what happens when you take the six most common food scraps and bury them underneath the exact same tomato grown in the exact same conditions for the exact same amount of time that's exactly what we did in this video burying food scraps directly into the garden to boost soil fertility is one of the most Tim honored and classic techniques but are all food scraps created equally and is the way you bury them the same that's what we wanted to find out in this video so that's what we did and I have to say as a gardener for over 10 12 years now the results of this experiment truly shocked me so to explain how we got to this point we have to rewind the clock about 3 months in front of me I have the six most common things people recommend to bury in the garden underneath your plants to boost their growth so over here in slot number one I have an old sour dough starter I have some tahini pasta old really sort of sloppy looking pot of beans so this is my kitchen leftovers here in this bucket I've just got some garden scraps that I've collected from around the garden so next let's open this up I've got catfish heads look at those guys right there next I have just food scraps this is something like you know little bits of cabbage that you didn't use Etc so like a piece of an apple finally I have farm fresh eggs these actually came from my hens here at the Garden and our final ingredient is nothing over here we are going to do a control where we bury nothing at all and just see what the natural soil will provide the Tomato so what we're going to do is bury all these about 12 in deep and put a tomato on top but we need this experiment to be as perfect as a backyard garden experiment can be so here is what we did starting with the tomatoes we chose to grow Italian Roma tomatoes from Botanical interest our seed company and we grew six of them we started them in our epic forell trays with the same soil at the same time with the exact same growing conditions so these are as close to identical as they can be almost the exact same height some are throwing flowers out this one might be a little bit more stunted but hey it's a backyard experiment we're doing the best we can here so the tomatoes are controlled the next thing we had to figure out was how to control the soil so what we did here is we broad forked it we took a big giant metal Fork stuck it in the ground and kind of loosened the soil up all down this row we added no fertilizer whatsoever and then these bamboo staks represent where the tomatoes are going to be we space them about 2 ft apart normally a tomato you might get 12 to 18 in apart we wanted them just a bit further so what we bury in each hole won't interfere with the next tomato we also need to control the water so Hand watering was immediately off the table what we had to do was set up drip tape two of them one 6 in off on this side one 6 in off on this side coming from a main line that is controlled by a timer that is going to water 1 hour twice a week you might think that's Overkill and to be honest it kind of is but this is the fun of Epic gardening we needed one more control though because Gophers will go crazy for all the stuff we're about to bury in the garden so what I have here is a steel mesh basket and what we're going to do when we dig our holes is put this in bury the scraps in and then put soil and then the plants on top why because if I'm a gopher I cannot get through this and that is what would ruin this experiment let's do our first test fit it seems pretty good to me Ino sloppy beans tahini pasta here we go this is a creature I think we'll name this one tahini after the tahini pasta we'll see how it does typically you can prune some of these leaves off and bury it pretty deep but we don't have a whole lot of depth to work with so I'm actually just going to leave it like this and plant it right to this Leaf right here in we go and I'm going to put my Bamboo Steak right next to it to function as an early trellis but we do have a plan for that as well this is our standard Garden clippings weeds that sort of stuff just whatever's around the garden healthy nice amount of them not too much cuz I don't want it to go Anor robic and kind of form this mat I'm going to call this tomato that goes in Oxalis after the common weed that it is growing above we're going in with by far the stinkiest addition these catfish heads and filets so we're going to call this tomato noodle after that weird method of catching big catfish I've never tried it if you have take take me on a trip I'd love to actually do it but let's get this one in the ground and we go with the standard kitchen scraps and by this I don't mean fully prepared meals like our tahini over there what I mean is The Leftovers of fully prepared meals so we've got some pepper stuff in here there's some cabbage there's little apple cores some coffee grounds and stuff like that why don't we call this one Scrappy I guess this one we're going to do eggs I'm going to put this one in Ho just to see just to see if it lasts if it goes the distance the rest of these however I am going to crack and just kind of toss in the bottom we'll call this one Eggbert in you go Eggbert enjoy that yolk well we are at our last tomato the easiest one to put in call this one Roma because it's nice and pure going to go straight in the ground here no adulteration whatsoever now we need to water these bad boys in and this is maybe the only manual thing I'm going to do at all in this process so I'm going to try to get as even as possible our tomatoes are in they've gotten the exact same amount of water let me know which one you think is going to win the next time you see these are going to be a little bit bigger they're going to have their names and they're going to have their cages it's been about 2 and 1/2 weeks since the great tomato experiment began I'm seeing some things I like I'm seeing some things I don't like so let's start off with the ones that seem to be doing pretty much the same tahini which is our kitchen leftovers with the pasta buried underneath we have Oxalis which is our garden scraps one and then we have Scrappy which of course is our kitchen scraps all three of these look basically the same in fact when I come over here I see similar bushiness I see similar height on the plant and I also see some young flowers developing but definitely no fruit then I get over in the middle and I have to admit this one does surprise me this is noodle this is our catfish head tomato that honestly is way behind I'm a little surprised by this my only hypothesis right now is that it's taking a while for those heads to break down and convert into something usable maybe it's getting a little acidic maybe a little anerobic down there and that's why we're seeing some stunted growth we're just not seeing as much Sid shoot growth bushing this plant out but we are still seeing a little bit of flowers forming but then in a Twist we have egg Bird right here with a few eggs buried underneath as well as one uncracked egg and then Roma just the standard Roman tomato nothing at all added to the soil these basically look like they're at the exact same point of growth growth a lot more bushy than anything over here still no actual fruit just some flower clusters but overall more bushiness on a plant especially a tomato means more potential energy to develop that plant every single one of those leaves is a solar cell converting energy photosynthesizing into chlorophyll and making the processes of this plant life happen so I'm seeing some really favorable growth on our control as well as our egg now here's my thesis these four over here have significant matter to break down whereas these ones don't obviously the control has nothing to break down whatsoever the plants roots are just using whatever is in the soil but here I would suspect if you were to dig underneath you would see absolutely no whites or yolks that's long long gone by now probably already used by microbes in the soil you probably have some eggshells down there basically doing nothing so this almost might be closer to a control than I expected it's been another 10 days since we have visited the great tomato experiment funny fact we had a hurricane here in San Diego go California at the Epic gardening Homestead hurricane Hillary blasted these tomatoes with about an inch or two of rain and I think they're doing pretty well but there's a scientist on our team whose expert opinion I need to see what he thinks of these Tomatoes okay Jac I'm going to put a challenge to you I'm going to tell you what I've buried but not where I've buried them so number one I have just nothing I did eggs I did a few cracked eggs in one whole egg classic I did your garden leftovers your your your pasta actually right your tahini pasta I did Catfish heads garden scraps and then classic kitchen scraps I'd say that so obviously this one's the smallest yep then that guy yep biggest is probably either the last one over there two yeah so if I had to guess people always say put a catfish or like a a fish head or fish all the you hear it all the time so I'd guess that that's probably in the top three okay and then the eggs is another classic I don't know if it's good or bad but I'd say that's top three yeah and then maybe the kitchen scraps and the leftovers are probably the worst I don't know so maybe that's my pasta get this I'm going to go in this in order okay okay this is your pasta okay right here decent this is just standard weeds from the garden looks good this is the catfish oh wow okay so that's the worst easily the worst this is Kitchen scraps from cooking eggs and nothing wow so give me your PhD geology candidate expertise why do you think this is happening my only guess would be that that whatever these like the catfish head and maybe my pasta are just super anerobic like they're just not they're complex Foods they're complex yeah they're anerobic and there's also something really important that we don't talk about a lot here on the channel that you understand this you will understand nutrients at a much higher level and that is particle size and surface area oh yeah think about it we put three fish heads in this hole whole fish heads the only way bacteria microbes Etc they have to get around that exterior layer of the fish head break that down there's maybe even less surface area at that point break that down break that down whereas if you put in the scraps there's a ton of surface area that they're small particles right they already cut up a little bit SAR to composting so here let's grab a couple of these trellises we have to treat them equally so what we're going to do is they are all determinate Tomatoes but we are going to replace the trellis with a taller one we're not pruning them whatsoever we're going to let them sprawl but I do want that main Vine to come up so let's tie these babies so we're just going to put a steak and then wrap some string around it Str yeah that's it let us know your predictions in the comments we'll be back with another update in a second back again mid-september now jacqu a lot has changed we have fruit on nearly every one of our experiments yep but still it's actually kind of hard to see what's going on now they're starting to grow into one another but I think your leftovers your pasta dish really seems to be the loser now it does seem like the smallest overall plant so I would say that you're probably right smallest overall then weirdly the garden weed one has started to come back Oxalis this one has really done nicely looks really healthy and then what I'm noticing and remember we noticed last time that the the fish one noodle this one had a smaller overall canopy of tissue but it had actual fruit on it and it looks like that is continued cuz you've got a nice amount of fruit on this one down here and a lot of flowers on the way still so might not be the biggest but it's going to yield for sure part of me thinks maybe it's because the nutrient profile of the catfish is higher in like phosphorus or potassium maybe I don't know and then over here it's sort of a mess like the control and the egg one are kind of just one plant at this point in time yeah I would say the biggest difference that I could see is that the control seems to have the most amount of aphids yeah this one is covered in these sort of whitish aphids there's a little bit on everyone but honestly the weeds has zero aphids that's very bizarre zero that's very bizarre makes me feel like maybe there's some sort of beneficial that was in the weeds that is somehow being transferred through I don't know we'll see there are a couple ripe Tomatoes not going to pick them because at the end of the video not only are we going to show you what everything looks like underneath the soil but we're also going to pick every single tomato count them and weigh them per plant to try and settle this food scrap question once and for all the time has come my friends the season is coming to a close jock certainly looks like it's comeing to a close here they're looking bad honestly so what we need to do is we'll take all the tomatoes put them in front of each variety take all the green tomato tissue put it behind cuz I'm also curious how much green versus how much actual produce potential yeah exactly so let's go ahead and do that all right well ja we have a pretty damn impressive display of tomatoes if I do say so myself so what we've done is we've gone through the arduous process of already pre- counting these both separating into ripe and unripe and for ripe we just decided anything like 50% color more that's basically ripe yeah the flavor's good at that point now what we have to do is weigh each of these because we might know that there's let's say 100 right here but if they're all an ounce well that 100 count isn't so impressive so we're going to give you the total weight and the average weight and when we're done we are finally going to dig up what's underneath each of these and see what's [Music] there 5 lb and 12.7 Oz 6 lb and 5 oz 2 lb 13.4 o 5 lb 11.1 Oz 8 lb 7.9 Oz 7 lb 14.8 ounces Jack and I have conferred we've weighed we've gotten the average weight we've gotten the percentage of ripe and unripe and we've come to some very serious conclusions Jac what's the first one on your mind the first one is that there's an obvious loser there is an obvious loser let's go to our loser now our loser is noodle the catfish head here's my theory you tell me what you think very complex piece of organic matter big old heads of catfish buried right at the root Zone hard to break down thus it did not break down very well it didn't convert into nutrients that the plant could use quick enough this is absolutely the worst only about 80 and they're about half the weight of any other super tiny then you have the middle of the pack the middle of the pack being jacques's kitchen leftovers my weed scraps and then standard kitchen scraps like trimmings of vegetables and stuff like that all of these were roughly the same within margin of error basically yeah they're basically the same the only call out jacqu is that this one just the garden weeds by far had the most green growth the only thing I can think of here is that perhaps it's a lot of vegetative material perhaps the nitrogen was made available quickly and could utilize that and turn that into V which is exactly how you would make like a weed fertilizer stew nitrogen and that seems to be true it seems to be the case now we go into the ones that we didn't think would win but seems like they have first off you have Eggbert this is the one with a couple cracked eggs and one whole egg and we're going to show you in a second if that whole leg is still there I think it is do you I think it's gone you think it's gone yeah I think it's gone okay we'll have to see but what we noticed here is that the counts on these are roughly similar 120 134 they're generally bigger and they're generally a little more ripe but the pure control rip absolutely destroyed the competition as far as ripeness there's about 70 or so ripe ones here and none of the other Tomatoes at all are have over 30 ripe tomatoes so I don't know exactly why this happens but I think you might the most interesting thing to me I don't know the exact reasoning but this had a very small amount of vegetative growth which also meant that it was the most densely producing tomato yes so that's actually a nice little bonus when you think about this one at 134 tomatoes and very over 50% % ripe right and then you think about the weed scra one over there with just under 100 Tomatoes way more vegetative growth and less ripe so what do I think is happening at a broad scale the takeaway to bring home if you want my opinion it would be probably I wouldn't bother putting food scraps in the garden compost is what food scraps become and that's what you put in cuz it's the most bioavailable but I would say jacqu that the surface area really matters absolutely that's the key because the bigger stuff is just going to take a long time to break down down the chopped up weeds clearly did okay I would guarantee the weeds are completely gone I would think that the kitchen scraps are completely gone but let's find out we have to go dig this up I really want to know let's start out with your kitchen leftovers o we got that basket look at that I don't see a single thing I don't see a single thing in there it's completely gone completely gone honestly surprising not only that it looks like it never was here like nothing no evidence no evidence whatsoever wow very interesting kitchen leftovers completely eradicated okay there's basket I'd be shocked if there was a single I I would 100% be shocked there's nothing nothing it's just dirt nothing cool all right let's check out the middle of the pack here we'll skip noodle for a second and we'll go over to just kitchen scraps another prediction here nothing oh look at the worms Oh wait there is stuff there is stuff there tons of eggshells oh wow this is fascinating tons of life this is fascinating there are tons of egg shells wow and there is a absolutely teeming with pill bugs the other two like zero basically there's no signs of actual bug life that we could see visually there's a ton of pill bugs in here and in fact there's an avocado peel look at that there's the pits wow so what's interesting here is you're seeing the decomposer layer you're seeing the worms and the pill bugs and I would guarantee there's a couple other things we prob can't see here they have decomposed I would say most of this the only things left and this might be be a clue to the next one I know that's theegg shells I'm like maybe no eggs okay last time chance to change your mind you think there's going to be uh uhoh I see something here what do we got a whole lot of eggshells tons of eggshells and some life there's definitely something hold on where's the egg I think it did break you think so I'm shocked that the egg broke I'm actually shocked I wonder what if we just stabbed it with the steak we might have yeah we might have it's mostly broken Downy but it's very fragile very fragile so here's my prediction jock I think we're going to see it be skeletonized yeah I don't think we're gonna see a lot of actual I think we're gonna see a lot of life here we're gonna see a lot of little creepy crawlers yeah I'm a little scared a little bit scared I'm a little scared honestly smell yeah how's it smell I don't smell anything yep which I like oh there's some worms up in here wo look how chunky oh dude W that's bone that's W what it's completely dude dude it's completely gone look at these bones it's all bones this is all bones like there's no material left and there's a ton of worm life around here ton of worm life doesn't smell like anything let me see like absolutely nothing it smells like pure yeah like a I don't know nothing wow dude not not that much life not not that much life but the but the material is the proteins and the fats they are completely gone completely gone so I wonder what happened then to the plant well here's what I think the process of breaking those bones that protein and fats down basically stalled the plant's ability to intake nutrients cuz think about it it's not breaking down protein and fat directly into nitrogen Etc there's process to that absolutely so it's there there's a probably a microbial environment going on that is basically inhibiting nutrients until it flushes them at the end you know and I think it probably went like an oxy like no oxygen no oxygen cuz it was just so gross and look at the roots actually yeah on this comparatively yeah are pretty small pry like look at the roots on this this was our weed one this one is very healthy looking Roots even this one's healthy yeah yeah wow cuz think about it you you transplant the Tomato directly into the fish head and they're starting to break down immediately it's probably going a little acidic or or anoxic or something like that definitely funky what have you learned Jac at the end if you what would you recommend I would recommend using compost I might try an egg just cuz it was close enough that I'm a little bit curious yeah but definitely to me I think I think I honestly and I've said it a million times I would just plant and I might add a little bit of compost and I wouldn't do any of these crazy wild things I I I would just I would just Garden as as Mother Nature sort of wanted us to Garden in the first place don't to deal with catfish ad well think about why fertilizer exists basically it's gone through the process for you it's it's very fine very granular broken down very close to its final component aka the elements that the plant is taking up so we hope you eny enjoyed this experiment we had a ton of fun doing it if you want to see more stuff like this definitely hit us with the Subscribe full tomato guide here you can buy seeds to grow tomatoes from our Seed Company Botanical interests good luck in the garden and keep on [Music] [Laughter] decomposing