Hay mulch absolutely saved my garden this spring. It was hot and dry and I was watering all of time. We lease some land to a guy who cuts hay. I bought one (Grazon-free) round-bale back from him and mulched the garden. Boom. Instant improvement. Much less watering. Weeds supressed. Fungal networks rejuvinated. One (mostly) dead tomato plant brough back to life. Now I've got two more big bales to spread. I'm going all out for a full-on Stout/Sobkowiak/theGood deep hay mulch permaculture Grocery Row Garden of awesomeness.

@melanielinkous8746

11 ай бұрын

You've got a gold mine with that hay connection! Awesome.

@awc0000

11 ай бұрын

@@melanielinkous8746 Definitely. I would be afraid to get hay anywhere else these days.

@catharinephoto

11 ай бұрын

I’m assaying some supposedly safe oat straw.

I used my wife's candy thermomater to test the soil under my mulch and it was dramatic. Mulch is key. Thank you for validating what I have been doing for the last 5 years.

@GardeningwithDave

11 ай бұрын

Thank you for sharing! Ive been using my lawn clipping as mulch. Leaves are also great but we don’t have enough trees.

Legit awesome reminder to us! I can attest to how much mulching helps - Had a 3 year old peach tree that was spindly and barely put on any new growth each year. It was a two-foot long stick when I planted it and in 3 years, it had only grown by perhaps two feet. I thought it was doing "okay". Well. Then, late one summer, we got a load of wood chips delivered to make the base of some new garden beds and extra wood chips went around that little peach tree. The next spring, that tree put so much new growth out and bloomed with so many flowers! We have since pruned that tree several times, and it is still such a strong, lovely, and tall tree. It is neither bothered by drought nor excessive rain - just having to change out the mulch this year due to a fungus and pest issue that meant we didn't get very many peaches this year. But the mulch has truly made such a remarkable difference! We did not mulch around a cherry tree planted at the same time as the peach, and it remains the size of a shrub. It gets mulch this year so we can have a strong cherry tree, too. 😊

@davidthegood

11 ай бұрын

We had similar results in our old Florida food forest! Trees that just sat, until we deep mulched them.

@MsTwiththeTea1980

11 ай бұрын

Oh wow. Thanks for this comment. I have a fairly new cherry tree 😊I will be sure to mulch

Wife and I went to Blairsville, GA a couple of weeks ago. Hot, but not unbearable by any measure during the day. Mornings were lovely. We got back home, a mere two hour drive south, and it felt like the pits of hell. Everything other than our peppers and cowpeas is suffering.

@JD_and_TheBanned

10 ай бұрын

Butternut squash seems to do ok.

Here in south east Louisiana we have just been unreal hot and no rain for over 3 months and now fires near us. Mulching had saved our trees i believe that we planted last year. Pray we all get a break from this heat soon.

It really works! Mulch might be the most important aspect. It's a slow release feed to the life in the soil. The soil life gets a long-term sheltered environment with plenty of food to turn it all into little nutrients for the roots to absorb. This is better than boosting soil with short-term redbull solutions. It works, but is that really what we want? In the end, it almost doesn't matter what you use as a mulch. Diversify your mulch seems to be the way.

I recently got in a butt load of wood chips and I’ve spent the past few months putting in in my food forest. It got too hot to finish but I’m about 70-75% done. I’m going to finish this fall or winter. All the trees have already benefited from it though. I had a bunch of them hit growth spurts or something bc some doubled and tripled in size.

I observed with my "Grow a Little Fruit Tree" trees, they have struggled in the north FL heat. The longevity spinach I planted around the pear tree has shielded the trunk from the sun and that pear tree is thriving. I decided to wrap all of my fruit tree trunks with a thick paper tree wrap (sold at Ace) and they are beginning to thrive with the heat! I also decided to do the yard waste compost pile next to one of my avocado trees...that tree has grown incredibly. Thank you David for all your work and advice! I now grow all kinds of veggies that work around this latitude (brilliant concept) - yams, sweet potatoes, yard long beans, Chaya, etc. all in the heat of FL summer.

@davidthegood

10 ай бұрын

It has been a really hot summer. Good work testing and observing.

Love the ad at the end, well played

+100 points for +100 degree video, thank you for your dedication DTG. Sweating to share plant knowledge. 😃🌱🐢

David, your gardener friend at the end of the video put on a few extra pounds but didn't age a bit after 10 years. Thanks for all you do. Ray Delbury Sussex County NJ USA

@Roescoe

10 ай бұрын

The scene of him sleeping in the hammock with the bananas cracked me up

I'm always amazed at how moist the soil is underneath all my woodchip mulch!

Great video! We mulched our entire yard with woodchips and are growing our own food forest! 2 years in and can't wait for it to grow up like your forest and the one in the end of the video 😍

Hey David, I am from Assam, Northeast India. We have Taro growing like anything around here ( multiple varieties ). Yes we eat it. I love it. But generally here they find a way to grow naturally around areas that tend to be low lying than the normal ground level. And since it rains quite heavy here during monsoons and some more off monsoon, it's generally wet around those areas. They are usually surrounded by different types of mosses and green vegetation ( you guys might call it weed ). It's normally darker around those areas hence it has bigger sized leaves to collect all the sunlight. Normally if the plant loves the location its leaves grow quite bigger than what you had and they grow multiple stalks from the base. Good eating my friend.

@hoperules8874

11 ай бұрын

O! Thank You! Now Inknow how to make my taro bed! Love that stuff!! So good!😋

Im starting a grocery row at my moms new place here in southern Arizona! She wanted help with her trees and i already started compost piles. The last owner left some sad pomegranates and plums in row.

@davidthegood

11 ай бұрын

That is awesome. Good luck!

I feel your pain 😢, I'm from central Florida.

Im a fan of these follow ups where you talk about what worked and what didnt.

Amen to mulch!!! ❤

I mulched over a bed with some ash plane shaving last week, and I think the light color of the ash and just the many-thin-layers nature of plane shavings has really done a lot

I bought both of your Florida gardening books, Compost Everything and Grocery Row Gardening, plus one more that I haven't had time to read. Great information! 👍 ❤

@davidthegood

11 ай бұрын

Thank you.

Crazy I never had to worry about unbearable heat in Easter Wa. I started wood chipping the yard a couple of years ago to try and help my garden garden plants, which many are native, I really miss the seasons but am learning to adapt to the new normal here. Drought continues, wonder if I will see water restrictions before I die. My guess is yes.

mulch is great but mulching while eating pickles is gold

I've been shocked seeing so many things just thriving in this heat--while others shrivel and attract pests!

Big facts. This is how you build soil. It's very simple-just make the soil structure as complex as possible.

I can feel your excitement. Totally know what you are talking about.

@davidthegood

11 ай бұрын

Thank you.

Ever since I discovered this IRIE Channel,before we would gather up all the fallen leaves, the cut weeds and grass, cart them off and leave a bare ground, "clean" yard, yes clean, devoid of life but now, when it rains(currently in the rainy season,that organic matter absorbs the rain, keeps it from evaporating back into the air, keeping it available for the many plants and thus upon improving first the soil, we're on our way to being carbon copies of your Grocery Row, Food Forest! Thanks for sharing, missed the Goodstream but enjoying the replay, and wishing the Good Family an IRIE weekend!

Spent the whole 2022 in Nashville for work after living in Texas all my 27 years of life I have to say the weather out there was great way now that I’m back in Houston I definitely miss that weather

The heat over here in San Antonio is just as bad. Thankfully I have a thick mulch layer covering everything and it’s been working well.

Just what I needed to hear today! Thank you 🙏 Blessing y’all’s way!

Came for the fountain, stayed to honor the fountain.

Ive just gone and buried some terracotta post around some of my fruit trees for slow release water. See how it works hay, , and with mulch 🙌😊🇦🇺

I feel a new song coming on..... CHILLING IN THE MULCH! 😂

Very inspiring! I had to put shade cloth over my goumis here central Texas. They get sunburned

Hi David Have you ever tried growing other cold hardy bannana Mekong gaint bannana there bigger then musa basjoo and grow pink fruit and also very cold hardy. Musa sikkimensis is also good and has red leaves and grows in the Himalayas.

I wanted to be comment 100. Thanks for all that you and your family share!

@davidthegood

11 ай бұрын

Thank you.

It's going to be 116 tomorrow. Very true just make sure your mulch wasn't sprayed with anything! Great video once again DTG. Blessings to all the survival gardeners..

@davidthegood

11 ай бұрын

Whew

I think you make my top 5 hippy gardener list

100%! preaching it from the mountain tops, this is literally how we are thriving in this drought.

Thank you so much!

Super encouraging.

Love it !!!... ready for some fall gardening videos .

I have lived in NE Florida a long time hated the cicadas as a kid but have come to realize they drown out the traffic 😊 lemon aid form lemons

I went from a little garden with two 3x6 beds to 3 beds, 2 long trellis and 4 tunnel trellis. And i am putting into action what you said. Start an island. I found a local nursery that sells really big fruit trees for 30-40. I bought 6. 2 peach, 1 apple, 1 mandarin, 1 apricot and a plum. I already have a little fig and a lemon that are under 2 ft tall These new trees are taller than me. All 5-6 ft . I am now deciding where to start my islands and what to plant with them

Awesome thanks for sharing

Hi David, do you worry about how high the mulch goes on those young trees? Or did you pull the mulch back from the trunk a bit?

@elijahsanders3547

11 ай бұрын

Yes he did :)

Good o David! Good timing on this video because I will be in my garden here in hotlanta all weekend killing mosquitoes and trying to do some mulching. 12:47 p.m.

@betty8173

11 ай бұрын

Sometimes, a mix of tea tree and lemongrass essential oils in coconut oil, coat yourself, can keep those mosquitos away!

@lpmoron6258

11 ай бұрын

Hotlanta! Like that

The music is fantastic,GOD bless you

At our place you KNOW it is hot when walking across your crunchy grass burns your feet!😂😂😂

Love the reference to Candide. Great book.

@davidthegood

11 ай бұрын

You may have been the only person who got it.

Are you gonna show the fountain? ....there it is, never mind!

Thank you for this video 😊newer gardener here

Great Ad

Amazing 🙏🌱

You do make a beautiful islands.

please show grocery row! no matter how it looks like it would be amazing to have a tour this season, we only got 1 run-through this year :/

@davidthegood

11 ай бұрын

It is hot and dry, but we can film another tour. Been hoping for rain.

@brockberrick2727

11 ай бұрын

@@davidthegood Love you David!

Loook fresh man !! Stay with nature 🌴🌴👁️

Great content 😮

David the good!!!!! Only you can help me here 😂. I have a yellow jacket nest in the compost pile in my garden. What ever should I do that doesn’t include getting myself or my children attacked.

There isn’t anything available to mulch with this summer if I can’t trust buying straw. Of course there’s none to buy currently. Ranchers are having to go out of state for hay. Hay supply is at a 50 year low in Texas. Grass hasn’t grown for two months. Too hot and no rain. I bought some pine shavings from feed store to mulch veggies beds but it’s of minimal help with 105+ everyday. I need to have it much deeper. Will be stockpiling leaves from people who put them at the curb this fall and winter so I don’t get caught short of mulch next year.

@davidthegood

11 ай бұрын

We've been there. Good luck.

Annoying fan palms make great mulch after clearing them I just chop up the trunks with a machete they are soft enough for that.

Hi from Florida David

105 degrees here in Zone 8B Texas today.

Thanks DTG, do you trim branches that appear to hace fire blight now or wait til fall ... (or at least fall weather)? We really need to start making islands around our fruit trees. Things are really struggling with yhe drought and heat here in Louisiana! Stay cool!

@Willbkool

11 ай бұрын

I would trim them ASAP to keep from spreading.

Good video

I live in SW Missouri and it is not cool in the morning! Unless high 80’s to 91 is cool. The humidity is 100% in the AM too. NOT COOL. Thanks for the video. Sorry, I’m heat crazy! 🥵😡🤪

@davidthegood

11 ай бұрын

That's funny. It was nice in Hannibal.

So what you're saying is, I need to cover myself in mulch to keep cool until winter 😅

I am happy that mulch has helped you guys. But here in Texas with 110* and 125* heat index its like an oven outside. I am watering 24 hours a day. Nothing is helping😢

@CIB8282

11 ай бұрын

In Texas you'd need a huge shade cloth installed to keep your plants alive. That's a tough spot to grow.

@davidthegood

11 ай бұрын

That is terrible.

@thecatniplife

10 ай бұрын

I’m in central Texas. Must have shade cloth to even try to grow in summer but in the end, July and August are no grow months for us. That’s always been kind of true but now it really is. Air temp is too hot for anything to grow or set fruit. Don’t waste water trying. Have to stick with highest heat tolerant crops but they won’t take off until a bit of a heat break. Us dropping to 99 and 100 this week has my plants breathing a sigh of relief. Gives me hope for fall.

Recommendations for insects defolaiating my fruit trees? Particularly mulberry and apple

Was wondering if I should wear a fountain hat to Scrubfest lol

Thats some interesting evidence 🧐

I thought you were going talk about the chicken pit? That experiment with the amazing Amazon soil?

Great video! TY. ❓What are your thoughts on using pine chips🌲 in a vegetable garden and around fruit trees❓Thank you for your time 🌺

@davidthegood

10 ай бұрын

I like them, but they do take a long time to break down. It would be worth adding compost first so there is some slow feeding taking place.

@LadyMaryanne

10 ай бұрын

​@@davidthegoodHi David thanks for your advice. Great idea, I'll definitely implement that. Blessings to you and your family 🕊🌷🌱

Amazing and hilarious outro! 🤣

@davidthegood

11 ай бұрын

That is my brother-in-law!

FEel like temp in sw ohio this evening is 103°f I'm staying in.

But why does he have to get up in the middle of the night to make biscuits? 🤔

@awc0000

11 ай бұрын

Because when it's time to make biscuits it's time to make biscuits no matter what time it is.

@dianadeejarvis7074

10 ай бұрын

Because the biscuits are that good.

My cow peas and green beans are burnt and they are mostly in the shade. I'm sure you have covered this. But, what kind of mulch is best of annuals?

@CIB8282

11 ай бұрын

Grass clippings worked great for me.

Any idea what happen to Ice Age Farmer?? He’s been off the grid for sometime!!! Hope he’s all good.. appreciate your work brother.

Yeah it was 94 at 11:30am here and 103 Heat index 😢

The mulch or cardboard can harbor pests. The insects also like the cooler areas. Happened to our neighbor. Better to grow small and use shade cloth.

Dang. Even my Taro is doing better than that in South Central Alaska. It seems its either too hot or too cold in a lot of areas of growing. One thing I like about growing in Alaska is there is at least a period of a few months when the sun is out 24 hours a day, the temp is warm or hot and there is plenty of water and good soil. Its no accident Alaska leads the nation in giant veggies every year. I often compare gardening to going to war. I spent six winters in Hawaii and it can be a fight to grow stuff there too.

…and plants that need less water. For example here in Florida I’ve planted Mexican wild Olive, Texas sage and mountain laurel.

Try gardening the dessert. Watering 3 to 7 times daily. If not certain plants burn up even with mulch. 😢 .

Taged u in a video of my garden hope u'l get it😅

1:45 is that gungo peas back there?

@davidthegood

11 ай бұрын

Yes - we call them "pigeon peas."

I'm a little disconcerted seeing your Persimmon still leafy. Mine has already put a fall show on, red curly leaves, quite a few have already dropped. It's been in the ground around ten months. It's still high nineties here in Cyprus and will be for another six weeks or so yet. I water it every time it dries, daily at the moment. Maybe it's particular to the variety. I have no idea which variety mine is. It's a grafted tree though.

Is that canna on your island an edible one? Please could you tell us the Latin name so we can ask for it at the nursery?

@davidthegood

10 ай бұрын

This is a turmeric.

@louiseswart1315

10 ай бұрын

Unbelievable that it grew that big in those summer conditions. Demonstrates the influence of deep nourishing mulch very well.

10 years later... lol!

Lord God then made david , and it was good .

Hi from Southwest TN. I started working outside 6:00 am this morning. At 10:00 it was unbearable. Thank you for all of your great tips. I have been having great success. 💚👩🏼‍🌾💚

@thecatniplife

11 ай бұрын

Those are the hours I can stand to be outside as well. By 10 am I can’t take anymore. I’m in central Texas.

I haven't been watering the food forest and it shows. It's scary, to be honest. the garden/grocery rows are toast.

I gave up on my pomagrante

@bobertcronos8433

11 ай бұрын

It will probably thank you pomegranates thrive on neglect I go out and say mean things to mine to toughen them up a bit

In dry summer, your plants need water, not mulch.

👋 David this is Bernadette aka Bernie from LA. In Verbena now just under 30 min from Petals from the Past. Will you be stopping by again..? If so I’ve got some questions about my new land.

@davidthegood

11 ай бұрын

You can email me

@WhatWasIThinkinHomestead

11 ай бұрын

Howdy neighbor! Verbena here, too. 🙋🏼‍♀️

@kaitieriley

11 ай бұрын

Would love if DTG did a petals meetup! I'd go. I'm in the Montgomery area!

Ok, am I just being a baby? My dream is to garden barefoot in the evening. The mosquitoes laugh at my dreams. I have at least one snake sighting a month. Last month it was a rattlesnake. I recently saw a few baby Pygmy rattle snakes. Thankfully it’s usually a rat snake. How do you get rid of the mosquitoes? I do all of the stuff they recommend. More mulch to be put on tonight!

don't keep rhizomes in the why-zone, mulch maaan you ready for that rooster to crow?

Why Mulch is best. Why mulch is worst. Mulching 😂

Thx for helping me up my mulch game It is making a difference esp in z9a 🙏🏻✌🏻👍🏻🇺🇸