What do you think of adding salix ulmus platanus ailantus to fix the soil. Mabey some burdock

You could use "bandrechen motormäher" mi one hase a plate on the sid so you can make a nise winrom. You can mow from poat side so you get a dubble winrow.

It's funny that your 5 big steps are 15 feet, because to the rest of the world 5 big steps = 5 meters ^^

I’m Proud of you for working on your communication skills. You are doing a good job explaining your process. 💚 Best of luck 🍀 to you!

How will you be planting the perennials? It seems like the planting opening is so tight it would be hard to dig a hole. Are you direct seeding?

intriguing... i dont think the cut section wil stay dormant or dead to propper new sowing.

This could be mechanized for a tractor attachment

Could you take the frame and mount it on a front end loader to just kinda push all the grass over into the rows you want? Or does the grass need to be severed.

Just show the use of the tool instead of lots of talk. You just like to talk

I look forward to seeing updates on this. Cheers J

This is really cool. I wanted to pack my mulch neatly before but it never occurred to me to make a form! Here in the UK slugs would be a huge problem direct seeding into the split.. compost into the split and transplant sounds a brilliant weed free solution. Sorgum sudangrass is not grown at all here in the UK or at least I can find very little about. Perhaps I could use anual rye grasses. I think I would need larger space to create the same biomass

nice man, I can tell you are excited about it. I get it, nothing more exciting than growing and innovating at the same time!

Do you have fly strips on ur hat? 😂

Same thing on my property In the slate belt of eastern PA. Barely any topsoil on compacted clay with tons of pieces of shale within. Seems like most trees are diseased and falling over. Invasive plants love to grow here but knowing that I’m just focusing on adding organic matter everywhere and chop & dropping around productive plantings.

"syntropic" agriculture. Wow. That's sho'nuff a $10 word right there! Help me out Mr Google. Y'all Nawh Yorkers are soooo precious!

Show, don't tell. Please get someone else to hold the camera for 15 seconds at the beginning and then you can go into a focused discussion. I see grass bi see some lumber. I have no idea what goes down here.

Awesome! How do you manage bugs? This looks like a permaculture setup?

I did this exact technique but with woodchips and sunflowers. I made a trench with woodchips and built on top of the rocky soil essentially.

Super cool idea Erik! What production crop would you plant here for the trade off of space and labor to be worth it? Cant wait to see how this progresses!

Very cool concept ⚡💪but skeptical about the green manure without cover. Would love to see numbers on how much just plain evaporates if it's going non-stop. Yeah, it decomposes but that means it decomposes in both directions - into the soil and into the air. No birds will catch the gases and bring them back to earth. Why isnt there a layer of carbon, or anything, on top? 🤔

Can you normally grow the mulch quick enough for this process to happen and get a second crop to full maturity (not sure where you are but I know for sure we couldn't where we are, that is a crop that will push up through)? I guess YT threw your vid to me as I recently watched a syntropic video to learn what it was, I think the guy you mentioned in the vid.

Huge waste of time, perfect example of " doing to much " this is one of those ideas that sounds great but, IRL it don't work. There are much faster and easier to ways to accomplish this.

Can't wait to see if growing

What's your plan for the cover crop that regrows in the center space, or are you planning to cover just the planting bed to terminate it before planting?

Gangster

I think I grasp the concept, but the implementation, imo, needs a lot of work. Having to hand pack the material into the form(s) feels like a deal breaker to me. I agree that large scale hay making is tremendously, if not entirely, mechanized and that related technology could scale this process up, but the price tag goes way up at the same time. It's likely entirely possible to design an agricultural machine that mows the cover crop, sweeps it into the mulch rows with planting lines and does the seed planting, all in one pass. To my mind, the challenge is to come up with such a "machine" on a BCS, or even hand operated scale. There might be some way to adapt a wheel hoe to organize the material and create the bed with seeding/planting furrow. I feel like I see the potential and benefits (I'm looking to syntropic agriculture principles for use on my site), but that "There's got to be a better way" than hand loading a wooden form that gets moved again and again.

www.syntropia.com.au/ - more information about Scott Hall

good luck,,you got alot more to learn

woah, nursey stock in between corn rows? brilliant, transplanting a bunch of mine tonight!

Back pain sucks, I've had one surgery and I forced me to retire as a plumber. Good luck with whatever you got goin on 👍

Great vid

New York is a terrible place

Awesome

John Kempf talks about this in a recent podcast, inspired from his conversations with Christine Jones.

Another couple of thoughts about this approach: there's an old saying that the best fertilizer is the farmer's shadow; as you go through making this weed control pass, you're also, simultaneously, reviewing the condition of all of your intended plantings.

Where did you find the mist heads you were using?

Most of the damage I can see are on my willows, a bit on the apples. Sean mentioned you have goumi on your property. Can I trouble you for a couple cuttings in the fall?

You should try russian pommegranites

Congratulations to you and your family, Erik! That guild is awesome! I have a smaller cattle panel high tunnel that I'm growing some pawpaws in. I'm going to espalie them. I hope that will eventually lead to a more reliable crop where the spring frost can't burn the flowers.

Nice work in the greenhouse! About the moths: You can also freeze any items where you couldn't get rid of the moths otherwise. Worked for me. In other news, the spongy moths have demolished one of my hazelnuts. The other one is holding its own.

What you are also hearing is pieces of leaves falling. At least in my experience, when they get hold of an oak, they munch through and drop pieces of leaves all over the place. (Oaks are one of their favorites.). I like the perspective of carefully observing and concluding that it's essentially pruning. The oaks were defoliated (this was in the early 80s) but leaves grew back before summer was over.

This also reminds me of the phenomenon wherein squirrels feed on maple buds in early spring, causing the seed that develops from the remaining buds to be fully formed, which increases seed dispersal distance.

This particular case of caterpillar colonization seems to be the result of island biogeography. Surface area X distance.

Great video. Thanks for posting. Do you worry about the tithonia getting perilously tall this year and impeding/killing some of the trees you planted?

Topsoil regenerates very slow, 1 inch per 100 years (including the input of biodegradable material, compost etc etc). I don't know how fast can roots penetrate and break down the hard soil, maybe more? As you mentioned, if the spade doesn't go very deep this will be a problem for the trees. They will not grow, nor they will die. They will just stay short and small. Better use this area for leafy vegetables, or any edible plant with shallow roots. You can also find trees with shallow roots, or grafted on species with shallow roots. Chestnuts are good option, quinces too. I am talking from personal experience, my family has 1 ha of land mostly used are summer house on a hilly area and cultivation of summer vegetables (non commercial, for personal use). I am 45 years old and there is one pear tree that my grandfather planted in the worst place of the land, like 20 years ago. Couple of meters away there are other trees, quinces, apple trees, walnut trees, even a quite tall fir tree, they grow amazing. None of the trees are shading the pear tree enough so it will affect the growth, regardless the short distance among them. It's just this spot. The pear tree is still alive, but short and small. It has just established there but it doesn't seem to grow at all. If we are lucky we will even get 2-3 pears from that tree, but that's all. I don't want to discourage you, I like people with new ideas and know how to work around a problem. I really hope you it will succeed.

if this was minecraft u could use pistons and tnt to dig down

You may regret those hybrid poplars

Yep thats the same kind of rocky bedrock soil I have

Looks good. It would be interesting to try this on sheer rock, say an outcropped slab, and see if species' roots could penetrate or grab the rock and grow from there. You can see this sort of thing happening on rock ledges and road cut blast areas through rock, but it would be interesting to try it after initial close up observation of a more-or-less sheer rock face. Looks like you are well set for success with this effort.

keep it up! it''ll be lush woodlands before you know it. Im also rehabing poor soils in zone 7a doing 40 acres of pecans, walnuts and hazlenuts. 30' row spacing and alley cropping giant sunflowers, cowpeas and milo sorghum. namaste