Back to Eden Gardening and Hugelkulture and other non-conventional garden methods

[politicalcenter]

Can I have some of that? Lol. I live out in the middle of the Tularosa Basin in NM. We have nasty caliche clay soil. I've been working on trying to get a BTE garden going. I have a small bed right on the east side of my porch that I've had Rosemary in for about 3 yrs. I got some alfalfa grass mix hay, and composted horse manure from a friend, and a bunch of mulch from our county dump. I put a layer of hay, a layer of manure mulch tgen hay and a sprinkling of manure on top. My usual PH is 8.5 I just checked it after having this stuff on for a month and my PH is sitting at 7.2 ish. I was shocked. It's staying moist, and even the dirt under it is looking better. Instead of looking tan and cracked it's a mid brown, and moist. My NPK are low, but it's usually very very low. Even adding organic matter and mixing it in doesn't work. The heat and arid climate just kills organic matter here. I've planted a Cherokee Purple tomato plant, some cilantro, and a jalapeno pepper plant in it. It smells rich and wonderful. The wood mulch is breaking down, and I'll have to add more after the plants grow more. The tomato plant was barely above the mulch when I planted it and it's growing great. Even with us having some nasty cold fronts that brought wind, and light freezes with it. I even have tomato seedlings coming up in my garden that has had a lot more exposure to the nasty spring west winds, and even chillier light frosts. I put down comoosted horse manure, cardboard, and mulch with a light sprinkling of homemade chicken manure compost out there. It's been slower coming up out there, but I have sruff coming up I was prepared not to have yet. I haven't watered my main garden for a week. My little bed has been a month. Just remember to get below the mulch to plant seeds. I'm lucky ( or stupid lucky) that I put the cardboard between the manure and mulch. That way I know I'm not planting in the mulch. So far so good. I've been thinking about going into the mountains and getting a bit of decomposing log, and leaf litter. We get so much heat I'm afraid of the fungi dying. I'll be headed out to my garden this afternoon to "play" some more lol. If this works here it can work anywhere.

Just about any organic matter you can put on your garden will work. I have even gotten pickup loads of leaves from the woods out behind the house and used them for mulch. I ran over them with a lawn mower and raked them up. When you begin to see earthworms in your garden you will know you are making progress. They are the unsung heroes of the garden. They do all my tilling. I just set out plants and mulch. But I do fertilize my corn.

 

[Kiki]

VERY VERY VERY Good video/movie..
Ive been watching it on and off in between my daily "stuff"
i will watch it again tomorrow when kids are at school...and not interrupting me.
Thanks!

 

[drewskimac]

VERY VERY VERY Good video/movie..
Ive been watching it on and off in between my daily "stuff"
i will watch it again tomorrow when kids are at school...and not interrupting me.
Thanks!

It is for sure! I started it and said outloud "Are you kidding me? This is silly." And a minute later I was like "okay. That is so true. This is all so true. And so simple." So glad I watched it.

 

[Kiki]

It is for sure! I started it and said outloud "Are you kidding me? This is silly." And a minute later I was like "okay. That is so true. This is all so true. And so simple." So glad I watched it.

If he were selling an item, i would buy ten.

I do NOT believe or "fall" for infomercials...
But this show is awesome....

Why has it taken this long for me to see it???

Shame on all for not sharing it sooner! lol

 

[lazy gardener]

Quote: I have been sharing it for at least 2 years. You're just not looking in the right place!!!! IMO, it's not an infomercial. He's not selling anything (unless he's selling his video). No profit to be had in a simple concept that works good and uses free ingredients. Kind of like fermented feed!

 

[DesertBrahma]

Paul Gautchi actually gives away everything. Well except what they eat lol. I decided to move some of the mulch around 1 of my trees while trying to pull grass yesterday and it's starting to break down. I put a little blood meal on when I added the mulch back in February. This tree went through a month last year without water in the hot summer because oir well went dry and they had to go deeper for us to have water. So i didn't know if it would survive. It's up, doing it's blooming and growing. All because I added some mulch. It's holding the moisture where I need it, not out in the atmosphere. I've watched his video 3 or 4 times so far. Each time I learn something new. I have seeds coming up already that shouldn't be coming up yet. I only dug up my old water system, and filled that area back in then layered everything. DO NOT till the wood mulch into the soil. It will take longer for them to break down, and it will tie up the nitrogen. Just put it on top thick. Make sure to move them oit of the way some when you plant, then back on. I have seeds coming up already that shouldn't be coming up for another month. I have had to pull grass that wasn't completely dead when I started, but that's ok. I just planted a trumpet vine and mulched it too. When I first saw the video I started doing the whole "bang head on wall and calling myself stupid" thing lol. I grew up in east Texas. We had to use a leaf blower to remove the leaves from the driveway every fall. Of course mulching works. Nature does it automatically. If it's natural it will work. So now I mulch. No more bare earth in the garden. Even in my hot arid climate I'm mulching and my trees, and plants are thanking me. Good luck everyone.

 

[Kiki]

I know he isn't selling anything, I was just saying...

I had this thread bookmarked to read from the beginning..I hadn't yet started to read..

 

[lazy gardener]

Excellent post, DM!!! Very well written, and yet an other testament to gardening the natural way, the way God designed it. This is exactly why I call myself the Lazy Gardener. It's so much easier to work with a natural plan than to fight it and try to do it "the way we've always done it." Paul's presentation can potentially be a bit off putting to the atheist. And I'm not going to go down that road, other than to say... he's a wise man, it works. And it works very well. And it effectively, in the long haul cuts your gardening work by huge amounts. If you have a yard that is accessible to a big boom truck, and can form an alliance with a tree trimming company, you can get all the material you would ever need, delivered to your yard. IMO, the best material is spring growth, where the wood is very wet and loaded with fresh spring leaves. But, being a beggar, I'll take what ever I can get when ever I can get it, and often come back from the dump with my trash cans loaded up with mulch. The tree companies find it easier to dump there in a huge parking lot than to drop it in my yard.

Now, to the reason for this morning's post: I'm a huge fan of cattle panels. They can be used to build tractors, hoop coops, green houses, trellises, arbors, and basically any thing you can conjure up. They are self supporting, and Premier 1 sells some fantastic wire spirals that can be used to connect any cattle or hog panels at any angle. They are essentially indestructible. The hardest issue of using them is to get them home b/c they are 50" tall and 16' long. They are incredibly rugged, it takes 2 strong people to bend them into an arc to get them into the standard bed of a pick up truck. Then, they must be lashed down very well. I learned this lesson the hard way, when I had 2 panels in my truck. Loaded up so it looked like a connastoga wagon with the canvas missing. Those panels went sailing out of the bed of the truck, and rolled down the highway. I am so thankful that there was no one behind me. I would have caused a serious accident. NOW!!!!! The new and improved: I was doing some price checking and found that TSC carries a product called Handy Panels. These are the same ga. as the CP, but cut down into a more manageable size of 8' x 50". Perfect for the fencing and trellising, where you don't need the full 16' length!!!

 

[igorsMistress]

Thank you!

 

[DesertBrahma]

I know he isn't selling anything, I was just saying...

I had this thread bookmarked to read from the beginning..I hadn't yet started to read..

I loved his videos. I've even written to him and received a letter back. He's right though if you think about it. Nature takes everything and continuously gives back. My area doesn't have a chance to do natural cover because of our fall and spring winds. I'm helping nature by adding the wood mulch. I've even tossed about 60 cubic feet into my chicken run. They love looking through it and finding bugs. I had it piled up in 6 different 3ft piles and they've brought it down to 6 inch piles and scattered it lol. I spray some water on it as I'm watering my trees, and yesterday for fun I tossed some meal worms in it. They loved it. I've been tossing the kitchen scraps on it and they just scattered everything, and mix it up for me. Hoping to turn everything into lovely compost so I can plant some stuff back there for them. I'm trying to replicate his style of gardening in a hot arid area. I wish you great luck. It's amazing what I'm already seeing in the garden, and around my trees and pretty plants.