This is Part 12 of 12 Part Series that will help you understand the PRO’S & CON’S of Back to Eden organic deep mulch gardening soil improvement 101 method with wood chips to composting just Fall leaves. Great start for beginners Tour our secrets for organic soil & growing gardening vegetables 101 documentary with pest control. Looking into soil food web & soil health in a no till organic garden. diy garden. Organic gardening and farming.
NASA Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1SgmFa0r04
LIST link: http://www.rootnaturally.com/PlantListMycorrhizal.pdf
If all the plants share and do not compete for nutrients, is there a need to do any weeding at all?
hii Sir,
I also theoretically know there is no such thing as mono culture in nature.. but why is that when i weeded my vege bed, and those vege grow faster and bigger after the grass were removed ?
because i experienced it myself, when the grass is removed from among the vege bed, the vege obviously seems to grow faster and bigger in that "instant" .
theoritically, what you said are all right, but why is that to achieve it, it is so difficult and different ?
when grass were grown among plants, it also become hidden place for snail that comes out to eat my vege…
Adam and Eve disobedient causes us to be in the curse that we have to toil and labour and the ground is not working for us..
i am a Christian, i believe return back to nature is our only way to be safe or turn from the path of earth disaster.
my pasture has told us to plant legume trees all around our crop bed.. but here in Germany, the sun is so little, that shade of the legume trees causes low vege yield.. very low.. especially when it is past summer.. the sun is so low on angle, that the trimmed legume tree cast shade of my low vege..
i tried many years ago using legume cover crop.. such as white clover.. apparently the are so fast grower and dense and talk that drown my veges… and they attract snail and behind breeding ground for it..
How does mycorrhizal fungi survive times of plant dormancy, when there's no or very low levels of photosynthesis? Like under a heavy snow pack. Do dormant plants continue to send sugars to their root systems stored somewhere or are sugars stored in the roots themselves? How long can a fungus survive in the root system of an annual, like say a corn stock, after the plant has died back? Great channel, by the way. It's extremely informative!
Dear Mark, Thank you for all your efforts. This is huge. I learned a lot from these videos. Keep on keeping on this great education. I have subscribed as well.
I watched this series and I understand that woodchips and roots are key to begin growing great soil. But what is the starting point if you are going from scratch? For example, you have a piece of land. And you have watched The Back to Eden Method and your in depth how-to's. You understand the process. But how do you start. Is it in year one: lay down the wood chips and in year two: sow the clover, the sunflowers, the winter rye and in year three: the vegetables and legumes? And with laying down the wood chips (and/or leaves) how much do you lay down? You do first 5 inches, wait for a month to start the composting-process, and lay another 5 or 7 inches? Or do you lay down 10-12 inches of fresh wood chip at once? So, how-to-build the foundation? You get just the wood chips or as well a good deal of composted material? What is your opinion about this?
How do you prune and how do you harvest? Have you special techniques? I am curious about your methods as well in this.
In advance thank you very much. A lot of questions, but thank you (perhaps the answers are in other videos I haven't seen yet).
God bless you and your son and in everything you lay your hand on.
All the love from The Netherlands
Hi ive spent the last few days watching all your leaves vs eden videos. Which are GREAT btw but i do have two questions. Q1 i have 3 raised bed (6×3 ft) height about 7inch which i filled with compost early this year, as youve explained compost does not build soil, how can i transition from no dig gardening to back to eden gardening. I do grow things in the winter like broad beans, garlic/onions, carrots and lettuce. Q2 is it possible to use a combination of leaves and woodchips? Eg put leaves down first and then put woodchips on top? Or would that be to excessive. . Thanks in advance 🙂
Hi Mark, thanks a lot for your work.I watched all the 12 videos in this series and they are really helpful to me in understanding soil and how to build it over time. However, I have a question: I do not have much land space and the little that is available has a lot of stones in it. It is actually too stony. Can I use raised beds to do the Back to Eden gardening? Thanks a lot for creating these videos.
This is such a great video. So I'm making a new garden area and just yesterday I put cardboard over a poke weed. I should uncover it and let it grow? Sandy Florida soil.
Hello Mark, I’m new to gardening so I have been researching various methods on the internet and ran across your channel and I am most impressed with the effort you have put into your videos. My property is covered with pine trees that are scheduled to be thinned this year and I plan to clear an acre for an orchard/vegetable garden. I have been collecting wood chips and horse manure in preparation for making compost, any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you David
Sorry I'm so confused – I've got the cover crop growing but the roots are so huge and take up so much of my garden bed that I can barely plant anything into it. Even when I cut the stems down, when I part the soil all I see is roots, roots and more roots. Not anywhere near enough space for my beets our potato to grow – what should I do? Help!! I know you've mentioned in your other video never to pull roots out….
When you plant alfalfa do you water it or no so that the roots go deeper to get the water.
I don't know where the story started that elephant garlic isn't a garlic. Some people say it's a leek and others claim it's a shallot. It is a garlic although it may have originated as a garlic cross with some other unidentified plant. Just trying to right a long standing too often repeated inaccuracy.
Do you plow the ryegrass under?
I've been binge watching this series of 12. I had heard of Permaculture farming, and still don't know what that is. And I'd heard of Back to Eden gardening and didn't know what that was. Now I have a much better idea. Thank you so much. I finally realized I should probably just subscribe already, so I did. D'uh
I had been doing it wrong all along. When I had a house I wanted to buy a compost bin. Husband said no. I asked if we could build one then, he said no. "We'll just buy compost". I tried to get him to get the lawn to grow longer so the roots would grow deeper, in a drought area it made sense to me. But he insisted on cutting it short. I planted strawberries one year, 6 plants. I got about 3 berries the first year, BUT the plants sent out runners and made more plants. By year 2 I had at least 24 plants and while they were in season, I picked a pound of strawberries every single morning. My family was getting sick of strawberries. Year 3 he ripped up my strawberry plants and rototilled the ground. I was so upset.
I would cut dead leaves off tomatoes and zucchinis and leave them on the ground, he'd get mad at me for not cleaning up. We aren't married anymore. He kills everything he touches.
elec trizity
Great presentation!
This is brilliant. One question I do have. You say plants reserve ( retain ) the water etc. How come if you have a shelter belt of trees on a farm, all the plants closest to the shelter belt do way worse than the rest of the crop?
Amazing Mark. So we’ll explained and shown. Love your stuff!!!
So helpfull. Getting more and more grounded in better coexisting with true nature. Thanks so much.
Hi Mark, where can I find your list of cover crop possibilities . Thanks
What if I leave my lawn to grow tall for just a month out of the year? Would the roots stay deep?
Honestly, there are a lot of inputs here to include seed, and the work to make this method viable not to mention the added cost associated with this. I appreciate that this works for you, but for most gardeners this doesn’t seem to be reasonable. The amount of work, cost and effort doesnt compute in a cost/effort ratio in my eye when I simply build raised beds and add compost annually.
This all sounds logical but if the theory is correct, it seems to me that just planting vegetables among an untouched field of local weeds (excluding bind weed and parasites) and shrubs would be the optimal way to grow and I'm unconvinced that that is the case. Also, this might be a great idea for an acreage or orchard but in suburbs where we have a 20×20 plot, it doesnt seem efficient to grow veggies with 5 other non producers taking up space. I havent viewed the results of this series yet but your tomatoes were doing great in leaf mulch. Dowding seems to have great success with just compost mulch. Perhaps there is a happy medium that would be most effective. I enjoy all your videos and look forward to more. Thank you.
Love your info and teaching method.
Employing no till with diverse cover crops for the first time starting last fall. Im in wester NC growing zone 7B. I get that leaving cover crop taller will develop deeper roots and feed soil food web. But we also have fire ants that LOVE to hide and nest in deep cover and under mulches. Know you don’t have fire ants, but wondering if anyone watching has found a good solution. Thanks!
Thank you.
Very nice!!
Thanks for making this series. Really interesting!
Thank you for follow up.
Hey Mark. I've been binge watching your videos for a week, and I'm nowhere near done yet. Thank you for such amazing content – I've learned a ton.