Back to Eden Gardening

[Beekissed]

Don't know where this has been all my gardening life but God finally led me to the Back to Eden documentary~ http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/
and I'm more excited about this gardening season than I have been about any garden for a long, long time! If the Lord wills it~and I think He does~I'm going to try this for our horrible heavy clay, acidic, soil for the garden and also for our orchard.

We live out of any town by 20 miles but I already contacted a tree service place that said they'd dump us free wood chips if he had jobs out my way. Now it's up to God to provide him jobs out my way...... That, in and of itself, was a miracle, but the guy actually knows exactly where we live and NO ONE knows that....we have the hardest time giving directions to folks and getting them to find where we are. So that was miracle number two.

Miracle number three is the fact that my oldest brother bought a big ol' wood chipper a few months back. Could be he will let us borrow it this spring so I can kill two birds with one stone and get some trees cut for firewood and also make some nice, green wood chips for the garden.

I didn't think anything could get me excited about gardening in this soil, but God had a solution, as usual.

 

[journey11]

Hi Beekissed, long time no see!

I've seen the film awhile back and I like the idea, as it is basically what I do with my perennial flowers anyway. I did have some gigantic rhubarb out in that flowerbed this year and have thought of tucking a few herbs and edibles in there as well.

Is your soil in the eastern mountains dense red clay too?

 

[Beekissed]

Sure is. And on top of that, I live on a ridgetop where the soil is thin and was previously a pine thicket, so the soil is very acid and doesn't take well to amendments, no matter how many and how much I add~hay, straw, leaves, mulch, manure, lime, etc.

I'm counting on this method to change the nature of this soil enough that I can grow things I used to grow at other places with better soil and also have more even moisture control. It's either sopping wet and doesn't dry out or so dry that it hardens up and roots cannot move through it.

I've tried many other methods for it but this one seems like a final solution for me here and I have a good feeling about it. I've also got an opportunity to get some old, old horse manure down the road..for free...so it seems like all things are coming into alignment towards this method.

Since I use active, cultivated deep litter in my chicken coop and see the benefits there, it's no great leap for me to understand fully the benefits of this type of deep litter in the garden.

 

[digitS']

@Beekissed - You have been away for a very long time!

I looked, May of 2012. That might have gotten you into a thread in April of 2012 but you seemed to already be on to the Self-Sufficient forums.

If you do a TEG search for "Back to Eden" with the quotation marks, this is what you will come up with: LINK. There have been several conversations in the last couple of years.

digitS'

 

[Beekissed]

Thanks! I had tried the search with the same words and only came up with one conversation about mulching on that topic. Don't know why I didn't yield the same results you link here but I'm glad to find these other conversations. If you'd like to just add my post to one of these and close this thread, I wouldn't mind one bit. I only started it because I couldn't find a thread on it!

@Beekissed - You have been away for a very long time!

I looked, May of 2012. That might have gotten you into a thread in April of 2012 but you seemed to already be on to the Self-Sufficient forums.

If you do a TEG search for "Back to Eden" with the quotation marks, this is what you will come up with: LINK. There have been several conversations in the last couple of years.

digitS'

 

[digitS']

No!

That's just for reference.

Historical or otherwise .

Steve

 

[Beekissed]

Thank you, all the same! I'll check out those other conversations and see how folks are working out with this method. Thanks again for the helping hand!

 

[so lucky]

That video and your words are enticing. I will watch the video when I get time to pay attention to it. Glad to see you on here, Beekissed. It sounds like you have soil similar to mine, but I didn't have pine trees. Just clay.

 

[Beekissed]

Here's a follow up vid of an interview with this Paul guy and I was so impressed with this vid as he goes from one place to another in his gardens and shows some of the things that have happened there and how things grow...completely impressed! Never saw fruit trees that look like that, though....kinda weird.

 

[so lucky]

I was able to watch it this evening. Lots of good info. What he said about not watering made sense. Well, it all made sense. Now gotta find a source for wood chips!