Carrots are one of the main crops that I grow
in my gardens, and when they’re grown well can be really high yielding, but they can
be a tricky crop to grow. It’s sometimes hard to get the tiny seeds
to germinate, there’s a few problematic pest issues that we need to deal with, and it’s
essential to thin the seedlings adequately in order to get a decent yield of reasonable
sized roots. But I never really know how the crop is developing
until I start to pull or dig the roots out of the soil, and quite often the roots are
split, or forked or the shape that I would prefer.
For several years now I have been growing the same variety of large storage carrots,
and this season i decided to sow a batch in six of my family scale gardens, each of which
is being managed using a different method. Now that I have finished most of the harvesting,
it’s interesting to see the different size of the roots from each of the gardens and
what proportion of the roots were forked. And I was quite surprised by the difference
between the gardens, especially with the wild shapes of carrots that were being pulled out
of one of the gardens. I have been getting really good results from
growing this type of carrot in my Extensive Garden over the last few years, and this year
was also a good crop. The wide spacing of the rows, the large variety
and a long growing season, all combined to produce a lot of quite large roots, that were
in good shape for the most part, though a few of them were forked or split.
I had sown these seeds at the beginning of May, a few days after I had dug out the remaining
old chard plants from the same bed, which had grown quite big over the winter and into
the spring. I had forked the soil a bit to loosen it,
but not excessively, and then I worked in a few fertility amendments into the surface
of the soil as I raked a seedbed for the tiny seeds.
This recent soil cultivation could have caused some of the carrot roots to fork, possibly
when they grew into air spaces within the soil that hadn’t had a chance to settle
yet, but it could also have been due to stones that were still in the soil.
I did notice that the forked roots seemed to be more clustered together, rather than
randomly spread along the row, and this led me to suspect that the decomposition of the
remains of the large root system from the chard plants might have caused the forking
of the tender roots of the carrot seedlings. It would be quite interesting if the clusters
of forked carrot roots correlated to where the last few overwintering plants had been
growing, but I can’t remember where they had been in the row. This crop of carrots from the Intensive Garden
was good this year, similar to what I have been able to harvest over the last few years,
producing quite a high yield of slightly smaller roots in a fairly densely spaced bed.
It was nice to be able to pull out quite a few clean, good shaped roots, and some of
them were quite big and long, especially at the edge of bed.
There were some forked roots, but they seemed to be more randomly spaced across the bed,
and the forking occurred at various depths of the different roots.
These seeds were sown on the same day as they were in the Extensive Garden, but the soil
had had longer time to settle before hand. While the fixed beds in this garden are typically
double dug each season, which is a process of loosening the soil quite deeply, adding
lots of fertility, and removing most of the stones, I decide to not dig this bed prior
to the carrots this season, thinking that the digging that I had done before the previous
crop would have been enough. The remains of the old crops and any weeds
had been cleared from the bed at the end of February, a couple of months before sowing,
but a layer of low fertility compost had been shallowly worked into the soil surface just
before sowing the carrot seeds. This recent addition of compost could have
caused some of the roots to split near their top, but would not have had an impact deeper
in the soil. Some of the roots were really long and pointed,
which is typical of this variety, but others seem more stunted or blunt ended, and I’m
not sure what caused these, but perhaps I just need to accept all of this, and a certain
amount of forking as a natural variation within this open pollinated variety. In comparison to the other gardens, I was
quite surprised by the number of forked carrot roots that were growing in the No-Dig Garden,
and I’ve not seen this type of forking before, and I can only think that it was due to the
way the beds in this garden were prepared. I had cleared the soil surface of all weeds
and old plant debris in February, and then in the beginning of April I had added a thick
layer of finished compost on top of the soil surface.
This was the first time that I had tried using this particular No-Dig method with root crops
like this, which involved me buying in large quantities of finished compost which was sterile,
but not very rich in fertility nor fully decomposed. A lot of the forking of these carrots was
right at the top of the root, and in in many cases seemed to coincide with the bottom of
the layer of compost, or the top of the soil. This sudden change of growing medium seems
to have had an impact on the first thin tap root that was sent out by the carrot seedling.
I’m not sure if it was a physical issue, and I suspect that there had been enough time
for lots of biological activity to develop at the interface between the compost and soil
below, but not enough time for the compost to really settle in.
Or perhaps there was just too much biological activity for the delicate roots of carrot
seedlings to manage, and instead they branched out, producing some crazy root structures. Thing were quite different in the Polyculture
Garden where the carrots and parsnips are interplanted between established onions and
garlic plants. The crop this season was disappointing, partially
due to the slightly later sowing, not thinning enough or when the plants were small enough
and I’m not sure if there was enough soil fertility to go around.
I also failed to keep the carrot fly away from this crop.
But the roots of most of the carrots were not forked, and the interplanted parsnip roots
were all straight and deep. I think that this is mostly due tot he fact
that the soil in this bed had been sieved in the previous October while harvesting the
last of the potato crop, which would have removed a lot of stones, and then compost
had been added to the surface of the bed at the same time.
The overwintering onions sets and garlic were planted in December, and by the time carrot
and parsnip seeds were sown later in May, the soil would have had more than 7 months
to settle in, and I think this really helped to reduce the number of forked roots. I think the settled soil of the carrot bed
also helped the crop in the protected Polytunnel Garden, where the same variety had been sown
at the beginning of July, after overwintering onions had been harvested.
The soil in this garden has been dug over quite deeply for many seasons, and most of
the stones had been removed in the process, and the soil has become loose with a good
texture. But the only work on the soil that I did just
before sowing this batch of carrot seeds was to level the surface a bit, so the depth of
the bed had been undisturbed since before the onions were planted 7 months earlier.
The result was that almost all of the carrots were straight and I think I found only one
root that was forked. This was my best crop of carrots in terms
of root shape, but unfortunately I had not covered the crop with a mesh early enough
and the patch had ended up being quite infested with carrot root fly, which was really disappointing. The largest batch of this variety of carrots
was grown in the Simple Garden in soil that had been sieved to remove the remains of the
potato crop, as well as any stones and larger weed roots from the topsoil.
But unlike in the Polyculture Garden, this work was only done at the beginning of February,
and then some fertility amendments had shallowly worked into the surface of the soil, before
it was covered and allowed to settle for only 2 or 3 months.
I have harvested a pretty good crop out of this garden, with a fair number of well shaped
roots. But there’s also a fair amount of forked roots,
and some showing signs of rot and cracking, perhaps more than in most of the other gardens.
I am not sure what the issues are with this large crop, but I suspect that once again
the soil probably needed to settle a bit more before the carrot seeds were sown. Having finished harvesting all of the carrots,
I think I can make some interesting general observations about all of this.
The carrot roots seem to be generally less forked when they’re grown in soil that had
a fair amount of time to settle since it was last dug, and perhaps even better if a compatible
crop had already been growing in the soil such as with the onions in the Polytunnel
Garden and in the Polyculture Garden. Stones in the soil may be an issue, but it
doesn’t seem to be an important factor as there were quite a few forked carrot roots
in the Simple Garden which had had most of the stones removed from the layer of topsoil.
The remains of the roots of some plants that were grown in the same soil before the carrots
may cause problem as they decompose, which may have been the main factor with the chard
plants in the Extensive Garden, but the onions in the Polytunnel didn’t seem to be an issue.
A recent addition of a thick layer of compost onto the surface of the soil can cause issues
for young carrot seedlings, as can be seen with the dramatic shapes of some of carrot
roots from the No-Dig Garden, but it probably depends on the quality of the compost, and
the amount of time that things have had to settle in.
Of course all of these forked carrots are still edible, but they are more difficult
to clean and prepare in the kitchen, and they are more difficult to store.
Forked carrots also seem to be more susceptible to splitting and a certain type of rotting
of the root, but I am not sure where the correlation and causation lies with all of this.
I plan to process and eat all of the forked and damaged carrots first, and to only store
the really well shaped carrots for use later in the winter and into next spring.
I am going to make sure that I finish any digging and other soil preparation work for
next years crop as soon as possible, to allow the soil to settle, and I’m seriously considering
pulling out any crops that are already in the ground earlier rather than later, and
it’ll be interesting to see how many carrots I get in next year’s crop because of all
of this work.
Hi there,welcome back to HuwsNursery and we are here in the vegetable garden and it is about mid-March so it is time to plat some pea seeds. So today I’m going to show you a really simple method to grow peas from seed, and this is basically using a rain-gutter here, this is just and old rain gutter so you can find hem in scrap yards or anywhere really. And all you need it some compost and some soil. Firstly you want to fill abut an inch of compost and that is going to act as a base layer where all the nutrients are, then secondly every inch along we are going to plant 3 seeds along it, and then cover it with a couple of inches of just normal soil. So lets start by filling up this rain-gutter Here I am just filling up the rain-gutter with some homemade compost and what we will be doing is using 2 gutters as we do like quite a lot of peas, but if you have quite a small garden you can really have as much or as little peas as you want. And just cut the rain-gutter to size. Really easy! I’m just continuing to fill it up with compost about an inch deep. Okay so the peas I’m using here are ‘Meteor’ and they are ealy-drawf peas because you can get different height so the normal traditional peas grow to about 6 feet tall but these dwarf peas are good for small space gardens and only grow about 2 feet tall. So just what I’m going to do is place 3 seeds in a row, and then leave like an inch, maybe just over an inch and plant another 3. and the continue to do that which may take a coupe of minutes but just do it for the desired length of the rain-gutter you would like. Now you must be wondering why should you just put it in the gutter? Why can’t you just put it int the ground? Well, theoretically you can put it straight into the ground, but the good thing about using a rain-gutter first is that there is actcually two good things about it. Firstly it stops mice from eating the seeds. And we have had big problem with mice eating broad-bean seeds and pea-seeds and you can actually see the tunnerls underneath where they go along eating the seeds. So it is a good way to stop mice and also the other way is that it is really easy when you dig a little trench, you can just slide all of the plants off and it is just so easy and I’ll show you that in another video were I’ll be planting these out. And you will see for yourself how simple the methods are! And so finally just get some general soil and fill up the seeds to the top. And then after you have done all this you then want to place it somewhere high where any mice can’t reach it and in a few days in about a week or so, you’ll start to see some sprouts appear in abut 2 weeks and then wait for them to grow about an inch to2 inches tall and I’ll be showing you in another video how to plant them out. And it is really fun! Just watching them all slide off. So I hope you enjoyed this video thank you very much for watching! See you soon :
(upbeat music) – We’re Sustainable Harvesters. What you’re standing in is about 12,000 square feet of controlled environment greenhouse space. In this space we can grow
up to 7,000 heads of lettuce in every week utilizing growing techniques called Aquaponics and this awesome controlled
environment greenhouse to protect us from the heat in the Houston summers. So we grow a bunch of different varieties of leafy green lettuces and we distribute that to restaurants and other food service partners all throughout Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, and even in Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge. So we grow about 12 different
varieties of lettuce and we pack them into our cardboard boxes with seven varieties in each one, a beautiful blend of reds and greens, crunchy and tender. From butter head lettuce, to oak leaf, to lolla rossa, and even
green and red romaine to really bump our
differentiating product line where chefs and other
food service partners can get a product that
they’ve never seen before and a product that has quality and consistency like no other. So we seed all of our lettuce by hand and we start them on these
grow trays right here. So this grow tray has 162 spots of a one and one inch cube that we ultimately put one seed in and let them germinate in the dark for about two days. After that time period they
have access to the sunlight. They’re gonna grow their first leaf and specifically with lettuce that first leaf is called a radical. So once they hit that radical stage, we bring them into the sunlight and we ultimately leave them under LED lights for about two to three weeks. When they get to about this size or a little bit younger or a little bit older, we actually bring these trays down to the very back of the greenhouse where each one of these will pop out on a bed of pegs exposing
its cubed material. This cube material is
made of 99% peat moss with 1% elastic polymer giving it a sponge-like effect, allowing us to submerge
this root structure into water for the life of the product. So when we put these products in the water we ultimately have to
remove product first. So the first stage in
every day is harvesting. We try to harvest in the
earlier morning time period because the lettuce does tend to wilt in the summertime during the 11 to 4 or 5 o’clock period of time. So we’re limited to the
morning hours to harvest. When we do harvest in the morning, it’s as easy as pulling this entire board out of the water and carefully bringing it
to our food preparation area where we’ll ultimately take each one of these heads of
lettuce off of this board by pulling them out, exposing just a few of the bad leaves that might be there. We’ll ultimately compost those leaves, leaving this head of lettuce with its roots still in tact. When we put these roots around this, it gives a shelf life of close to three weeks in your refrigerator. Now that’s a really big value for our farmer’s market patrons that might take it home and not wanna eat it that first week and have that access to it the next week. For our restaurant partners, it’s not as important, but it still allows that product to be the freshest
product in their kitchen because it is still living. Now when we remove these boards, it leaves a space in these grow beds. These are 100 foot grow beds and we stack these every single day. Our entire process is very
similar to blockchain. When one thing goes out, one thing will go in at a different area of the system. So when we remove these boards, we ultimately have to seed appropriately because it’s a time frame. So those seeds won’t be in the water for another two weeks so we really have to plan on
having that product in there and think forward about two
to six weeks at all time. Now when we remove the boards, we leave a gap up in the front and then that allows us to push all the boards towards us
here, our harvest area, and stack new boards in the back utilizing our germination cubes. So it’s as easy as pushing these back with just one hand and if you can think of the reverse we’d be pushing these forward so that we can ultimately
harvest this lettuce closer to our clean area so it really eliminates a lot of the cross contamination effects. We wear gloves, we wear aprons and hair nets or hats so that there is a very limited chance for any kind of cross
contamination in our system. Now when there is an
opening spot in the back, we’ll ultimately have
to restock these plants and it’s as easy as pulling
these little cubes out, all 162 of them, and simply putting them directly into these raft boards that are made perfectly for those one inch by one inch cubes. Now when we put those in, we’ll fully stock this. This happens every single day so that we’re always keeping
this grow bed covered. If we were to leave an open
spot for more than a day, the nutrients in this water would really ignite algae and it would just grow
like the lettuce would. It really grows in full force. It’s a beautiful algae, I wish we could utilize it for something, but in our system it’s not beneficial. It takes away from the nutrients that all the plants are trying to eat. So a little bit more about our process of harvesting and ultimately packing before we get into the
science side of Aquaponics. So when we move these rafts
over to our clean area and we ultimately clean
all of that lettuce, wrap the roots, we have to pack it and put
it in our cooler right away to crisp it up. So we’ll pack it in these trays that we call our transfer trays. Ultimately packing one variety in each one of these trays, giving us the ability to
pack all seven varieties with a couple of these and keep them in our cooler to crisp up. Then it’s time to pack our lettuce and make our mixed cases. So it’ll be as easy as
doing one variety at a time, laying out all boxes, and just putting the red
all in the ten boxes, then the green and then the red and so that really keeps the lettuce from being out in the heat for an extended period of time. Everything will be fresh and crisp in our 36 degree cooler space until it’s ready to be packed. When they are packed, we’ll leave them on the other side of the cooler stacked up and we can fit about 150 boxes in there and every other day almost, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, we have distribution companies come to our roll up door, pick up the product, and ultimately distribute it out to our restaurant partners that might be a little bit
further from our reach. We do still keep a loyal
small customer base of delivery routes that we personally do, but we limit those to a lot of the restaurants in a very small area, but we do try and distribute out and promote as many
restaurants that we work with with the distribution partners as we can. So that’s really the process of moving from seed to
harvest in our system and up next I think we’re gonna really dive into the Aquaponics side and what makes this product grow so well in this system and ultimately the greenhouse that allows us to grow year round, creating a consistent product and ultimately a great customer base. So now it’s really time to
get into the Aquaponics side and what makes us different than most traditional growers out there. So the way that we grow all this fresh, leafy green lettuce is a combination between two ecosystems in a growing technique called Aquaponics. So the basic definition of Aquaponics is the combination between aquaculture, raising fish, our freshwater fish, in a controlled environment and hydroponics which is growing plants in a soil-less environment. So we utilize both
ecosystems working together to simultaneously create the nutrients and ultimately remove the nutrients in the form of up taking and growing their beautiful
leafy green leaves. So starting first with
the fresh water fish, specifically we use Blue Nile Tilapia and these tilapia come to us all male from a great breeder in New Mexico called Americulture. We get them all male for three
really important reasons. First they create more waste as a male versus a female to create
nutrients in our system. Second they grow much quicker as a male versus a female. And third and most importantly, they don’t reproduce. If they were to reproduce, we would be having tons and tons of small little spawn
get through the filters that we have at the bottom of these tanks, ultimately get into our filtration over on the rock media, and if they were lucky enough, maybe even swim into our grow beds and become really, really
hungry vegetarians. They would eat all of our roots until the point that we really wouldn’t have a product. Now there are some types of fish that are beneficial in grow beds, but we really try and separate these two components the best we can. So these tilapia are the
real engine to our motor. They create that nutrient in
its raw form called ammonia and they create that my
excreting a waste product after we feed them every
day two to three times. So I’m about to feed these guys and they’re probably pretty hungry here in the summertime. In the winter they kinda slow down, but in the summer they are full force, ready and hungry and creating that lean meat that we really like to create
with these tilapia. So we’ll feed them real quick and see if they’re actually excited here. So as these tilapia eat that waste product and ultimately create that waste product, it gets brought down by gravity to the base of these fish tanks. These tanks are equipped
with a conical base and that conical base can really help trap a lot of that solids and move it to a lower point in the system which is our next
filtration, our biofilters. These are a simple baffle system that separates out the solids from the liquid ammonia, or broken apart ammonia. We can remove almost 50% of all the fish waste in those two tanks and we flush that out once a week to our compost beds, adding a really rich nutrient igniter in that compost bin. So after it removes its 50%, that other 50% of that waste heads down to our second filter we like to call our living filter. This is an ebb and flow, flood and drain, rock media bed that raises that water to a certain level and then drains it out quickly creating aeration and
ultimately slowing down the momentum of those
solid waste particles so that they can be consumed by naturally occurring
bacteria in the system. Not only do we have
naturally occurring bacteria helping us out creating that nutrient, every one of these beds is equipped with about four pounds of
these red wiggler worms. These red wiggler worms are a great little rumba in these media beds. They clean out any of the bigger particles that we might have ultimately that might get clogged in the smaller pipes in our system. They also excrete a supplemental
nutrient to the system, ultimately balancing out
these grow beds right here so that the water passing
below this walkway into our grow beds is
clean of any solid debris and just really rich in ammonia and hopefully really high in nitrates which the plants can ultimately take up in the form of that nitrate and remove it from the system before that water flows directly back to the lowest point in our system where we equipped a pump sending it eight feet directly above so that we can have fresh water going directly to those fish tanks creating a closed look, re-circulatory, aquaculture system by the
scientific definition. So Aquaponics really allows you to grow almost any type of vegetable or fruit that you really want to. You just have to adapt your system to accommodate for those
certain types of crops. Here we have deep water culture which allows us to really
grow a fast moving crop that doesn’t need to stay
in these beds for too long. It also limits your growing abilities in that deep water culture to crops that might not
be a rooting vegetable or have a really dense amount of roots. So things like carrots,
beets, or radishes, or even tomatoes that have to be vined up and are really a long lasting crop would be better suited in those media beds that we just left on the
other side of the greenhouse. Now no matter what you’re growing or what type of environment
you really have or system, you really have to control the weather. In this environment in Houston, we’re really hot and humid. It gets up into the 105, 110 degrees with almost 100% humidity. So growing these products outdoors is really only limited to the springtime and early or late winter. So having this greenhouse environment allows us to really trap
the heat in the winter and really cool this
place down in the summer utilizing a couple different components throughout the greenhouse. Now all of these components are really dictated through an
environmental control box set with parameters as that
temperature raises or lowers, it will turn certain things on in accordance to that temperature gauge so that we’re not really always having full force AC coming through here or we’re blowing through our heaters. So all of those temperature readings are situated through a sensor hanging throughout the greenhouse and a weather mass outdoors
in front of the front door. So those will come into that control box and ultimately turn on the
various components that we have. Now first we’ll talk about the winter. A little bit easier to
grow here in Houston. In the winter time we really don’t have to warm this place up too much. The only real concern is
getting the temperature in the water too cold for the tilapia. If they get below 55 degrees, they’re really prone and really
open to disease and death. So we create an ambient
temperature in here that’s a little bit
higher than its threshold and we utilize these 200,000 BTU heaters to turn on propane we engage so that we can only turn those on, raise that temperature
just to that threshold, and then they’ll turn off so that we’re not wasting a lot of propane or a lot of electricity doing that. So now getting into the
harder part of the year, our summertime is really hot here and so we really have
to control the weather to grow throughout the year all 12 months. And the way we do that is
a couple various components that create a wind tunnel
through this greenhouse. So on the other side of the greenhouse, we have exhaust fans. We have nine, four foot
by four foot exhaust fans that will turn on in the
morning of a hot day. One by one as those turn on, a vent on the other
side of that brown wall gradually gets larger and larger. So now we’re sucking that air from outside through the greenhouse and out the top of the other side creating almost a wind tunnel that moves that humidity up
and out of the greenhouse. Now on a really hot day, we’re really just sucking
hot air in from outside. So we have to add one
more layer to this system to really cool it down to the threshold that this lettuce can really thrive in and the way we do that
is drenching that entire brown wall from top to bottom reservoir and circulating that over and over again until all of those cooling
pads are drenched with water. Now that vent on the
other side is still open and those exhaust fans are
still pulling that air, but now it comes in contact with a very thin stream of water, ultimately evaporating that water and cooling this temperature
in the greenhouse down to about 90 degrees, which is our upwards threshold in the hottest days of the summertime. This allows us to really
grow the lettuce year round, but we are still limited in the summertime to harvesting and planting to more early or late hours of the day. Some greenhouses will
incorporate shade cloth and that really is dependent on the crop variety that you have. We have ultimately decided not to utilize shade cloth because this lettuce really needs as much sunlight as possible and through a lot of
years of trial and error, we’ve just found out
that with our environment and our product and our system, shade cloth is not appropriate for what we’re doing here. So that’s really how we cool and heat this place up to
grow a product year round creating some consistency in the market and really boosting our credibility to the chefs and the patrons
at our farmer’s markets throughout Texas and Louisiana. So not only is this system sustainable, but it’s really efficient on labor. We’ve incorporated a very simple way of harvesting, seeding, and planting so that you can really minimize the expense of labor and really maximize your profits. This entire greenhouse can be run with 7,000 heads of lettuce per week with just two people operating it. So one efficiency here is planting and so these cubes that
we talked about earlier come in one inch by one inch square coconut core and elastic polymer cubes. Now these guys are perfectly sized to be put and placed into our grow boards. So by putting it on a bed of pegs, I can ultimately pop
all of these cubes out and very simply grab them, maybe six at a time, two by two if you’re not so skilled, and start plugging away. So we’ll start planting these and we go by variety and we can really do about
four and a half trays or grow boards and rafts per cube tray. And so we’ll do about
four or five per cube tray and we really try and
time how much we harvest to how many seeds we
have ready to go as well. So usually we’ll have
excess seeds ready to go so that if something bad happens or if we harvest a lot of one variety, let’s say butter head
goes in really popular for the Easter holiday or for any kind of different holiday at our farmer’s market, we might have gone through
a lot more of that, we can ultimately have some back up so that we’re ready to put them into our system when they need to. So when we put our first tray in we always date and label that with the variety of lettuce and ultimately the date that
we’re putting it in here. We also have the date
that we germinated it and this all goes back
into those Google forms so that we can really track production and see how many weeks it’s taking us to get a head of lettuce from the back of the grow bed all the way to the front of the grow bed. So as I mentioned earlier, it’s as easy as stacking them in the back and pushing them forward
to place this lettuce where its appropriate spot is. So we’ll push those all the way forward, keep stacking these until this entire grow bed is full and so that we have a
nice blanket of insulation to keep that cool temperature in the water and limit the amount of
algae growth in this system. We do have a difference
between aqua and hydro and so aqua utilizes fresh water fish as our nutrient base. Hydroponic, like we have these
tomatoes growing right here, is actually solely chemical based or you add your soluble nutrients and ultimately distribute
them the same way that you would do in Aquaponics, but it doesn’t fully get recirculated and so you ultimately have to
keep adding those nutrients once every two weeks or so and keep draining that body of water to replenish those nutrients so it’s not as sustainable. It’s very difficult to
get organic for that and it is a very efficient and future way of doing
it, much like this, but we ultimately like to utilize the sustainability features of Aquaponics. LANDiO, LAND is OPPORTUNITY. (upbeat music)
Articles, Blog
Ivan Aguirretalks about how Holistic Management and Regenerative Agriculture changed his life
November 30, 2019
My name is Ivan Aguirre, I’m from Sonora,
Mexico in the northwest part of the republic of Mexico. I was raised under an agrarian
farming ranching family for many many generations. Ranchers, ,farmers, miners, freighters. I
was educated up to 10th grade in Mexico, and then had the opportunity given by my parents
to become bilingual, bi cultural by going to the United States of America for further
schooling. I attended Texas State University where I graduated as an economist and a range
manager. That’s where I met Alan Savory back in the early 80’s. I’ve been ranching this
family enterprise, this family ranch since 1983, so a little over 30 years of leading
this enterprise. Being empowered, anyone or any community of people that are organized
as a whole. There’s prosperity thriving, healthy lives with a land resource base healthy that is producing
abundant water, healthy soils that act as a punch producing abundant plant vegetation
producing abundant wildlife, producing a lot more carrying capacity for domestic animals
and healthy produce or fruits. Becoming more resilient to the extreme weather patterns
that we are experiencing now. We are contributing by practicing these principles to mitigate
a global fever they are experiencing right now. Capturing more carbon and putting it
where it should be in the soils and releasing more oxygen into the atmosphere. Anyone can
get involved, even if you only have a square meter backyard where you have a little soil
on it. Or even if you have 10,000 acres where you’re managing range livestock. Nowadays,
with all this internet technology, eCommerce, eLearning, this knowledge is available to
anyone, almost to anyone that has a connection to the internet. Our mother organization,
the Savory Institute is providing a platform in order for anyone that has a connection
to it to become empowered with knowledge, with principles and practices to get them
going. In case for those rural communities, they are far away from these technologies.
There is people close by that can support them. Yes, definitely it was very very frustrating
in the first 10-15 years since we began adopting this innovative way to organize oneself. Either
a self person or your business. When we began in the mid 80’s, up to the middle 90’s close
to 2000, we were ridiculed. There was a lot more opposition from the established scientists,
academicians, bureaucrats, even the life sector leaders of that time. Nowadays, as new generations
are coming along demanding us to get on board the ecological sustainable healthy way of
life, it’s becoming easier. There’s a lot more demand for these schemes, for these alternatives
to use it to implement it as the alternative to regenerate our natural resources.
My name is Claire, I volunteer on this project
which is called Grow Together. Which is a project run by Hyde Park
Source and Forward Leeds as a joint project. It’s been running since June 2016, so nearly, a bit more than
half a year. And, it’s winter now so we’re excited to get a whole new growing season
in from March, so it’s the first time we’ve been able to plant from the right time, in
March. So everyone’s just enjoying today. We’ve
got some sun. We’re putting up birdboxes. Everybody’s enjoying seeing what there is
again. We’re going to mix the gelatine in with
the water. In one bowl and we’ll mix it until it’s all dissolved and then we can
pour it into the other bowl, mix all the seeds in. What your meant to do is put it onto a
flat table and you know like, cookie cutters, biscuit cutters and then you fill the biscuit
cutters but I thought, we’re not going to be able to do that up here. So I thought if
we find some sticks, about that width, tie a piece of string onto it, put it in there,
then we can just pour it into these and they should just set, we can pull them out and
then we can just hang them around here. And we’re hoping to put up poly-tunnels
so we can have a more sheltered area and grow plants and pot plants on and grow some more
exotic veg. Hoping to have a range of crops so your traditional, your onions, your potatoes,
also sweetcorn, and also bringing some of that food down to the Recovery Academy. To
do the snack and chat and the cook offs. To bring that all in so we can engage other people
in the Recovery Academy. And you find, that with food and gardening and stuff like that.
People, even people who have thought ooh, I’ve never gardened before, you find they
get a real sense of reward and value from the project. I think it’s just it’s been
such a fun, rewarding project. It’s almost happened organically, to use a pun there,
but that’s the way people have got to know each other, by doing, by digging and they’re
chatting about their life and it’s just been a wonderful project and there’s a lot
of people that are passionate and I’ve enjoyed it. I’m looking forward to carrying on to
this summer and more years – we’ve got funding
– Hi, Geoff Lawton here. And this is a 66 acre Zaytuna Farm which we started developing
in 2001 through 2002. And, we laid out the mainframe
of water harvesting systems, like this old swale here. This is the oldest, largest
swale on the property. Planted the fruit forest,
which is a perennial system. Even without maintenance, this system would go on
for a few hundred years. There’s jackfruits, and
mango, and custard apple, and Brazil cherry, and
pecans, and bunya nuts. And, it’s a system that
mimics a natural forest, and it’s a system that takes
very little maintenance, builds soil, and the swale itself helps hydrate your property. It’s a long time now, a few years since I’ve done a farm tour, and a film of the
evolutions of the property. So, I’m going to take you
through the landscape, and show you how things
just keep changing, and just keep getting better. And soil keeps improving, and the water cycles are moderated, so we’re drought proof, and
more or less flood proof. It’s an extremely stable system. Here in the mid-slopes of the property, the swales are smaller, they’re younger, but they’re also very well managed. And because of that, they’re more diverse. And we’re already
involving our own poultry, as maintenance systems every now and again to buffer up the security of the system, bringing in more species all the time, into this big contoured belt right through the middle of
the property, of food forest. Here in these younger food forests, we’re managing the way the forest falls. As a forest grows on a fallen forest, we also manage the layers of production. Here in the mature food forest, we really don’t have
any maintenance at all except for a little bit of
chop-and-drop once a year, when we drop some of these
logs onto the ground. If we walked away, and it had no maintenance in this system, for over 10 years, we
could still come back and get it all in maintenance in one day. It’s a completely stable system, and it’s in full production. Here in one of the lower swales again. We have a really diverse mixture of trees, and it hasn’t been managed yet. So, there’s a lot more leaf,
there’s a lot more shade. We haven’t cut the legumes for mulch. And we’ve got fruit trees
starting to bear fruit, in early, well early spring, it’s not quite spring, just about, We’ve got mulberries coming on here. We’ve got different
bamboo shelter as well. So we’ve got different species of bamboo that are sheltering the cold air because cold air falls downhill, and we’re getting a little bit
more of a frosty zone here. Now, this is a system that is
definitely under management. The poultry have just been through. A big flock of Muscovy
ducks have spent two weeks in here sorting out all of the weeds, laying a lot of eggs, and now we’re ready to move in
and start our cut for mulch. So here’s our swivel pipe, and it’s literally a loose
plumbing fit in here. That just fits on. And that sets the height of the swale. So the water in the swale
can’t go above this, and then if we swivel it down, we reduce the height of
the water in the swale. We can take it right down and turn it into a
flood mitigation system. So we can share the
discharge or raise the lever. Now this is a very useful feature to actually control large water flows and hold light water flows. This banana circle fringed
system with a kitchen garden example that is much bigger
than a normal kitchen garden but is a classic example of
what most people would like as a food production
system in the suburbs. This is our lotus paddy. It could quite easily be a rice paddy. We’ve drained it all so
we can harvest our lotus and have a look at the roots. And we’ve got a swivel pipe
that we’ve reset a bit lower. So this swivel pipe now is in this recess so it can drain the paddy right down. So this is a new evolution
that we’ve set ourselves up. A drain that now falls down
the bottom of the valley, and it goes down at a very slow fall rate, so it’s only dropping six
inches, 150 millimeters, before it gets to this
small chinampa canal. Now this runs at least
six months of the year, but right now, we’re at the end of winter, the driest time of the year. We’ve set these up perfectly level, and we’ve left some
good soil at the bottom. So these are for aquatic crop, and we’re going to build
a trellis over the top. We’ve put a lot of soil from
the trench over on this side, and we’ve repeated the system downhill. So we just put a little bit
of cover crop on it now. We started irrigate to get
the cover crop started. So we have three of these. They’ll be grow beds and
trellises and aquaculture. We’re probably going to put
mulberries on either side and pleach them together
as a living trellis. And this is a start of a
small production chinampa, and we’re really excited
about this new evolution because we have so much water
now sponged into the property. Once we open up our systems up slope, we can just get this trickling
through continuously. Our main crop system here produces the largest volume of vegetables, and it’s a continuous production. There are two chicken tractor systems producing one cubic meter of compost each every week of the year. This system has been in
production for 12 years, and the soil gets better all the time. This is a system that is
definitely of economic value. Let’s go for a walk through the system. So here we have cabbages,
and here we have onions. And then we have one of our legume, emu plants, and Ali crop of leucaena. Potatoes, little bit
frosted off on the top, but they’ll be alright. Then we have daikon radish, and then we have a
trellis, a bamboo trellis. And it’s a solid one, split bamboo woven together. And that’s snow peas. Then we have another Ali crop. And here we have broccoli. And then we have pac choi, and it’s just about to get its seeds, so we’ll save the seed crop. And then we have field peas, actually potted peas on the trellis. And another Ali crop of leucaena. And we just keep the branches coming at the top and take
them off at the bottom. So we get a high, pollard shape. Another potato crop, slightly
touched up by the frost. Actually, two potato crops
touched up by the frost. And then a turnip crop
that’s just about finished. Let’s have a look at the other side. More onions. Onions all the way through, and half the bed’s in mulch. And it looks like there’s little turnips. It looks like we’ve got
small turnips in there. And another Ali crop of leucaena. Top and bottom Ali crop. Over here, we’ve got carrots. Here we got potatoes and cover crop. Here we got more carrots. They’re not up yet. Another Ali crop. We’ve got beetroot. Two more potato beds. It’s winter, so we’re going
to have a lot of potatoes. Here we have a purple daikon. Then we have romanesco,
rather an unusual brassica. We’ve got a lot of it at the moment. And radish at the other end of that bed. And here, daikon radish. Here we have hira, paletted
legume into plant Ali crop. Another bed of romanesco. Another bed of carrots. Another bed of potatoes. Another bed of romanesco. Turnip and garlic. And then we go on to our
bed on the next side. So let’s have a look. Here we’ve got young
Ali crop coming through. Leucaena. All the Ali crop’s leucaena, and it’s all being cut to be high pollard. And if we go over to the other side, we’ve got Ali crop at the bottom. All with Ali crop top and
bottom between each set of beds. Potato, bit touched up with the frost. Broad beans, two beds of broad beans. Cabbages. More radish, and more onions. And some good paletted leucaena. That’s how they’re supposed
to look when they’re advanced, and our understory is comfrey, little bit touched up from
the frost at the moment, but comfrey on the ground,
leucaena high pollard at the top, and that’s our Ali crop. We take all these little sprouts off so they only sprout at the top. Another potato bed. Snow pea trellis. And another snow pea trellis with pac choi coming through underneath. Chinese green cabbage. Ali crop. Potato. Potato. Potato. It’s definitely potato time of year. More leucaena. Potato. Potato. Beetroot. And a capsaicin crop that survived all the way from last summer
which is rather unusual. And we finish off with another Ali crop. That’s our main crop system, and that’s what it’s about. Main crops. Not about small, fiddly
kitchen garden crops, but big, main bulk crops. This is our compost chicken tractor. It produces a cubic meter
of compost every week. The bedding gets turned out here and added to manure from the farm, cow, and horse, and maybe rabbit, and then food scraps and
vegetable scraps and weeds, and then turned over every week. Five weeks later, we’ve got
pretty high quality compost that actually goes out to the beds. Every week, a cubic
meter out of this system and the other one in the
distance go on to the gardens. Each system fertilizes 10
garden, 15 meters wide, with three beds, 1.2 meters wide. Now, it’s a trialed system. It’s worked excellent, and this is like the fertility
engine of the system. As long as you keep this going, you produce this pretty good compost that definitely keeps
a continuous production coming out of good food. Excellent food. We can refine this system and turn it into a very commercial, viable model. Our urban chicken compost system produces one cubic meter of compost every month, and it only occupies 16
square meters of land. We have 12 chickens
producing eggs every day. Here we have chickens with a mobile house that we’re moving through the system. So we’ve got chickens
maintaining the system, and then we’ll move them on. They’ll maintain another system. When it regrows, we’ll bring them back. So we’re cycling our poultry
in many different ways. So we’re hatching our chickens. We’re bringing them in. Here’s a set of youngsters here. Some older egg layers behind. And it changes as we process our chickens, as we move through with new
chickens that are hatching. These are our worm farms. And they’re quite famous
worms, these ones. Underneath here, there’s just
masses and masses of worms, and they’re processing waste. But waste is in a high
premium on this farm ’cause we have chicken
systems and compost systems, and we have worm farm systems. But down here is worm juice, and you get a bucket like that every day. And you can pour a little bit of extra in. Pour some in. Pour some fresh water in every day. You’re guaranteed that’s
going to suck through and come back out. Put on the garden. Fresh water put in. We got three of these that
are continuously producing high quality worm castings and worm juice. Every three months, we get a
bath full of worm castings. Every day, we get half a
bucket full of worm juice. So this is part of our
organic fertilizing system. Now over here, we have
specialized compost. So this is compost that we’re making with no help from the chickens. This is a system that’s nearly ready, and we’ve put specialist
ingredients in here to make it specific. And underneath here, there
is high fungal compost. So this is a specialized system that’s just waiting to
go through full process. And if we look to this with a microscope, there’d be a lot of fungi in
here, a lot of fungal shreds because when it was
actually ready, we came in, oh, there’s a worm there. We came in, and we put
flour in amongst the turn, which is a fungal food. So this is specialist
towards fungal domination, which is much better for tree crops. Now it’s sitting there going
through this fungal inoculum, so it’s full of mycelium,
specifically good for trees. Let me show you the difference between worm castings, which
is kind of gluggy like that. You can stick it together like a ball. Like a mud ball. That’s worm castings. It’s kind of sticky. And this is compost mixed with
sharp sand as a potting mix. It’s a lot more friable. Hard to mix that with sharp sand. And if you mix different ratios
of compost with sharp sand, you get a really friable potting mix. So here we are. This is our shade house
where at this time of year, winter, it’s mainly just trees because our seedlings
are in the polytunnel. And here there’s just
enough shelter to stop some of these rust sensitive
trees frosting off. So we have a lot of fruit trees. Guavas, grapes, coffee, pomegranate, jack fruit, avocado,
custard apple, loquat, there’s a whole mixture of stuff in here. And during summer, this is seedlings, and these trees are outside. But this time of year, it’s kind of a shelter for fruit trees. And this is our polytunnel,
and there’s a lot more going on in here than the shade house in winter. So I have all kinds of frost
sensitive crops in here, and really frost sensitive trees. There’s some sugarplum
here waiting to come up. Asparagus. Some tomatoes getting ready to plant. All our little seedlings. We’ve even got some pineapples here. They definitely need to be in
the polytunnel over winter. We have a lot of climbing yam here, and turmeric and yacon
and different propagules. We have some water chestnut here. Everything that’s a little bit tender or very young is propagating in here just for these three months. So just this time of
year in the subtropics, This is a useful area
and an essential area to get us started early in the summer. Our seedlings just come out
to the hiding off table. These are a load of
beetroot we’ve grown on, and they’re ready to go in the garden. They’re just getting a
little bit of extra sun and care before they
go into the big world, main crop garden. All our toilets are composting toilets, and they’re flushed with sawdust or just shredded organic matter. And when they’re full, they’re
emptied into wire baskets. They sit in the forest, and
after nine to 10 months, the compost is fully processed, and we can use it on forestry trees. It’s nice, high fungal compost. There’s a lot of sawdust in it. It’s got a lot of wooden material. It’s broken right down. It’s nicely aged. Doesn’t look like anything
it started off as. It’s quite safe to handle. Just looks like typical forest mulch. Put it around our tree. Pull it back a bit. There we go. That’s humanure when it’s
gone through the process, and it’s aged really well. Smells fine. Looks fine. You would have no idea
how it started life. Here’s our large
commercial reed bed system. There are two concrete base. The water comes in from the kitchen through grease traps, through a septic, and then filters through
the gravel and reed roots, and goes out into a leach field that soaks through the landscape
towards production systems. Here’s our polypropylene reed bed, and it’s just where for one household. We’ve recently thinned out all the reeds and replanted it and reset it. So it’s ready to go into action again. It’s working. We’ve flooded it a couple
times to get the actual roots down into the gravel. And it’s exactly the
same as the concrete one except it’s made out of polypropylene. They’re both items here in Australia you can buy off the shelf. Now this is our dairy with our
one cow milking machine here and all the feed that we, minerals and supplements
that we give our cows every time we milk them. We can milk from a standing
position here through here. So this is a purpose built system that milks every single day. Our cattle lane way goes
right around the farm with 43 gates where we can sell graze in varying sizes continuously
for our beef cows, our dairy cows, and our horses. This is the most efficient
large area system on the farm. So here we are in the
wilderness on the farm. I’m in one of the wet gullies, and here, we can come to nourish ourselves and feel what it’s like
to be in a natural system, and this is how we design Impermaculture. We design with the systems from nature so we can nourish ourselves, and we can nourish the planet. That’s what we need to do.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a plant whose leaves were highly nutritious, was resistant to slug attack, it was fast-growing and hardy and truly maintenance-free, whose leaves could be harvested throughout any season of the year. Well…May I introduce The tree collard! Sometimes called tree kale,
Brassica oleracea,
who is always pleased to make your acquaintance. On a hill near a wood, where nobody goes. Up a track, through a gate. The food forest grows! With secrets and treasures for everyone’s pleasure. And Rob’s discover, Rob’s discover-eeeey. Hello again. And welcome back to the forest
garden. This once rather elusive, tree-like form of brassica is now enjoying its resurgence, and about time too. It’s an excellent companion
for loads of things, except strawberries, tomatoes and certain kinds of beans. Mine can be seen towering out of the centre
of my leek patch and medicinal herb nursery bed with a few scattered around the orchard
area for good measure. It’s not that I gobble kale galore. Although
I happily would if there weren’t so many other delights around here to choose from. It’s just that every time a gust of wind snaps one of its brittle stems the
thrifty rag-and-bone man within me takes every one of them to plant up as a cutting And as they root so very well they are an effortless
way to keep in favour with your gardening friends by donning out spontaneous kale cuttings throughout the year, nicely potted up like this I say kale cuttings, it’s actually better to rip them off the stem or pick up the ones that have been damaged by wind .beacuse when ripping them off of the stem they retain some of the growth hormones where the bud was at the bottom of the stem here and they root a lot more easily. In good soil, they can grow up to 2 meters
high within a year, and live for up to 20 years. If their charms begin to wane or they become
too disorderly they’re pretty easy just to snap off at the base. Which can sometimes happen
accidentally if one is foolish enough to go scurrying by with ill-fitting boots with
two full watering cans and a large bare-rooted bay tree. There is one particular challenge to growing them here
in the forest garden, however. The geese. They absolutely love them. I’m
indeed happy for them to supplement their dull, verdurous diet on a few of my personal
sweet, salady crops here and there. But they always head straight for the collards first
thing in the morning. They then tell me that they’re too full for their contract-bound
grass cutting duty and will start later in the day when they’re less full.. as they
rip off another protein-packed leaf and toss their heads back, eyeing me defiantly. Usually,
I ignore this, but sometimes I put my hands behind my back, kneel and join them by ripping
a few leaves off with my teeth whilst their intelligent, blue eyes peer at me with faint
amusement and indolence. Anything to keep them away from my swiss chard though!
they can be eaten raw and are best in the morning time when still turgid before the sap returns
to the roots in the afternoon. * Crunch * They are much sweeter after a frost, so needless
to say my Christmas dinner is always quite kale-laden! Incidentally, today is November the 8th and this morning was the first hard frost there was so These leaves are really sweet So very sweet Thank you kale. Mullein moth caterpillars love it too! And just
a handful can strip a mature plant in a couple of days. I overcame this by mixing a few of
these decorative crawlers amongst my khaki Campbell ducks’ pellety supper. Within two
days the ducks came to see these creatures as a viable food source and voila! No more
caterpillar riddled leaves! Not below half a meter anyway. Which is just about as high as the ducks can reach. Whether foraging around my garden for lunch or tea, or sometimes breakfast! Invariably one of these purpley-green, vitamin and calcium-rich
leaves always ends up in my wicker picking basket The tree kale is particularly high in vitamins K, A,
& C and by weight is more protein rich than beef! There are many good reasons
for it to be always on the menu. Usually, I just rip them up and add them to
whatever mix of that day’s leaves and vegetables I’m sautéing in my cast-iron skillet. I can’t do this with one hand. This week it’s mostly tomatoes & courgettes with copious amounts of collard for extra iron. Though when I’m feeling decadent enough to put the oven on, there’s nothing quite like the lightly salt & pepper seasoned, crisped collard. * crunch crunch * As the days shorten and the darkness drives
me indoors, the time for culinary experimentation will soon begin. There are plans afoot for
collard smoothies, collard soup and even collard sauerkraut! So watch the space! Thank you very much for watching. And see
you soon! Bye!
Sometimes nature gives us strange crosses between plants. The Tayberry is a surprising mixture between blackberry and raspberry, inheriting the characteristics of its parents. This fruit of quite a recent appearance emerged in Scotland around the 1960s and was named in honor of its place of origin, the Scottish river Tay. The Tayberry is a climbing evergreen, woody, and robust shrub, but with light branches and thorns, so we should support it, preferably through trellises. It should be noted that it enjoys a high resistance to cold and frost, withstanding temperatures up to -15º C (5º F), and its protection from -26ºC (-14,8º F) is necessary. Frost will not be a problem, since its flowering is late, at the end of spring, and we can see the fruits emerge in the rods from the second year. Something to note is that it is a very resistant plant, which barely has pests and adapts to virtually all types of soils, although its production increases considerably in substrates with a large amount of organic matter, requiring a sunny or semi-shade location. It requires moderate watering during the establishment stage in its planting place, but, once installed, it does not need so much hydration. The morphology of the tayberry bush is similar to that of the blackberry, with a fairly similar growth pattern, while its fruits resemble raspberries, but much more elongated, being able to reach a length of 4 or 5 cm. (1,96 inches) The berries are reddish-purple when they ripen and harvesting occurs in summer. Unlike raspberries, tayberries are full of juice, its taste being a real treat, much sweeter than blackberries and raspberries, and full of nuances. They will be collected very ripely when their color darkens, at which time they will be less acidic, full of juice, and their soft and fruity taste reaches its pinnacle. They are very perishable, so they should be eaten immediately after collection, keep them for a maximum of one day in the refrigerator or choose to freeze them. Raw, in desserts, jams, jellies or drinks, any use option is ideal. Like other berries, tayberry is low in calories, with a large amount of fiber and antioxidants, and stands out for its high content of anthocyanins, vitamin C and manganese. This curious and exquisite hybrid of the forest, fleshy, fragrant and very tasty, is an easy species to grow, suitable for cold climates and with great resistance to pests, which offers us a great production and becomes an indispensable choice for our garden Ecological or food forest. Subscribe