Back to Eden Success! Fast Permaculture Soil with Woodchips - Grow Everything - Episode. 7
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- čas přidán 9. 09. 2024
- In this video I show you the progress of my 1 year old back to eden garden area! As well as which types of chips break down fastest.
You guys are lucky, you have so much space for those wood chips 😊
I finally got a huge pile of wood hips.... they were trimming in my area and I just asked them.. they brought me 4 loads full!!
hey
Thanks for posting this great video! I live up in the Ocala horse country and get weekly deliveries of horse manure with wood shavings mixed in. I compose it for 60 days and it is transforming my sandy soil.
I have never used woodchips as a soil improve'r but its now on my 'to do' list. Good uncomplicated video. Thanks.
+Home Grown Veg This is amazing isn't it? I have been researching the 'Back to Eden' method. I now have my whole garden covered (not in woodchip but 4 inches of old hay then a thin layer of woodchip over the top. I have not been able to get enough wood chip to cover it all with just that but hopefully will have some more coming. My seaweed is composting down well by the way and I have my 10 inch pots ready for the spuds this year! Hooray! : )
+Tina Hart Hello Tina. I was out for a walk recently with Molly and in a wooded area next to a car park some trees had been cut down and shredded. Great piles of wood chips just there for the taking. If we can get a couple of dry days 'back to back' me and Molly are on a mission. I am not sure how I will use it yet so just chasing advise from other gardeners.
You are so LUCKY I would grab that while you can! Have you seen the Back to Eden Film on you-tube? The man whose garden it is about is a war veteran he is very religious but if you put that aside he speaks a lot of sense. I mulch all my boarders with anything I can get, its just like the way you do your seaweed and leaves, just lay it on the top. I dont have access to much wood-chip, so this year I have put old hay from a stable near me and then topped it will wood-chip to make it look nicer. I tell you its a good job I don't live next door to you as we would be having a race with our wheel barrows to see who could get to the wood-chip first! Hee hee : )
+Tina Hart check with your local parks dept. oftentimes woodchips from public works free for the taking.
Tina Hart,
you mean *borders (as in a boundary) A "boarder" is someone who rents a room in someone else's home. LOL
Some of the best camera work.The close ups are crystal clear.
I'm starting my third year of Back to Eden gardening here in the desert regions of Southern California. Love it!
stampified hi, my name is Emily. I am about to start Back to Eden in Norco, CA! How is your garden going over there?
Doing well. I have zucchini coming out my ears already. My tomatoes aren't ripe yet and have less flowers than normal so that might be a smaller than normal harvest. My fruit trees are doing great. I'm next door to you in Riverside.
stampified how interesting. We just moved from Riverside 3 weeks ago. We used to live by Tyler Mall. How is your water usage with back to eden?
I use way less with BTE. I know Paul doesn't water at all in the documentary, but I used to live in that part of Washington and a drought there is nothing like a drought here. You'll have to water. But before I did BTE I had to water every day in the hot months for about half an hour per spot. Now I water twice a week for 20 minutes per spot on those triple digit days. In weather under 90 I water once a week.
stampified that sounds awesome. I am so happy to come across you. Magic of internet. Lol! I have never garden before and eager to start. Plenty to learn 😊 i've subscribe to your channel.
That dirt is looking great. There's so many ways to get free leaves and branches, if you live near trees. I live in the country side, in the Caribbeans I sweep the leaves and pieces of broken figs and I compost it. It saves me from buying so much dirt. Great video. Loved and Subbed
OMG!
I'm Jamaican and if I lived in the Caribbean I wouldn't worry about compost or growing any type of vegetation because all the natural resources are already there I would never buy anything gardening in the Caribbean
Great to see you doing Back to Eden. I've been using this method in VA since Sept 2012. I have all the tree services numbers in my phone. I got a friend into it and she has had 8 loads of wood chips delivered since October. She's and everyone using wood chips are hooked. Cheers from zone 7.
Louise
To plant a garden is to believe in the future.
Louise B, I’m also in Va (your neighbors in Forest!) and started a 20’x20’ BTE garden last year. First year I had some aged chips but my garden was pretty dismal. Watched the BTE documentary again and realized I had no greens in my chips and also that it was “ok” to fertilize if you need to, which I hadn’t. I went from disillusioned to hopeful and things are going much better this year...My plants are growing much better and I just got a truckload of amazing chips WITH greens this time that will amazing when they break down. I probably have way too many...but I’ll find some place to put them.
I am glad to see I am not the only one in Florida that is following the Back to Eden method. I live North of Ocala and started my journey 16 months ago. I am a long time Organic Gardener and after watching Paul's video and L2Survive video's I started looking for wood chips. I was overwhelmed with the simple way this method works. Keep up the progress reports as our conditions are almost exactly the same,. I started with 18 loads and have only 5 left to keep my BTE garden supplied for the next few years. My loads look very similar to yours, type of wood mix, however mine seem to be much smaller in size when I started, After 16 months I still have no weeds, and the work load is far less than a till or raised bed garden. Where do you get your Azomite Rock dust? I have found it hard to get the micronized version in my area.Have a Great Journey
How thick of a layer did you put down when you started?? I’m in Orlando and contemplating laying chips for my garden and mainly getting rid of weeds
It's interesting how there are so many videos now conflating the use of wood chip mulch, with composting. Wood chips can be composted into a rich planting medium, but it requires a high input of nitrogen. When wood breaks down without it it tends to be pretty baron. I had an experience once filling a garden bed with this material obtained from my local stump dump, and it needed to be heavily amended in order to be effective.
keptyeti It is not to be planted in, but pulled back and planted in the soil. Wood-chips are initially a mulch. Dig them in and it will render your soil useless until it recovers the nitrogen,
We're in Vero Beach, and we started trucking in Woodchips a year ago ourselves. I'm anxious to go out to dig down through it to see the progress we've made in a year. Our backdoor garden sandy soil was transformed amazingly by laying down about 5 inches of wood chips over this past year. The results have been amazing there, but I have yet to really test the ground in our orchard area where we laid down about 3ft depth of woodchips over a very large area covering almost 2 acres. We had alot of rainfall this past year, and we're looking to get in more tropical trees as the weather warms over the coming months.
Sure would love to see an update of your soil quality beneath your chips!
Dude, I totally enjoyed this! Thanks so much for showing those examples.
keep you eyes on the pine piles ph level. you could get acid soil. cheers..
This is marvellous! I am in South Africa - and I am just starting the woodchip method. You are a great motivator. Thank you.
New Negritude
I love your username and wish you the best of luck on wood chipping gardens in South Africa. I, for one, would be interested in hearing about your experiments.
I like your enthusiasm.
Rain is your nitrogen source. It takes longer without other nitrogen sources but mulch will break down with just rain.
How much nitrogen is there in rain? Is it the dissolved air in the droplets, or bubbles of it that get incorporated into the mulch?
Sounds right. Plants gain so much growth after a rain . It's like super charged event
Rain is two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen. There is no nitrogen. The moisture of rain allows decomposition to happen faster if than it was dry. That’s all.
New subscriber started Gardening 3 years ago, I use composted horse manure from local Equestrian center and wood chips in path ways, wood chips and chicken manure makes compost in 3 months. Just took down and had 3 oak trees chipped in my yard. Time for my winter workouts!
Good video. You are well on your way to a great garden!
Sure, everything will break down eventually. All it requires is a little moisture. Diluted urine will really speed things up on your piles.
Here's an idea. Rent one of those baby Bobcat front-end loaders and take off the upper layer of chips, the dry layer and form one new pile, moistening as needed with a hose as you go. Then turn the more composted material. Some of the totally composted material at the bottom of your piles can be moved to the garden as your first four to six inches of your soil layer. Mix in some fast decomposing leaves to help build the soil and maybe some thoroughly hot-composted horse manure. I use horse manure instead of cow manure. I figure there is less likelihood of toxins in horse manure. Hot composting it though is a must to kill the weed seeds in horse manure. Horse manure also has more nutrients in it than cow manure.
I think my neighbors think I'm bat shit crazy about wood chips, but I'm not the only one lol. Love the video
Great weather, soil and conditions!!! Very fortunate!
So AWESOME!!!! I LOVED this video, sharing....:)
Great video! Thanks for taking the time to make it. Very informative and interesting to watch.
its a cover and a soil maker. use leaf chips. put chips in the chicken pens. then layer on chips in fall. spread wood stove ash also. layer seaweed a great plus, cover with chips.
Amazing! To be doing that in such sandy soil too... Thanks for the video, and best of luck with the garden!
Jared Rechnitzer Especially In sandy soil.
Great work keep us posted we need more pioneers in organic gardening.
Wow Florida is a wood chip munching state! Up here in 🇨🇦 it takes a lot longer. A lot longer. Must have some gingery bugs down there. Wonderful stuff.
I meant hungry
Different kind of trees break down at different rates. This is due to the content level of carbon within the wood.
Example: Hardwood/Slippers that are used in construction have high content of carbon which can take years to breakdown.
Certain commercial place sell hardwood chips, and even adding fresh manure (to hardwood) can still take 5years to break down.
yes but also humidity and temperature is a huge factor
Beautiful soil! This is my first year using the Back to Eden method and I am so excited about it! By the way....really well made videos! :) Subbing!
Its amazing what some simple woodchips can do!
Some of your wood chips are very similar to RCW (Ramial Chipped Wood).
RCW makes a copy-paste of the forest ground. It's a strong humus input and it is revitalizing the soil with numerous microorganisms.
Wood fungi are the first components of the soil food web. They are beneficial to plants through the mycorrhizal symbiosis.
Using RCW with a sandy soil helps to store nutriments and moisture.
You will find a lot of informations and studies on the Web about Ramial Chipped Wood.
Ramial wood chips are the best. I saw a professional installation of a RWC by trained horticulturalists long before Gautschi's BTE became popular.
If you can't make RWC youself, arborist woodchips are a distant second best & need to be conditioned before speading.
Avoid tub grinder crap at ALL costs.
I am in SW FL. I found that palm mulch is the best. It turned our sand to black gold in 6 months. I have been getting the Asplund other material doesnt break down as fast as the mulch. Either way, it is a great investment in the soil
Just Sew Trish good 2 know bcz the house behind me has areca palms and they drop in my yard
Are you growing in it now? If so, hows it working out for you?
I learned Red Alder and any of the willows, so including Cottonwood and Birch, rot the fastest in the Pacific Northwest. I'm following the ramial wood/bois fragmenté raméal studies from Laval/McGill and beyond, and rotting the mulch fairly fast with urea and wood ashes, then applying it in 4 months when it's already about 1/3 rotted.
It has turned our inert weathered rock topsoil into black gold too, in 4 months. A family asset, that.
Would palm mulch be ok in central fl zone 9b???
dude you haven't seen breakdown till you add a flock of chickens to the mix. OMG in one yr they took a 4ft tall pile of woodchips to practically nothing. That's just one pile tho. thnx for sharing
Exactly. The chicken manure adds a huge amount of nitrogen, which is necessary for the decomposition of the wood chips. Otherwise the wood chips decomposing will actually take nitrogen from the soil. The Back to Eden garden is far more amount the chicken manure than the wood chips. It is simply composting in place over the soil. I'm amazed by how many people think it's the wood chips that are magic.
Sorry mate - but the wood chips are magic.
Yes you need nitrogen, everyone including Paul acknowledges this. But the magic is in the break down of the wood chips and the mulching effect plus the water retention effect.
Sun is the most destructive thing there is in your garden - both killing the soil via and water evaporation -mulch fixes this.
Secondly it thermo-regulates the soil and roots.
It provides an huge culture for the symbiotic uptake of nutrients.
The chips contain a massive cross section of nutrients and minerals - not just carbon, nitrogen - but everything the plant took up in its life - this breaks down and feeds the soil in a constant stream.
I have now done at least 20-30 or more wood chip garden beds - probably way more, and have been gardening for decades.
Chicken, like all manure, is important - but wood chips take it to a whole new level.
Yes - the wood chips are definitely "magic".
.
I have always used wood chips in both vegetable and flower beds. The chicken manure is far more important, particularly in a mulched vegetable bed, as it releases enough nitrogen. In a flower bed, any organic matter is sufficient. It isn't magic; it is science.
We are not talking about flowers. Further anyone who knows anything about gardening knows that it is not just N - but N-P-K
Give it rest mate.
Good lord. Anything that covers the soil will help it from drying out. Traditionally in the U.S., lighter mulches (straw) were used in vegetable beds because as they break down, they use nitrogen (and pretty much only nitrogen) in the composting process. Light mulches use far less nitrogen than thicker mulches. When using wood chips, you needs lots of nitrogen to allow for composting, or else it will leach it from the ground, which will lead to lousy crop yields. As I explained, in flower beds, nitrogen is not a major concern, and so wood chips are generally fine without added nitrogen. Again, this is science, not magic. The best you can do is say "N-P-K"? Try this: www.ecochem.com/t_compost_faq2.html As you can see, the issue is CARBON to NITROGEN. Not Phosphorus or Potassium. Wood chips are all carbon. You do bring us to a good point though, that added fertilizers should be without nitrogen in a Back to Eden garden, however, as there is already plenty of nitrogen from the chicken manure. No fertilizer is really necessary from the composted wood chips, however, as they should contain plenty of nutrients. Ultimately, it isn't about the wood chips, though, but the balance between carbon and nitrogen to allow for composting and mulching. Back to Eden gardening is awesome, but it isn't magic. It also was the traditionally gardening method back before mono-cropping and the Industrial Revolution. For example, hugelkultur is a historic version of the BtE gardening used in Eastern Europe where wood was mounded up, covered with nitrogen, and gardened over. The wood became quite moist as it decomposed and added nutrients to the soil. English gardeners, on the other hand, covered their beds with gravel because they lived in a wet climate, but needed to smother the weeds. In more recent years, modifications of these techniques in permaculture led to sheet mulching and lasagna gardening methods. BtE is really just another variation. Though Paul Gautschi seems like a great guy, the filmmakers did a lousy job of explaining his methods and made it seems like the wood chips were the magic, rather than the whole system. Science explains what is going on and historic gardening methods show that this system is not nearly as revolutionary as some folks seem to think.
Thanks for all the info, we are doing an epic back to eden food forest in Michigan!
An enjoyable video thank you. I wish we could get hold of that amount of wood chips here in Thailand. The soil here is almost devoid of good organic matter.
Cheers Leigh & Toon 😉
I think anything that's natural will be positive for the soil and the more variety the better.
Wow, this is Amazing Ed! Can't wait to get down there over thanksgiving or christmas and get my hands in that stuff!
Wow - when they say pure sand, they really mean it! I'm a bit jealous, though; probably composting 12 months a year, as opposed to maybe 6 months up here in the northeast.
Why are they sitting in piles? Why don't you spread them around and 'grow' a lot more beautiful topsoil?
That's pretty awesome
i have been turning my pine wood logs into hugelkulture/permaculture similar just takes a little longer to break down. I'm doing that bcz I'm unable to haul that much woodchips to my back yard. I'm not 20 anymore. It does seem to be pretty effective even doing that. My beans are doing great in it. Possibly by this time next I'll have some woodchips. Looking forward to it.
Fantastic video. Thank you. I've a new growing area in a small field and we've just found 2 piles of wood chips on the edge of the field so am going to ask the owner if it's OK to use them. I'm sure it'll be fine as they were put the to get them out of the way.
Decomposed organic matter is not soil. Its compost. That's why your piles are steaming - because they are composting.
what do you think soil is? fucking volcanic rock dust? every soil is made from dead stuff, which is compost.
@@alpayseckin1001 Soil includes sand silt and clay, called loam. Loam is critical to a healthy functional soil. If you remove the loam you reduce the benefit of soil respiration, cation exchange capacity/mineral availability, paramagnetism and on and on. Technically if you don't have loam you don't have soil.
@@hosoiarchives4858 I don't even know what slit means.
Alpay Seçkin No mate, I don’t think soil is volcanic rock dust. You’re right that soil has an organic component (some of which is alive, some dead). But it is mainly a mixture of sand, silt, clay, air, and water. Compost is mainly decomposed organic matter (and some living organisms), air and water, that may happen to have some sand, silt, and clay in it. The distinction is mainly about the amount of organic matter. A big pile of organic matter will turn into compost. A big pile of soil is just soil.
Jack Francis Sure, in most gardening situations you end up with a little bit of soil getting into composting material, but the wood chips here are composting, and they’re going to be compost at the end of the process, not soil. Compost can be made completely without the involvement of soil (but realistically tends to get a bit of sand, silt, and clay in it because of where it is made, or because of the bits of old crop roots going into the pile). Soil on the other hand MUST have sand, silt, and clay in order to be soil, and it will have only minor amounts of organic matter in terms of volume. It is a actually an important difference in terms of functionality and nutrition when buying (or making) compost for use in the garden. If someone sold me 50 square metres of compost for my market garden but then delivered soil instead, I wouldn’t take it.
I think I will buy a shredder and shred them before piling them up. A well-shredded mix of the different wood will convert faster and will have better quality.
OMGGG you have crazy mushroooms?!
Try using EM 1 Effective Microorganisms for faster decomposition !
you should spread mushroom spoors all over that pile and you get mushrooms and it helps break it down :)
They generally just arrive.
@Major Greenz,
mushroom *spores
Very good demo.
Great looking soil!
You can use human urine or Coffee grounds or combo to brake them down faster
If you want them to break down quicker, spread the piles into 6-8 inches layers on top of your ground. They need to pull Nitrogen from the surface for the chemistry to work faster with a Nitrogen source. My wood chips decompose in a year. I put over 900 cubic yards to my 1.25 acre yard already and need to put more already. I'm in Melbourne FL.
Great video
It's been a while since a new video or update on this video. I'm curious to see the progress of your work
I am also in Florida
Great information.
Beautiful! I like how excited you are discovering that beautiful soil. I'm in the desert so things are moving along slower, but I got a HUGE load of pine chips. Good luck.
I'm not saying you're mistaken outright, but I did wood chips for the county for 18 years. What you see in the early part of the video, +- 2:00, IMO and per my observations over the years is, the smaller particles and saw...dust ...that have/has settled to the bottom as they inevitably will with any medium, as the rain and gravity has washed them off the larger particles and carried them to the bottom of the pile. That said, wood, even limbs WILL rot and breakdown and crumble more quickly that most people believe, but judging by the color and texture of this material, it appears to be just sawdust that has settled to the bottom of the pile.
This was encouraging.
Get to spreading and using no need to wait
Incredible 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Looks brilliant
great video.
Amazing!!
very helpful thanks for sharing!
thanks for sharing, God bless.
wow...awesome
I was able to cut way back on watering with wood chip mulch
thanks!!! very useful information!
Composting kitchen waste is easy and done in 40 days in comarison to wood chip and leaves of 12 months approx
It takes about a yr for green wood chips to break down to useable compost unless you add
Garden lime to it
One of best an fast ways to get your garden soil richer is use
Wood ashes all other things you talked about are good but bury your kitchen scraps in dirt compostable things I've found that bones bury little deeper in garden helps ha hA my wife used to get cheapest beer you could get an pour on her Rose's bushes
did you add the mushrooms?
Nice video!!! Thoughts on black walnut tree mulch? I have a wood chipper but I only have walnut trees to shred
It seems to me it would be the process of the breakdown of the medium rather than the product that feeds the soil, and that value is being lost between the wood chip and the crumble.
+partner348 I wonder if you moved the pile would the soil underneath have been improved by the "tea" that soaked into it, and could you plant there and get improved results?
+partner348 The biology, if not disturbed too much I think can be held in the soil and is an important aspect of good soil also, aside from the leaching of soluble nutrients, so perhaps not all might be lost.
partner348 Yes, but why bother? Just pull back the cios to plant and pull them back around the plants.
Thanks for sharing! I just got one of my questions answered about the palm trees. I want to make a permaculture garden in my Florida back yard and I was wondering if I can use all the trimmings from my cabbage palm trees. I'm trimming the trunks of some of hem. I assume the old branches can be used too....
I will try on my land next season. My question is there any specific wood chips for this? I mean all I have here is mahogany, teak, jackfruit, acacia... THANKS 🙏
I am building a wicking garden. Its basic woodchips in a 3 feet deep by 3 ft wide with all the topsoil in a row with the wood chips on either side. For now, it is going to be a wicking garden where the topsoil will wick up moisture and nutrition from the side row of wood chips. After 4 or 5 years the woodchips should be great for planting in. My question is what editable mushroom inoculate can I use to put into the wood chips that would speed up the decaying process and give me a crop of mushrooms? I have 19 tandem axle loads of mulch in these rows of 100 ft. 2nd question is can I start something in July of 2022?
what if you had chickens range on the chips
omygod rednil I add wood chips to my compost area with my chickens and their manure and in 3 months have great compost
What area of Florida are you in? Zone? I have a friend in Panama City starting to look into this style of gardening.
Did you just add the wood chips on top of your grass and it broke it down into compost. What happens to the grass and the sand beneath the compost that was there originally does that get incorporated into the wood chip and the breakdown
can we get an update vid?
Thanks
Never mind, I should have watched the whole video
When planting, what if I spred the woodchip appart, lay a bit of compost or even directly kitchen scraps in the hole that I just made because I 'm worried about nitrogen in case the woodchips have not been there for even three months, then set the plant I want to plant along with the substratum, and then close the woodchips around up to the collar of the plant. Will this work?
Decomposed woodchips aren't soil. By definition soil contains minerals, sand, clay and silt- woodchips is just an organic matter.
Yes, i'm aware that decomposed wood chips alone aren't technically soil. Over an extended amount time the native minerals, sand, clay etc. naturally bond and mix with the decay and runoff from the wood chips and leaves which creates a soil layer. I would like to note also that wood chips and leaves inherently contain a large amount of minerals that were absorbed when the trees originally grew.
Soil naturally occurs in any healthy forest, manual mixing of the materials is not required, only time.
Hmmm. I didn't know that wood chips can turn into soil. Must be some sort of alchemy involved.
Can you please provide me with some clarity. You live in an area that your land is sand do you have the wood chips just dumped on your property in loads and you just let it sit there with a natural rain water and let it break down and then you plant in that soil or humus
Wonder if that would work here in Texas? It's so hot & dry I wasn't sure if internal combustion would be a factor. I'm from the Midwest where if you dropped a seed accidentally 3 weeks later you got a plant. I was spoiled but now here in Texas I have had a harsh lesson in hot dry climates. I built some cedar raised beds & aquaponics I am getting a few things to grow. I will try it but we don't have much water, probably can't use the hose because that comes from a community well which is treated with chlorine, another reason last year's garden was an epic failure.
buzzsaw301 it will work great the chip piles will absorb dew and evaporating water from below
Thanks. ✌
Can you plant straight into the broken down wood chips or do you have to mix in with the dirt underneath? My wood chips are sucking nitrogen from my plants but I’ve been wondering if I sift them can I plant straight into the the sifted compost? Is that now considered soil? Thanks for any help.
Why are you looking to bring the mulch down to soil? Wasn't trying to cover soil with wood chips the whole point? The faster it decomposes, the more frequently you'd have to cover with new ones.
+crazy808ish I couldn't agree more! The Back to Eden method is for actual growing, not for covering soil for the sake of covering soil. What's the game plan? What are you waiting for? Spread all those woodchips evenly all over your plot and plant stuff! Also, many people don't quite understand it because it's never stressed in the original film about this method, but chickens play a vital part in Paul's soil management! Watch a few videos of the tours he gives of his property - in those videos he cover the topic more thoroughly.
@crazy808ish,
The whole point is to transfer carbon below!
The only way to do this is to grow something in it, otherwise you just end up with wood chip COMPOST.
Plants transfer atmospheric carbon through their roots into the clay, sand and silt...that is how real SOIL is made.
Want to see an update on your place
Will probably do one soon! Been very tied up with work.
i live in port st lucie, fla. do u know if its possibble to get free wood chips here. i have put my name on 2 list 4yrs havent heard.
So, it's been a year...what have you actually done?
Nice work on the chips! Mine is working great as well. Just wanted to know about your camera it's very clear and crisp. What camera did you use for this? Impressive.... Thanks!
+Jesse Jaymz Thanks! I shot this video with the Sony A7S in S-log 2. My full time job is making commercials and music videos locally, so naturally I use my film equipment even for these youtube videos. I'm glad you like it! :)
Cedar tree chips and sawdust broke down in 2 & 1/2 summers to look like brown dirt not mulch but dirt only on the top were there any evidence of the original chips there was very little rain fall the past two years
How does it look now?
james butterson...yes i would love to get some...do u live in the p.s.l area? i have used some of my own logs for a hugelkulture & i have access to plenty of areca palms but am looking 4 wood chips
Did you put the wood chips directly over the grass? If so, did it kill the grass without putting cardboard down first? I'm doing wood chips this year over grass and I'm wondering if I need cardboard. Thanks.
+clive mossmoon I don't believe he used cardboard. At least I didn't notice any when I was there. Enough wood chips should be sufficient.
Next question is how are you going to work up all those wood chips and turn your property into a beautiful garden?
I use this method and what you are making is NOT SOIL. It's compost, and you should use, and treat it with that in mind. Combine it to improve a sandy soil, and raise it and mix with sand on a clay soil. Woodchips plus clay soil equals too much moisture for optimal plant growth.
Paul Gautschi, who is the original teacher of this method, had hard, clay "soil" and after years of simply adding wood chips and nothing more, he's got elbow-deep, fine, black wood chip growing medium that grows sweet, delicious foods like nobody else on the planet. I'll take his word on it.
As I have stated, I do use this method, and if you are in a high rainfall area, you need to raise the compost well up above ground level, or you will get a water soaked mess if there is clay underneath. Soil is made up of more than wood. Its wrong to refer to it as soil.
VICtorian071 I think he's using the term "soil" as a general term for growing medium. To get all bothered by the term soil reminds of the coffee snobs who say coffee isn't coffee unless it's made with a French press. It's unnecessarily critical.
FarmbyGardens You seem more worried about fanboying to realise, that from a gardening point of view, the two are different and should be used and treated accordingly.Compost is used to make a lacking soil more complete. Not replace it.
Actually what you are creating with this method would line up with the technical definition of "soil" better than compost.
Definition of soil according to Google-
"The upper layer of earth in which plants grow, a black or dark brown material typically consisting of a mixture of organic remains, clay, and rock particles."
Most native soils already have clay, rock or sand, but have an unbalanced ratio in the unforested areas. All you're doing with this method is adding the organic matter that would normally fall to the ground in forest and completing the mix that is ideal for plant growth.
Compost, (at least in the way most people make it) has too much nitrogen as well as a mucky texture that prevents it from being a good lone component for growing in. It's either from excessive manure or large amounts of green material which make it extremely rich and good for supplemental use.
What i'm finding is that woodchips from freshly ground tree branches make a soil that has less nitrogen than your average compost, but is much lighter and therefor more inviting to microbes, fungi and worms all of which balance and add nutrition to the ground slowly over time.
The principal with sheet mulch gardening is that where there is more water, add a deeper layer of woodchips. The more you add, the more the excess water is wicked up into the chips.
Where I live, we get 54 inches of rain within a period of a few months in mid to late summer. We usually have water standing in spots in our yard for 2 hours after rain even with fast draining white sand. I've never had a mud problem in my garden because we put down 2 feet of woodchips in all of the low areas.
In the end. To each their own. But i'm finding that most of the problems with this method are easily solvable.
is an update coming soon?