Great Tips for Growing a Successful, Fun, and Sustainable Garden with William DeMille

Join us in a groundbreaking journey into the world of regenerative gardening with master gardener William DeMille. William shares his invaluable expertise on soil regeneration, sustainable practices, and the transformative power of gardening here as we discover the essentials of soil health, the magic of microbial-rich compost, and practical tips for nurturing your garden. Delve into William's educational program that empowers students through personal gardening projects aimed at addressing societal issues and promoting climate regeneration. This session is not just about gardening; it's a comprehensive guide to cultivating skills, health, vitality, and a deeper connection to our planet. Whether you're an avid gardener or new to the green scene, you'll find inspiration and actionable advice to help you grow not just plants, but a greener tomorrow.

00:00 Welcome Back to the Garden Revolution!

01:39 Diving Deep with William DeMille: Soil, Nutrition, and Sustainable Gardening

04:39 The Foundation of Healthy Food: Understanding Soil

07:44 Simple Steps to Transform Your Garden

11:18 The Magic of Microbes: Feeding Your Garden's Soil

16:31 Unlocking the Secrets of Soil Spheres for Garden Success

25:52 Navigating the World of Garden Pests: A New Perspective

32:45 The Essential Role of Fungus in Your Garden

39:09 Embracing Nature's Way: Lessons from the Redwoods

42:13 Unlocking the Secrets of Wood Chips and Soil Health

43:03 The Art of Composting: Methods and Misconceptions

43:46 Navigating the World of Compost: From Kitchen Scraps to Manure

54:44 Compost Tumblers vs. Traditional Methods: Pros and Cons

58:10 The Journey to a Thriving Garden: Immediate Steps and Long-Term Strategies

01:03:48 Choosing Between Soil Repair and Replacement: A Gardener's Dilemma

01:12:07 Fertilizers and Soil Nutrition: Organic Solutions for Growth

01:14:52 Empowering Your Garden and the Planet: Lessons from the Soil

Replacement soil recipe: For a 5 gallon bucket, combine:

50 % peat moss

50% inexpensive potting soil from a nursery

Heaping TBSP of blood meal, bone meal, azumite (if have clay -type soils), and ground eggshells.

You can access all of William’s links, courses, patreon, socials, and you tube resources here: 

https://linkfly.to/williamdemille

Worry Free Eating book link:  https://a.co/d/funSlTZ

Transcript

0:00

Hello and welcome to the What Really Makes a Difference podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Becca Whittaker. I've been a doctor of natural health care for over 20 years and a professional speaker on health and vitality, but everything I thought I knew about health was tested when my own health hit a landslide and I became a very sick patient. I've learned that showing up for our own health and vitality is a step by step journey that we take for the rest of our lives. And this podcast is about sharing some of the things that really make a difference on that journey with you. So grab your explorer's hat while we get ready to check out today's topic. My incredible guest network and I will be sharing some practical tools, current science and ancient wisdom that we all need, no matter what stage we are at in our health and vitality. I've already got my hat on and my hand out, so let's dive in and we can all start walking each other home. Hey, it is finally time again. For us to talk with William. he is a master of regenerative gardener, and he's the creator of the Georgia schoolroom and the Georgia revolution. He does courses bootcamps an in-person experiences, teaching people about soil, regeneration, agriculture that is sustainable. And he does it all. Whether you are trying to grow food in an environment, that's easy to grow food in, or whether you're not, he lives in. In the mountains in Northern Nevada. And I can tell you that is not the longest growing season. There is. He runs a full soil testing lab and he's written a book. That I really enjoy called worry-free eating. It's about restoring the soil growing and harvesting food. He has been on the show before, if you didn't catch that it's episode number 13 and he gave a basis of what we're talking about with the soil and with land management. And we talked about just some cool things about climate change, how we can help what we can do for the soil, the nutrition and the food, all of that is such good stuff. So that is back on episode 13, but we wanted to do another show so that we could help people as you're getting your gardens ready. So in this episode, we talk about how you can prep your soil. What you can do if your soil really is kind of crap, dirt. And some other tips and tricks of what to do or not to do that really may surprise you. So I'm so excited to be able to present this. Please enjoy right along with me, Mr. William Denelle.

Track 1: 2:45

And we are back with William DeMille, who I know many of you have been looking forward to coming back on to teach us the usable, what do we do in our gardens this season, if we want to do it a little differently and we want to have healthier plants and more fun doing it. So William DeMille is here with me. Good morning, William.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 3:07

Thank you so much. It's exciting to be here. I love this.

Track 1: 3:11

Me too. Part of why I love this is because I'm really grateful to be sharing this information. So I'm going to be talking about how to help people with a famine with people that perhaps want a different way in episode one. So if you haven't heard our first part, we talk more about what is happening with the soil, what that means for the nutrition in our food, and how we can be in a place of famine even when there is food present. And we also talked about how in repairing the soil, we not only can help the nutrition in the food, but we also can repair soils that are in famine. We can turn deserts into grasslands, learning these philosophies. We talked about some of the grasslands that were around. We also talked about what happens when you put cattle on land in one way versus another way. Just lots of really interesting things. So if we will, we will build on the functionality of how to move all of that information into a usable garden. In this episode, but if you would like the basics, please go back to episode one and then join us here again. You might know a little bit more of what we're talking about. So for today, William, what I'm hoping is that we can help those who want to grow a garden this season and perhaps have it be, like I said, more fun, but also the food be more nutritious. The pest problems not be so big, help save a bunch of money and not buying stuff that's going to hurt it anyway. And maybe skip some practices that are traditional that might be actually hurting our garden. That sounds like a tall order for most people, but for you, I think you are well equipped to guide us.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 4:50

Thank you.

Track 1: 4:51

So to start off, can you give us just a little information about the what should be in a healthy soil. And I know this is starting off a little science y but I think it's good to have a common language. And again, for any listeners, you have written a book. It's easy to follow along. I love the style in which you've done it. And it's called Worry Free Eating. I will put a link for that in the show notes, but in there you talk more about the science. So if, if you're. Feeling like you want to space off for the science part, just listen. We'll give you the basics. And then if you really want more, grab William's book and you can know why it will actually help you to understand the basics of the science. So go for it and tell us the basics. And then if people want more, they can catch a book. Yeah.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 5:45

on healthy food, we need to really focus on a healthy soil first. And we just don't do that in our modern gardens. Modern gardening is more about, oh my 1st. Let's go till up the ground. Let's put a bunch of transplants in and water them. And then that's kind of what we do. But we really need to focus on the soil first. So instead of just doing what we've traditionally done, we want to have a soil that is filled with all of the healthy microbes. So that would mean beneficial fungus, bacteria, protozoa, nematodes, microarthropods, all of those good guys that make the soil work. So soil is a living thing. And it is not dirt. So soil and dirt are two different things. Unfortunately, most people's gardens are dirt. I do a lot of soil tests and I find a lot of death going on in people's garden soils. Meaning that these good microbes are not there. And so that is a bad thing. So the main thing is we get the good microbes into the soil and then we keep them alive. And this becomes overwhelming to people. They're like, wait, what? I just want a tomato. Come on. So, uh, but I'm all about the nutrition. We'd need to have the most nutritious food for our bodies and our families. So what we need to do is just focus on. Getting that soil to be super healthy and happy. And so I'm going to tell you how to do that. And it's only going to take a second because I know it sounds overwhelming when we're talking about all these things, but it's so easy.

Track 1: 7:31

Can I pause you really quickly before we go into that? So for those who are not sure of the link, the reason the healthy soil is so important for growing a healthy plant is because the plant is pulling everything that it needs out of the soil. If you're trying to grow soil, I'm sorry, if you're trying to grow plants in like dead crap dirt, it doesn't have any nutrients to bring up to put in its fruit. So, the things that are in the soil help it and the other living things that are in the soil help it break down, turn it into the nutrients that the plant can use, which turns it into nutrients that we can use. So it's similar to in our bodies, if we are eating empty calories and they don't have a lot of nutrients, then we can't build our neurotransmitters. Our immune system doesn't have what it needs. All kinds of other things fail, even though we still look like a human being. We don't have the good building blocks we need. Plants are the same. They need the building blocks and they get those from the soil. So you can pour expensive fertilizers on it, which we're taught with Miracle Gro and with other stuff. But there are drawbacks to that, which William can go into besides just that it costs a lot. But having a healthy soil already gives the plants what it needs. So that's why he's saying that's step one in healthy food.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 8:49

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So the way that you actually do this is feed the microbes and put the microbes there. So those are your two keys. So what do microbes eat? There are only two food sources for the beneficial microbes. And that, and see how easy this is? You only have to remember two things. So the first food for the microbes is the decaying plant material. So old plants that are dying. So this would be things like wood chips, or grass clippings, or your compost pile that you're putting around your plants. So all of that is dead plant material. The second thing that plants eat is the exudates that come out of the plant roots. So the living plants put sugars and proteins into the soil and that's what we call an exudate. So if you have living plants in your garden as much as possible and a layer of mulch on top of any kind of organic matter then that is the food source for your plants. And if that is all you do. Then you will start to grow really healthy food and it's easier to grow. And there's a third thing you can do that's really good. Instead of isolating your plants in different parts of the garden, mix your plants up more like a jungle so that you have four plant families growing close to each other so the roots are touching. So if you do those things you will start growing really fantastic food.

Track 1: 10:25

That really is such a good summary that boiled it down to exactly So if you haven't heard part one, I was ready to give up on gardening. I love plants. I love healthy food, but I was just happy to pay someone else to do it because every time I tried, all I seemed to grow was like a garden that looked good at first and then would get overtaken with weeds. I would run out of time to do it. All the bugs would move in and they would kill the harvest that I spent all that money and all that time putting in anyway. It was depressing. But I heard before the last planting season an interview with you, William, and it boiled down to those three things. So I did that. I found healthy wood chips that were untreated. and we did some of the other things that you'll talk about, but I also started mixing up the growing. I had never done that. I grew in rows or I grew in squares or I grew whatever, but, but the same plants by the same plants. I didn't want like strawberries that tasted like onions and I figured if anything touched it each other, it would be terrible. What I found was doing. Just those three things, I, I went more into what you'll teach, but those really were the basics. We now have just started covering whatever ground we can with wood chips or leaves or old straw, and it's made a huge difference. Besides that, it's really fun. It's kind of fun to hunt for cucumbers while you're munching on a strawberry and reach up and grab a bean while you're pulling out some squash. It's really fun.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 12:01

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Track 1: 12:04

So once you give people the basics of the three things to do, and I back you up on that, where do you think is the wisest thing to go from there? Okay,

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 12:18

some things and just stand there long enough so that you can take it in with your senses. Look at it, listen to it smell it, feel it with your fingers. You might even taste it, but that one's a stretch for a lot of people. But it's just start to just with your senses that you have with your body. Start to interact with your garden, with your soil, and see if it has a message for you. Now that can sound a little esoteric and weird, but really to become ecologically literate, which is what I teach my students, is you need to be able to communicate with the environment around us. So when you're standing in your garden, just feel it. You know, for those of us who are parents, when you have a small child who's not old enough to talk yet, We can quite often tell, just by interacting with them, if they need something. Are, are they, are they sad? Are they happy? What are they feeling? What do they need? And sometimes it's very intuitive and we can't really explain it to somebody else, but, you know, a mother who spends a lot of time with her child, she just kind of knows what to do to comfort that child. And we can have the same experience with the land and the garden. And we need to have that kind of a relationship and experience. So, what you do, go out there, look at the land. Is the ground bare? Has it been tilled up? Is the sun beating down on it hard? Feel the ground. Is it hot to the touch? Um, if it is, then it's running a fever. So you need to cover it up with that detritus sphere, that mulch that I was talking about, that organic matter on top. All right, thanks a lot. You need to have that blanket on the soil surface, so that it's not running a fever anymore. We don't want it to be drying out. If it's drying out and all the moisture is evaporating into the air, then it is dehydrated. It needs a drink of water. Here again, putting on that layer of mulch on top of the ground, helps it to retain the moisture so it doesn't get so thirsty and dehydrated. Just little things like that. Start observing. As your soil improves, your plants will improve exponentially, which is fantastic. And that's exactly what we want, because the point is, we want a beautiful arm load of ears of corn, or we want a bushel of tomatoes, or cucumbers, or whatever it is we're growing, and we want those plants to thrive and be healthy, we want them to taste good, and the best way to do that is to not just throw seeds out there and expect something, But to actually be mindful during the process of being in the garden. And so it starts before we ever plant a seed and we need to be thinking about that soil, you know, how does that soil smell? Come get a shovel, dig in the ground pull that hunk of soil out. Are you seeing earthworms? Does it have a texture like a decadent chocolate cake? Or is it falling apart? And, and different soils are different. And they, you know, from, from climate to climate and region to region, healthy soils will look somewhat different. But, but everywhere you should have a soil that kind of it's going to have air holes in it. It should have like the pores in the soil. It should not be tight and compacted like a mud pie. Remember when you were 12 years old or 8 years old, whatever, and making mud pies out in a mud pile? And then two or three days later you pick it up and it's hard as a rock? If your soil feels like that, it's not healthy. It needs to be soft. It needs to be supple and it needs to have lots of air holes in it. You should be seeing a lot of earthworms. So those are the types of things you're looking at that you want. Thank you.

Track 1: 16:26

earthworms and air holes, and you want it to be sort of clumping together,

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 16:33

Yeah.

Track 1: 16:34

And not falling through your fingers.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 16:38

Right.

Track 1: 16:38

so what I had and what I've seen others, I live in the high mountain desert, so most people that I know have either a lot of clay in their soils. Or, it's like dirt, I didn't know the difference, but it's like fill dirt, like on a construction fill dirt pile, it felt like coughing dry as a bone. There was nothing living, there was definitely no earthworms. You said that we needed earthworms, and you also talk about arthropods, nematodes, that means people, he is saying that like, the creepy crawlies. are good in there. Mine had nothing alive, so that wasn't it. But tell me what, I want to hear more what a soil should look like. So tell me about the layers that if your soil was healthy and thriving, what it would look like from the plant on top all the way down to the bottom.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 17:31

Okay. Yeah.

Track 1: 17:33

if it, what to do if it doesn't

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 17:35

Okay. Perfect. Yeah. So there, there are these, these six spheres of the soil is what we like to call them. And the first sphere is the phylosphere. Phylo just means plant. That's just the scientific name of the plant. So the phyllosphere is the area around the plant where it's growing leaves. So this is up out of the soil. This is what you see when you look outside. And you can see grass on the ground. You see a great big giant tree. Wherever you see leaves, you're seeing the phyllosphere. So what does that have to do with the soil? Well it actually has a lot to do it, to do with it. And it's fascinating because everything in the soil is functioning Because of the microbes that live in the soil, the bacterial life, the fungal life, the protozoa life. Now, this philo sphere, the reason we call it part of the soil spheres, even though it's the leaves above, is'cause on the leaf surface, they are covered with beneficial microbes. Now they, they aren't always covered, but they should be in a healthy ecosystem. The leaves are covered with a lot of very beneficial bacteria and fungus, and we want that. The fascinating thing, they communicate with the microbes that are down in the root zone under the ground. And we don't even know how they do that. But, you know, it is cool. It's the neatest thing. So we know that it happens, but we don't really know how. Maybe they have miniature cell phones. I don't know,

Track 1: 19:19

We are just surrounded by life that is communicating all around us. It's so neat.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 19:25

so, so when you walk out on the ground, what you're stepping on would be the detri stratosphere. That's the next layer down. If you're walking on a lawn, you're actually walking on the Philos fare, which would be that, that leaf surface of the lawn, but right under that, where you have dead. Decaying organic matter, so leaves that have fallen off and they're starting to decay. Or a mulch, if you're a gardener and you've put mulch down. That's going to be called the detritosphere. Detritus simply means trash. So it's the trash layer on top of the soil. And like I mentioned earlier, this is important because it feeds the soil microbes. And it insulates the ground from too much sunlight, too much cold. And it keeps the moisture in the ground. Thank you. So the detritus sphere does a lot of important things. The next layer you're going to be looking at, and when you dig down and you pull that shovel full out, you'll be seeing the aggregates and we call that the agrotosphere. So that's the, all the little clumps of dirt that have been glued together in little tiny balls, just like little tiny specks of dirt. And there's the micro aggregates. They're so little you need a microscope to see them. And then you have the macro aggregates, which are the big ones. That are the, the big coarse pieces that make it give it, give it a chocolate cake type texture. And then the spaces between the aggregates are all the pores. We call that the porosphere. So that would be that next soil sphere. That fourth one. And the pores are important because when it rains or when you water your garden, The water will go down through all of those pores, and that's how it gets into the ground. It's how the water gets in there. And then when you stop watering, gravity keeps pulling the water downward, and it goes down, down, down, and then what's coming in after the water? The water acts like a plunger in a syringe, and when you pull on that syringe, it pulls air through that porosphere, And oxygen is our number one nutrient in the soil. And so that's why it's important to water. And then you don't water for a while. If you water everyday, you'll get too waterlogged. So it's important to water right, so that you get a lot of air pulled into the ground. And that keeps all these microbes healthy and happy. And it makes your roots grow fantastic. So you get good, good roots. And, and the roots is actually the next sphere of the soil. And we call that the rhizosphere. So you should see a lot of roots in there. And the last sphere would be the drillosphere. And that's the holes that are drilled by large animals like an earthworm. Or other bugs.

Track 1: 22:14

That's so cool. I feel like you're just preaching good news, truthfully, for people who live in places that either get very little rain, or just a barrage of rain and then none. Because you're saying if we have the right things in the soil and those air pockets and the big drill holes I'll think of, then we can actually keep the water that comes into our soil and it won't just run off like it does with the clay dirt crap that is so common in the deserts where so many of us are trying to garden. So being able to hold that water that protects us from flooding, that brings our water bill down, that helps us, you know, stay out of famines, that's beautiful information. And it's kind of fun to think about, you know, the little army of creatures making all of these tunnels that can hold our water. Like we're working together, makes them not so gross. Ha ha ha ha

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 23:13

do think about bugs that way. We're like, ooh, there's a bunch of bugs. Ooh, what do I do? Yeah. Oh, I got my plants here. I'm trying to grow something. Look at all these bugs. Okay, here's the

Track 1: 23:21

that I've worked so hard for.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 23:23

Yeah. and here's the thing. If you have a lot of bugs, that's actually a fantastic thing. And the thing, the question I get, like, all the time is, how do I know the difference between the good bugs and the bad bugs? The simple answer is, go to Google and look up the bugs you see, and, and you can start learning. That's the simple answer, but it's not the best answer. Really? You're asking the wrong question. Because there aren't any bad bugs. So if people want to know the difference between the good and the bad, that tells me, okay, we have to do some education here. All bugs are good. It's just that if you have too many of a certain group of bugs, then they're probably going to be eating your plants. So we need to have a balance. And if your plants are super healthy, they're going to only eat the old, dying, decaying leaves. So, you know, if, if you have, say, a cabbage out there, and it's covered with all those little green worms, then your cabbage is not healthy. Even though it may be growing a big cabbage, then the proteins and the sugars are not high enough in those leaves, and, and so it's not a healthy plant. Because when you have high proteins, high sugars in your plant's leaves, the bugs don't eat them. And it's, I mean, I've known this for a long time, but it's interesting, because when I say this to people, it's always news. I mean, this is not common knowledge. Everybody's always surprised when I say that. And they're like, well, wait a minute. I have five acres of this and that. And the bugs always come in. And it's interesting and kind of funny in a way how many people get defensive about it. Because we work so hard at our farms and in our gardens that we automatically assume that the plants are healthy. But working hard doesn't necessarily make us healthy. We have to do the right thing. We could work really hard at drinking lots of soda pops and alcohols and all sorts of things that are not very healthy for us. So working hard doesn't equal health. And it's the same with our gardens. We need to be doing the right things to create plant health.

Track 1: 25:34

And the right things based on science that's coming out. I know I've heard you talk before about growing up in a environment where you had family mentors teaching you how to do things kind of old school way composting and mixing up things, and then went to school and learned the collegiate way of growing and they were two very different things. And your analysis, as far as I understand, is that the old school way was smarter and science is now starting to show why, that when we took it into the industrial age and started just adding inputs and fertilizers, we, we robbed some of the ancient traditions that were nourishing the land. Am I correct in remembering that?

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 26:17

Oh yeah, for sure. That was perfect. Yeah. I mean, You know, the whole conventional modern agriculture is a nightmare, you know, and, and I can say that without judgment because I am one of those people, but I have changed my ways, and I'm doing it the way that I grew up as a child, and it's working, but now we know why it's working because of some of the fantastic researchers out there. You know, the, the Elaine Inhams, the Ray Archuletas, the The Alejandro Carrillo's, all the people out there who have done the great research, now we know why it works. So it's pretty awesome.

Track 1: 26:59

So going back to the question of pests, because I think that. was one of my biggest mindset changes was that seeing the bugs doesn't necessarily mean my food supply is threatened by these stupid bugs that I need to kill. It's asking myself why they are there. And, if the plant is healthier, if it's putting more, like you said, proteins and sugars in, not only does it taste better to me and have more nutrition, but it tastes worse to the bugs because they eat the dead stuff. When I understood that, I thought, okay, so if they are on, So, I did what you said, and I planted a variety of like four, four plant families touching. But that means that I had plants in different areas in different grow beds, right? And so, say I had four tomato plants, I had them in four very different locations. One thrived, one did meh, and one did not do great. It just like never seemed to Turned to red tomatoes until lately and I know and until the end of the season and now I know more about what what other nutrients may have been in or not in the soil, but My question my my perspective then after your training was not I can't grow tomatoes These stupid things and it was the weather's fault and it was the tomato bugs fault It was what is happening with this? You plant. So I noticed where bugs were crawling on the ones that, that were not doing well, and there were no bugs on the ones that were doing well. It, it kind of changed my question into what is in the soil that they need or don't need. And it's telling me that it's thriving here, but it's not thriving here. So I could be more scientific about it and look at The differences in where each was planted, or what strain it was, instead of it just going to failure or chance. And that felt so much more empowering for me. You talk about being ecologically literate, and I think the more literate we are in looking at what's happening in our plants, it changes the questions we ask, and when we change the questions we ask, then we at least know where to go to, to improve our outcomes. So if you are finding that there's bugs all over, that can be because your plants are not healthy. And if you're noticing that, what are some things that you would begin to check if you're trying to be more ecologically literate?

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 29:33

Okay. So, you know, if you have a problem, the best thing to do from an ecological point of view is make the problem bigger. And then that solves your problem.

Track 1: 29:46

Explain that William.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 29:48

exactly right. So if you see bugs that are hurting a plant, then we automatically think in our mind, oh my goodness, these bugs are the problem. So just step back, take a deep breath, and bring in more bugs. Because there's not a predator there keeping the bug that's eating your plant in check. So, you need more life in your garden. My entire life all the gardening books all the gardening classes I shouldn't say all but pretty much all of them really have said here's how we kill stuff We don't want and that is the mindset of modern agriculture If there's things we don't want then let's kill it and now we're in a situation where our soils are dead we've done a really good job killing and and Let's change that entire paradigm and say, How much life can I invite into my entire ecosystem? Whether I have a backyard or if I have a 20, 000 acre ranch. You know, whatever you're managing, whatever land you're managing, invite as much life as possible and nature will balance itself. Now, not completely. You don't just go out there and invite all the life in. There are some other steps you need to do, but that is certainly a mindset we need to have.

Track 1: 31:21

bringing in more earthworms bringing in, What else would you bring in besides earthworms? That's all

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 31:27

Yeah, yeah, so,

Track 1: 31:29

as life goes.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 31:31

First of all, you need to have, you need to have all those microbes groups. Let me just tell them to you again. There's bacteria, fungus, protozoa, nematodes, microarthropods, enchatreads, macroarthropods, and earthworms. So those are all the life that you need in the soil. So how do you get them? Well, we can't even see most of those because they're microscopic. So you feed them. If you feed something, it tends to show up in the ecosystem. So if you are covering the soil with a detrio sphere, there's a food source. If you're growing plants in your soil, there's the second food source. And if you're watering your your area, your garden, then they have water. Now they have everything they need to build a home and work for you. And within a decade, you will have a functioning soil because you have maintained a food source. Here's what we do to ruin that f food source. We till the soil. And everybody got, you know, we all get out there in the springtime with our rototillers, we till up the soil, and that takes away our detritusphere, and it kills all the living plants, and then we start over. And it makes way too much bacteria grow, because the bacteria is stimulated by the tillage, and so now we have too much of a good thing, because the bacteria grows so much, and when the bacteria grows a lot, now they are letting off a lot of Nitrogen in that soil, which will sprout all of the weed seeds that we don't want. So it becomes a vicious cycle. So,

Track 1: 33:10

we till because there's weeds and hard earth, right? And then that makes more weeds and harder earth because we've killed all the things that make it soft.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 33:20

yes. So, one tillage pass across the garden can kill up to 50 percent of our beneficial fungus. Now, it's interesting because, because two passes doesn't kill 100%. So it's kind of exponential in a backwards sort of way, but it's still, uh, I mean, fungus is one of the most important things in the soil to help our plants grow. So, you know, really help.

Track 1: 33:51

highlight fungus for a minute? Can you remind me what it does and why we want it in our soil?

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 33:58

Okay.

Track 1: 33:59

that if I see mushrooms growing, that means I'm watering too much and I should back it off and yank those mushrooms out so fungus didn't take over. Or even when I called to order my wood chips, the guy that did the wood chips said, you know, lots of gardeners put this on there, but that promotes fungus and you don't want that. This was, this was last year while I was doing it. So can we highlight what does fungus do

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 34:20

Okay. So

Track 1: 34:21

if it's too much

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 34:22

yeah. Yeah. Yeah, good, good point. Good conversation. This is very important. First of all, there are two types of fungus. There are the good funguses, and we have thousands of species. And there are the bad fungus, and there are thousands of species. All of your good fungus live in aerobic, highly oxygenated soils. All of the bad ones live in anaerobic, compacted soils. Tool to compact your soil? It's the rotor tiller.

Track 1: 34:57

Just backwards.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 34:58

It

Track 1: 34:59

what we are taught.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 35:01

So you know, we till right now and it makes it nice and soft, so we think it's good. But that's an immediate reaction. But over time, it breaks up all the soil aggregates, it collapses the porosphere, oxygen can't get into the soil. The aerobic. Uh, fungus dies, and the anaerobic fungus begins to grow. And so now you have a diseased soil, and then you have a garden expert, whoever comes in and says, Oh yeah, you have all this bad fungus, you need to spray with a fungicide. So you do that, and it kills all the bad fungus, and all the good fungus that could have been there. And so now we are on our road to a really unhealthy garden. Disastrous desertification process in our own gardens. The other thing that fungus does that is really great, is fungus is the biggest living organism. We used to believe that the blue whale was the biggest organism, and then we thought that it was a, a quaking aspen tree that was the size of an entire forest. But Now we have discovered that the biggest organism on Earth, is is a fungus and it's 10 miles wide and 20 miles long and it's microscopic. So that's mind blowing

Track 1: 36:20

That is mind blowing.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 36:23

fungus, they have very long threads and it looks kind of like a spider web except they're so thin. They're much thinner than a spider web because you can't see them. It takes a microscope to see them. So if you think of a telephone pole, it's pretty big around and it's really long. Well, think of a rope. It could be that same length, but it's still little. Now think of a fishing twine. And you put it out there somewhere, a hundred yards away, and you can unroll it for hundreds of yards, but you can't see it from back here. Now go down smaller to a couple of hundred times thinner than that fishing twine, but still as long, so we have a structure that's extremely long, but it's microscopic. Stop it. And that's how it can be the biggest organism we know of on Earth. And one individual, I'm not talking about a group of these guys, one particular individual organism, and it's huge. But think about this in relationship. Here's the practical part of why that's important. If we get good fungus growing in our gardens, then we have a plant that's growing, And it's root zone, say it goes about two feet deep and maybe two feet wide. So you have this nice little place where all the roots are. And those roots are supposed to bring in nutrients for that plant. If the roots can't get a nutrient, let's just say iron. You're in Iron County, which is funny because I know that a lot of, a lot of plants there, they don't they can't get iron. A lot of the soils there have iron chlorosis problems. Yeah. So, let's just say you're an iron deficient. So, here's the role of a fungus. A fungus hyphae, and that's just the little strand of fungus, it will hook itself to a root on your plant. But, remember how long it is? It can go out hundreds of feet, hundreds of yards away. It can even go under the road into your neighbor's yard or whatever because they can travel a long distance. And they can pick up iron where they are and they will bring the iron through that microscopic network to your plant and feed your plant. And

Track 1: 38:41

cool.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 38:43

yeah, so we don't have to have we don't have to have all the nutrients right there in a fertilizer. What we need to have are the living, active microbes that will help our plants grow. I mean, think about the redwoods. It's one of the most productive soils in the world. Those plants in the redwoods are so massive and huge, that if, if, if, there have, there have been scientists who have done studies on the redwoods, and what they've showed is that they produce more calories per acre than any other soils in the world. Now it's not calories like food, there's not much human food there to eat, But just in a measurement of energy. So, take a, just take a cornfield in the Midwest that's producing over 300 bushels per corn. Well that produced a lot of calories with modern farming. But it didn't even come close to what's happening in the redwoods. But think about it, there's no farmer in the redwoods. The redwoods have been doing that for thousands of years. It started in the last ice age, whenever the ice went away. And we know that there's trees there that are thousands of years old. So, how is that happening without a human there? Because nobody's there with the rototiller, nobody's there with their, all the products they bought from Home Depot, nobody's out there with their hoe, hoeing weeds around the redwood trees and all the big beautiful ferns that are growing in the understory. It just happens. It's working. It works. Mother Nature works. So in our agriculture, what we ought to be doing is just mimicking nature. And that's pretty much everything I teach. If it works really well in Mother Nature, then let's have it work in our garden.

Track 1: 40:31

Which basically means have a variety of plants at different heights growing to absorb the sun or also to protect others from the sun. Have different types of plant families. Let the stuff that falls on the ground stay on the ground. Don't spray any sides on it, pesticides or herbicides, so the soil, the microbes in the soil can continue to live and thrive and eat the stuff that is coming down from the dead stuff or eat the, I remember someone in one of your classes called the exudates, the plant sweat, so the root sweat, that feeds the bugs and let them make the ecosystem that then can grow plants. That's,

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 41:12

Yeah.

Track 1: 41:12

to think about anyway.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 41:14

Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it just works. So why are we doing all these crazy things? Well, because scientists like to be in their laboratory figuring things out, you know? And that's a good thing. I'm not criticizing that. At all. It's just that if we want to have the very best, most nutritious food, then we We're kind of limited on where we can get it and growing our own gardens is a fantastic place

Track 1: 41:38

Yeah. How do you know if you have too much fungus? So you talked about aerobic and anaerobic, and I like how I heard you explain it in a class which was that aerobic stuff smells nice. Like it smells like the earth, like you're, it's, it is a pleasant smell. It doesn't smell like. A construction zone. It doesn't smell like an old compost bag like I opened up either. So, smells terrible. It's like pleasant and sort of earthy and, and grounded. Anaerobic, you said, smells nasty. Like there's a part of you that knows you don't want to eat that stuff and it doesn't smell good. That's how most of the compost I've ever made has turned out smelling, which is why I started attending your classes because I wasn't really making compost, I was making sludge. You talk about the healthy fungus will grow in aerobic, unhealthy will grow in anaerobic. What was the guy that I got the tree shredded stuff talking about? That fungus that you can see growing on the trees that you lay down in the detritus sphere. Is that what we want? Is that not what we want? How do we know if it's too much? Okay,

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 42:53

You got to realize that I don't know like 99 percent of people out there. They simply don't know a lot of these things This is new information. A lot of this information is just you know in the last 10 years is when we've discovered a lot of the things that we've been talking about today. So, we need to, we need to be forgiving of people when they make statements like that. Because yeah, there's certainly bad fungus that can kill your plants. But if you have a pile of wood chips, wood chips are very aerated. They're very oxygenated. So anything that's going to be growing out of a pile of wood chips is going to be the good fungus putting woodchips around your plants is never going to be a bad thing. It's not really going to kill your plants. Now, if you put woodchips around your plants and then they die from a bad, bad fungus, that's because you didn't have good soil underneath where you were putting the woodchips. It wasn't the woodchips fault. It was a, it was a pre existing condition. So you need to keep adding the woodchips and, and the other things, you know, other compost materials for, and it usually takes three, four, five years. for that soil to really get good. So in the first couple of years, yeah, you're probably going to run into some problems, but it's not because you're putting on food for these good aerobic microbes.

Track 1: 44:08

Okay. So let's talk about compost and some of the other stuff that you put on a soil to help it thrive. I would like to know what the difference is between a healthy living compost, or if you were to just put like I've heard people say to just put banana pills out in the garden and I heard other people say, don't just put banana pills, that'll attract all the bugs and that's not compost anyway. And I've heard some people say, skip the annoying part of composting and just go to your local farmer, get manure, mix it in. So can you explain to me, who's just heard a lot of different things, what the difference is between those and why one may be more healthy than the other?

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 44:52

Okay, so any, any kind of a food scrap should be decomposed completely before it goes on your garden. Okay. So you do want to compost that before it goes out there. That's a good idea because in the early stages of the decomposition, There could be some certain creatures, you know, bacterias or fungus that is attracted when it first starts to break down that could actually spread to some of your plants and cause an issue.

Track 1: 45:21

Okay.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 45:22

So you don't want to just put food that is just beginning to decompose right out there. As far as getting manure from a farmer, it's the same thing. You need to compost that also.

Track 1: 45:37

Hmm.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 45:38

if you put fresh manure on, it's the same thing as your kitchen scraps. You know, there could be issues with that. Now, if you want to put, if you don't want to go through the, what you said was the annoying part of composting, then, then, what you would do to skip that is in the fall of the year, when you know the garden is done, you're done harvesting everything. You could take a large amount of that material. And you can spread it out on top of your garden and let it decompose throughout the winter. Because, you know, you're going to have four, five, six months, depending on your climate, where that can begin to decompose when it's not in the growing season. So that's a good way to add that detritusphere to the soil surface.

Track 1: 46:24

Okay, so just manure, kitchen scraps, and, and in the winter and call it good.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 46:32

Yeah.

Track 1: 46:33

amongst the other leaves and wood chips that we've put out there while it's resting.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 46:38

Yeah. Yeah. Now, here's the thing that always happens. Because that's the scenario I tell people all the time. And they always come back to me with this question. So I'll just go ahead and answer it now because people are going to be wondering, they'll say, well, yeah, but we're producing kitchen scraps every day when we cook. So, you know, a big family, they have a five gallon bucket of kitchen scraps once a week or whatever. What do we do with all that? Well, you're going to have to have a little bit different system. You'll have to have a system where you're continually composting. Um, there, there is a thing that I tell people, I don't know that anybody's ever done this, but it would actually work. But it's not that practical. But if you saved your kitchen scraps and put them in a freezer so they don't start to decompose. And then when you have a big bunch of it, like 10, five gallon buckets, see how it's not really practical, but this would really work well if people would do it. Uh, and so you take that material and then you compost it all at once. And it actually makes a fantastic compost. And so people who have a compost as a business and they're, and they're doing that, it would be more appropriate for them than maybe the home gardener.

Track 1: 47:47

So I heard an old farmer talk once when I was sitting next to him at a class actually learning compost. He said that what they had been doing for a very long time is they would just pick a plot in their, in their land that they weren't going to garden on that year. And they would put their kitchen scraps and whatever manure or whatever there to just sort of like sit through the year. But it was like a mix of. New and whatever was there from a couple months ago, and they would just let that sit for a year or two and then cycle back and use that so he didn't have to watch the temperature or let it marinate or whatever. What are the pros and cons of that if you had just an area where you tossed it and didn't think about it?

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 48:30

Okay, so it all really comes back to the definition of compost. So if you're just going to put it out there and do it the way you just explained that the farmer said, that's fine, but you're not making compost. What you're doing is you're just adding organic matter to the soil that will eventually be used up by the microbes in the soil. And so that's fine. It's a good thing to do. It's better than filling landfills with that material. So it's a fine thing. But it's not compost. So what is compost? Compost is a specific set of materials with a specific recipe so that you can multiply and grow the beneficial bacteria and the beneficial fungus. So that you can introduce those to land that does not have the beneficials. So that's kind of the difference.

Track 1: 49:24

So it's an inoculant, basically. Like, you put it in where you want to grow now, or where you want to grow in the future, to get them to start propagating.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 49:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of like somebody says, I want to be a cattle rancher. And so they get they get 10 acres and then they put hay out there and they put a water trough and they fill up the water and they go back in a year to round up the cows. I'm like, man, there's no cows here and nobody ate the hay. Well, you never introduced the cattle to the pasture. And, and so, so putting, putting the compost material, the kitchen scraps, whatever, onto a piece of land and just letting it decompose naturally is kind of like that. We didn't get the correct species into the land. All we did is we got the food onto the land.

Track 1: 50:15

Okay.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 50:17

making a proper compost is growing the herd of cattle so that we have the cattle to put in the pasture.

Track 1: 50:25

Well, and this is how, then, if there's been soils, that have not been producing. This is how we get the good stuff into the soil that can then eat the stuff and have it start producing. So this is the really good news. If you know your garden has been struggling or the land around you is not thriving and beautiful already, then you have to start the species growing and that's what compost does. Okay.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 50:50

And that's what the inoculant is because you're introducing those species.

Track 1: 50:54

okay. So before I met you, When I started to learn about compost, even though it was scary to walk around in the feed and farm store and look at what the price was going to be of the fertilizers I needed to buy, and the bone meal I needed to buy, and then the compost I needed to buy. I thought, okay, well I'm gonna put into this something good so I'm gonna get the best kind of compost that I can in this bag. And almost every bag that I opened up smelled terrible, but I just put it all over my garden and thought, well, this is just what compost does, I guess. Can you, it didn't go well. But can you tell me the pros and cons of that? Because I know compost is a huge, Market. And if, if people don't know how, or have had bad experiences growing compost, you tell me the pros and cons of buying it. And then maybe a different way to look at making your own compost or some resources or places that we can go. Okay.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 51:55

of compost or potting soil from the store And it smells bad. The reason it smells bad is because of the anaerobic disease causing organisms that are living in it. That's why it smells bad. And so when you say you put that on your garden and then it didn't go well, that's because you were adding all of the bad guys. And unfortunately, that is a very common thing that happens. We make the assumption that that if we go to the store and we buy a product in a bag, that it's going to be good for our garden when we take it home and put it on there. And unfortunately, that's not true. And I'm really sorry. I hate to be the guy who bears the bad news, but that is the reality of the world we live in. It's kind of like going to the grocery store. We assume that if someone's selling food, then it's healthy. But I think we all know that if we choose the wrong things, it's certainly unhealthy. So, so where do we get the, where can we get good compost? And I don't have a good answer for you. You, you, you, you need to make it yourself. That's why I wrote my book. It's why I teach my classes. It's why I started my school. Is because I saw this big societal need. That we have this perception that, oh, let's just go buy the stuff, except when we buy it, it doesn't help us. So you know, we need to have professional people in each community. We already have doctors, we already have lawyers, we already have accountants in each community so that families have resources, but we don't have professional farmers producing food. We don't have professional. Compost makers making compost for people's gardens. So there is a huge market. lot of people could go into that and they could get really good at it. So that when you, when you pick up a handful of that compost and you smell it, you should be smelling pretty much nothing. If you have just, it's just an inert, there's no smell. That means it's highly oxygenated. If it smells beautiful like a forest floor and it smells really good, that's a good thing too, like you already mentioned earlier. But, unfortunately, usually we're opening those bags of stuff and it's not pleasant. So,

Track 1: 54:40

different, well, seen in action two different methods. So one that I have tried and failed at, but my sister has tried and seems to be working really well, are those kind of spinners that you have that are black and you have one section where you're putting fresh scraps in and maybe an equal balance of shredded paper or leaves and then the other side. Where you aren't putting anything fresh in and you're just hoping that it marinates and you water it when it gets a little Dry and you move forward from there. It has never made anything but bugs and nasty or dry nothing for me But she does get that like sort of good smelling clumpy dark Composty things so I've seen that can you tell us the pros and cons of that and then tell us just the basics. I know for more information in your book, you do a step by step, but the basics of how you create it when you create it so that it's ready for gardening that season. And then, you know, how much effort it, it really takes in for how long.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 55:46

yeah,

Track 1: 55:47

more effort, but not, but not a long time.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 55:50

yeah. So, pros and cons of compost tumblers. The pros are they're neat, they're efficient, they kind of keep things tidy in one's yard. Those are the pros. the cons of the compost, Tumblr is they don't really make a compost because they don't grow the right organisms just because you're turning them all the time. And so you are reducing the waste. You will have detritus in the end to put on, but it, you're not growing. the right amount of fungus to go onto your garden, which you want. And that's the main purpose of compost is to grow that high fungal content. The reason they don't grow the fungus in quantity is because every time you tumble it, it pulls it apart and breaks it up. And remember that these things are very long. They can go hundreds of yards, which we've talked about. So every time you turn it, it breaks that fungal hyphae. And so then they have to start over to grow again. So, I don't recommend compost tumblers to people.

Track 1: 57:01

okay.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 57:01

The way that I make compost is I will make a big pile, like four feet across and about five feet high. And then, I, I, there's a process of turning it, and when it heats up to certain temperatures, we will turn it. And then, and so you'll turn it for maybe five, six weeks. And then it stops heating up just because the bacteria runs out of the food that makes it, makes them grow quickly. And so that's why it stops heating up. At that point you want it to sit for about a year. And that's when this whole compost pile will be filled with that fungal hyphae. It takes it a year to, for all those little fungal hyphae, all those strands. to grow like a spider web throughout that entire batch of compost. And then you have a very large amount of biomass of the beneficial fungus that's in there. And then you take it apart and you can make an extract so that you can pour it on your garden. You could put the extract in a tractor, in a, in a sprayer and spray it on, you know, hundreds of acres. You could water your houseplants with it, whatever. Or you could just take the compost and put it on your garden like a quarter of an inch thick along the, on the surface. So there's different ways to use it. But the entire point of making compost is to grow that fungus. It, you know, the bacteria is very important too, but it's pretty easy to get bacteria into your garden. You know, you put six inches of mulch out there, and like grass clippings or whatever, and the bacteria is going to come in there, it's going to colonize, you've got it. But your soil still isn't functioning because your fungal content isn't there. Fungus is the tricky one. So that's why you make the compost, is to grow the fungus. Heh, yeah.

Track 1: 59:01

at first so it doesn't overheat and turn on and combust. But then when it's sitting there, the conditions are right that it can grow that fungus you want. So you really are doing it now for next year's garden. Okay, so now we're at the crux. What do you do if you want to grow a healthy garden now, but you didn't start a year ago? So We need to find someone in our neighborhoods that is growing compost or dot dot dot

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 59:32

Okay, just get started. Don't worry so much about this year. Think long term and say, okay, I don't have a person who's a compost expert, so I'm gonna be the compost expert. Or you get a group of people and one of you become that. So what do you do right now this year? Just get started. Do the best you can and realize that in the next five years, it's gonna get better every year. So that's exciting. I mean, you know, you started with pretty bad soil and you, you, what did you do? You covered the soil, you mixed up your plantings so that you had different plant families whose roots were touching, and you saw results in the first year. And they were tasting pretty good, which means it's working. So it may not be as good as it's ever going to get the first year, but as you continue to do this, it gets better and better. It usually maxes out to where your soil is really great, somewhere in the three to five year range.

Track 1: 1:00:37

Okay, I have a couple questions and then we'll move on to our to our last subject Which is you do have a potting soil mix that I? Really like but before I move on one thing I did because I knew I didn't have compost as you talked about You was I went to the farmer's market and found someone that had worm castings that had done a worm bin. We had tried worm bins in the past and not had a great job with it, but we got to ask you our worm questions and ask this other guy our worm questions. And we ended up making kind of an inoculation tea out of the worm castings and then have been doing a worm bin through the winter. And I'm excited to see What that's going to do because I ran out of time last year by the end of the season and didn't make the compost So I'm kind of in the same No compost stage for year two as I was for year one, but I have a lot of other things set So I love your take on you don't have to wait to start until it's all perfect. My husband and I were standing Where exactly where we ended up doing a garden and he has studied about permaculture and regeneration for years But he He learns, and the more he learns, the more he learns we don't know, and we don't have this shit, and we don't have this shit. So it doesn't start as he's gathering, and I am a starter that doesn't, that finds what I don't have and has to work a way around it. He would, he would know a better way to do it, but doesn't start, and I start without the better way. So this year, we decided to team up. And I remember standing in, on, on the area where we were going to garden and him saying, but we don't have this. And me looking at him and saying, I am starting and I will do this, we'll do this with your help and your inputs and imperfectly or just not ever do it. What if we just, what if we just start year one? We don't have compost. We don't have the other stuff. We don't have all the right watering things, but what if we just start? And just that start. was so fun. And then having him be able to apply all the things that he had learned made it way more successful than if I would have done it on my own. So the worm bin I think really helped, but correct me here if that's wrong. Was that like a good thing to do in the interim, but still I probably need to grow compost? Or can you get the same things from either one?

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:03:00

Yeah, so, so worm bins is compost. So yeah, it's absolutely the right thing to do. If you, if you've made a pretty good compost, uh, and then you add worms to it, once it stops heating up, which is what I do, then the worms make it better than if you don't add the worms, because you'll have more bacteria, more fungus, more protozoa in there if you have worms in the system. So yeah, you certainly did the right thing having, having the worms in there for sure.

Track 1: 1:03:28

Sweet, because they've bred fruit flies, so I'm trying not to be annoyed about the fruit flies and

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:03:34

Okay, so, so just

Track 1: 1:03:35

feed us.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:03:36

so just a quick tip. If you're breeding fruit flies, then your moisture level is a little bit too high. So just let it dry out a little bit. And your worms want to be somewhere in that, you know, 60 70 percent moisture range. And the fruit flies are going to grow a little bit above that. So, so there's a

Track 1: 1:03:57

through the house.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:04:01

Yeah, you bet.

Track 1: 1:04:02

Okay, so You talk about how a soil should look when you dig a shovel in, right? Porous and rich and dark. Mine looked like crap filled dirt, as we talked about. Like, no moisture, no life. So after I listened to yours, I decided that instead of tilling in compost and Tree bark. I had, I had tilled in tree bark the year before, but it certainly didn't make anything better. So, I decided instead of tilling in, I would just take out that crap dirt and start over. And I chose that because in talking to a couple of the older people that lived around me, They said, we've been trying to repair this soil for 10 years. I wish I would have just taken it out and started fresh. So I decided to do that. But how, how do you choose if you're going to repair soil or take it out and start with better nutrients? And then will you teach us what those nutrients are? Because you had an interesting perspective on making potting soil and it worked really well for me.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:05:10

Okay, yeah, perfect. So, when you walk out there and you look at your garden, one of the things that it's going to tell you is whether or not it's growing plants. Okay, so, let's assume it's not winter, it is in the growing season, and you go out there. If it's just dirt, and let's say it's had some water, but it's still just dirt, it might be a good idea to remove the soil. But if there's weeds everywhere, and just, and there is plant life, even if they're horrible weeds you hate, Then you probably don't need to remove the soil because it is growing plants. So there's that part of it

Track 1: 1:05:43

Okay.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:05:44

Now if you if you do feel like you want to just put in a whole different soil Then you could just the simple thing I tell people and I tell people different things and I don't exactly remember which recipe I told you But here it goes and you can correct me if you did something different But what I do is I just do like 50 percent peat moss You And you can just buy that from any garden center, like a Lowe's or Home Depot or whatever. And then 50 percent of just the cheapest potting soil. And the potting soil will also have some peat moss in it, but quite often it will have other things like bark wood chips, things like that. So there will be other fillers in it. So I just get 50 50 of those and then I mix them up. And I just use a little cement mixer, but you can just mix them on a tarp or, or on a, anywhere you don't, it doesn't have to be fancy. But just mix that up. And while you're mixing it, I like to put some nutrient in it. So I just put in equal parts of a few things. So one would be blood meal, and bone meal, and azomite, and egg shells. And, and you mix all those things up, and, and they're thriving, and they're, and it will help to give the nutrients that your plants need. so so that, that's the basics. And those are just elements that you can get from you know, the garden centers have those, have those things. So

Track 1: 1:07:08

you did tell me that recipe, so that's great. I really liked what you said about just getting the cheapest potting soil, not only for my pocketbook, but because you said the more expensive ones sometimes have actual additions that you may not want in your garden, other fertilizers or sides that you don't want. So just to go with the bulk cheapest thing that actually. Having that decision be made for me before I even went to the nursery was fantastic. So thanks for that. We did, oh, so we, I didn't have a whole bunch of eggshells yet. So I did bone meal was the other thing you said you could do. But just to tell everybody, I bought a lot of bags of bone meal and I'm still not through my first and we've done a lot. So bone meal goes very far, is my humanitarian tip. It, it fed a lot of dogs that tried to get into it.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:08:01

Right. Yeah. They will, They will like

Track 1: 1:08:03

keep that, keep that in a separate container. But we I didn't have a cement mixer, but now I've seen you do it that way. That is on my list of What we did is when we took out the dirt, we had my son's friends help us. They were good sports and we, and we paid them. So that was fun for them too. But we started it on a tarp, but then found that got a little too heavy. So we just were mixing things in wheelbarrows and it was actually really fun. The one of the girls that was helping was like, I feel like I'm like, over a cauldron or something. Like, here's your blood milk.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:08:40

That's

Track 1: 1:08:41

And we just mixed it up. It was really fun, actually. So we mixed, we did that, but I didn't have any azumite and I just started. Can you explain what azumite is and why I may want that in my garden?

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:08:53

Yeah. So the azomite, it's just a calcium source. Like they mine it from the deserts of Utah. And it's it's just a source of calcium. And, and a lot, most of our soils, and, you know, most gardens throughout North America can use some extra calcium. Of course, the eggshells are going to be calcium, the azomite has a lot of calcium, and the Bone meal. is going to be, and they're different sources of calcium, and they tend to feed different groups of microbes, which increases your diversity of microbes, which is a good thing to know. Azomite also has a lot of the other trace elements that your plants need. So it's a, it's just a good thing to have

Track 1: 1:09:34

And if you already have, like my garden now has that mixture and it has four to six inches of wood chips on top of it. So this year, or for other gardeners that already have mulch and are already kind of working with soils, do you still sprinkle some of that just on top of the wood chips and wait for the lovely bugs to bring it back down and water to wash it down in?

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:09:55

Yeah, you know usually with anything like something in the nightshade family. So that would be tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, um, tomatillos. Those types of fruits and vegetables. I just put a, a little bit in the hole when I transplant the plants. So you're just going to dig a little hole down through that mulch layer. So it's down into the soil. Then just put a teaspoon of a calcium source down in there. And that really helps those two to go. So,

Track 1: 1:10:24

So just of the calcium source, or do you mix up that potting soil? and put that in with the transplant every year, like

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:10:31

yeah, it wouldn't,

Track 1: 1:10:32

and everything.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:10:33

it wouldn't necessarily be all of the whole potting soil mix. It would just be the, the fertilizers that we, that we added. So the eggshells, the azomite. the blood meal and the bone meal. Yeah. And, and you know, you, you could even, you could throw in some alfalfa meal. You could throw in some kelp meal. There's some other things. If you feel like your plants didn't do very good last year, you may add in a little bit of alfalfa or, or some kelp and it just gives a few more nutrients. And so let me just tell you this, cause I didn't say this before and this is important. Uh, your ratios. So I put about You know, a heaping tablespoon of each of those into a five gallon bucket mix of this 50 50 mix. So half, half of a five gallon bucket of a potting soil, half of a five gallon bucket of peat moss, and then a heaping tablespoon of each of those other ingredients.

Track 1: 1:11:34

Okay. And then if I remember from your classes, just to kind of wrap up our last topics, you said basically to repair nearly any soil. Remember what you said is to lay down. a layer of cardboard to block the weeds that you don't like from coming up and then to lay down so just I mean just on the earth cardboard and then the layer of wood chips which is four to six inches right and then to add in the inoculant so your compost extraction and then to add in the other nutrients like the blood meal bone meal azomite azomite azomite

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:12:13

yeah, yeah, as it might be. Yeah, it's A Z O, Azo, Azomite. Yeah,

Track 1: 1:12:23

or something.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:12:24

we will give you your oral examination now. Okay, so, and that's correct. So, I would add the powdered fertilizers, you know, put those in the transplanting hole, and As you transplant or just if it's your first year and you're mixing it into the whole Um mix then just do that and then plant your plants in it throughout the growing season You probably need to add some liquid fertilizer to those plants You know, maybe every two weeks maybe once a week. It just kind of depends watch your plants. See how they're doing Do they feel like they're growing? Well you know, are there other factors? Are you having lots of cloudy weather? Well, they're going to grow slower You So take the everything in your environment into account. Okay.

Track 1: 1:13:10

what kind of fertilizer? Are you talking Miracle Gro or are you talking fish emulsion?

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:13:15

Yeah. So I would just use something more along the organic line. So like a fish hydrolysate. So, you know, for people in the Western United States, there's a company called Intermountain Farmer known as IFA, and that's a good place to get the fish hydrolysate. Most of the garden centers would carry a fish emulsion. And it's similar, but the fish hydrolysate has longer carbon chains in it. And so they're going to be feeding your fungus a little bit more. So it's a little bit harder to find fish hydrolysate, but it is a better fertilizer. And, and I would, I would avoid the Miracle Gro type things. But, but if, if you're just getting started and you have Miracle Gro, you can go ahead and use it. Just realize. That instead of 3 to 5 years to a functioning soil, you may be more like, you know 5 to 8 years if you keep using the, the really easily absorbed fertilizers like a Miracle Gro. It just takes a little bit longer to get your microbes to grow. It's not that Miracle Gro kills the microbes, it just stops them from colonizing as quickly. Because the plants are not feeding the microbes the proper exudates to get those microbial populations to grow when you're feeding the Miracle Gro. So I tend to not feed Miracle Gro.

Track 1: 1:14:40

Okay. And don't the fertilizers, aren't they like a fertilizer salt that can make kind of a salt table as it goes down through the soil? Am I

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:14:47

Yeah, yeah for sure. Yeah, I mean you know years and years of any of those commercial fertilizers they will build up your salt levels and then your plants are dehydrating even when they have plenty of water in the soil. So, you know, I mean, a lot of our farmland, we hear a lot of propaganda about, you know, the, there's only 60 harvests left in the, you know, and that could be true, but I mean, it's not really true if enough people go through my class because we can fix a terrible soil in three to five years. So we just need to fix them. But yeah, I mean, some of these, so if we keep doing what we're doing, the way we're doing it, With the amount of salts we're putting on the ground, yeah, those ground, those giant fields of farmland, they're not going to grow food anymore. So, I mean, there's certainly truth in what is being said, but nobody should be scared about it because I can take the worst piece of soil in the world because I've done it many times. We can take the worst soil, contaminated all kinds of problems, and in five years it's the Garden of Eden, so, you know, you know.

Track 1: 1:15:55

That's amazing. So, as we near to the end, I just want to say along this vein, I was hearing a little bit of hearsay and I thought it was just fair propaganda. But, no, like you're saying, that those farmlands, if left unchanged, are not going to be able to produce food that can sustain us. But the amazing news is what happens when we rehabilitate. I saw a documentary on Netflix a few weeks ago, I think it was called Kiss the Ground. It was, have you seen that? Yeah, it was talking about the problems with climate change and all of the the climate change and all the problems we're seeing in the environment basically, but talked about how plants naturally pull carbon out of the air and down in the earth. And then you touched on it, but the new, the nutrients, I mean the, I'm not saying this right, you touched on it, but when the carbon comes down through the plants into the soil, the living factors in the soil actually use that carbon. So we can reverse climate change. We can help, you know, what's happening in our skies and in our climates and in our world by doing this process as well. Then not only do we get better food, the bacteria in the soil get fed and everybody wins. It's

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:17:18

Yeah, yeah, exactly for

Track 1: 1:17:20

So where can people follow you, learn more or take classes? Cause you have some super cool classes.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:17:27

Yeah, just I mean all my contact information is on my website it's called the Georgic revolution Georgic as in Virgil's georgic poems about farming ancient literature is what we're talking about there. But Yeah, so that's where all my contact is. We have a good website. It has a lot of information information Winter.

Track 1: 1:17:48

you do boot camps in every season to help people if they want to come out. You, we learned all kinds of skills. We not only learned the science, we got to look at our own soil. People could bring soil samples and just with your microscope right there, I know you have a soil lab. You test people's soils to find out. what they actually have. So you aren't kind of shooting in the dark and then, you know, if you need to grow more fungus or if you need to introduce earthworms or whatever it is. That was fascinating to see that. And then we also learned faster tricks in how to plant well. We saw the diversity. We were able to look at just so many things you packed into three or four days, but you also do a summer program, right? Will you tell me about that?

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:18:35

Yeah, so, I have a class and we are able to take 20 students at a time. And, it's a four month class. It starts in May, it ends in September. So that's our growing season here. Each student is assigned a garden, and it's their personal garden. It's 15 feet wide, it's 50 feet long. I mentor each student so that they can have the most successful garden possible and they learn all the gardening skills. They learn self discovery in the classroom. So we, we're, we're working on the human aspect for sure. And we work a lot on self development. And then each student identifies a problem in society that they find interesting and then they develop a project. So, when they go home, they are empowered with some personal skills, and some food growing skills, and some climate regeneration skills, so that they can impact their community in whatever project they want. You know, we had one girl, and she went home, and her thing was herbs, so she wanted to do a whole bunch of medicinal herbs so that they were available to her. The people in her life who, who use medicinal herbs, but they just go to the health food store and buy dried herbs. But growing the fresh ones, it's much better. They're much more potent and effective for what they do. But anyway, we have had a lot of students do a lot of fun projects. So That's yeah, and we're taking applications right now. So you can go to the website and read all about that. There's a lot of information on there. for listening. to answer all your questions. And of course I'm available to, you can email me, text me anytime with any questions you have.

Track 1: 1:20:26

Thank you so much, William. The, the whole subject matter of the whole point of this podcast is about empowering people to have more health and vitality in their lives. And truthfully, one of the changes that I have made in my life is gardening in this way. And vitality is the word. It was a lot of work to put in, but I felt like it kind of worked. bring me back to life almost. I know that sounds weird, but I could do it in smaller sections. There was teamwork. There was this science meeting, actual reality and how I helped my family. But then the The even bigger benefits truthfully came not even just because of the harvest, which tasted better and was, had way fewer bugs on the produce. We got to eat every single thing that we grew. If we could eat it in time before it went bad because there was so much, my yield was much higher, but also just I would go out to the garden and I would do what you talked about. I would listen and I would feel, I would sit next to it on the little rock wall and I would just take my shoes off. I'm like, I am the gardening hippie now and put my feet on the, on the wood chips and be leaning over and munching on a strawberry while I was cutting some plant down that was time to be cut down. And I really could feel the earth, giving back. It just struck me how I thought I was doing all of this good for the earth. And then, as usual, when we come forward in service it gave back. It gave back more than I felt like I gave to it. And the vitality that I could feel, literally feel, in the food. Like when I eat a carrot that, that we grew versus a carrot from Walmart, they're not, they're not the same. So much more vitality

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:22:21

Yeah.

Track 1: 1:22:22

much more health. So thank you so much for training anyone else who's interested through your classes or can be hearing it as podcast. I am really grateful for your time today.

squadcaster-861f_2_02-01-2024_095437: 1:22:33

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Track 1: 1:22:35

Okay. Until next time. Thanks for joining us.

1:22:48

​I hope you enjoyed that as much as I enjoy that, I always like talking to William DeMille. I would strongly suggest any of the classes that he teaches. Either online, his free YouTube videos that are Q and A's, he puts out almost every week. Any of the courses that he teaches the bootcamps are fantastic. And that summer program. Wow. If I had the love that I have for now for working with the soil. But I was back in college or my early twenties. I would be there for a summer. I would already be signed up. So for the cliff notes version, number one, healthy soil is alive and has to have living things in it like worms and bugs and microbes. And it smells nice. It doesn't smell bad. And if you ever open a bag of something that smells bad, do not put it on your garden. As a review for the episode before something else that is important in feeding the microbes in the soil are two things. Number one, you want it to have decaying plant material? That's what the microbes eat. So things like compost, grass, clippings, and wood chips. And number two, the microbes eat eggs. The dates that come out of the living plant roots. So remember that's like the plant sweat. That has the nutrients that they need and they can metabolize to put into your plants. so you need the living plans and the molt. And remember, instead of isolating the plants in different areas in your garden, you want to mix them up more. See, if you can have four plant families that are planted together enough that their roots are touching. And when those roots touch, they start to make what's called secondary metabolites and those turn on a different set of genetics. Which make art. Plants have better taste and nutrition. And because they have better tastes of nutrition, the pest don't like them as much. So also better pesters distance. In this one, we talk about a lot of traditional practices, like how to do compost correctly, which is far, far more nutritious and less risk of having problems with anaerobic bacteria. then if you buy them at a store, We talk about telling practices. The gist is don't tell. It sincerely hurts the fungus in your soil, which you really need. It's a fantastic benefit to your soil. And also we got that recipe for a quick soil fill in or for making your own potting soil mix. It's less expensive and it's also way better for your plants. So I put the recipe for those things in the show notes, There's also a link to his website and the courses he teaches and the book that he's written as well. Thank you so much for joining me today. And that's William DeMille. As for next week, the next guest on the show is just one of the coolest people I know. Her name is Tara Capehart. And she is our Y T 200 certified in half a yoga, yin yoga. And she's a certified mini yoga instructor as well as a myofascial release practitioner. She's also just one of the best yoga teachers. I've ever attended a class for the reason I asked her to be on the show is because there is something very different about being in a class that is taught by Tara. There is a respect and the way that she sets up the class and the flow and the ambience ends up being such an invitation to go inside your own body and drop some of the judgment or comparing that happens when we go into new environments, especially fitness environments, like yoga. She creates the movement flows really intentionally. And I had questions about that. I also have questions about how it is that she gets it to be such a balance of masculine and feminine in the class. Which is such a rewarding experience for everyone involved. And then we also get to talk about some of the ancestral wisdom, things that she practices like bone broth. She brought bone broth to our interview, which was in person and it was freaking delicious. I have since then, Started making my own. And we talk about how to do that. Tara has a strong belief that it's the simple choices that we make every day to strengthen our physical and spiritual connection. That lead to a purposeful and a fulfilling life. And I think you will hear that come through in the interview. So I'm excited to share her wisdom with you and we'll see you next week. I'll meet you here.