Tuesday, October 11, 2011

My first Back to Eden garden

Last spring I hauled home 6 dump truck loads of wood chips from the local stock yard. I piled them up after bringing them home and watched them steam on cool mornings. I mulched around fruit trees and berry bushes with them, but most of the pile remained unused. Until this week.

After watching the Back to Eden film which details Paul Gautschi’s gardening technique, I was persuaded to give it a try. I had already sowed some fall greens in our main garden, and I didn’t want to disturb them (we’ve been eating some tasty salads for about a week now). One of our smaller garden areas had sweet potatoes in it, but it was time to get them out.

So, after harvesting about 20 bushels of sweet potatoes, and bringing in the basil plants to dry, it was time to create a Back to Eden garden. This particular garden plot is 50 feet by 75 feet.

The first step was to remove what weeds were left and then smooth out the remains of the ridges in which the sweet potatoes were grown. I used the disk to do that, although that wasn’t the only or best option. I wasn’t trying to work the soil up, just level it out a little.

Then, I hauled several truck loads of compost and dumped them on the garden. I used the tractor with a box blade to spread the compost as evenly across the garden as I could. 002It ended up being about one inch to two inches thick.

The next step was to haul wood chips. I hauled 6 or 7 truck loads, leaving about one truck load where the original pile was. Then, it was time to spread the chips across the garden as evenly as I could. I used my Bobcat for some of this, but a lot of the spreading had to be done manually, with a rake, hoe, shovel, and wheel barrow.

It took a couple of hours, but I was able to spread the wood chips across the garden to a depth of about 4 to 6 inches. It looks good, I think. Soon, I hope to plant some garlic and a few potatoes in it.
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7 comments:

mmpaints

it looks great dp! I got the power company to bring me some chips from their latest trimming spot. I'm looking forward to doing the eden garden plan myself. I know it's going to help me out a bunch/

mineral wood laminate flooring

I never knew about this one. Thanks for sharing such wonderful and informative post. Really helps me a lot.

Anonymous

I don't see how they get around pH adjustment when using wood chips. Our area has pine and they tend to be very acidic. I still use them but add lime.

dp

I've read that pine needles and wood chips don't actually cause acidity in the soil as is commonly believed. Perhaps, further research is needed.

Anonymous

We also did the back to eaden garden on our existing beds and created new beds over some of our lawn with the newspaper and then compost and then wood chips. It makes perfect cense to me. I wish I had started years ago. Brenda

Bovee Family

Christi and I just watched this video a few weeks back. We then viewed it with our entire fellowship! We just harvested our sweet potatoes today. Tomorrow we begin the process of hauling in the compost and wood chips!!! So excited to see how it goes.

Harvest

I hope to try this mulching method this coming growing season. It looks promising.

Darryl, thanks for your encouragement when we wrote last re blogging. I have finally started our family blog and would be glad to have you check it out some time. It is new, but I hope to keep adding content.

http://bythesweatofmybrow.blogspot.com/

(I misplaced your email addr, so feel free to remove this message from your blog. I was not trying to spam it. Feel welcome to link to ours if you want.)

Blessings!
Darryl (from MI)

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