I am one of her students at the Soil Food Web school. Dr. Ingham, she is so cool and she makes herself available to talk to if you have any questions. I have admit she is like a rock star to me!

You got Dr. Elaine Ingham as a guest, you've arrived.

So much respect for Dr. Ingham and her astounding work. Thanks for this, Diego. 🥰

There is a difference in my mind between soil coverings (prevent moisture loss, weeds) and soil creation. Since what I have is lots of dead or dying trees, I use huglekultur techniques, burying as much small branches and twigs or using them to line the way and covering with manure and continuing to build this. Toss some red clover or other nitro fixer on top in the fall. After a winter or two, part the top layers, make a hole, add compost or potting mix and add perennials. There are so many wonderful ways to feed the soil

Nice podcast. I think you could have pushed Elaine to give more cover crop examples and be a bit more specific. She likes mentioning the exceptions and doesn't like getting boxed into giving advice. I liked how she mentioned that in fertile soils the plants are much bigger. I use this to grow foraging weeds for food. They become less bitter.

After 30 years of composting for mulching my annuals I stumbled on a quicker, easier, richer mulch: SHREDDED LEAVES. My neighbors trees dropped too many leaves for her to manage in the fall so I volunteered to "clean up". I bought an electric leaf vac/shredder, 15-1. It came with a canvas bag which I slung over my shoulder, requiring frequent stops to empty. (This would have gone much quicker if I had help from someone pushing a large cart to trap the mulch.) I put the mulch in my 140 sq. foot, raised bed. It slowly, over a few winter months, broke down, leaving dark soil. I will NEVER compost again. Remember: Keep a cover crop, even if it's just weeds. Why? Building soil is done by ROOTS IN THE GROUND. Observe nature, learn, follow. Don't make work by fighting nature or following traditional farming/gardening, e.g., turning over the soil. Does nature plow? Hell no!

You don’t have enough podcasts! More names more more 👍🏿👍🏿

Needed visuals of these methods

The Compost Queen!!! 🍂🌱♻️

Love the steam punk artifacts, especially that beautiful stove! There IS permanence in this ol' world after all!

We’ve been looking for good perennial ground covers, thanks!

You both are legends

She’s cool and has some great experience!

I find her methodology so difficult to comprehend. I’ve been gardening for 65 years. No till for 8 years. I can weed 1200 sq ft in five minutes. Can push a 1/8” bamboo stick 18” into my soil with no resistance. Below that is glacial recessional moraine... coarse gravel/boulders cemented together with alluvial clay - hard pan. the bed rock is usually within a foot or less. My brain rejects a gardening methodology that requires a microscope. I think I’m finding JADAM much easier to comprehend. KISS.

Thanks Diego for providing these. A couple of things. There is no magic watering can. Not all practices apply to all scenarios. There is something to be learned. It may prove beneficial in the future. Or maybe not.

I really appreciated the information.

A source to find the combination of perennials to cash crops would have so much value for farmers

Cool, I just got the answer to the question I asked in the comment section of the previous video. I don't remember seeing the info on her web site but I haven't had time to explore it , just skimmed a couple parts. Thank you both.

I live in the tropics and I just started gardening I'm glad to come across this topic and I'm thinking sweet potato. Anything I should know about? Thanks

Love you both. Such good info. Much appreciated. Here in 7B have found it simply IMPOSSIBLE to keep the bermudagrass out of my garden. Nothing Ive done has slowed it down one bit. Till, no-till, cover crop, cardboard, wood chips, hay mulch, limit watering to drip irrigation,. Feel like the only thing left is to turn the bermudagrass into my perennial cover crop and just plant into it. Any better suggestions?

Hi Diego. I found this clip very interesting. Enough so my wife and I planted this year's garden with dichondra as a permanent cover crop. The problem we're having is we have some sort of grass (it looks similar to orchard grass if it isn't) coming up at the same time. How would we get the dichondra going before it's over taken by the grass? Thank you, Bill

Do you recommend growing brassicas in grow bags because of the mycorrhizal fungi issue rather than in a garden bed shared by other vegetables? I garden all year so things finish and are replaced by something else.

I appreciate the info, but at the end I was still confused. I know there are lots of variables, but could you give the steps to take and my actual garden? Should I plant a cover crop? What type of cover crop? Ground covers? Clover will grow too big.

Soooo many of the plants on her list will not survive winter in my region (zone 3). Hopefully I can find something. I've been looking.

Question. We have an interesting succession weed... black jack. It is easily eliminated/ pulled. I have trampled and cardboard covrred for no dig. Wood like yo think it's a good cover crop... btw i am on a tropical island. Nitrogen fixing is imperative.

Would have loved the link to the website she is talking about...

Searched her site but cannot seem to find the list she referred to. Does anyone know where more information on perennial cover crops for planting vegetables into can be found. Have done searches but coming up empty handed.

Say goodbye to direct sowing with this method.. seems it's tailored to transplants only. Would love to see a visual demonstration. I don't see how it can last indefinitely without additional inputs to the soil without getting deficiencies, especially with the flexible ground cover options. If we look at it with a microscope we should be able to discern ideal ground cover blends. The microclover grew a foot tall in my crap rockpathway too. Stay away from that gimmick. I might try a bed with purslane along with tomato transplants next spring. Zone 5b

Hi!, I live just north of Atlanta in a Piedmont environment, long hot summer, extremely short spring and fall, and mild-ish winter. We occasionally get a few inches of snow once or twice a year. There is some bare ground in our yard that is on a slope, and I am worried about soil erosion around the many trees that are growing there. What would be a good ground cover that would help prevent the soil erosion and thrive in the shade? Thanks.

Would growing grass be considered as a good ground cover to improve soil quality? We had cocoa planted in our farm, would growing Buffalo grass be good ground cover for them?

Peanut grass might be good?

crimson clover is my choice but also a blend for green manure annuals.

Clover

Why so little of Elaine Ingraham, she's the Best!!!

So which website has this list?

Ive always adored dichondra but its a very thirsty option. Doesnt it compete with your veggies too much? As a southern californian, water is always the top issue for home farming. What are good drought tolerant groundcover options? Or perhaps just stick to skipping groundcovers altogether in favor of mulch?

Has anyone found her link to her list of ground covers?

Where do I find the list of perennial cover crops that she talks about?

Has anyone tried this succesfully or unsuccessfully? Diego, are you perhaps planning an experiment? Would be nice to see some real life results :)

pearl millets ?

😆❤️ #SaveSoil

Great interview. Listened to the whole thing, and I learned a lot. But I wish you would've pushed back some more on the whole "perennial cover" thing. Yes, sure, it's the "lazy" method if you're growing food in a small garden, for yourself, and hand planting everything you grow. Or maybe even on some farms, I don't know. But it's not less work in an intensive market garden. In fact it doesn't work on a that scale, period, because you can't use all the equipment (seeders, paper pot transplanter, harvester etc.), and planting by hand, in-between the mulch, is not competitive. For a scientist to flat out refuse to acknowledge that her technology-related advice (in other words, advice that has nothing to do with her expertise: science) isn't universally applicable, is quite ridiculous. She should've answered your questions about constructing systems which don't use living cover, instead of constantly going back to that one solution. Not to say that the idea doesn't have value. In fact, if the living cover thing really works as well as she said it does, it could be implemented on the ultra-large scale to grow any crops, with robots. But that would require massive funding and years of research and development before a single crop is grown. But it is doable. Conventional ag is already developing autonomous robots which can target individual plants. They're targeting them to pump various chemicals into them (herbicide on the weeds, fertilizer and pesticides on the crops), but mechanical weeding and planting is just as doable.

I dont think central texas has growing conditions allowing perenial low cover crops

Neither... The answer? Woodchip.

The domino efect of all this is unreal . How many people over eat for the lack of nutriction in the food ? How many health conditions ? Most people in America dont even know what a tomato is suposed to taste like ! and in general if they had better quililty they would eat the stuff they are suposed too in order to have a balanced diet .like salad .

4:40 This is not true at all. Yes, in really good soils, weeds are less of a problem but as long as there is space unoccupied a weed will fill that gap, no matter how good the soil is. The idea that weeds are not healthy in good soil is also completely wrong. Yes, some weeds don't grow better in good soil, as they would in bad soils but they certainly don't grow worse. Take Urtica dioica (Stinging nettle) for example, it grows well in reasonably good garden soils, but it grows much better in very good soils. My stinging nettles grow to almost 2 meters next to my compost pile. Same goes for Aegopodium podagraria (Ground Elder), Glechoma hederacea (Ground Ivy) and many more. Furthermore, tree seedlings are popping up all over the place in good soils. That's because good soils resemble forest soils, therefore pioneer trees start to grow there. Elaine Ingham has to start studying phytosociology. That's where you learn that most weeds encountered in humid temperate regions are actually adapted to very high nutrient level (Eutrophs). Take Echinochloa crus-galli (common barnyard grass) for example, that grows under very high-nutrient conditions, whether it's in bad soils or good soils. As long as there are a lot of nutrients it will grow and nearly all soils in humid temperate climates are nutrient rich.