, increases the organic matter in the soil, its so easy to do, and basicallypaul is doing more or less what i'm doing in raised beds and he just has beds that arein rows, right? its just makes so much sense, you know. it makes me sad when people stillfeel they want to till and all this stuff and i know i'm going to get comments downbelow saying no till is hogwash, but this
is how nature works people! there are no rototillersin nature! anyways, if you guys want you till i don'treally care what you guys want to do, but we're going to go ahead and move on with thisvideo. what i'm going to do next is as i was taking notes in the no till talk, and i wouldencourage you to check out my eco farm video, it's like an hour 45 minutes, where i actuallygo over, you know, a lot of the things that i learned there as well as some of the differentvents and you know, just give you a tour of eco farm, which is a pretty good video initself. this one i think is more valuable. i was taking notes in the second half, andthen i took, you know, just pictures of some of his slides that he was presenting, so i'mjust going to next part of this video i'm
going to throw up the slides, and then i'mgoing to go over the slides and share with you guys some of my comments. the slidesso, now we're going to ahead and get into some of the individual slides. so this isthe operating and maintaining a no-till field. so this is once you've got everything plantedout, once you're ready to, you know, harvest, and you have harvested and you're ready forthe next, you know, planting. this is what you do. and actually, this is quite similar to whati do in my home raised bed garden because to me doing a no till is pretty much likehaving a raised bed. so, what you would do
obviously is harvest your crops, and thenof course next is to clear the bed. you're going to cut all the crops down, pull theweeds, and add on compost. now, one of the things is, he cuts the cropsat the baseline and leaves a root zone, all the roots in place, and just plants aroundthem the next time. this increases, he finds, his organic matter. next he'll broadfork andhe says, you know, he rarely does that these days so in a garden at home like i do, i justdon't even do any of that stuff. the next thing he does is lifting the pathways.you know, as he is piling on the compost every year to the raised beds, the pathways getlower and lower, so he basically puts down some more mulch or something like that, ibelieve.
then he applies fertilizers and composts.generally he uses something like calcium, i believe he mentioned. a calcium source,and the maybe he'll use the rock dust, and then the compost and he just tops off thebeds with that. and then he transplants in his baby plants.most of the time he does it from transplants, and you know, not from seeds. except certaincrops he does start from seeds. and then he waters and covers in. the next slides are actually really cool,but i want to show you guys, he actually shows the process and how it actually took 3 peoplewere able to turn 3 beds in one hour. so this is the slide so that like, you know,all the crops we grown and then basically
you can see the farm workers harvesting. theybasically harvested all the usable crops on here. and then the next thing after they harvestedthe crops, then they basically just pulled all the plants out. so they basically justcut them down at the root zone, left the roots in the grown, and wheelbarrowed off the areato put it in one of the several compost piles on the property. they moved the drip lines out of the way andthey're just doing some additional cleaning of the beds. you can see here the beds aregetting more cleaned. you know just made clean and tidy, ready for the next planting. next, they're actually preparing the bedsfor the next planting. once they got the beds
prepared for the planting they're adding thecalcium and any other fertilizers that they add, which actually they don't use a lot.the main thing they add is they top it off with compost. they add very few things, actually. so you can see here, this is a little bitof a process to add nutrition. and this is something actually i do after every growingseason. you know, i'll take my raised beds that have generally sunk down an inch or two,depending on the bed, and make a mixture of compost, and coconut coir and bernique collie.which i may not need, but i have it, so i'm adding it in there. and also with the rockdust and the other things that i add in and then i top off my beds. so, i'm doing somethingvery similar to this in a home garden approach.
after applying the fertilizers, then theybasically pile on the compost on top. they're continuing to pile on the compost and thiscan take a while. as you guys can see, they got all the compost spread out all over thebeds. the compost have been fully prepared for the next round. and you can see the driplines are back in place. the next step is they are bringing transplants out from thegreenhouse. these guys are probably about four weeks out, it depends on the specificcrop, and they are just planting them out. now this takes a little bit of time, you know. but, they have 3 workers in there and withthree people it is planted out in no time. so as you guys can see they are planting threerows of crops and they have it spaced out
so that the drip lines have emitters facingevery 12" and they are using drip tubing with built in emitters every 12", not the p-tapethat tends to degrade quickly and needs to be replaced. they are placing that so thatis no more than really 3" from each plant. now you guys can see its fully planted out. and what they are doing now is actually wateringin. afteri replant, i water things in and i might even water for the next week or two,depending because you know, in transplants, the roots may not be close enough to the drippers,if i did not plant them close enough to the drippers. and the water may not actually capsulateover there depending on how long your watering cycle is and the ability of your soil to capsulateand hold the water.
once they have it all watered in, you cansee the workers are quite ecstatic and happy because now they can move on to another taskon the farm. and generally when i plant one of my beds in my garden, i could pretty muchcomplete a bed depending on if the bed is one of my long beds 4 by 16 or a 4' circularraised bed. i could do a couple beds a day just by myself. mixing the soil, topping itall off, and you know, its just a fun time working in the garden. i mean, its reallyfun to be connected back to nature and i want to encourage you guys to get out. alright, so all that process of those slideswas taken over 1 hour is what paul kaiser said. so, you know, really it does take thatlong to, turn a bed in a no till farm. once
you have a good crew that are trained well.you know, one of the things he does is actually pays his farm workers quite well and theynever work more than 40 or a few hours over 40 hours a week. so, they are not workingovertime and they really enjoy their jobs because they work year around, unlike manyother farms. so, lets move on and go onto some of the otherslides. the next slide that paul put up is actually the bene fit of using transplants.so, you know, i highly encourage you guys to use the transplants when planting in agarden. this is especially important if you guys are a beginner. hopefully, if you'refarming you're not really beginning. you know what you're doing and you know how to makegood, healthy transplants or plant starts.
but, a lot of the time i find people whenthey start their seeds out, they don't really work out that well and they get long and spindlyand they may not be healthy and then you wonder why your garden didn't do so well that's becauseit is very important to get good healthy transplants from the get go. if you don’t know how tomake them yourself, have somebody else do that for you. you know, my guy supports alocal farmer that grows a majority of my transplants or go out and buy them somewhere. so here are some of the benefits of usingtransplants. basically, he could save time. because he has his transplants ready to plantout after he clears the bed, that you just saw the process. he could clear that bed andheavy the transplants ready to go in so there
is less bare soil. this is always somethinggrowing int he soil. there is literally an hour of time when nothing is growing in thesoil on paul's farm, in many cases and there is a few exceptions. but, there are actuallyfew and rare. because if you were to plant seeds, that wouldtake a long longer for them to start growing and germinating and stuff. transplants geta second infusion of nutrients. you know, he's basically- when he transplants he basicallyadds nutrition to the soil, so the plants get further nutrition because they alreadyare grown in a good mixture. he likes using like the 80% mixture of happy frog pottingsoil and 20% compost to make his transplant seed starting mix, that he grows his transplantsin for several weeks, about 4 weeks in general.
and the cost, he says, to basically make aplot of transplants for him is about $2 a flat. so he says he would much rather haveextra transplants that maybe he doesn't plant sometimes- that he gives to friends or sellthem than to not have any plants and not be able to put things back in his garden. sotransplanting and creating seedlings and plant starts is a constant job there at the singingfrog farm. for me personally, since i travel probablya little too much, i don't have the time to manage all my plant starts, i tend to be lazyand let nature do all my plant starts for me. so, i let seeds drop in many cases sothey come up and when they pop up and i see there's ones i actually want to transplantthem out into pots. they've already been established.
i let them grow in pots in a protected environmentfor a little bit, and then i'll transplant them back out or simply i'll go out and buya transplant- a good, healthy transplant. its important if you're buying them to inspectthem and make sure you're getting good, healthy ones. and i find- i go to a place that i gettransplants for about, i don't know, $10-$12 per flat. and i'm willing to pay that, youknow, to get healthy plants. i could have a jump on the gardening. another thing he uses about transplants isthat he's assured to get 100% crop coverage. if he was to plant seeds, you don't know ifsome seeds are going to germinate, some seeds are not going to germinate. and you may notget 100% coverage. so, i encourage you guys
to get 100% coverage in you guys' home gardensas well. i mean, he's growing food for money, and he has to make a living out of this. youguys are doing it for fun and for your life. i mean, food is important, it is the #1 mostimportant thing you guys can be doing to change your life for the positive is grow your ownfood. so why leave barren soil, you know? lets get 100% plant coverage and grow thingsclose together. if you're not familiar with how close to plant things, you want to lookup square foot gardening, plant spacing, or look up bio intensive plant spacing. they'revery similar, little bit different, but those will give you some really good guidelines.if you're growing in a system that has really good organic matter and soil, you could getaway with planting thing significantly closer
than what they tell you on the seed startingpack. less time in the field, equals more cropsper year. so, because they turn it so fast, he can actually have multiple plantings, ithink he said 7 i don't exactly remember. 7 times, 7 harvest from 1 bed from the wholeyear. whereas, most- certified organic farmers might get 1 or 2 harvest because they leavethe land bare half the time. and the land is exposed, and when the land is exposed you'redegrading the soil. so don't leave you're land exposed! less time in the field means less availabilityto pests. now, because the transplants were started in a protected greenhouse nurseryarea they have, plants are much more susceptible
when they are babies and young. that's whywe don't kick our kids out until they're 18. we would never just leave a baby on the street,on a corner or something. i guess they did that in the olden days when they didn't wantthem. but, we would never do that today. a baby can't fend for itself, and a baby plantcannot fend for themselves. but, once the plants are more older, a month old practically,they are a lot more resilient to external stressors. transplants out compete weed seeds. so becausehe's not seeding and because he adds a whole new ayer of compost every time that his weedsseed free, he has these established plant, they are already established. they grow upquick and they shade out the other weeds that
pretty much just don't come up in his garden.so iin my technique , yeah occasionally, some weed seeds get blown in or some weed seedsget mixed in my compost that didn't get the grade, they come up. but, i'll tell you thati barely do any weeding inside my beds at all with the methods i use, which is verysimilar to what paul's doing there. less water used to get established. so ifyou plant from seed, you've got to constantly water to keep the seed at a good moisturelevel or the water will evaporate off the soil. but, because he’s done all that theplant has roots, so it can fend for itself. it can find its own water. so, you're goingto save water. in addition, i want to mention is that withthe no till farming style paul uses, because
he is increasing the soil organic matter,there is significantly- and i want to say that again- significantly more water holdingcapability of the soil.this makes you more resilient to when we get heavy rains and flooding.recently, paul's farm, their neighbor was flooded out and they had planted a new plantingof kale or something, and the whole crop was lost because it got flooded out. but, theway paul does it, he was resilient to the water, because he's build his soil and he'sdoing things according to nature. i mean, one of the things i respect about paul isthat he has a, not a background in farming that's cool if you have a background in farming,but he has a background in like agroforestry and basically restoring habitats and land.so, he's taken this approach to farming and
really, you know, in my opinion advanced thewhole no till to like a science. so always, the most vulnerable stage of plantsthat he's starting, his transplants, is actually in the protected nursery. and, does it seemlike a lot of work? you might say that's a lot of work john, planting all those transplantsthat are so easy to seed. so, he says he knocked out a 100 flats, 5,000 plants in 10 hours.in the rain, in one day. so, i mean, for me i would much rather- i mean, i love transplantingmy plants. besides him, he's just transplanting, he's getting in the ground, covering it sothat could go a lot faster. i actually add things in the planting hole when i transplantpersonally. so while paul does transplant for most crops,there's a few plants that he does directly
seed because it just doesn't make sense totransplant them. things such as carrots, radishes, peas, and beans. and he'll direct-seed those,and then he'll cove them in burlap. so this helps keep the soil covered, which is oneof his main tenet. it also lets, it holds the moisture in there, it also lets some-a little bit of light and some heat through . and show he does that in the beginning,and takes it off when the plants are starting to germinate probably. and then he'll occasionallydirect seed things like arugula, cilantro, cut & come again lettuces, small asian mustards.and everything else is transplanted. so, now he gets in to talking about how togrow healthy transplants in the soil is critical. and i already mentioned the mixture he uses,he uses 80% happy frogs potting soil 20% compost
that he makes. and he talked about the nutritionin there, as the plants start to geminate and come out and wants some nutritious soilto support it, and its definitely important not to overwater it because you could leechthe nutrients out of your transplant medium. so, its important not to overwater your transplants. he also talked about the mycorrhizal fungi,which is actually in the fox farm soil. i actually add additional mycorrhizal fungi.thesefungi are so important, i basically add that to the roots on every transplant that i makein my garden. he also talked about moisture management,he actually said you don't want too much rain. and he actually said that he did not believethat worm castings were something good to
add to transplant medium. which, i'll actuallyhave to look into, but hey, he says that, that's what it is. i think it would be morebeneficial adding it in at a later point. benefits of larger-size transplants. he hashigher survivability and less time in fields. can be handled roughly or quickly, especiallywhen you have to plant out 5,000 plants in a day. and the- shades the soil. because theseplants are larger, starting to get some leaves on them, and they will shade up more thanif you just plant it from seedlings. he talked about the duration in the nursery. you know, on average, things are four weeks, but some things are 3, and some things maybe a bit longer. he also talked about, as i mentioned before, transplant costs at about$2 to produce, including soils, seeds, and
labor. so, when i do my transplants,i'm goingto be like, hey paul, can i buy some flats from you for $2. well, he probably wouldn'tsell them for that. so, this is a picture actually, of his greenhouse area where he makes his transplants. you can see basically he has a 2 by 4s andsome 4 by 4 post to make framing and what he found to use for the racks, he bought likethis- like this hog-panel kind of stuff with the grate on there. i'm not sure if he mentionsit on there. i think it's just a cheap hog-pen because he had used pallets and the nailsstick up and it would snag the whole flat and all these kind of things but, this iswhat he found works best and i would probably concur because his nursery area looks greatand he wants to make sure the plants are nice
and established before planting them out inthe field. he also talked about the yellowing of nurseryplants, and i hear about this a lot. basically he said if your plants are yellowing in yournursery, your seedlings, its because you're watering them too much. so that is a fineart in itself, knowing how much to water your seedlings. people are like, oh i want to lovemy plants, i want them to germinate, i want to give them water, water, water everyday.they don't need water every day, you will drown them. if you drink too much water youcan choke and drown, so that's something that you just have to learn. you need to check the soil, and check to seethe transplants and how they're looking and
water appropriately. this will change, soyou can't always have a regular schedule. at certain times of the year, when you'restarting your transplants and it's not as hot outside, you're not going to have to wateras much. but, if you're still doing transplants when its hotter outside and you're in a greenhouse,you're going to have to water more often because you're in a greenhouse, right? because, especiallybecause there is not a lot of soil in those little pots, it dries out pretty quickly. next, he went over his spacing for transplants,as i mentioned before, i do the square foot gardening or biointensive spacing. he, paulprobably uses something very similar. basically, he has one system for everything.so, basicallyhis drip lines were 2 lines, emitters 12"
spacing i'd personally might do it 8", itwould give you a little more flexibility. but, basically, this is what he does. alltransplants on a standardized spacing regime. he has two lines, and at every 24" he plantsthings like romanesco, cauliflower, and summer squash. two lines at 18" spacing, he has the brusselssprouts. 3 lines at 18" spacing, broccolis and cauliflowers. three lines at 12" spacing,he does the kale, the chard, the head lettuces. he has 3 lines and 6" spacings for the bulbfennel, and 4 lines at 6" spacing for the small head lettuce and asian greens. and other things like tomatoes, winter squashand alliums, he has different spacings for.
so another thing he talked about when spacingyour transplants is, he talked about basically maximizing the plants you're spacing in thegarden, so even though these are his general spacings, when he plants the new baby plants,he'll interplant other crops with the intended crop for that field or row. for example, ifhe's growing the romanesco and cauliflower, he's going to plant lettuce intermixed withthem, along the middle row, to basically increase his harvest from that field. because what'sgoing to happen is that the lettuce will grow so fast and by the time the lettuce is fairlylarge, the cauliflower leaves are just starting to shade them out a little bit so that theywill be tender, delicious and good to eat. and they'll harvest hose guys and then bythat time, by the time they harvest them,
the cauliflower leaves are grown out and nowthere is shading where the lettuce was. but, previous to that, they were not. so, he reallylikes to interplant things. romanesco and lettuce, he'll do dill and cabbage, he'lldo leeks and lettuce, and yeah, this talk was so, so great. anyways lets go ahead andcontinue onto the next slide. next he talked about compost and fertilizer.this is something critical to your garden, to his farm, and also, to your garden in myopinion. basically, to go over this he went over all these different areas. i took noteson some things, but in general he talk about on compost, he's not a big fan of animal compostin general. he says there could be too much salt and pathogens in there. he does use-he used to get like all plant-sourced compost,but
just recently started getting some good localcompost, manure from local horses. maybe primarily due to the sonoma compost shut down in hisarea. so, i mean, i wasn't sure to ask him hey where do you get good compost in yourarea. and he was getting sonoma compost but, now since they've closed, basically he's makinghis own and getting more local resources. so, he didn't really have good options whereto purchase those in sonoma county now, which i was actually looking forward to. so yeah,you can make it on the farm and off the farm. when he was first starting he was bringingit in off his farm, now that he's up and in production he's making more and more on hisfarm, so he doesn't need it. he talked about nutrient management, calcium, feathermeal,trace minerals like the rock dust.
he talked about compost blankets and managingmoisture. the perfect compost building recipe doesn't exist. compost happens, and as longas you're making some compost, he said it's good. and i would just say that not all compostare created equal. he talked about how much and when, basically he adds it after everyplant harvest to retop the beds, to give back nutrition. because what is he really doing?he's actually mining minerals. and he's mining those minerals, putting it in plants, exportingthem off the farm. so, now he needs to add things back to the soil to build that backup for the next batch. he also recommends soil test, water test, and even more soiltests. one of the really good things that he talkedabout that i want to cover was compost blankets.
and there's a company called compost techin vermont, and that's a compost blanket to keep the temperature of the compost- to keepit either warmer or keep it cool in the summer. so this is something that was actually veryinteresting to me, that i'm going to look into. thought it was really cool. so now we talked about making compost, andhe said he's a big fan of aerating the compost regularly to make it faster. he also talkedabout adding oyster shells to compost to take away the ammonia smell, if its starting tosmell. another thing he talked about in this slide is mulching and basically he likes touse more of a living mulch, so he plants things sort of densely so basically the sun doesn'thit the earth. he did mention rice, straw,
or wood chip mulches. and sometimes, becauseits important to keep your soil covered at all times, sometimes he's not able to replanta bed right after a harvest. so, in that case, he'll cover it. he'll cover the bed with ablanket and keep it covered so that it stays ready and be covered until he's ready to plantout. so, that happens about this time of year, where he is not quite ready to plant his warmseason stuff out and he just wants to get a jump on that, so he's going to wait in thecover for a little bit. unplanted, but covered instead of replanting out. next, he goes over some of the tool he uses,and this is probably good if you're a farmer. it doesn't really help me out a whole lot,but it's interesting. broadforks, shovels,
rigid rakes, wheelbarrow, carts, 5 gallonbuckets and yogurt quarts, nursery flats and 6-packs, serrated harvest knives, coolbotwalk-in refrigerator, wash station, and pack materials. so maybe, for me personally, i'llhave a video soon on some of my favorite tools that i like to use in the garden. but, tome, actually some of the tools i like the most are actually bulb planters, so i canbasically just take a bulb planter and put them in the ground. plot a blog, and thenhave a little nice spot for my transplant to go in. this makes me much more efficientwhen planting. and, of course, nursery flats and 6-packs definitely handy to have around.i mean, i have a wheelbarrow to mix my compost and all this other stuff. let's go ahead andmove on.
so now what we're looking at is actually anoverview sight of the singing frog farm. and this is kind of just the spacing and the sitemap. so let's see if i remember anything.so basically, the ones with the gray tops arelike the structures, and then i think all the ones outlined in the brown were plantingbeds and then actually the ones with the little blue i think were the little ponds, and theni think the little brown circles are compost piles. so, he has those spread out. and idon't really remember much else but i hope to visit him one day soon and make a videothere and show it to you guys in person, should be amazing. so one of the big things that was importantto paul that i really want to stress and that
i probably need to do more of is increasethe ecological biodiversity in crop areas. so, he grows hedgerow and is really, i thinkthat was in the last slide. he has so many hedgerows in between several rows of his plantsand this is one of the reasons why no till farming works. you just try to do no tillwithout the hedgerows, you will not be as successful from what paul says and i believeit. the hedgerows do so many different things. because it is an undisturbed soil areas, that'swhere you get some of that beneficial pollinators to next and other, you know, create a habitatfor a lot of creatures. birds and snakes and everything. and they are going to help youtake care of your garden and they're free labor. you're just going to attract them.
so you want to mx berry, flower, and herbcrops with vegetable crops and be sure to add vertical elements to your growing space,from subterranean clovers to fruit trees. combine perennial food crops with annual foodcrops. and leave some leafy crops to flower for post harvest for the beneficials. so this is the slide where it actually talksabout the hedgerows. leave areas of the farm undisturbed to provide a habitat, restoreand enhance existing natural habitat, connect on-farm habitat to nearby natural areas, planttrees and shrubs as hedgerows, windbreaks, borders, filter strips, and wildlife corridors.provide sources of water, shelter, nesting materials. plant clover in roads and paths.even his roads there are planted out, which
is actually quite cool, because he doesn'twant to leave any bare soil. so then that, most farmers are really good at doing. so this a really cool cartoon that he reallylikes, and its one organic myth. selective pesticide. butterfly and ladybird friendly.kills only ugly bugs. so, i mena, everything you spray, even if its the organic certifiedpest control, there are always repercussions to that. in my opinion that are no truly selectiveorganic pest controls. yeah, maybe some won't effect some creates, but there is always repercussions.what are the repercussions of spraying pest controls, even organic, and then have themdrop into your soil to the micro-biome in the soil, right? we just don't really know.that's why he doesn't spray basically anything,
which is quite impressive. and he has a systemset up to do that. now, i don't necessarily recommend you guys just stop spraying everythingin your garden. well, depending on where you live and how your system is set up and hownatural it is and how long you'e been doing it, that might be a disaster. so you knowi kind of just have stages where i escalate thing. so stage number 1 for me, i've seenan put break i use my fingers to smash them or collect the pest. go out every day, collectsnails, collect slugs, collect cabbage worms off the leaves. you can collect them yourselfso then you don't have to spray anything, right? another thing you can do, i was doingit just the other day, is high pressure water blasts. so i have a really good video on thebug blaster, i'll actually put a link down
below this video if i remember. and i actuallyhigh pressure water plants off, so i'm just spraying water, right? and event or sprayinghigh pressure water on good bugs may not be best for them. but, nonetheless, where i'm spraying, basicallythere's a white fly or avid infestation, and basically this dislodges them and gets themoff my plants and they may not make it back on. so this is much more friendly than sprayingeven organic pest controls, so once i've sprayed this high pressure water, i've sprayed that,and then i'll repeat it, every day or every other day for a couple days, a week. and theni should get the situation under control, and if i'm not able to this, like i'm traveling,i'll try to do this as much as i can and if
i have to, i'll try to use the least toxicspray. so one of the things you could do is like a diatomaceous earth. i have a video on that, i'll try to post thatbelow too. thats another thing thati really like to do because that's another thing ireally like to do because that will actually fall into the ground and add to the soil inthe end, it basically works by dehydration. and then the other thing that i'll do is theneem and dr. bronner's sal suds soap, and i'll put a link down below to that pest controlmethod. and that's like i do only if i have to, like if i've got some major situationthat is going to take me out. i don't just spray that haphazardly, i go through the otherstages first.
so this is where paul talks the economics,because people might say, you know, you can't do no till because it's not profitable. sohe compares average gross revenue per crop acre. he has several acres under cultivationat his farm. so all california vegetables $1,900 revenue per crop acre. california organicveg farms, better, at $3,700. small, diversified, direct market vegetablefarms. that's mainly organic, $11,000 and you know there's different farms, likestudent farms that basically get free labor, so they are able to make more revenue. but,then if you go to singing frog farm, he makes $100,000 in gross revenue per acre.so, clearly,this financially makes sense and it makes sense for the environment to basically restorethe land because we're degrading it here on
the planet. so, i'm really excited that this can be profitableand at the same time do good for the creatures on the earth, whether they are the bugs, thepollinators, whether they are the native species that are getting wiped out because we're bulldozingand putting in parking lots and things, right? so, this is the real- if you want to farm,this is the way i would, this is the way i'm going to do it one day when i have acreage.it's pretty much the same system i'm using now, but just in a larger fashion, and itcan be profitable if that is your goal. you know, my goal is to just grow some reallygreat high quality food for my and my family. so this next slide is called a venn diagram,and it basically shares relationships. and
if you think about it, that's what farmingis, that's what gardening is, that's what life is all about cultivating relationshipswith everything. so, this venn diagram shows that no till agriculture done in the way thatpaul is showing at his farm is showing environmental stewardship at its finest, it can also provideeconomic prosperity, and it is also socially responsible. the no till method for environmentalis soil, organic matter 8-11%, once again, as paul mentioned earlier, soil organic matteron a farm in california,a recent survey 1%. this is dismal. provides perennial hedgerows, no spray, ultra-lowwater use, because one gain if you increase your organic soil matter you significantlyincrease the soil moisture holding capacity.
it's kind of like an earthquake, on the richterscale an earthquake that's like 5 is not like a little big stronger than a 4 it is significantlystronger than a 4 on a richter scale. and same thing as soil organic matter goes up,water retention goes up, and more importantly than just the water retention is the fertilityand the carbon holding capacity and also the micro-biome or the beneficial microbes inthe soil. i mean, all around this is just a good thing to do. so, yeah also the native bees and song birdsand native creatures, it enhances their lives, because farming is wiping them out. even organicfarming done on mass scale like its done now is unsustainable in my opinion. and yes, ibuy organic food when i'm not growing my own,
and i wish there was more no till farms thaticould support, because i believe this is one of the answers for the future. how we reallyneed to grow food on a large scale, if you want to grow large-scale. of course, i alwaysencourage everybody to take responsibility for what they grow and grow part of what theyneed to grow by themselves and grow your own food. because that's really when, we reallyneed to diversify and not focus on having large farmers. we need to have a lot of manysmall farmers. also, for social responsibleness, it has job security because he provides jobsyear-around. he doesn't have the farming season when he has to let people go in the winterwhen he's not growing anything, not seasonal. and he feeds the community year around, unlikeother csa programs in his area that only operate
certain times of the year. he is 100% yeararound and fresh crops. some csa provide crops like potatoes and squashes that they alreadygrew and then stored for the winter and then they basically doll them out over the winterthey don't have things or they sell things like sauerkraut that they preserve. but, inmy opinion, fresh food is always the best food. and also this would not be possibleif it did not make economic sense. his gross sales $100,000 gross sales per crop acre peryear. granted, he did go over his labor costs, his labor costs are 58% of the $100,000. but,labor costs is not something that's like a bad thing. when you have enough gross salesto cover it, it's a good thing because you're creating uss jobs, right? you're not underpayingthe poor farm workers and treating them bad
and having them put on suits, or in some casesno suits and having them spray toxic pesticides. this only makes all those issues from growingfood. this next slide basically shows, i believe,shows i don't think i took any notes on this, but basically it shows microbial communitiesof the microbes in his soil. now this is something that most farmers unfortunately do not payattention to. they get soil tests, oh yes they test may 17 main minerals in the soiland that's what farming is all about to most growers, including organic growers, right?but, the soil microbes and the soil micro-biomes in the soil is really where its at and theseare like the workhorses that break down the organic matter and make it available for theplants, so he's basically showing in this
how after 5 years it went up significantly.and this is what every farm needs to do because farms even organic farms are degrading thesoil micro-biome, right? that's why there's lower organic matter. if there's not highorganic matter, the soil micro-biome cannot thrive in there. so this is why i encourage you guys to dono till methods and sell that rototiller if you have one, right? i have a video on howto rototill, you know, aerate your soil if you want to, and it's actually by using microbesand letting them do all the aeration and getting the earth. there's natural ways to do thesethings and everybody's been taught wrong for many years and its just because its been taughtwrong all these years doesn't make it right.
and people need to wake up to the fact thatthere are ways to successfully do no till and more farms should get on this as soonas possible. so once again, paul went over some of thetenets of no till and how to manage soil for health. and these are the thing she livesby and he tries to create a system and steps and procedures at his farm to accomplish these.so, and i want to encourage you guys to do these in your personal gardens as well. andif you have a farm, please do these also. it does work, there are many steps to it andi hope that one day paul writes a book. so, anyways, to recap one of the most importantslides in his presentation. 1. disturbing the soil as little as possible.this is very important.
3. keep living plants in the soil as oftenas possible, and 4. keep the soil covered all the time. andthis is a quote form the usda, this is coming from the usda at the same time most farmersdo not do this, although this is the usda saying this. and the last thing that he reallytouched on that he's really passionate about is overhead irrigation. in 1980, overheadirrigation was outlawed in israel. like, what was that? 35 years ago they outlawed it inisrael. and actually there is a lot of drift emitters and components coming in from israeland that's because they've been working on this technology and that's because whereaspeople still do overhead watering in the states, and i think that is an abomination and itshould be stopped. the problem is they need
to do that is because once again, there soilis poor. it has low organic matter, it does not hold the water very well. you just got to keep watering and it keepssucking it up and you got to keep watering so this causes more water loss, right? butdoing it the right way by increasing your soil organic matter and using the drip systemlike paul does. he doesn't have to water that much. you know, i took down how much he waters,let me see if i can find it in my notes, but he basically waters very, very infrequently.i was actually impressed about how few times a week he waters. and i don't remember wherehe put it, i'm to going to quote incorrect information, i tried to have as much accurateinformation in this, buti might have gotten
some stuff wrong. so paul, if you're watchingthis, i'm sorry if i got anything wrong, but hopefully overall i pretty much got your messageout there. and i hope to, once again, visit paul really soon and make a video at his place,really highlighting what he's doing because this is seriously really important. so, what do you guys think of that entirepresentation? did you guys like this? if you guys like this, hey please give me a thumbsu. let me know when i'm out in california next, i'm going to try to hook up with paulkaiser, go to his farm so i can so you guys this personally and see it for myself becausei've been hearing paul speak for a couple years now and every time he inspires me. andhe's not like a speaker or anything and this
is the first time he's teaching this stuffcause he normally just does it he doesn't teach it, but man this stuff inspires me.and i wish that there's more farmers like paul out there, and i want to encourage youguys to be more like paul and let him be your model because it can be profitable. you canraise healthy food and this is probably one of the best ways to do it. but it's not justabout not tilling, there is more things that also need to be incorporated. like, you know,a native habitat and having native species and you know, constantly staying on top ofthe weeds and making paths and mulching and having copious amounts of compost and he hasrock dust too. so you know, its a whole entire system you can't just be like okay i'm nottilling, everything is going to be fine. no,
there are other parts of the puzzle that youneed to get straight that that it will work and be successful. and basically paul hasfigured out all this stuff for you. so i hope paul writes a book on this stuffand is able to share this with others so that he can be the model for other organic farmsto follow along and even big agribusinesses to follow along with no till because i trulybelieve that this is the future of not only farming, and even more important than farming,but regenerative farming. that's actually restoring the land instead of strip miningit away like convention and even many organic farming practices do. so, once again, if youliked this episode, please give me a thumbs up, let me know. if i get a lot of thumbsup, i'm going to go out and visit paul. make
some time to do that, visit his farm and interviewhim one on one. also please put below any questions that youwant me to ask paul int he comments. i'll be sure to ask him. also be sure to subscribeto my episodes if you guys like this video, this is the kind of episodes and knowledgethat i like to share. stuff that you will not here on any other youtube channel. allaspects of home gardening, commercial farming, in an ecological way, products, and i don'treally try to discriminate i just try to put anything out there that could help you guys.even if it just helps one of you guys, i've met my mission to help make the world, theplanet, and you guys' lives a better place. also be sure to check out my past episodes,i have over 1,100 episodes now. i teach you
guys all aspects of how to grow food at home,i visit farms and you know, teach you guys how to do things in my back yard and my frontyard and i just have a fun time doing that and i know that you will gain a wealth ofknowledge through my experiences and what
i'm sharing on this youtube channel. so, withthat,the sun's going down and i've got to make some dinner. so once again, my name is john kohler withgrowingyourgreens.com, see you next time. and remember, until then, keep on growing.
