G'day Everyone, I hope you enjoy the video! It's getting close to the end of the year, but I won't be slowing down because all this rain and hot weather is turning our garden into a jungle, so I have to keep "getting into it" like Santa on Christmas Eve or nature will take over! Anyway, thanks for your support and I hope you have a happy Christmas. Cheers :)

I lucked out this fall and was at Walmart when they were getting rid of all the gardening stuff on the parking lot. Everything was $1 except one kind of miracle grow. Peat moss, potting soil, pavers, sand, gravel, mulch, everything $1 each! I have a small car, but I made 4 trips and got 140 bags of raised bed mix, potting soil, peat moss, and even 58 bags of miracle grow indoor potting mix. I spent $150 but probably saved $1,500. I topped off my current raised beds and have put in 3 new ones! It was a lot of work but sooo worth it.

You have always consistently been one of my favorite gardeners on KZfaq!

When you were putting the fish waste in, I was recalling what they taught us in first grade about the pilgrims, and how the indigenous people taught them about putting a dead fish in each hill of corn as a fertilizer.

Can't believe a half-an-hour went by already. You have such a kind voice to listen to.

It's winter here in Pennsylvania, US. When my wife and I bought our home last year I used a lot of your videos to start our raised beds. They produced phenomenally, and I'm glad to see a guide to help us use to compost we've been making. Our tiny yard has turned into a dynamo for food and is the gem of the neighborhood. Thank you for your helpful videos and happy holidays to you and yours!

My wife doesn't know it yet, but she bought me a couple birdie beds for next seasons grow. 😂thanks for all the tips and great videos. Love your stuff.

Nothing beats a good organic humor as well...love you mark keep it up🍻🍾

Mark's side gig is off grid burials, his plants really relish a freshy from time to time 😂🤣

Just caught myself giving you a thumbs up back 😂 love the videos all the way over here in Florida. I’ve learned a lot watching your videos.

Every video that concerns raised gardens we watch them multiple time as to not miss anything we are still pretty new to all of this and with your tips our garden has gone crazy. A big thank you Mark and greetings from the prairies in Canada

Is there going to be a part 2 to this video, showing how the vegetables grow in both beds if there is any difference?

I can’t wait to see the follow up on how things grow in these two beds!❤

Mark, The chunky bits of charcoal will help the soil by providing a "home" for the microbes in the soil. Love you videos. Can you do a video on signs of plant nutrient issues or disease issues that can be solved organically, or by using the proper fertilizers to help the deficiencies. I have learned a ton of new tips and tricks from your videos. Keep them coming!!!

Mark, don't let anyone give you grief about being dig vs no dig. Everyone's situation is different and you should do whatever works best for you in your area. It's a win either way if you're growing your own food.

Same - My family actually gave me an intervention that I was working too much and that the stress and anxiety wasnheading me to a heartattack. I also gained 30 pounds...I quit in December and Janaury 1, became a consultant of my own! Good luck to us both. Here's to 2024

Good day Mark! I can't wait to see the comparison of the veggies grown between the raised beds! Wishing you and your family a very merry Christmas and a productive and prosperous new year!🦋

Good stuff Mark couple of additional steps I use. 1. I never let the weeds go to seed in my garden beds. Even if I just have to cover them with grass clippings to stop them flowering 2. Before I start rebuilding the beds, I leave them fallow for a couple of weeks, get any weed seeds to germinate, and then rake them back into the soil on a hot day. After a couple of growing seasons, the beds become almost weed free, even the onion and nut grass. Cheers

An American programme I watched they did identical garden beds, one with hay as mulch and one with woodchip. The one with wood chip produced about 50% more veggies after one year.

Hello from Canada! Love the content. You should look into making a fish fertilizer at home. Just a 5 gallon bucket with a tight fitting lid, brown sugar, and the same fish wastes you put in the bed. Mix thoroughly and leave it with the lid on for 6 months and you’ve got a homemade fish hydrolysate. Amazing stuff! And very affordable

I imagine each bag you used will be $8-12 a bag. With that said you could have $50-60 a bed. Though it may grow better foods, I can’t imagine the average homeowner seeing it beneficial on a cost basis. I’m interested to see outcome of cheap bed vs expensive bed. Great video

We get horse manure for free. They’ll load it into the back of our truck and then we’ll take it to our compost pile and let it sit there for the spring and and till it into our garden after last harvest so it’s ready for the spring planting

Great video! I’m moving from buckets to metal raised beds and this helps me out a lot😊

Reaching way back to Elementary School days, I recall that native Americans would place a small fish next to the seeds they were planting.

This guy seems so genuine and friendly. I bet it's partially from so much time by himself in the garden. Time to reflect.

What a great topic! Great timing too as most gardeners here in the northern hemisphere are prepping beds now in time for spring (where the ground isn't frozen!).

Hey Mark, love your vids. We also use eggshell dust. I bake the eggshells and chuck them through a coffee grinder to mix with my soaked chook food and also use it in gardens with specifically tomatoes and zucchini’s to minimise blossom end rot.

My wife and I have been enjoying your videos on our television youtube channel and never get to give you a thumb's up! Thus this comment! We've learned and as I said, enjoy watching your videos. I'm retired but she's not. We live on the Atlantic Ocean in a condo and though the weather's great, and the views are wonderful we intend to move in a few years to a place where we can do some serious fruit and vegetable growing; just an acre or so. I want to landscape with a water feature or two. Up until three years ago we always had a home (four new ones constructed throughout our 44 years of marriage), and I liked landscaping with stone. I hope to do more of that with fruit trees, and grape vines. I have to stay in shape, and nothing would motivate me more.

Great vid Mark. I usually put my fireplace ashes into my compost during wood burning season rather than straight on the bed. Seems like it would mix better within the compost.

Been watching your channel for years, always good solid gardening information. I too use raised beds so I can sit and I reach across with no problem. Mine are 3 feet wide. At 83 they are godsent, since I can no longer reach the ground with my back issues. I love grass clippings, leaves, kitchen waste, etc. to raise the nutrient value in the soil. Previous decades ago I composted using the batch method. Even moved my compost in trash barrels when I moved to a new property years ago. I liked the large U shape wider than deep and used the two corners to pile the compost back and forth to turn the mass every couple weeks. Just a few turns and I had a batch ready to go. I miss those days. Carry on and happy holidays to you also.

The Tree trimmers were here trimming around all of the wires... They ran everything through a chipper. I asked the guy what they were going to do when the chipper truck was full. It was a big dump truck mind you. The chipper sprays it all right in the back of it. He said we pay to dump it. I said you can dump in my yard for free... Two years later after turning it occasionally, I have a mountain of really good compost. It almost looks like potting soil... The best part is: It was FREE! It would have cost me a pile of money to buy all of that compost...

Thank you Mark, as always you give real life videos for those of us trying to grow a little food. I started watching you in the beginning, now going into my third year, I successfully make my own compost and mulch. I love the fish idea, I will go over to the coast to get seaweed and fish parts and starting weed tea.

Love how you mention gardening keeping us fit, healthy and also giving us produce in return! It's a win win!

The amount of dadness at 28:42 is just absolute perfection

Great video. Idk what plans you have for those beds, but seeing a side by side growing comparison with a variety of crops would be a cool video in the future to build off this one. Possibly do a running total of the produce weight harvested by each to see if one would produce better than the other.

I LOVE your videos. Just happened to find you. Watch while on the treadmill. I live in Florida but am currently in a community that doesn’t allow gardening. Won’t make that mistake again. I live vicariously through you and your garden. 🥰 You are very talented and entertaining. God bless. Darlene

Hi Mark, I just want to say thank you for your channel, I’ve just started following you. I’m a new home gardener in Adelaide and I’m really enjoying your content. You’ve helped me heaps.

very good, as always!!! i started watching you last year when I only had a small cage with 4 quails, now i have about 20 chickens, 30 quails, 5 ducks, a medium compost pile and almost 19 m² space with large pots lined up for gardening.

Mark, thank you for this. I only have a small garden but sometimes when I have setbacks I feel like maybe this just wasn't for me. But knowing that the 'big kids' with big gardens have similar setbacks, I feel like I'm not alone and I feel like I can get up go back into the garden and start over again. Thank you for showing me this kind of video❤

Hi Mark and all I use 3/4 finished home compost all the time. I like it for blending into the top 3 or 4 inches of garden beds. Makes a good layer to cushion the chunky mulch for the top layer. Finished compost I use for general fill for the top 12 inches.

Such great information. Kentucky USA here and garden madness planning for our growing season has begun. I need all the free tips I can get. Thanks!

Another great video bud!

For a minute, I thought you were going to show us free bed! Got so excited!! I'm also excited about the free bed filling. 😊❤

I am so keen to see the outcome / harvests from each of the beds. Thank you so much for doing this.

Merry Christmas from The States, Mark!

"Extra Texture." What a good name for a band! lol PS Merry Christmas to you and yours, Mark.

I started using horse alfalfa pellets to return nitrogen to the soil. WHAT a difference I am seeing. Especially for peonies and roses. Also, the rhubarb and veg gardens are just starting to take off. I am in arid Colorado, USA so it has also helped keep moisture in the soil. It's only 8.00 a bag at the farm store for a 40 lb bag. A neighbor gave me a huge, gutted fish, it went in my big tote with the musk melon plants.

Ahhhh......I so love watching garden videos in our northern hemisphere winter! Keeps the dream alive!!!

Hey Mark. You are my absolute favourite KZfaqr. Thanks for explaining things so clearly and making it fun too! 😊

My personal approach is to dig a trench like you did with the second bed (but in different places each season rather than always down the middle) & then put all that grass & garden waste from the first bed into the bottom of the trench upsidedown & then throw newspapers & torn up boxes deliveries come in on top of that to prevent the weeds coming back up to the top (I soak first if the weather's dry or I want everything broken down & productive again fast) & each year I dig that trench, it's moving that now composted material back to the top & around the garden & then I throw a little blood & bone or chicken poo/dynamic lifter onto it if I'm going to grow heavy feeder plants, otherwise just leave as is & I get great results with fantastic biospheres in the garden with worms, mushrooms & everything else in there & soil looks great & holds water great. I think it's great you did this video & showed both options really well & I'm sure a lot of people will really appreciate it, but I think people often want to overcomplicate things & feel like they need to do more than they actually need to. If you put what grows in the garden back into it, it will always have enough nutrients present, just needs that small amount of the plant that's harvested to be replaced in nutrient value. & I love compost too, but I have limited space, really not enough for a proper compost, so I have a kitchen flip top garbage bin in my garden, with the bottom cut out of it & I just put all my kitchen scraps directly into that & the nutrients from them leach down into the garden where the plant roots can access them, as can the worms, making it an in-garden worm farm & when it fills, I just stop adding new stuff for a few weeks (I've got a second smaller bin to use during that time) to let the last added stuff break down & then move it to a different location & spread the stuff above garden height into the garden around the bin & that corner becomes my super growing spot next planting :) I'm taking my ground level garden into a raised garden bed right now, have put 1 layer of besser blocks in position & all my hedge trimmings & paper/cardboard waste is being dumped into it section by section to build it up to the besser block level & once it reaches the top, I'll add a second layer of blocks to raise the height. Sweet potato & beans growing in it at the moment, they seem happy to grow over & around the cardboard being added & when I harvest the sweet potato, I will end up mixing the cardboard into the ground soil & if it's the same as my main raised garden bed, I will probably need to add a bag or 2 of sand at some point for better drainage, but my main raised gardenbed is basically ALL compost/garden waste/paper & a little sand, nothing else & everything I plant grows super well without the need for any additives, have been for 12 years now, have never seen any productivity lost. Lots & lots of carbon (compost, ash, manure etc etc) in the soil is absolutely the secret to a super productive garden imo & avoiding chemical fertilisers over time really improves the soil & makes plants FAR more productive due to increases in soil microbes that break down everything to release micro-nutrients in plant available forms Just wish I had more space available, love the amount of space & set up you have!

I keep my worm bin in a shed and throw all my weeds in there including the seeds the worms eat everything then when the seeds sprout they die from no sun and are eaten. It works especially well with pumpkin seeds I don’t want

Se mais pessoas tivessem se preocupado em cuidar do nosso planeta, reciclando coisas e praticando sustentabilidade, hoje nós não estaremos enfrentando tantas catástrofes naturais ao redor do mundo. Mas nunca é tarde pra começarmos a mudar nossos hábitos. Assim espero! Parabéns!

Wow! Zeolites!!!🎉 last year I grow potatoes in it…2-4 mm granulation… 30 cm deep, in 60 liters containers… production, 18-20kg on square meters Feeding culture with liquid type Jadam from grass this year, I put in zeolites to grow onions, garlic 🥕 carrots and potatoes

I’d like to know the cost of that mix of commercial amendmenrs, which are really high quality. Okay for one bed, but I’d suggest out of the question for those with multiple beds

One thing I do over winter with the fruit trees. Is put used crushed coffee beans around the base of the trees let the worms do there work. When spring comes my apricot cherry gooseberry trees have a fertilizer boost

every autumn I collect Leafs from the neighbors. They usually dump it away and let the city collect it... so i offer to clean the driveway and take care of the Leafs. Best mulch and an easy compost element especially when combined with kitchenscraps and grassclippings. + I can get Horsemanure from a local stable which only feeds organic hay so potential herbicides are not a big issue

Pull all the weeds into a big, black plastic garbage bag, add some water, close it loosely (to allow outgassing), and lay it in the sun for a few weeks to become instant "horse manure". Open it and spread into your garden. You've just saved and recycled all those nutrients, and killed most of the weed seeds. Add all the grass clippings, too.

Thank you so much for keeping us involved with everything I have learned a lot and also from the dad jokes keep up the good work and Merry Christmas to you and your family😊

Nutgrass is a really nice crop in its own right. The tubers it forms are calorific, sweet, and exceptionally rich in fiber, and it can be very productive. It was one of the most important foods of the first humans to settle Europe, before agriculture developed. It does grow aggressively, and it does compete with other crops, so it's usually treated as a weed. But even still, would you be interested in sparing a container to grow it, just to see what you get?

Love your tips and tricks mark! I appreciate everything you share with us. Keep up the great work. 👍

Most potting mixes use worm castings, good quality ones at least. So you're spot on! Technically it IS actually adding compost most of the time!!💛 Great idea. I would add though, if you want to use any water based or brew, just toss an air pump and airstone and will be night and day difference in number of the highly beneficial aerobes. Can use solar pannel/battery to avoid needing any wires💪

Have a great chrissy Mark. I hope you didnt get too drowned this last week.

For years my grandma use dandelions water as soir fertileser. You just pick up all dandelions in your garden, put it in a big container and fill it with water, cover and leave it for 2-3 weeks. It need to be like half container of dandelions and rest water. And then its ready just use that water from container half dandelions water and rest plane water. Also we use old ruster nails and other iron stuf for plums and other stone fruits as a source of iron for trees.

Hi Mark , I hope all is good with you. Great video. Would you let us know about how much it cost to prepare the commercial bed? Also do a comparison planting, and production of the two beds. You are very lucky you have access to free manure, and wood chippings, most of us have to pay for that stuff unfortunately. More power to your growing thumbs , Muffy from Oz.

The heat kills off pathagions and seeds. If they let the process work naturally once the thermaphilic stage is complete and goes into its second mesophilic stage the beneficials come back and thrive. But they have to let it happen naturally. Or they can innoculate it.

I'm sure you know this and just misspoke, but wood ash isn't a substitute for humic acid, but is a good substitute for the mineral amendment you added (vermiculite). Wood ash contains ONLY inorganic salts of plant minerals (Ca, K, Mg, Mn, Zn, S, Bo, etc, etc). Fire combusts all the organic matter,leaving only minerals in the ash. Humic acid is pure organic matter (hydrocarbon), and is what lends the dark color to compost, for instance. Humic and fumaric acids are great fungal foods. And those little chunks of charcoal will become great habitats for the soil microbiome (as in "bio-char"). Hope this helps.

I bag up all of my chicken poo in the chicken feed bags everytime I clean out their coops. I add a bag into EVERY raised planter everytime whatever I am growing has finished.I no longer wait for weeks (I use to). I tip a bag over the planter, dig it in, water it WELL (soaked) and plant into it next day..., NEVER lost a plant yet from manure burn. (another myth as far as I am concerned) I have sooo much produce I end up putting it out the front of my property for free. 😊 (Glad you said it's a myth about the nitrogen depletion rubbish 😊). I have gum trees and I recently read that you "shouldn't" use gum tree leaves as mulch because the eucalyptus is a plant retardant. 🤣 (I "WISH" i had marked that comment from that dude..., total rubbish😡) I have been raking up the leaves off my property for 25 years and throwing them into my compost tumbler. I am the envy of my friends for the quality of my garden. 🤣..., little do they know..., I am a terrible lazy gardener...., PREP, PREP and PREP. After that I do sweet FA till the season has finished. 🥰

2.2 Million!!!!!! look at you go ay!

Love the hogfish & grill...! LOL TNX 4 VID LOL

All that plastic when you use commercial amendments. I hop out have a soft plastic recycler where you are, as I do here in nz. I do wish we could get sugar cane mulch !!😊

What a great comparison! I just want to add to hopefully save people in the US: much of the feeds given to cows and horses, unless you specifically source manure from organically-fed animals, is grown with an herbicide called Grazon. I've read reports from people who have used them, and even at times in a product called Black Kow, which then sterilized their garden beds. It's so unfortunate.

You're not gonna like this but hey. Nutgrass actually loves it when you till the earth, you could use a screen and sift every nut and root you can find and it'll bounce back in stronger force from all the tiniest of root pieces left behind. The best way to get rid of it over time is to use a good deep weeding tool and carefully remove the grasses as they show, taking care to follow all the root strands along and remove them fully including the runner roots.

Always enjoy your videos - thank you 💚✌🌿

Well, now I will use the whole fish I catch. Bury in the garden I shall do. Excellent video. Just waiting for the snow to go away to get into the garden here in Canada.

Self suffishing me 🤣🤣🤣🤣. I nearly wet myself. You're a classic. Love it. Love the show too.

Looking forward to future updates on how the two beds produce. 😊

incredible hammies, Mark. must be doin a lotta hiking. bet u can haul bodies. gday mate!

Merry Christmas Mark. That potato salad looked a banger. Ill be setting up some large raised beds like those in this video soon. Looking forward to shortcutting as much as possible.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge Mark!

I love this style of video!

Minute 4:55, a critter on the far end of the raised bed is having their moment

Another great video Mark thank you.

That was an awesome comparison video! Thank you.

Thank you Mark

With your new fishing channel, I’m sure you’ll make a bunch of fishing friends who would love to get rid of their waste for your garden. Bonus!

Thanks for sharing!

I just wanted to point out that those chunkier bits of charcoal are good for the soil anyway & help with aerating it and also help prevent fungal growth but you probably already know that. Interested to see the comparison update of these two beds. I’m watching this today which says 3 months ago, so hopefully soon!? 🙂👍🏽

Always helpful Mate 👍

Thanks Mark. Moved into my forever home in December and hoping to get a birdie's in the next month or so. So eager and excited .

This was genuinely helpful. Great video!

I enjoy your videos you are giving alot of valuable gardening tips.

Another great tutorial! Great tips. I thank you for all your work to share with us!

Good advice Mate, Looking forward to the New Year 😄

I just love you and your videos so informative for all us gardeners. Merry Christmas to you and the family

Happy Christmas to you and yours, Mark!

Absolutely fascinating! Thank you and Merry Christmas!

Another great video

Thanks Mark 👍

Merry Christmas!!

Thanks Mark. Have a Wonderful Christmas and New Year’s