We Buried Common Kitchen Scraps in the Garden and THIS Happened 🤯

What growing experiment should we try next?

An interesting experiment would be to do a second generation in those same holes with the now broken down dirt and see which does the best.

My grandmother each year would hoe a trough between the planted rows of her garden and each day put the kitchen waste in the row and cover it up. She would start at one end of the row and work her way to the other end of the row, hoeing as many rows as she needed each year, even during off seasons. The following year she would plant the seeds and plants in the isles where she had buried the kitchen waste the previous year. Where she had planted the garden the previous year she would there hoe her troughs in which she would bury the present years kitchen waste. She never used commercial fertilizers, and she never had a compost pile. She had no problem with insects, and her garden produced greatly. This was part of my grandmother’s Pennsylvania German ways that she taught me.

After my Italian father harvested his crops in the fall, he would dig a trench of about 12 inches throughout the garden and throughout the winter he would add food scraps and just continue to add food scraps and cover up the trench. By the time he was ready to do his planting in the spring, everything was broken down, and his soil was ready to be planted. Obviously, that is the key to making sure that everything is broken down before you plant in it, otherwise the microbes breaking down those large items are robbing the plant of the nutrients that they need. Great experiment. Thanks for sharing.

My brother regularly fished in the Pacific Ocean when we were teens in the 70’s (big fish 😳) After he cleaned them Dad buried the rest in Mom’s garden. You would not believe how productive that garden was 😊 She ended up winning a contest and appeared with her harvest in the local paper.

My mom used to help get yards ready for Master Garden tours. At one of them she saw the best soil she'd ever seen and assumed the gardener used a lot of compost. When she asked her if that was the case, the gardener said she had never used compost and that the only thing she did to improve her soil was bury kitchen scraps. I've been burying kitchen scraps for years (just barely under the soil to not disturb it too much) and think the important thing is to bury them not at the time of planting but at the end of the season, so that they've broken down when it's time to plant. Sometimes in the fall in rows where I wasn't able to cover crop, I throw kitchen scraps on top of the bed and then cover them with a thin layer of leaves and/or straw.

I would have loved to see you guys taste test a tomato from each plant to see if you could tell a difference in their flavor too. Probably not a lot of difference but it makes me wonder. I think the lack of aphids on the Oxilis was the most interseting detail... a natural way to fight those annoying bugs!

Just for info sake : my Grandparents had HUGE gardens my whole life, as long as they had their home together out in there City of Linden MI. It was known that the Veg. & Fruits: garden & trees, were basically my Grandfather's fare, with help from my Grandmother. The Flower gardens were only for my Grandmother to tend to. They equally managed the whole of their yard together. Neither the yard or the gardens.. ever had any form of Treatments. There were no weed killers or bug killers or commercial fertilizers ever used. My Grandpa tilled and cultivated the grounds throughout the season. When planting, he would initially before placing the plants or seeds ( seeds he kept from his produce - year after year ) put in his Compost MIX. That mix was everything chopped up and small. He had ; greens from the grass mowing, some leaves from their fruit trees, all the garden by product ( vines, leaves ,.. ) that showed no signs of spoilage or infestation of bugs, fruits and vegetables scraps, egg shells, coffee grounds AND Fish ( chopped up - from a WHOLE FISH ). The fish used were fresh, small and came right out of the lake from their back yard. They were Sun Fish and Blue Fish. Everything was chopped up small. All mixed in/together with tended to Compost of the same. They had the most Beautiful Gardens for years. Strawberrys, Raspberries, Purple Concord Grapes, 5 types, at least, of Tomatoes, Corn, many types of Peppers, Onions, Potatoes, Green Snap Beans, Eggplant..etc. for the vegetables. The trees were Black Walnut, Pear, and Apple ( Delicious) . Never have I seen more Fantastic gardens. Not a weed in sight !! Being with my Grandparents gave great fun and experiences. In my early years (8yrs. -- ) I started my own gardens with the knowledge I acquired from them. I had wonderful success with Vegetables gardens but no luck with flowers. I was successful with Shrubs and Trees. I guess I had my Grandfather's Green Thumb. He was a pure, ( so I was told by him and the family ) Full-Breed Indian. My mother was the one who handled growing flowers and definitely had the touch. Fish and Egg/Shells definitely work, but must be chopped up small. He used local, Small bred fish. I hope this helps. Best of luck in your business. I Love your tomatoes.... May GOD Bless you and the whole ( all employees ) of your business. Thank You for the productS AND the really cool video. 😊

My Grandmother taught me this. No waste. No expense.

A variable that wasn't tested was to make sure you had the same mass of additives to each plant and to emulsify to make sure you have the same surface area. There were WAY more fish heads than anything else and they were HELLA wet. I would happily redesign this experiment with you Kevin. It's literally my job lol

This is the kind of content that I really love - side by side comparisons to test different methods. Coming from a coastal community with a strong fishing heritage, I can tell you that fish byproducts are definitely used to enrich the soil, but nobody is putting huge heaps of fish under each plant. Fish bones/scraps/entrails etc are dug into beds in the fall after harvest to allow them time to break down before spring planting, and this is done annually so the parts that take longer to break down have multiple season to finish the job.

I was always told that composting material drawns out Nitrogen. Which is why you compost material first and then add it. The fish heads did so poorly because the composting process used up all the Nitrogen. Long story short, add compost, don't compost while gardening.

I save my eggshells and break them down to almost a powder and some various sizes and mix it with my compost. I get so much tomatoes that I can eat exclusively from my raised beds for 6 months and still have plenty for my neighbors to help themselves to.

This was fascinating! As a science teacher who emphasizes using control groups, I love that you included one! A gold star! However, On the Control plant, you did not show that you dug up the soil to the same depth, or had an empty steel cage underneath it. Strictly speaking, the lack of turning the soil underneath the control plant definitely could have affected the growth. Thanks for an interesting video!

Only Kevin and Jacques can react to broken down fish heads with the same awestruck ferocity of a twitch streamer and not be cringy while still being entertaining and educational 😂

Many years ago my neighbors (a married couple) in a community garden had a method that seemed to result in terrific rich soil and amazing veggie production. They would cut up their kitchen scraps and freeze them until they had enough to bury in a square foot or so of their garden. When they harvested a section, they would dig down several inches, bury the kitchen scraps, cover them back up, then NOT GARDEN THAT SECTION for a couple of months until all of the kitchen scraps had decomposed. One possibility for why Roma and Eggbert did the best is that Roma had nothing buried under it, and Eggbert had mostly broken eggs which would have decomposed very quickly. So the plants' roots weren't competing with the composting materials. All the goodies in the soil went to the plants, not to breaking down the compost materials. If you left those six areas alone for another year then planted out six more tomato plants, you might see different results, because all of the buried materials would have broken down.

Really great video. I ❤ the fact you made 1 video with continual updates instead of making three or four little videos making us getting recapped every step of the way. This was very efficient use of time for me and very educational regarding gardening. One of the reasons I keep coming back 🙂

Absolutely fascinating. As an extremely lazy gardener, I feel vindicated after telling countless people on facebook that making all these crazy concoctions and teas and such is just too much work. Just compost the dang weeds. Just compost it all and be done with it.

So interesting to see the long term progress of this experiment! Seeing how quickly everything's broke down has me considering composting in ground more often 🤔

This reminds me of something my grandfather told me about sixty years ago. He said, a plant will grow not because of what you do to it, it grows in spite of what you do to it.