Like your place

Love this channel!! Keep up the GREAT work. I was greatly moved by Paul's videos one for his love of country also his love for our God. Now i'm truly inspired by you and your methods and mission. PLEASE keep the videos coming!! 🇺🇸

Great analogy about the no-hands device 😃 looks like your garden has all it needs to thrive. Great video 👍 please keep em coming

I also laid down newspaper and cardboard first, wood chips on top holding it in place while nature does its work.

I'm sure if Paul Gautschii would have thought about how to transform his garden fast. He would have used your method. Makes since. After you have build the soil to the depth you want. Then put the roof on the house.

I swear by leaves. I collect as many as I can in the fall, try to get a minimum of 12" of leaf depth in the fall, let it rot all winter, then till it in the spring along with the compost and rabbit manure. Basically turns the whole garden into a compost pile. Seeing those pine trees - the pine straw is great mulch for the blueberries, too!

Hi Tom, you've done and continue to do a marvelous job. I also loved your comment regarding 'social distancing and masks'. I'm with you. Anyway, I'm in Zone 7 and have clay soil. I realize you are doing a garden, a big one. I'm doing a backyard in flowers, tall fescue grass, and a prairegrass border / small wildflower meadow; plus I'd like to prep a no-till garden. I see you did wood-chips and tilling them into the clay with the latter addition of microbes. You've prep'd over a couple of years, that's great. I was going to seed tall fescue this month (May 2021) but dang it...what good is putting a cool season grass down in Northern GA if the July-Aug Heat can dry it out. My learnings from you and others of late have got me thinking about my soil. Treating soil after one has seeded a lawn kinda puts a damper on most soil renovation. My 17,000 sq ft backyard could use a bit of soil kindness (e.g., microbes, mylowhatchamacallems and fungi). So, I'm considering contacting a local Tree Service company and getting 2-3" of wood-chips (i.e., twigs, leaves and chips), and then adding your salt water potato leaf mold concoction over the top of my tillage. Wait for the soil to heat-up and cool-down a couple months (June, July and August) and then put my Tall Fescue and Prairegrass/wildflower seed(s) down in mid-September. I'd only have 3 months of clay soil treatment, but at least I'd have given my 6-8" of clay soil a boost of rejuvenation. Plus, with an improved soil, I'm hoping the Tall Fescue would have less stress for the future years to come as the rejuvenated clay soil might hold moisture better and encourage better root stabilization and heat / drought-resistance. Your thoughts or any recommended advice would be much welcomed and appreciated. "I'm just an old chunk of coal (MN farmboy), but I'm going to be a diamond (GA yard professor) one day" 🎵🎶

We too are growing in Wood Chips down here in mid Florida where the temps have been running in the high 80's to the mid 90's I am in the process of building some raised beds, nothing big just 4X8's, using 2X4's, I am however buying fertilizer called Neptune Harvest, Rock Phosphate and Mycos. I did make some fertilizer in a trash can and never got to use it because it was hit from a big tree branch.

I did basically the same thing, 3 years of alfalfa pellet plant waste, wood chips, and a few cover crops of just whatever, legumes, grains, flowers, would let them grow irrigated, and then the summer heat here in Arizona , non watered, just odd monsoon, so the heat didn't overheat the soil, now I have about a 8" layer of humus, full of worms too, now I cover crop only, heat loving planted in April, cool crop loving in Sept, Oct, and now I use Diakon radish both crops, they leave holes when the die off, water penetration, and worms can use those tunnels. I've upped my organics from 1% up to 15-19 % in the top 10", I try not to leave it bare, and dead for too long, as the bacteria's, fungi, worms need a place to live, I soil sample, as well as tissue sample as well, as there are inherit micros I need to add, now it's Mag. Mang, Moly. as soil and tissue show low to very deficient. I don't think there is a one size fits all, I am in a Zone 9 and our rains come in July-Sept, and summers get 112F so we are dealing with no organics, and lots of Caliche, put calcium, PH is 8+ and now I'm 7 PH. And to close a food forest, bird haven, look over the fence yard and ask " how do you do it. Many try, many fail. Organics, Organics I tell them.

Sub'd. Been growing soil last 2 years, 12 inches of wood chips for Back to Eden has turned into 2 inches of mulch and black soil. Pulled off the chips and tilling under the small amount left, serious clay underneath. Tiller is getting stuck in the clay, took a break and watched 2 of your videos. Now time to back out and take my beating, I think I'll reduce the till bar to a few inches just to get it done.

Thank you

Good job

It appears the wood chips aren't robbing all the nitrogen from your plants! Good job!

I am in zone 8, North Texas, and just right behind you in thinking and actions. I don't have ~2 decades to wait for this black clay to become a forest floor either. Started bringing in the wood chips 2 years ago. I learned and started JADAM just this week and thanks to your "groundbreaking" work, will now give myself permission to go get a tiller(!), cause I really need to move this process along. Thanks so very much for your honesty, observations and taking time to make these videos.

So interesting to hear you talk about why you are doing your soil building the way you are. I am just starting to learn about no-till gardening and like the concepts behind it but my current soil is awful. I had been contemplating tilling (mixing) in soil ammendments to deal with the clay and then once I have workable (growable) soil, no more tilling. Listening to you in this video, I feel confident in going that route. Am new to your channel so will be checking out your other videos. Your explanations and overall presentation style are really helping me learn about this stuff!

your right, lot of cr-p out there, sheep everywhere, but the wakening is happening God bless

Very thankful to learn about making my own microbial brew, and fertilizer!! I've been studying soil food webs , reading the book Teeming with Microbes. This book states that wood chips promote more fungal dominant soil, and leaves and hay promote bacterial dominant soil. Vegetables prefer bacterial dominant soils, and trees and shrubs prefer fungal dominant soil. I've used a lot of wood chips in the garden, but leaning toward hay (which is more expensive). But since learning how to make the wonderful soil bacteria brew, I am thinking I can use wood chips again and feed the veggies with the bacteria brew. Best of both.? I did have a great garden this year, but costly. Love learning how to have a wonderful garden more in tune with nature. Thank you so much for generously sharing your time and knowledge!

I've done simalerly. Might want to try incorporating tons of leads into the mix. I did, and wow. After a year, I can grow any thing.

3:47 👍🏻

I have similar problems in regards to having very hard clay. I'm trying a similar but hopefully faster approach. I'm bringing in the wood chips adding urea to them and trying to hot compost them. Then once they are broken down will use a roto-tiller to dig the compost into the ground and cover with more woodchips. Also am hoping to make some charcoal and add that to the mixture as well. I'm hoping the hot composting is faster than them breaking them down in the ground (months instead of years).

Tip. Dig trenches. Then your tiller will go down deeper.

how on earth do you get the camera to follow you? :). What equipment do you use for your videos? Love your videos. very informative.

Super informative video, do you think your fermented micro organic potato, salt & leaf mould potion is the same as Humic acid?

I also live in the Ozarks (in Arkansas) my soil is EXTREMELY rocky so rocky in fact that I can't even put fabric staples in without hitting a surface rock. What would be your suggestion? Planning to start a rather large food forest.

how is it that you have zero followers when I subscribed to your channel?

You're adding sand? Don't sand and clay make cement?

a lot of peoplefalling lol