hey

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

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.

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.

+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

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.

Jared Rechnitzer Especially In sandy soil.

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

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,

I meant hungry

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.

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???

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.

yes but also humidity and temperature is a huge factor

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.

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.

+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! :)

They generally just arrive.

@Major Greenz, mushroom *spores

buzzsaw301 it will work great the chip piles will absorb dew and evaporating water from below

Carl Fisher one year. Go ahead and use it as a mulch cover right away though

+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.

+James Johnson Go ahead and use it. I started my friend is using it on pure sand and is growing an amazing Market Garden.

+James Johnson you should look up Texas Prepper 2 here on KZfaq he has woodchips on his property, very good video's on Back to Eden method of gardening!

Will probably do one soon! Been very tied up with work.

+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.