In this video, I share a little known gardening method that is better than raised bed gardening! Insect pests and garden diseases often destroy my tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and other plants in my hot, humid summer climate, but this year, my vegetable garden is looking better than ever thanks to this incredible vegetable gardening method! If you struggle with pests and diseases in your garden, this could change your life!
Follow my series on straw bale gardening here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1gY7BoYBGIHSGzSTntDC8ToTvOBuCCN_
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 The #1 Challenge Most Gardeners Face
2:47 This Gardening Method Is Incredible!
6:13 How Garden Diseases Spread
8:17 How I Stopped Garden Disease Spread
9:43 This Gardening Method Controls Pests Too
13:07 2 Potential Problems To Watch Out For
16:01 Adventures With Dale
If you have any questions about how to grow a vegetable garden, have questions about growing fruit trees or want to know about the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share some DIY and “how to” garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please ask in the Comments below!
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ABOUT MY GARDEN
Location: Southeastern NC, Brunswick County (Wilmington area)
34.1°N Latitude
Zone 8A
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© The Millennial Gardener
#gardening #garden #gardeningtips #vegetablegarden #vegetablegardening
27 Comments
If you enjoyed this video, please “Like” and share to help increase its reach! Thanks for watching 😊TIMESTAMPS for convenience:
0:00 The #1 Challenge Most Gardeners Face
2:47 This Gardening Method Is Incredible!
6:13 How Garden Diseases Spread
8:17 How I Stopped Garden Disease Spread
9:43 This Gardening Method Controls Pests Too
13:07 2 Potential Problems To Watch Out For
16:01 Adventures With Dale
Wow! What a game-changer! I live in Cypress, TX northwest of Houston and as everyone knows, Houston is infamous for summertime heat and humidity! Incredible information and I appreciate you sharing it with your YT subscribers. Keep your great videos coming!
I bought my straw bales last October. I even 'conditioned them' properly.
They STILL have not broken down.
Had to replant green bean seeds FOUR TIMES just to get some to sprout.
This time I coated the top of the bales with about an inch or so of used coffee grounds.
I will try next year. I’m in zone 8b and you used to live here- I reminded you shared from one of your video.
I have a question about figs. All of my figs in ground, they are bushes. After winter, all last year growths were dead 😢 and I just got green figs. I get new growths each year. How can I protect my figs and shape like a tree?
Thank your for sharing . I am waiting for your update on horizontal figs, too.
No "Grazon" on that hay.
Congratulations! Your determination and ingenuity never cease to inspire and amaze!
I'm thinking this is some kind of weird weather thing. My tomatoes are doing much better than normal. We've been much cooler than normal here in middle TN. I'm not sure what is going on, but my tomatoes like it.
Do you solarize your raised bed soil before planting? If your hypothesis about reduced insect and pathogen pressure helping your plants is correct, then doing something to reduce that pressure even in soil might help.
Awesome video!! Thank you!! I’m going to try the straw bell method next time!! 🙌🏻🦋🤗
You da bomb man I like commented and subbed you’re the best
good channel man
I wonder if some kind of rain protection with go around low drip could help with the ground contamination. I think I just have exactly the same problem here, but i'm not sure because it's my first year, but it really looks like that.
Mulch keeps the sun from directly heating the ground the roots are in. Weak plants attract predators, the leaves expel O2, water and various molecules. Some flowers nearby can mask that from every bug downwind.
I’d love to see how you plant into the straw bale. This is fascinating. The soil I got this year was infested with spider mites unbeknownst to me so I have been fighting them for about a month now. But I think I finally won lol I don’t want to do this again next year though😅
I have done it before and get pretty good results, I like the fact the straw break down into compost by end of season. I don't have my own truck in order to haul so many bails otherwise I would do this method more.
Love your Adventures with Dale! He is a lucky pup!!!
How do the tomatoes taste growing in horse food compared to growing in good old fashion southern soil? 😂
Sounds great, but I am allergic to hay! I’m just starting to try growing a few things using potting soil.
I wonder if straw bales would keep my neighbors cats out of my garden😒
I can't really get straw bales locally. Any suggestions? Where to look maybe? I've probably missed it
Have you ever experimented with a aspirin on your tomato plants?
You can also grow oyster mushrooms in the straw! Right around August Ill inoculate yellow oysters in the straw, which is when your bale will need the most frequent watering. It will take a bit for the spores to spread, and the moment the weather cools in October it will explode into a flush of mushrooms, and oysters will out compete disease causing fungi as it colonizes. ❤
I’m in VA just over the NC line north of Greensboro (zone 7a) and the only pests I have seen so far this year were some aphids on a couple weeds in a bed that I hadn’t gotten to weeding yet. I made a organic mixture up in a spray bottle and killed them and removed them and haven’t seen anything else since except some small light purple moths/butterflies that I chased away with the water hose for a few days because nothing was blooming yet and I was afraid they were looking to lay eggs. 🤷🏽♂️
Great video; thanks! I am so bummed there is no option to save it!
huh, maybe i'll try a bale or two if they have untreated straw locally
Buying so many bails is incredibly expensive and you would have to do it every year. With that type of cost I would say its far easier and cheaper to buy organic products at a grocery store….. furthermore how can you manage to eat so many tomatos? I have 6 plants for a family of 4 and we can never keep up with all the tomato's which we eat often.
I used straw and hay bale culture 20 years ago back when I was a market gardener. If you have access to cheap or free bales, it is a good idea. If not, it is better to work on blight-resistant landraces, which I have been doing for over 25 years. If you have a lot of bales, you can also lay them out in a mat and give them 3 years to break down. This will raise the level of soil. I got 400 bales of spoiled hay for free once and did this. After three years I had another 12 inches of soil. Based on the old canard that it takes 1000 years to build an inch of soil, I compressed, 12,000 years into 3 years. Think outside the box – just like the Millenial Gardener is doing.