Why am I not growing my veggies in wood chips, and am I still using the Back to Eden method?
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In addition to Paul's suggestions, I strongly suggest looking at or taking the Soil Food Web Course by Dr Elaine Ingam.
You need the Bungus, and Bacteria in the Veggie Garden. You need to watch the recent Paul G video. He is planting in wood chips created soil.
Spot on my dude.
I watch quite a bit to get a better view of his method also. The chips are like a permanent cover he pulls back then adds his compost before planting. I tried that this year in a couple spots in my veg garden. Looks to be working well. Those lil fungi are seriously at work in my garden. And they very much benefit the perennials. Interestingly you can buy amendments that have cultures or something from the fungi. In a video about it, their biggest show off was tomatoes. Maybe they benefit most from a top dressing or mulch because they are shallow rooters.
Also, lol, I've used a mushroom compost in my mix for a couple years now and things have gotten interesting. Mushrooms everywhere! But no edible ones. Sad face. The devil fingers sent me down a rabbit hole of research. Scary, inappropriate looking, stinky things. I think they coincide with my ant issues.
You need to do a wood chip dirt raised bed. And like you are doing now. Do a exact planting, and fertilizing. And see if there is a difference.
From where u buy mushroom compost?
You made a very clear presentation of your soil mulch analysis.
Thank you.
Love your videos….learned so much from you..thank you!…Tuck is a boss!
Humic acid isn’t proven to exist In nature … it’s a correlation between humice and the acidic ph of soil that contains a lot of humice
I LOVE TUCK
Greetings! I do not remember if I already commented about this method, since I come back to watch your videos again and again. Here is my point, I have tried using woodchips as mulch and adding compost I buy that large part of it is wood Thought I was doing a good job and improving the soil.Then discovered that the termites from my neighbours back-garden have migrated to mine.
It is a problem that came about after hurricane Maria on 2017. Thank God our houses are made of concrete!
Anyways, everytime I move a container or dig the soil to plant I find termites! Cant have any wood structure in my garden, it gets eaten!
Do you have any idea if they cause damage to the roots? How to exterminate them without poisoning the garden soil?
PLEASE help me, I am retired and enjoy working in my garden but this is just getting out of control.
You have such interesting things to teach us, but why do you have to sound so hystrionic and theatrical? You have charisma and pesonality, you don't need to invent one.
its still not clear…..
does he layer woodchips with compost? or does he clear away the previous years woodchips, add compost then add the woodchips on top?
what exactly is the process?
Excellent video. Again.
Took me awhile to see this too. I started Back to Eden gardening in 2016 and followed Paul G. Also I watched all his videos and don’t have Hens either. I do compost everything. Buy in some veg mix. Totally agree with you thanks for making it clear to people. Great job. James.
James, this is my second year of bte gardening and the results are spectacular. The soil is so full of life and the plants love it. I know the surface is fungal dominated but I am not so sure about the soil below.
I think a lot of the confusion comes from where you began. You actually transformed sand, that's right, sand into a viable growing medium. To me that was inspiring and nearly miraculous. I hope didn't discount what you accomplished in such spectacular fashion.
I didn't start with sand. I started with mostly normal soil although some areas contained construction fill. All of the chips are gone after an initial application of 4 to 6 inches. So for me all the talk of sifting wood chips is irrelevant because I don't have to.
One more thing. I don't compost any more. Last fall I laid down a thick layer of leaves. I saw Paul pushing away the wood chips, dumping green waste and re-covering with the chips. I do the same with the leaves but I'll cover it with cardboard before replacing the leaves. The worms love cardboard.
Great explanation. I use wood "mulch" since I don't have access to arborist wood chip products. I use it around everything, to cover the ground and suppress the weeds. However, I have to dig down a ways, to plant in the soil below. Woodchip mulch takes a long time to break down, because of not having any green material mixed in.
I'm going to be gardening differently in the near future, doing more raised beds though, as we deal with very invasive plants that you can't eliminate from your garden at ground level.
CARBON CARBON CARBON You build it from the top Amazing things come from the bottom. This was exceptional. If you grow food having piles of carbon laying around serves so many purposes. Bedding, Sanitation, Ground cover, Mud control, Composting…..Great Stuff first time I got introduced to you. SubScribed! Thanks For Sharing
My food Forrest in southwest Florida garden continues to thrive. Many fruits, blackberries, mulberries, many vegetables. Thanks James
I visited Paul’s gardens and orchard last Summer and saw that the wood chips he had on his annual vegetable beds were very fine—the pieces about 1/2 inch at most. He said you need a LOT of wood chips when your soil is “hungry”. His soil has been so well fed over the years that he no longer needs to add so many wood chips. I asked him how vital his chickens were to his success, and he said wood chips alone are enough to feed poor soil (I don’t have chickens but I make compost). It makes sense to use whatever is available to cover and feed the soil. We sheet mulched two planting areas last Fall with a 10 inch deep pile of fresh uncomposted wood chips. One area was plowed first, the other was not. We’re having amazing success this Summer in the area that was plowed first. The non-plowed area has much smaller plants with yellow leaves. Plowing our hard compacted soil once seemed to speed up the process of getting the nutrients into the soil. The 10 inches of wood chips is almost completely broken down 8 months later. We won’t need to plow that space again—but we will dump another thick layer of wood chips over it this Fall.
I use a wood chip mulch on my raised beds, but it is a mulch, and I pull it back and plant into the soil. By the end of the season the soil is really rich and black and ready for another layer of wood chips. I always start my seedlings and then plant them out, but I keep a bed without any mulch for direct seeding things like carrots and radish. I thinks the secret it to remember to plant into the soil, and not into the chips.
Paul's emphasis on a "covering" is key to understanding the method. The thick water canopy that existed over the earth before The Flood filtered out a lot of the harmful rays of the sun. Mulching serves the same purpose for your plant's roots. The great value of woodchips is that they are a mulch that ALSO provides nutrients slowly, and regulates moisture better than other materials. So, it is about a covering; not about woodchips.
The back to Eden method seems to be hearing the voice of God and learning from nature.
How do you source compost?
My covering is just cardboard as my garden is small. I cut holes in the cardboard and put grow tubes ( soda bottles cut into grow tubes) that protrude half an inch above the cardboard and place my plants or seeds in the grow tubes. The tiny amount of leaves that blow into my garden I use to mulch the grow tubes. In Cape town, South Africa we had a huge water shortage 2 years ago so I use a soda bottle with a hole cut in the lid to water only the veggies inside the grow tubes, rain does the rest. Cardboard Eden?
Thgank you for explaining. The bacterial and fungal differences make so much more sense now. You and Tuck have a great day!
I have been trying to say the same things to people for years. There's more to back to Eden than woodchips. He says over and over, he uses woodchips because it's what he has access to. They put compost, composted chicken run material and other lovely things to build soil, and covers it with woodchips as mulch. The idea is to build soil like a forest, layer the goodies on top, let the micro world do the work, and keep them all protected under the mulch layer.