Back to Eden Gardening Thread~Note: pic heavy thread.

[Beekissed]

Someone asked and I waited a bit to see if anyone else would, but they didn't. So, whilst resting my overworked knees, I will get one rolling. Please feel free to add your BTE here, pics and videos are most helpful, but explanations work too. I'm sure there are other people out there who are more successful than I am at this method and it would really encourage folks to see some good BTE gardens on here .

Here's the film I watched that started me on this path:

http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/

That was three years ago....unfortunately, I first watched it mid to late winter, so the bee got in my bonnet and I couldn't get it out. Instead of waiting until fall to start it, I tilled up my heavy clay garden 5 times and then started putting on chips~not the recommended start but I rarely do things the way people recommend.

The first loads of chips were really crappy, no greens in them at all, huge pieces of wood from crappy chippers. I rented a UHaul utility trailer and drove about 100 mi. round trip three times in one day to get those chips...had some help from my family on loading and unloading or I could never have done it.

Then came the spreading of the chips evenly...that took some time, some work, still haven't gotten them evenly spread after 3 yrs. The woman you will see in these pics is the Ol' Bat, my 82 yr old gem of a mother...the work horse on this homestead!

Not recommended to plant into fresh chips but I did anyway, using plenty of chicken litter as side dressing.

It wasn't as bad as I expected it to be and we got decent crops but not as good as traditional tilling and growing in this plot had been.

The flowers loved it, in the veggie garden and also in the beds around the house.

The second spring things didn't grow as well and I got blight all over the garden....I had dumped around 200 bags of leaves there, let them sit all winter and few composted, then removed most of them before planting. BAD year, lots of weeds, lots of bugs, lots of fungal infection....don't put leaves on top of your chips. That leaves a layer of stuff composting on TOP of the chip layer, where weed seeds can get a good grip...ordinarily the chip layer is supposed to suppress most of that kind of growth. Bad idea and I'm still paying for that in this third spring.

Will be placing more crappy chips on top of that layer of compost this year in an attempt to restore the balance there. Ideally, one would want ramial wood chips, with all the leaves and end branches ground up in the chips for added nutritional compost as the chips decompose, but that's not always possible.

Our biggest problem thus far for this type of gardening and seems to be the problem of most other people? Getting chips. Out in the country, and especially if one lives way back from the hard road, chips are like the Holy Grail. I've only had 2 loads delivered here for free and that I didn't have to fetch myself and those were just freak accidents of power lines back here being cleared.

Will post more pics as we go along, of the before and after on the soil quality, of other growth, of the weed removal....yep, don't let anyone tell you that you won't get weeds in the garden with this method. Weeds love compost too! They are just really, really easy to pull out of the garden now and kind of fun, especially if it's big clumps.

I've made a lot of mistakes with this method and am still learning as I go along. I'm still not sure about what I've done here~some of it I love, some the jury is still out on~ but now I'm committed to it and there's no going back. If you are unsure, it's best to do a test portion of your garden to see if you will like it, if it will work for you, so you can compare it with growth in traditional till gardening, etc.

 

[Lazy Gardener]

I am also a fan of BTE, and DL in coop and run. I started a BTE orchard several years ago on soil that never should have fruit trees planted there. It is thick, heavy, rocky clay, and the water table is very high. You can hear the water squishing under foot when walking on it in the spring. In spite of that, my trees are blooming this year, and have put on some decent growth. I am pruning them to hopefully keep them short enough to manage without a lot of ladder assist. I am converting my garden into BTE as well. I'm blessed to have nice sandy loam (imported) with a gentle south slope, good sunlight. While my neighbors are moaning and groaning about not being able to get into their gardens to till b/c it's too wet, I've been eating various veggies from my garden/green house for a month now. volunteer lettuce cropping up in the garden. My tiller sits in the garage and does not come out to play unless I am digging a hole to plant a tree or a fence post, or making a walk way or some other such nonsense. I merely loosen the soil for a row, plant or garden bed with my garden fork, and plant just as soon as the frost is out of the ground. That's an other benefit of BTE: the frost doesn't go as deep, so you can plant even earlier. Wet soil is not as wet b/c the chips act like a sponge to hold it. Dry soil is not as dry b/c the chips keep the underlying soil from drying out as fast, and they release their moisture to the soil over time. BTE also provides the perfect substrate to grow mushrooms. A new venture for me this year. I've spawned 3 beds of Wine Caps, and shared spawn with 4 other friends and neighbors. The microrhizae activity will aid in releasing even more nutrients to the beds that the mushrooms share with the veggies. I am not seeing the weed problems that have been plagueing Bee. (at least in the orchard) The garden is not well mulched enough for me to be able to speak to how that will do. My biggest issue is in getting the wood chips to the places that need them. I have had a few loads delivered, but those big boom trucks don't like to work in confined areas.

 

[Beekissed]

I agree!!! Oh, for that pile of wood chips!!!! What a huge blessing to have wood chips and horse, sheep, pig and chicken manuey!!! You could plant dimes and grow dollars on soil like that.

 

[NH Homesteader]

Ah you've convinced this cold weather wanna-be gardener! If we don't move, I'm starting this next year (well this fall). Heck if we do move I'll start it, just elsewhere!

 

[Beekissed]

Some of the coop clean out, some just loose hay, some pine needles and leaves....hoping that will suppress some weedlings until I can get the new chips hauled to cover the garden.

Had to tie up more peas ...their weight was pulling them away from the fence. We'll be picking sugar snap peas any day now and a good plenty of them. Most of these peas are as tall as me now and some are taller.

 

[Beekissed]

Took progress pics of the garden last evening...things seem to be growing well, though this sudden higher heat sent all my romaine into a bolt so quickly I couldn't pick them all and use them. Story of my life.

The pink honeysuckle over the gate seems to have recovered from all the aphid damage of earlier in the spring~I had cut all the damaged parts off that I could reach. Getting a handful or two of raspberries each day but still can't keep up with how quickly they ripen...the bugs are getting some of them. JBs, mostly. The pumpkins are taking over the garden, as per usual...only planted two of them but they have been loving all the rain and heat, so are growing like Audrey 2 out there.

The vine on the arch is butternut squash and a Brandywine tomato on the left, a cherry mato and two cukes on the right. Pumpkins in the foreground.


Sweet, sweet raspberries, thanks to a friend from up north!


Sweetums...could watch this kitten for hours! He's so very funny in his playing with Flash and by himself.

This is what grew from planting the stump of a store bought onion...weird, huh?

My bee balm bloomed! Isn't she lovely? Haven't seen a bee one on it.

Have to keep pulling these pumpkin vines out of the taters, off the fence, off the mato trellises, etc. You name it, it's invading it.

Shouldn't have planted these yellow squash so close to the peppers...they are crowding them for sunlight. I have four yellow squash growing this year, but these planted in the landscaping fabric are the most huge and healthy of them all. As you can see, I have healthy peppers getting bigger and bigger. Still pinching off the bloom so as to encourage more energy to the roots, but they are getting so much bloom that I'm finding it a little daunting to keep up. I'm going to stop removing those now that the plants are good and established and just let them do their thing.

Flash, the garden cat...he still loves sleeping in the garden, which I love about him. Now he's getting Sweetums into the garden, so maybe I'll get another garden lovin' cat.

 

[baymule]

We were given a LOT of 5 year old wood chips. They are black, crumbly and richly decomposed. My husband and our neighbor Robert, hauled loads and I pushed it up with the tractor while they were gone. they hauled loads for us and for Robert too.

They made 4 or 5 loads a day until it was gone. Robert got mulch too and spread it in his front yard and in his garden. The mulch was black, crumbly and rich.

The mulch sat piled up all winter. The grand daughters liked the mulch mountain and played on it.

 

[baymule]

We started getting wood chips from a power line contractor crew. They parked their trucks on our place at night and on weekends. We wound up with over 70 loads of wood chip mulch!

My husband is waving from the end of Mulch Mountain.

Then I turned to the right.

Plus we have piles and piles of mulch on the pipeline. We spread a whole lot of the wood chips in and around the barn to hold down the dust. We have a 30 year old mare that has lung issues and the dust makes her cough.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

For bigger seeds like beans, squash, pumpkin I just poke them down in the chip/compost with my finger to the first joint and call it a day

And THAT'S why we have dirt ground into our skin, lol!

 

[Beekissed]

Sugar snap peas picked yesterday. I planted these all at once, so they are coming on all at once, which was a mistake for sure.