Who Grew the Best Spuds?

We've got the potato contest. Myself and the Weedy Garden, we put these in together. Oh, it's so nice to be here. And welcome back to the Weedy Garden. A beautiful season and a beautiful day it is today and a new season for the Weedy Garden. This video is about potatoes, all right. It's a special video today because it's a special day. Today is the Weedy Garden's birthday on YouTube. Six years today. Ah, and I've got a little surprise. I've been practicing in the garden, look, with one of the bees in the garden and I call her Gigi. I'll see if she's around. Gigi, Gigi. There we go. Okay, that's good. I got her. Oh, great job, Gigi. Away you go. Oh, that's good. Oh, we're practicing, we're practicing. And practice makes perfect here in the Weedy Garden. And that's what I'm doing with vegetables. I'm no expert at gardening, by the way. I'm getting better at it because this is my sixth birthday, but this YouTube channel is all about sharing my journey of learning. And one of the main inspirations for me, apart from the beautiful bird sounds and this orchestra of sounds up here in the Weedy Garden, it's my good friend and teacher, Jeff Lord. And today he's going to come because we're going to harvest potatoes. I don't have a cameraman and Jeff's going to come and we're going to be walking around. So we'll just have to move the camera. And I think it's kind of nice and authentic that you are just with on the journey. So he's going to come to the Weedy Garden today. He's going to celebrate my channel's birthday and we're going to harvest the potatoes. If you've been watching the channel, we did a video together, this one up here. I don't know if you can see it because of the smoke, but there's a link up there for the video that we did when we planted the potatoes. And I've got to get the fire going. I've got to make a bunch of coals because we're going to have potatoes in their jackets on the campfire on my birthday. Well, the Weedy Garden's birthday. It's time to celebrate. Everybody that's watching the channel, huge thank you. Huge thank you, especially to the patrons and members that have helped support the channel through all these years. A whole potato season has gone since I made a video. We had the makeover down at Carmen's, but that was Transit that made that video. And then I did a nice little recap of the soil life, which I put on. But I've been away from the YouTube channel for a whole potato season. How about that? These are the potatoes that we're going to harvest today. Anyway, I came out here the other day and I noticed that these potatoes that I planted, if you remember on the video, I planted a circle of them in the middle. And then I planted some Nikolai around the outside. And they've been both really, really healthy, powering. And I came out a couple of days ago and I could see these ones like suddenly all started turning yellow, started drooping. And I did a little video and I sent it to Jeff and I said, Jeff, it's Weedy here. Look mate, I'm just wondering if you knew what's going on here. Look, so I've got this bed of potatoes and the Sabago, the ones that we've got together, these are these ones here. All right. These are these ones here, you can see. And then these ones here, I think they're Nikolai. These are the Sabagos and they've been like powering, looking really, really good. They just look discoloured and sad suddenly. I don't know if there's some bugs got them or if some mould's got them or something. By looking at it, can you see what's going on? And he said, it's time to harvest. And what I can do right now, just for the fun of it, I can just turn the camera around and just give you a real quick tour. Alrighty. And so this is my potato bed. There's another potato bed done in the same way with the mounds and the potatoes planted on the mounds with compost in the ditch. These are my carrots. It's not just carrots, it's thyme. I always get a lot of thyme in the garden. Rainbow chard and silverbeet, a few little capsicums, parsley beans. I've got some bok choy flowering. I've got some lettuce and some dragon fruits and some garlic in there. It's not broccoli. Or broccoli. A little bit of lettuce. See it's all mixed up. I don't want to, I want to confuse the pests and the animals. They're flying, they're looking for something, they get confused because there's all these different pheromones everywhere. The world's hottest chilli. Well second hottest is the Carolina Reaper. It's out of season now but they're still very hot. Just a little quick view of the office. The new office and abode I've decided to immerse myself in the garden and I'm studying Jeff Lorden's online PDC right inside there because I'm connected to the internet up into the big interweb and I can sit in there when it's cool and at night time and I'm listening to Jeff Lorden and I'm studying his online PDC right at this moment. It's actually going to be closing for enrollments very soon so if you do want to do the PDC it's probably a pretty good time to enroll before they close enrollments. See that beautiful tea that I got going as well. I've just been over and harvested a few things from the garden. I'm going to make the tea now because I want to have a nice cup of tea for him when he comes. I don't know a lot of you probably had potatoes on the fire before so you've only, you've got your own techniques right but this one I've been practicing pretty good and I think I've got it down pat so I'll share it with you. This is a pretty good system my mother showed me. It's just a bit of heavy duty mesh around my chopping block so it stops the wood from flying out the side and out the front. If it does fly out it'll fly out here so you can pick it up so you don't have to walk over all the time and pick up your bits of wood. Get a nice fire going. What we want is a lot of nice red hot coals. You want some nice big stuff as well so that you get lots of coals. Lots of coals. You don't want to go to coals, you want to make them. They call me lightning because I never hit the same place twice. Always leave these little ones here so I can start the fire with it next time. So I'll boil the billy first then I'll put this roaring fire on so when Jeff arrives there's a nice lot of hot coals. To make the potatoes, like I said, lots of coal and then you need a nice hole but I'll show you that later when I actually do it. You see those green potatoes? When I planted the potatoes I put mulch around them. I covered them up with mulch but that attracted the slaters. Slaters are these little insects that live in the mulch and they feed from the stems of the potato plant. So they were munching at the stems of my potato plant and I was losing my potato plants. So what I had to do was I had to take the mulch away from the bottom of the potatoes so the slaters were not living around the stem of the potatoes. But that resulted in a few green potatoes. As long as you don't eat only green potatoes and you don't do it for a long period of time, I think you're pretty right. I've got to get this place looking good for my teacher and mentor. So just do a bit of raking here. This video is sponsored by theweedygarden.com It's a beautiful day for harvesting spuds isn't it? Yeah, look at these. Well is that all you got? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't want me to get the other bucket from you? No, no, this is the bucket. I better not start boasting I suppose. Well we'll see. So where's the nine or the ten? Well they're around here. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. The whole bed? Oh no, well in the center circle. Should we just get into it? Yeah, yeah. People are sitting watching. Let's just start here. Okay, so I'll just chuck them on the ground to start with. All the little ones. I've got lots of little ones. Yeah, there'll be variation on different plants. We'll go a bit deeper here. Look, that's the second plant. Half of them are laying on the surface here. I thought they'd be more under the ground. I was a bit confident. That's a nice one. Yeah, one decent one. It's a bit rotten though. This thing's eating it. Yeah, something's been chewing in. You can cut it out. I'm doing the PDC every evening. I'm sitting in the tent down there and my internet turned on. It's great. It's kind of like having the PDC virtual. Yeah, that one's a nice one. Another nice one. A couple of nice ones, but geez there's been something eating them. I don't know what it is, but I'd like to find out. Yours are all really nice and healthy. Sandy soil might be the difference. Yeah, that's nice. That's a beauty. They must win the prize, I was going to say, but it's all eaten on the other side, damn it. Crying shame. You filled the middle with compost? I did, yeah, but the roots haven't even reached it by the looks of it. And the outside with compost? The outside ring? Yeah, this is a mound as well. Yeah. Yeah, sandy soil. I might go and get a couple of wheelbarrow fulls of river sand and chuck it in here. Mix it in. So that's five, six, seven, eight. I've got eight. I've got eight plants that survived. Oh, look at that one. They must win the prize. That's it. Yeah, okay. All right. They look about the same quantity, but mine look pretty sick. Okay, let's have a look at the big comparison. Do you want to put yours down there next to mine? I think you need more sand. Maybe there's so much organic matter in there, it's leaning towards things that can, I think it may have rotted a little bit and then made them vulnerable. Yeah. There's a worm in there, there's a compost worm in there, in the hole. I thought that compost worms didn't eat anything that was still growing. Well, I think it's already rotting in the hole. He was just in the hole. He's nowhere else. It's a little, definite little compost worm there. Yeah. And he's been only in the hole and there's dirt in the hole. So I think he had a little nest in there and he's chewing what's rotting. Now it's dyed around it and he's working on that. He's not, I don't think he's chewing into the healthy stuff. They're chewing into what's already started to rot and it's just a little bit too much. Because there is, when I turn that soil and look at it, it's like, it's totally alive. There's all sorts of bugs and crawlies. And it's still a bit chunky. The soil? The organic matter is still quite large-ish chunks, I think. It feels gritty in your hand, like it's almost sharp in your fingernails. That's all I could say. It's chunkier than my soil. Like you say, it's all organic matter. It's all, pretty much all organic matter. Well, yeah. Okay, a couple of wheelbarrow fulls of sand. Yeah, a bit more drainage. And mix it in. That'll just extend your garden anyway. All right, so what's the gig now? Well, I was thinking maybe, would you like to taste these potatoes? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Should we chuck them in the fire? Chuck them in. Let's have a cup of tea while we're waiting for those potatoes. You always make yummy tea. I'll give you the weedy garden glass, Geoff. Okay. A bit of lemon. Is there enough room on there for both of us? Yeah. Yeah? Yeah, I don't take up any room. We've been sitting here before on this bench. We have. Actually, it looks like you've got quite a lot of potatoes. Quite a few beds, yeah? Yeah. Hey, Geoff? Yeah? What do you reckon about AI, mate? Well, I think it's a problem, and therefore it's also a solution from a permaculture viewpoint. A solution? The problem is the solution. It's like a tool is a weapon, or it's something that's very useful. A tool. Absolutely. And it's a tool. If you use it the right way, it can be used as the information power that saves the world. The software we've developed, if you drop a pin on the map anywhere on this planet, it'll tell you the landscape profiles, all the LiDAR maps, all the different LiDAR maps we already do. Then it will tell you the climate exactly, and that will tell all the plants that will grow, all the trees that will grow, all the animals that can live there, all the domestic animals, the energy design that you're going to require for a different size house, and it'll tell you the house designs that work best for that particular spot, and the waste systems, everything you need to know. So you've got all the ingredients to cook the meal. You've still got to cook the meal, which is design. So you still need designers, but their ability to make good decisions is already, you know, for the components, it's already in options. It increases the power of a permaculture design certificate course hundreds of times, and then it will even give you the reference materials so you can check that this information is correct. It will tell you where people are already using those components and how it's working, and even give you the addresses to look them up if you want. The power of it's incredible. To be completely self-sufficient in your area, to give you the maximum amount of sustainability locally, it'll give you all the trades that you need, all the professions, all the jobs, all the employment, which a lot of people don't realize. Amazing. And then you still need to design. There's about a hundred questions that you ask a client that analyzes those answers, those component requirements, and then you design it. So the confidence it gives designers, incredible. Yeah, so AI can't do the designing. No, it never will be able to do the planting. No, no. Only these can do the planting. Yeah, that's another level again, but the confidence you get to get an accurate design, that's what will make a difference to people. Talking about AI, as I'm doing the cohort, the PDC online at the moment, and we're about halfway through, there is support along the way. You're there answering questions every week with your Q&A videos. Yeah. And you've got 12 teachers assistants. Yeah, they're answering all their questions and I get to answer some on a video every week. Exactly. So there's a lot of support if you join in to do the cohort at the moment. Oh yeah, enormous. I hear you're doing something soon that's going to be called the Evergreen. Yeah. And that doesn't have the support. No. But it does have AI, Jeff. Yeah. Can you explain what that is? Yeah, so my team have analysed every question that we've answered. Every question you've answered since you've been doing those online PDCs? Yeah. In other words, the average 35,000 questions per PDC. How many PDCs? 10. 350,000 questions. Yeah. And they put that together as a Jeff Lawton AI. Yeah, yeah. So you can sign up for the Evergreen. It's going to be quite a lot cheaper. Yeah. And you get it downloaded all at once. And you just go through it as you'd like. As you'd like. And I've beat tested it and asked myself questions. And I've been surprised how I've answered my own questions. That's interesting. I've been impressed. I think the depth of information that the online education gives you, if you back that up with the AI information, which people feel very confident about because we can check it. You can check it yourself. You can check the information where it's coming from. What's the source? How do I know this actually works? Here it is. Is there available? That takes you to another level of hope. You realize we can do this. The involvement with the intention of creating an abundant, peaceful earth is going to shock people. It's going to really be the big change. This could be the change. Right at the point of absolute disaster, we could be right on that threshold of complete turnaround. The place is brimming with fertility and soil, soil life, beneficial soil life everywhere. Permaculture is about observation. And this is a little challenge for you watching for your observation skills. If you want to win free access into Jeff's online evergreen PDC, all you have to do is write in the comments how many times I said the letters PDC stands for Permaculture Design Certificate. And a little extra bonus is I've said the word potato a lot of times in this video, and I'll probably say it a lot more times. Write in the comments how many times I said the word potato, and I'll choose randomly from the correct comments in both situations. All right, so back to the video and back to the story. I hope you're enjoying it. Oh, it's been such a nice day today. Yeah, not a cloud in the sky. Be nice to have a tour. Have a tour of the garden. Do you want a tour of my garden? Again? The potatoes are just about ready. All right, we'll go to the potatoes. You have to do one for me then. Do me one. I'll do a little video tour. Yeah, all right. That'll be my next video. I'll do a little video tour, and I'll show everybody. It's lush. You need to see it, folks. It's pretty lush. It's looking really nice. Yeah. I reckon those potatoes have been ready by now. Shall we have a taste of them? Yeah, sure. I'm looking forward to it. I'll get some butter. Well, they're nice and soft. See, it's hot, but it's kind of done its thing. That'll do us. Okay. Here you go. Hey. Yummy. Yeah. Smells really good. Cheers. Cheers. Happy birthday, Weedy Garden. Yeah, all the way. I do like potatoes. It's super secure about ground potatoes. You feel like, I'm okay. I'm going to make it. It tastes even better when you're growing them yourself. Every time. I've definitely noticed since my trees are established that I've got tons more little birds in this area. Yeah. Yeah, you would. Living systems are so complex and interactive. We'll never know everything. We don't need to, and it's nice to have the mystery. We need to know the calories we can produce. This is calories. Yeah. Nutrition is out there. That's easy. There's so much nutrition in the garden, but what's your main calories? What are your carbohydrates? What are your potatoes, your sweet potato, your cooking banana, your yams, your taro, all those things. They're important. Yeah. I mean, grain is a real hard working thing to do, but your main root crops. As gardeners, we need to mix up our calories and grow all the different types of calories we can. Only permaculture people tend to have a go at everything and love diversity. Why not have a diversity of calories and be more secure? It's important. All right. Well, that was that. All right. Well, thanks for coming out again, Geoff. No, it's a pleasure. Always a pleasure. I'll try again next year with the potatoes, a bit more sand, I think. All right. I'm going to go back into my tent now and continue listening to you on the interweb. Oh, good luck. Yeah. Yeah. Happy birthday, Weedy Garden. Happy birthday, Weedy Garden. You've done a lot of good in the world. Yeah, thank you. You have too.