00:00Save your money. I want to help you grow tomatoes, cucumbers, a lot of summer fruiting plants
00:08without buying feeds and fertilizers. When you are no dig, that really encourages the soil microbes,
00:15the biology in the soil, and enables all the networks that are in there, the mycelia, the
00:19bacteria, to help plants find the foods they need. With just a surface application of well-rotted
00:25manure, compost, whatever it might be. I mean, look at this beauty. And we've had quite a few off this
00:30plant.
00:30It's a variety called Sonnenhurtz or Yellow Oxite. And there's more to come as well.
00:37We're in mid-September here, so outdoors, they may not go on for too long now.
00:43It's just been so worthwhile. It's so easy without having to think, you know, what do I need to feed
00:48and fertilize? Do I need to do it even? You just don't, I don't think. Once you've got yourself really
00:53healthy. These varieties, the cherry ones that I was given seed of in Ireland last year, and I can't
00:59remember the name, unfortunately. I need to, I'll find that out. But you can see how they're quite
01:03abundant. And these purple ones in particular actually have been really good. So I'll just
01:08keep seed of that without knowing what it's called. And actually also under the tomatoes here, you can see
01:13a beautiful basil. That's Tulsi basil, which, or holy basil. And we've been picking a lot of beautiful
01:19leaves from that. And also I've under planted with spinach. So, you know, being no dig, no feed,
01:25it enables you to do more things. You get fewer weeds and you can enjoy the growing without having to
01:33worry about inputs. And increasingly I've come to, I've always felt uneasy about fertilizer. You know,
01:40I feel it's been given a bit of a free ride in all the, when people talk about organic and
01:45worry about
01:46pesticides, but I think fertilizer is insidious. It's just as bad because it's like giving plants
01:53processed foods. I mean, look at these cucumbers here. So they've been fruiting cropping there for
02:00three months. Again, without any extra inputs, it's just compost on top. In fact, if we look at the soil
02:07here, you can see, I mean, that's the kind of residue of what we put on back in the spring.
02:13And you, you can
02:14see quite, that's the root of a cucumber that's growing quite close to the surface, depending how
02:19much you water. But there's so much growth potential in there that we can't see. We can't see the networks
02:25of mycelia, the mycorrhizal fungi that are finding, teaming up with the plant roots and finding them what
02:33they need, not in simple chemical element form, but in complex organic molecules. That is how I
02:40understand growth happens through photosynthesis, pulling carbon out of the air, CO2 turned into
02:46carbon compounds. And that that goes down through the stem, in this case, a very long stems because
02:52we just keep dropping the cucumbers and into the soil where the roots talk to the networks of life in
03:00there, which are partly they're being fed by the compost. So there's a whole wonderful complex biology
03:06happening there. And it's, it's not so much about chemistry and nutrients. It's about enabling nature's way
03:16of working. And yeah, look at the tomatoes. And again, no feed or fertilizer. What I actually do in here,
03:26because it's such intensive cropping, we use a bit of dried seaweed. I get it from Ireland. It's really nice
03:33um, dried seaweed powder that you can buy and a bit of rock dust. Uh, just a bit of that
03:39in the spring.
03:40When I say a bit, you know, a dusting. And then on top of that, we put the compost, which
03:44in this case was
03:45well-rotted horse manure, one year old and some eight months old homemade compost on top of that. And about
03:52that much,
03:53you know, it's, we're not here with a slide rule to measure it, but it's, it's around an inch. It
03:58looks a bit more when you put it on
03:59and it's a bit less now, you know, it's really gone fine because, um, it's decomposing all the time,
04:05which is great. And that's in all in adding to and enhancing the biology. I mean, look at these leaves,
04:11look at the leaves of all these tomatoes. They're, they're really dark green, you know, and healthy.
04:16They, they just got, they're, they're just shouting at me saying, God, we are so healthy. And
04:23that, you know, avoids me worrying about, do I need to be giving them anything? If you give
04:29feed and fertilizer, you, you, well, in theory, anyway, you need to know what they need. How do
04:34you know what plants actually need? Really hard to tell. And then probably I think a lot of the time
04:41they've been given more than they need. And then that's leaching out because it's water soluble
04:45into groundwater. So it's, it's not only wasted money and time, but it's polluting as well.
04:52Whereas this method, the, the nutrients in compost, they are not water soluble. That's the beauty of it.
04:58So, you know, you could have water and you're not going to be leaching stuff away because
05:03they're just taking what they need when they need it through the dialogue that the plant roots have
05:09with the microbes in the soil. And it's a bit like our own microbes. We have a gut microbiome,
05:17just as there's a soil biome. And recent studies are showing, you know, how they're really similar.
05:24And I think it's like, if, if we eat junk or processed food, that's a bit like fertilizer to
05:30plants. That's how I'm coming to see it. And if we give the soil compost, which is feeding the soil
05:36life, not feeding the plants directly, the soil can work it out. All the microbes,
05:41the life in the soil can work out what the plants need through the connections they develop. And with
05:46NoDig, you're not breaking any of those connections. They're all still there.
05:50So they're in this soil. You know, that famous saying, a teaspoon of soil has more,
05:56more organisms in it or more life, bacteria, fungi and so on, than there are people on this planet.
06:02So there's, there's just tons of it going on there. It's looking a bit dry now, because
06:07at this time, which is, it's actually 10th September today that we're filming this. And
06:11I've stopped watering now because that switches off the, the way the plants grow and they go more into
06:17thinking of ripening, um, and growing what's there, but not making new fruit. So that's a sort of another
06:26trick for growing tomatoes and having, having them all ripen nicely. This is a variety again called
06:31Sonnenherz, the, the yellow ox heart and it, it's almost going pink. I left these on. Normally I, I pick
06:37them before they're quite this right. And I, I did pick a whole bucket full of tomatoes from here this
06:42morning, but I just left a few on these plants just, just for this video, just to show you
06:46this beautiful abundance that you can have so simply, so naturally.
06:51I don't, I didn't know anything, seriously.
06:53I'm just kidding.
06:53So coming back for me.
Comments