Forget what you know about backyard gardening. Maybe our grandparents were right.
Grow or Die: The Good guide to Survival Gardening: https://amzn.to/3dVtICL
Subscribe to the newsletter: https://thesurvivalgardener.us3.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=d1c57e318ab24156698c41249&id=1f74a21dc8
David’s Gardening Books: https://amzn.to/2pVbyro
Compost Your Enemies t-shirts: https://www.aardvarktees.com/products/compost-your-enemies
David’s gardening blog: http://www.thesurvivalgardener.com
No-till gardening is all the rage right now, but it’s not the only way to garden. Many times, it’s not even the best way to garden. Today I explain why single-row, Victory Garden style gardening works so well – and how you can build soil with tilling and cover crops.
Wide spacing, crop rotation, green manure, wheel hoes – it’s a different way to grow and build soil, but single row gardening has wonderful advantages. It may also be the easiest way to garden!
46 Comments
I totally agree mate…single row till for bulk production to put food on the table and excess to sell or barter. Natural fertiliser for sure…it’s easy 👍
For 35 years i gave been teaching large scale gardening. We use bcs tillers. The best on the planet. Our rows are. 600 feet. 800 feet. 1000 feet. We have amazing gardens. 10 acres of them.
Come see our gardens. Joys with the boys homestead.
David can I ask you a question please.. Can I grow sweet potatoes and Butternut squash in the same growbag. Well it's actually a chicken feed bag, trying to save money…?
All my garden pathways are covered with wood-chips and when weeds finally start to grow back after a year or 2 I use the pathway mulch as soil amendment and but down new wood chips on my paths. I basically use the pathway to turn the chips into mulch.
After I harvest everything… I just start dumping all my horse manure and chicken poop in there …..and then when the leaves fall …. I put them on top …. Let it sit all winter ….. and use my plow to mix it all up in the Spring …..
I live on a hillside of clay. Single rows work here and there but mostly I have to use raised beds
I tried an area for in ground, old fashioned garden. First the soil was poor, though good for FL. Then the moles came…ruined lots of plants. Then came the ubiquitous ants and aphids. Then the caterpillars. Then (🎼 dum dum duuummmm) the stink bugs…
I tried and tried, then the final blow came when a tree company working the power line overhead had a bucket truck blow a hydraulic line all over my formerly organic garden space 😩😭
Done.
I transitioned to big containers…kiddie pools, nothing less than 10 gallons. Joyous harvests! First ever!
Very interesting but I'm a bit confused. The only benefit specifically to using single rows that I heard you mention is less irrigation but you didn't mention why. Cover crops work in beds as well as rows.
"By spacing it THIS WIDE you'll have to irrigate a lot less" How wide and why would you have to irrigate less?
Good stuff as always. Thank you David.
Sounds like "Green Manuring" to me, BB
I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your insightfullness. I actually started watching youtube because of you many years ago and I have used the ideas you have taught through the years in every garden I have ever had. I am a FL native now living in a far colder place and gardening primarily in containers and yet I still use many ideas you have shared especially your willingness to try new things and to experiment-in fact, that is what the "Q" in my channel name stands for – QUESTION and I just want to let you know that.
Great video! Thanks for the love and information. May God continue to give you and yours the increase!! 👨🏽🌾🙌🏽📝
My sandy soil would completely be ruined if I hilled like that. I think the success really depends on the type of soil you have. My garden would dry out immensely fast. I learned that early on. Tilling makes sense if you are tilling in a cover crop. I think as a rule if you are tilling it should be to terminate a cover crop. If you have the space, this definitely seems to be the way to go, if you have lighter fast draining soils mounding like that probably isn’t the best option. I would keep it as flat as possible.
The best thing about planting in rows is that you don't forget what you planted. In Hawaii I plant in pots on top of lava. I plant in circles surrounded by fence rolls to keep out the chickens and to make climbing easy for the plants. I use black cinder with compost tea and othe teas. Whatever works is my mrthid.
I'm just a middle aged hillbilly from WV and I thought this is the only way to grow 😆 cheers buddy good video lots great information
Found you a couple of weeks ago and catching up on your videos. I appreciate all the encouragement you give. My gardening has been hit and miss for years. I'm encouraged this year if the rain would ever stop! I'm in Central Illinois and our weather has been so awful this spring. Hot them cold then wet.
I joined your channel in hopes of learning more. Thank you David. I won't post much never do but I'm here! 😁
New sub
David where did you get your wheel hoe?
I'm with you on this one…my garden is 40 by 60 .. some is no till and some is square foot gardening some is row garden… this year I'm planting clover grass between the rows and just mow
Thanks, David! We stopped tilling our garden five or six years ago and I cannot hardly grow anything in it. In the spring it has the most beautiful thick carpet of native weeds/edibles growing before we plant in it. So it's very fertile. But like the beets growing in there now from seed…. some of the beets are ready to harvest and some of them are nothing but 2" seedlings still. So now we'll till that garden! Thank you so much.
What's he doing at the start?
I live in the South. I dumped several truck loads of wood chips on my garden because of my horrible dirt. The soil is getting better but the bug pressure is unbelievably horrible. I will never dump chips on my garden again, I will compost them first.
Thanks. I single row, short rows in my green houses organically & out in the property & my stuff comes up fantastically better than most farmers around. I love the wheeled hour and going to see if my hubby will build me one. Just discovered you, thanks again
Very nice video. The old doesn’t always need to be thrown out, keep it if it works. Make it a part of your system. Our grandparents had some great ideas.
I do single till for bed prep and mulch my paths between the rows with wood chips. I run the chickens through in the winter and hard rake everything back to shape in spring. I do that with 8, 30' beds and it works out ok. 2 of the beds have voles because I did the buried logs thing that I wouldn't do again.
I suggest looking into hugelkultur beds, and for new soil, a lot of carbon (humic acid and biochar) will help a lot on soil structure
I love this video! I agree …use all the methods if you want and find the one you like best or if you are like me, do all of them and enjoy!
My dad has grown in rows and tills his garden every year. His garden is beautiful and he feeds the entire neighborhood! 😊☀️
I ve been learning gardening and permaculture for quite a few years now. I ve noticed there are different things i like to grow different ways 😋 potatoes are a main crop, they grow in an old field (with very rocky soil) and it works fantastically. Squash gets some weedie spot in a veggie garden (it doesnt mind the weeds really), and i always build a little hill for it with lots of random organic matter. Some small things, mainly greens like wild rocket, i only grow in containers. I ve learned a lot.. but there s still so much more to be figured out 😃
I started my veggie garden in August 2021. In Cape Town, South Africa we have tough Kikuju grass so I dug it out, used cement slabs to form a grass barrier. Over here we almost ran out of water a couple of years ago so being a pensioner I decided to cover the sandy soil with cardboard (no money for compost) to stimulate soil microbes. I cut holes in the cardboard and inserted "grow tubes" (made from old soda bottles) in the holes. I grew my veggies inside the grow tubes. I used a 5L water bottle to water only inside the grow tubes thus using much less water. I will continue to dig out more grass and expand the size of my veggie patch. I compost the cut grass clippings and on one piece of soil I just lift the cardboard and dig in my kitchen scraps, earth worms have come back in this piece. I planted 6 trees as well from neighbors trees as cuttings, but 2 are from seed. When the trees mature I will have leaves for compost too. No money garden is a challenge, but it's worth it as i have had a good harvest of organic veggies. Wish you success in your garden.
i will listen to the vid, but you hit the nail in the first minute, you need a lot of space. if you have acres, it's the easiest and probably best. my space is 15X10 and i use the whole thing, no spaces.
This is how I remember gardening or how I was brought up in a small village far, far away from the United state, that's the only way I know and this is how I dream to grow my garden, I was then 7 years old and spend my days in the garden most beautiful time of my life as well sad because I lost my dad, but it was his garden so I spend my days with my mom in the garden to be close to him ❤️
YouTube sometimes resembles the Russian educational 'orthodoxy' before the fall of the wall. Where anyone can make a claim and no one can disprove it. In that environment Russkis invented the internal combustion engine, the vehicle, rockets, the pencil, you name it – it was 'invented' there.
In this instance weeds growing in between the rows tells the farmer/gardener that the soil is struggling and therefore capable of supporting low-value, successional plants.
No-Till is just one element of a five pillar system. The reasons not to disturb the soil are many, the reasons to avoid listening to this simple truth are apparently even more.
Yes….feed the soil
Oh my goodness, thankyou for posting this. I've been doing this forever and started feeling like I was doing something wrong because it wasn't raised beds or "back to eden" or raised rows with tons of mulch, etc. We plant cover crops and do lots of compost, aged manure, leaves, straw, etc. My plants get huge and produce tons of food. I saw that square foot gardening recommends 9 bush beans to a single square foot? There's no way. My bush beans get almost a whole square foot big each! And yield tons of beans! Yet I started feeling like I knew nothing about gardening because of all the "newer" methods and thinking that my garden needed a complete overhaul. Not knocking other gardening methods, I love learning everything and maybe incorporating some, but really appreciated this video confirming that sometimes the simplest, old time methods are still great too and I shouldn't feel like my method is bad!! Thankyou!! ❤
Learning so much from you. Definitely getting your books!
I plant in holes in woven fabric. I've been using the same fabric for 6 seasons. No weeds. I plant, harvest, and wait for next season. I do top dress and till once every few years. Fastest and easiest way for me
I love your videos and I know your speaking English but for some reason I'm not understanding the lingo lol. "Run the chickens through" is one example. I've only been gardening for about 4 months now and have learned a lot thanks to you and Self Sufficient Me. We do have chickens but we let them go wherever they want. Bumper crop and cover crop are things I just learned about. The swamp water did Outstanding. 2 days after putting it on my plants they were up by 4 inches.
I am thinking of putting sedum between my tomato plants as a living mulch… I love experimenting
How do you handle watering a garden on arid land where there is little rain?
Where do you get the best wheel hoe from?
Ide like to know how you go with growing no til carrots. I can't grow carrots without a broadfork
Ive always tried multiple kinds of gardening and went with whatever worked the best for me, not whatever the most people online recommend. I'm 100% organic and I mulch with a variety of straw, grass clippings, leaves, weeds and plants from the woods, compost, wood ashes, wood chips, kelp meal, azomite and rock dust, manures and guanos, etc. I've been gardening for 40 years and this is the best years crops I've ever had. I moved a dead zucchini leaf yesterday and there were an abundance of earthworms under it! I must be doing something right.
Nice video. I am putting in 4 more hundred foot rows this year. Each one I will treat a little different because I see every row and every year as a new experience 🙂
😀🌱🐢
Showing some love, I hope y'all are doing well. Bless DTG and the clan.
When you garden in long single rows, do you plant more than one crop per row?