Thank you. They sure are.

Awesome. Good luck on your homestead.

Thank you. Hopefully you can keep terracing and reclaim some more land.

You're welcome

Thank you. My pleasure.

You’re welcome!

Hi there. I appreciate your comment and have perused your channel from time to time for tips. I also appreciate your scientific approach to gardening and it looks as though you are successful. However, I have to disagree on a few points and refer you the the originator of the method, Paul Gautschi. All that have visited him and talked with him regarding how to start have done the same as I have. They have all been successful and this is documented. There are many ways of gardening and building soil. There is not a 100% correct method to do it and there is (as I mentioned in the video) 1000 ways to skin a cat. This method has worked for me before with no issues. It has worked for friends and family as well. I understand and appreciate your point about the fungi and symbiotic relationship between the plants and their ability to enrich and grow the soil. This is very important for sure. So, I have sand......its like living on a beach. Below that is a clay that is so hard it is silly. The compost purchased is meant to give things a boost at the start to expedite and shorten the amount of time it will take to build proper soil. Thanks again and good luck to you.

THANK YOU so very much for writing back. I fully understand your point and answer. And Thank you for taking the time for all the details. If you do not make a video of it can you inform me how long it takes for the cardboard to decompose and when you plant your first crop? I am a little jealous of your sandy soil and look froward to learning more from you. Sincerely, Mark

Hope to learn more from you as well. You have a good channel. Great info. I will let you know the time length. A big factor is the amount of precipitation we receive this winter. Houston (where we had our other garden) is much different than where we are now.

Hello I AM ORGANIC GARDENING. Just wanted to give you an update to the question you asked about the cardboard. I investigated multiple sample areas in all of my raised beds and the cardboard has completely decomposed. We have had normal rainfall for our area and actually cooler temperatures than normal. We have started our seedlings and will be transplanting after March 15. Hope all is well with your gardens.

THANK YOU very much for this information. Very HELPFUL to all of us with Back to Eden gardens. Happy Planting soon..ENJOY. Blessing forward to a great harvest.

You're welcome. I don't mind the tape.

Thank you.

You're welcome. I am not concerned about it. There are probably more chemicals floating around in the air everyday anyway.

Hello and thanks for the comment. What we do is lay down 5mil thick black plastic sheeting to kill the grass underneath. If you are in the city, it may be easier to just take out the thick grass first. The cardboard or craft paper layer over the grass helps to further kill it and suppress weeds from growing. We do not prepare the soil underneath. The compost layer and wood chips are there to break down over time and nourish and change the soil. You have to periodically add compost to the mixture to keep it nourished. Additionally, you have to add wood chips as the others start to break down. Hope this helps.

Thank you for responding. So, after I have the craft paper or cardboard in place, do I leave it for how many months until it's ready to take out the craft paper or take out the cardboard and start planting?

The craft paper will break down quicker than the cardboard for sure. It also depends on the amount of precipitation and moisture you receive in your area. If you want to expedite the process, irrigate the soil/woodchips periodically.

+GISELE CARRAZCO if you want another bed ..... on the grass put soaking wet paper . Overlap. Put 6 inches of compost and plant at dusk. When they take off, add the wood chips or leaves in between the plants. Look up lazy bed gardens!

Yes, the order needs to be reversed to successfully build a Back To Eden bed. The chips serve the purpose of holding moisture in the soil as a mulch from the top. It protects the soil from evaporation as well.

We actually did a video about that. You can watch it here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/i7-pebiKmt6ql6c.html We rake back the woodchips and add certain amendments to the soil. After that, if there are enough chips that have not decomposed, we just rake them back over the top. If we need to add, then we add chips. We do this after each harvest. So once in the fall and once in the spring.

Thank you. Organic manure should be perfectly fine if you can find it. Good luck with your garden.

Thank you. Mine has grown a lot since this video. She is now helping me shingle roofs and helping with brake jobs on cars. The rebar stays on the fence forever.

@@CountryLivingExperience God bless her! I pray my little one grows to be that helpful. Thank you 🙏

Great tip! Thank you so much for letting us know about it.

We planted in ours right away. Just pull back the wood chips and plant directly down into the soil. We have several other videos on our channel showing how to do that. You should check those out.

@@CountryLivingExperience Thanks, so much, for your reply. Very much appreciated. We are beginning these similar practices in our own garden. I just planted 316 seedling plants of various vegetables and fruits, as we have to start them indoors because it's just too cold here where we reside in Canada. Have a few other fruits and veggies to plant, and we are now working on sourcing out good quality woodchips, and compost by the ton. I will definitely check out your other videos! Take care and have a blessed week! :-)

Wonderful! Many blessings for your homestead.

@@CountryLivingExperience can you link what video youre reffering to in that comment i went on your page and cant find it

@@faithfilleddreaming4414 Here you are: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/pKygbNxq07nKnYE.html kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fK6iZdl71smqZIk.html

You can plant right away. Just pull back the woodchips and plant directly in the compost.

@@CountryLivingExperience Thank you!

Absolutely. Works well in many types of climates including the tropics.

Thank you. We have almost 8 acres. Go check out some of our earlier videos that show us looking for land and homes. We tried to document everything. We also wrote about land searching and sizing for a homestead on our blog too....www.countrylivingexperience.com.

No reason. I must have forgot a few pieces of the packaging tape. It will not harm anything.

Yes. It works.

I haven't heard that. I don't think it is that big of a deal.

It is not misleading. I built raised beds. Back to Eden is inherently raised off the ground and not tilled in. Our definitions must be different.

Country Living Experience: A Homesteading Journey I guess that makes sense. I consider a raised bed like, usually with some kind of walls to contain the bed, often about 2 feet or more above ground level. Where as BtE is on the ground at ground level, you still plant at ground level. A small garden bed Back to Eden style to me is just a BtE garden bed not a “raised bed”. I originally came to check out the video as I am still looking to find some information on doing a 3-4 ft tall raised BtE bed. This would be so that my mother will more easily be able to garden as she ages but I want the quality of produce offered by BtE soil quality. I had this thought that fungus growing from the natural surrounding forests can grow into the decomposing layer in a BtE bed, connecting it to the forest as the fungus shares nutrition and such between organisms. As such, raising a bed off the ground would seem to defeat this. I’m not sure if it really matters but I’d be curious to hear what others think about it.

BtE is essentially just a deep mulched garden. The "covering" (woodchips) offer moisture and temperature mitigation. Yes, they do offer some benefit with beneficial fungal growth but any garden with a heavy concentration of organic matter is going to have that. The method originator (Paul) sill has to add a lot of fertilizer to his BtE (his is chicken manure). While I have found that BtE has helped with some crops, it has hindered others. If you build her a nice tall raised deep box and fill it with amazing soil that she amends continuously, I think that will work just fine.

😮😮😳😂

Thanks for the heads up. Chickens are in our near future and we plan on letting them free range.

My chickens never ate ants when I free ranged them. They will tear up your garden if you let them in there so probably not the best idea.

+David Boland somebody said they used baby chickens and it worked out fine.

They don't mine, sadly.

Like everything

You do not know what you are talking about. We planted right away and had fruit and veggies in normal growth times.