Endless discussions on Garden Web.....................................

Here is a link that might be useful: Back to Eden Search

Can you give us the Reader's Digest Condensed Version instead of us having to watch the first hour of the video?

I would imagine that "No Irrigation Gardening" would involve heavy use of mulch and maybe plasticulture?

Permaculturists are finding that hugelculture will result in no-irrigation production in desert conditions.

Hugelculture videos are all over u tube, too.

Yes, just search for both hugel culture and hugelkultur and you'll find plenty of short videos. It basically involves using rotting logs as your soil base.

I'd like to try it, but don't have space. Anyone here doing this?

Zackey in Ga

Uh, not exactly Hugulculture (I admit I had to look this up as I had never heard of it). I guess its the same basic principle, but on a far grander scale. He's not using decaying logs but rather has his entire garden made up of tree chips. Not mulch, not bark, but chipped up trees and branches, much like the stuff you can get dumped in your yard by tree companies (which actually is where he started getting his stuff from). Bark, core, leaves, everything is in there. He's not tilling this stuff into the soil (he doesn't till at all actually), but just letting it rest there and decompose. I guess the simplest way to say it would be "He's turned his entire garden and orchard into one huge compost pile", which I don't think really does it justice. He claims the only work he has to do is rake. Which I think is a little misleading. It would be better to say that the only work he has to do on the 'soil' is rake. There are various other practices he employs that also help to feed the 'soil' that I think some might call work. Another way to put it simply might be: "He's turned his entire garden and orchard into a forest floor."

how long does this 'forest floor' take to get from a pile of woodchips to a viable growing medium?

The impression I got was 'immediately'. In the segment where they cover the Pennsylvania project, they sowed seeds right after application. Their first crop was not very successful, but they chalked it up as an error on their part for sowing too high in the mulch layer and the seedlings' roots did not find the soil below. From what I gathered, you sow the seed in the mulch, not the soil, and when the seeds sprout, they send roots down to find the soil which will already have some degree of composting taking place. This 'mulch layer' will naturely break down at a rate the crops will be happy with. Each successive year will yield bigger and healthier crops as the abundance of nutrients increase, but even first season crops will bear 'fruit'. I wish I had the room to do this here and see how it fares with the the abundance of harmful nematodes we have.

Indeed there have been endless discussions about this on GW. I'll give my version of the cliff notes:

The exact Back to Eden experience is very specific, that is, he has a pretty darn good soil type to start with, and, if one reads the small print one finds that he is using fertilizer. So it is whether intentional or unintentional rather misleading. Crop plants require more nutrients than they will get from very slowly-decomposing chipped brush and trees.

That said, deep mulch in most climates is a big help to crops. Of course there are potential problems like establishment of perennial weeds and harboring of rodents, etc. In the sand and high evaporation rate of florida the benefits will likely outweigh the negatives. We started using wood chips for thick mulch this past winter at my folks place and it seems to be very helpful, but of course we are using a lot of introduced nutrients as well.

Down the road I discovered a fellow with the best-looking patch of collards I ever saw in florida, and he had them mulched with about a foot of leaves and pine needles, which was holding a lot of moisture and breaking down a lot faster than chipped tree waste. He did use chemical fertilizer to get them going in the fall before mulching, so again mulch on its own won't do the trick, except maybe in actual Eden.

Pat, well said it...

I know a person around my area with a big land and he did the "back to Eden" stuff, the first year that he planted a variety of food crops he didn't do well, he said tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers were a failure.

Silvia

Silvia, did he try a second year or give up on it? I am wondering if the extra year for decomposition made it work - it makes sense that the nutrients wouldn't be available right away.

L in FL, he invited me to go see his place but I have not seen it yet, too many places to go so little time.:) He has been clearing his land, cutting trees, etc for quiet a while, he also has access to animal manures from his own place and of course all the big tools and equipment. I really don't know how long he waited till he planted the crops, he did say that he had a good crop of sweet potatoes...

Silvia

Especially in the florida climate, IOW, the excessive dryness of soil and mulches problem, I doubt there would ever be sufficient fertilizer for most crop growth from letting sheets of wood-chips sit on the ground (with the exception of legume crops, probably). The compost that the big operators make is done with huge piles to achieve thermophyllic bacterial overload, breaking down the cellulose fast, and then of course they are introducing enough green matter to end up with some N in the mix as well. Even so it's poor stuff for growing crops, it just seems good in comparison to florida sand....

IOW = in other words

Not to beat this horse to death, but I went to a place where they make compost from wood chips on a large scale, this past winter, out near Daytona. One of the most important features, it was immediately obvious, is the location. It's in a very low area scraped out of swampland, so the ground is always damp. Every time the piles are turned by the machines, moisture is introduced, and that is how the decomposition proceeds at a fast and effective pace.

No comparison to a couple of feet of wood chips sitting on bone-dry sand in the hot sun which very rapidly burns off the moisture from the occasional winter rain. So decomposition is near-zero and therefor the nutrients and ultimately carbon in the wood are never going to become part of the soil, they will rather very slowly volatilize. But again, it has some definite value in slowing evaporation from the sand and even a little more moisture in the root-zone is a big help.