I love love love your commitment to regenerative gardening and your commitment to building soil biology. You make everything so easy to understand.

I raise goats and it’s hard to isolate manure from their wood shaving bedding. There are incredible self- plant potatoes, squash, and tomatoes growing in the manure pile this year! It’s all shavings and goat poop- no soil.

Thanks again Mark. Perfect job of putting the understanding of the how living soil works in first position. Looking forward to the rest of the series. Happy gardening from zone 8B.

I love this simplified version of soil and soil needs

Thanks for the gift Mark.

Wow, great video!

Very helpful. Thank you!

Fantastic lesson!! Thanks so much for teaching soil science - the real way it works! I'll be sharing this. All the best to you!

I love your healthy soil videos. Sharing.

Interesting video, and applicable to most people. There are some people like me that cant grow in the ground. In my case its because of a buried petroleum pipeline under my property. I do container gardening to not take chances with the food I am growing to eat. I start with my own mix of peat, perlite, compost, top soil, and amendments. Each year I dump or at least remove a third of the contents of the containers. Its then mixed with compost, leaf mold, and other amendments like pelletized chicken manure and worm castings. There is soil biology going on in the containers, because you are right, its all important.

Great info! Thank yo so much! I feel like I'm back in school as I watch your videos!

Great video! And it is so discouraging when trying to just buy some basic soil (sand/silt/clay) only to find the bag has a lot of wood chips! I like wood chips or leaves on the top, but when I am trying to start a new raised bed I want to make sure I am starting with the basics!

Thank you! I'm learning so much from you!

Organic matter mulch is probably the most important. You need the constant moisture kept in the soil (real soil) while slowly adding organic matter into the soil from the decomposition of the organic matter mulch.

All of your content makes so much sense! Since finding you, I just focus on building my soil. I collect leaves from neighbors, and just pour it on in the fall. Do you see any downsides to this method? I'm on year 2 of this practice, and things are looking really good from my perspective. Crops have been excellent, and my pollinator garden is doing very well as far as I can tell. I'll know more this coming spring/year. Thank you for all of your hard work!

Good show, cheers Mark

I've done some traditional tilling gardening in the past (mostly potatoes but some veggies to) at my village. The issue is that I live 70 km away from it and it was bit hassle to go into gardening seriously. Last year I got piece of land on edge of my city and decided to do some gardening. I went for no dig compost method and was very pleased with success. Now the issue I have with that style is that with place where I live, size of my garden and time that I have composting in some serious size is bit problematic. And if I just buy it than it gets expensive. I was thinking of alternatives and leaves or wood chips were two main ideas. Wood chips in place where I live are expensive if you want to buy and can't get them free or have chipper. So I was left with leaves. Than I went to search on internet and youtube, found lots of leaf mould videos but not many people that actually are using leaves the way you did. I really liked the idea and making 2 beds 13*5 for next season, just scared with the amount of leaves I will have to gather.😂 Wanted to thank you very much for sharing your knowledge and experience it is extremely helpful and very appreciated. Just one question to see if I understand it correctly. You are using winter crop basically to aerate soil and not leaving it one once harvested to decompose on bed? Thanks again.

I just discovered your channel and have done a deep dive in watching your videos. Makes so much sense. So how does one transition their raised beds filled with fake soil (1/3 compost 1/3 peat 1/3 vermiculite and amendments ) to what you practice. Our soil is heavy clay. Although I have had success with this raised bed mix it does dry out quickly and I know the plants are not getting the nutrients needed to thrive. Wish I knew about you sooner! Thanks for sharing your experience!

Mark I've got good news for you. I tried 6 methods to raise tomatoes last season and your advice on planting them tomatoe seedlings into root ball from the sunflower of the previous year .Your method was less than half the effort and no tilting almost O equipment and truly got less than half the amount of water. The method was a very close second best and 4 times less the work as my most productive method. Love your method and will test it again next season and will treat it equally and take better notes. Don't peatmoss help by holding moisture? Thanks 👍

I understand this is just an intro. But it does make me wonder about thoughts on heavy feeding plants that get deficiencies easily. A lot of people understandably just want to go for the synthetics and not think too much.

Mark - thank you for all you do. I am in North Alabama (7b). I enjoy watching your experiments. I have a lot of red clay. I have 1/3 of my garden covered in leaves, 1/3 in winter rye and 1/3 the way I normally grow. I am looking forward to seeing which works best.

Thank you for sharing this valuable insight. I always knew in my heart that real soil is necessary for proper plant growth, but guess i too got brainwashed. But i make sure to add atleast a handful of backyard soil and coarse sand to my potted plants, and they do way better than in just soiless potting mixes

Excellent video Mark! What are your thoughts about coco-coir to replace the peat in potting mix for indoor plants? 👍

Great video- thank you for this valuable resource- what zone is your farm in?

I've been winter sowing numerous varieties of ves for spring planting. Some varieties are better suited than others ot this. I am adding more vermicasting this year to taller jugs & bottles. Late frost has delayed planting in the past & my little guys need nutrition.

So interesting. I remember when you had all those leaves on your beds. I’m wondering if that was necessary for a period of time to increase soil organic matter or could one just start by planting and keeping a living root all year?Skipping the compost and leaf mold?

At least he didn't call it dirt.

Can we sprinkle some borax(boron) on the soil?

👍👍👍👍👍👊

How would you ammend a garden bed soil that is mostly decomposed organic matter? There is some sand and dirt, but a lot of it is lasagna layers greens and browns (1.5 years old) plus compost and lots of worm castings. Rock dust?

I live in Nevada and the soil is full of rocks and I don't know that I am physically able to dig up the rocks to get soil (I'm 75 years old) so where can I get real soil?

I just cleared an acre of woods next to me to expand my garden and have more space in general. I need to let the soil dry before adding / grading topsoil. Do you have any recommendation on what I should grow? Rye grass or anything like that? Would that serve as a common grass as well? Same zone as you. Thanks a million for all of your information!!

What do think about Azomite?

There is a herd of cows uphill from my field. No matter what I plant there it dies, even fruit trees and flowers. When I asked the neighbor if he would move his feeding station away from my fence line the answer was not pleasant. Any ideas what I can do to keep the "fertilizer" from burning up my plants?

I enjoy all your videos but this one has me confused. This is basically top soil and if you are growing in ground, that should be fine in addition to mulching to protect the soil. But are you recommending regular garden soil for raised beds and planters?

what about coca coir.? (sp). we have a compost bin where we put the spent trays from a microgreen farm. is that good for growing other crops, or would i need fertilizer?

What about chicken manure?

We only have sand here

Our real soil on Maui has root nematodes.

If your having trouble explaining that Potting Soil really isn't soil, I have the same problem with new growers group members when I explain compost is NOT soil. That myth is deeply ingrained...and the people who fancy themselves premaculturalists are the among the most dedicated adherents to compost = soil.

It may be silly question , but can you mix old last years peat mix with soil sand & silt worm castings, coffee grounds, blood meal & a compost in pots ? I'm mainly talking about for Tomatoes & Peppers