No Tilling "Back to Eden" Garden

[lds2]

I put in a tomato patch using this method this year and I am very happy with it. My neighbors are watering their gardens twice a day and getting little from it. I've been watering my little patch once or twice a week (when the dirt at the bottom feels dry.) Things are looking promising for having plenty to can and give away in the next few weeks.

Since I don't have a tiller I put down the newspaper and then compost and woodchips from the dump. I planted the tomatoes as deep as I could so they would benefit from lots of roots. If I had it to do over I would use thicker paper (like large pieces of cardboard) with fewer edges for runner weeds to find an opening through. You can do the work of preparing in the fall and have it ready to go for the spring.

I didn't do it right though as so far I have only put down a couple of inches of woodchips.

Welcome to Back to Eden Film!

[annewandering]

This is called 'lasagna' gardening and its so ideal. It saves the ecosystem of bugs, enzymes etc in the soil hierarchy along with being easier to keep moist. You can get it started overwinter by placing an old carpet on the ground to get rid of weeds, encourage worms and microflora, then use cardboard, newspapers, leaves, grass etc layered in the early spring.

Find this book, buy or get from the library. She is a font of information and hilarious while she is at it. Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza

[applepansy]

I saw this site awhile back and have convinced hubby this is the way to go. We're adding this method to Square Foot Gardening. This year I was too late to buy bark mulch for less than an arm and a leg so I used grass clippings to cover the soil. I've been amazed at how much less I have to water even in the boxes. I didn't get enough grass around my flowers by the sidewalk and I've had to weed more. I'm putting more grass clipped down this weekend.

Next spring we're going to call Rocky Mountain Power. They remove the trees interfering with telephone and power lines every spring. Hopefully they'll be working up here again and we can get a better price because they won't have to drive all the way back over the mountain to dump the chips.

I think the combination of both methods will be amazing.

PS: Several years ago I dug out my front flower bed (down about 8 inches) then covered it with several layers of newspaper and refilled it with straight garden mulch or soil conditioner. Last year I had to dig up the flower bed again. The problem was that newspaper decomposes and I had grass growing all over the place. I couldn't get it out. Some of my perennials didn't make it through the shock of replanting. This time I used the thick fabric. I have a little grass growing at the edges but nothing like it was.

Edited August 1, 2012 by applepansy

[Guest]

Sounds great.

I'm very much into hydroponics though. I don't really "water" my plants. LOL! I'm growing lettuce in a closet!

[lds2]

I had such great luck with this method last year that I am going to try it again this year. I am going to put down the rolled type of paper to see if I can control the "runner" weeds a bit better than last year. But not having most other weeds was really great compared with the weeding I have done other years and it looks so much better than black plastic (another way to control weeds.)

I put down wood chips on bare subsoil and didn't put down compost first this past fall to try to expand my garden area and that was a mistake...I should have put down some compost as well. I haven't tried putting just woodchips down on healthy topsoil but I would guess that one might be much more successful in breaking it down into planting soil.

I very much like the idea of not having to water young trees and so I am going to try this method for that as well, it is just I think you need a LOT of woodchips (12 inches deep) for an orchard area which could take me a while to collect, do.

There are additional youtube videos about this method for those who might be interested.

[Guest]

Sounds great, lds2!

I also had great luck with hydroponics that I'm preparing an aquaponics system. I'm hoping to get an 8x10 greenhouse built by September on the side of the house. I'm going to try to raise tilapia which will provide the fertilizer for the plants. The plants will be on pea gravel on the grow bed with red wrigglers to convert fish poop and dead roots/leaves into vermicompost. The grow bed will act as the bio-filter for the fish tank to keep the fish water clean, so it's a closed loop circuit. Completely organic. Well, at first, I'm going to use commercial fish pellets to feed the fish so it can get on an automatic feeder. Once I get the hang of this, I'll attempt a completely self-sufficient system where I grow duckweed in a grow bed attached to the system which will provide food for the fish and hopefully I'll have enough red wrigglers to also feed the fish with. We'll see if I ever get to that point...

[Gwen]

Sounds great.

I'm growing lettuce in a closet!

be careful lol

Kansas couple: Indoor gardening prompted pot raid

[Guest]

be careful lol

Kansas couple: Indoor gardening prompted pot raid

LOL! Yeah, hydroponics has gotten a bad rap from the marijuana folks but, we have to be grateful to these potheads because they actually have contributed greatly to the advancement of hydroponic systems which now feeds people in desert regions.

[lds2]

Garden report, early on the mulch contributed to an overabundance of earwigs that caused devastation in the small plants. I surrounded the plants with diatomaceous earth and this kept the rest alive. Once they got big enough the earwigs were no longer an issue. My tomatoes are smaller than last year but still prolific doing much better than my neighbors gardens with plants planted at the same time. My peppers, Kale and Swiss Chard are all doing well now that the heat of the summer has waned a bit. I have more cucumbers than I can eat off of the two surviving plants. I'm still making lots of "beginner" mistakes like planting my corn too close together, etc.

What is the lesson I have learned from all this? It will take a LOT more seed than I would imagine needing if I ever had to actually feed my family from a garden area. Also my learning curve is very slow which makes me glad I am making my mistakes now when things aren't life or death. One prophet said that someday we will rely on what we can produce for food. I am still a long away from being able to do that.

The strawberries I planted in containers did well where they had partial shade but ALL plants in direct sunlight didn't fair well and I planted alot both in containers and in the ground. Perhaps next year I will try planting them in mulch.

Edited September 16, 2013 by lds2

[NightSG]

Also worth a mention is Home | Square Foot GardeningSquare Foot Gardening

If you're buying in bulk, the supplies really aren't expensive, but be warned; if grass or weeds make their way into the SFG mix, you will have the healthiest weed crop you've ever seen. Pretty sure I could have made a square bale from the coastal bermuda that invaded my 32sf attempt at it.

[mordorbund]

Also worth a mention is Home | Square Foot GardeningSquare Foot Gardening

If you're buying in bulk, the supplies really aren't expensive, but be warned; if grass or weeds make their way into the SFG mix, you will have the healthiest weed crop you've ever seen. Pretty sure I could have made a square bale from the coastal bermuda that invaded my 32sf attempt at it.

I've only got a cement lawn (I think they call those things patios), so I grabbed the SFG book from the library and made my own garden boxes (2'x4'). I even have my own trellis that I re-twine every year (I thought these boxes would be a simple experiment and then I would move on to something more enduring - turns out these things work just fine and I reckon I'll continue to use them until I move). I get a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes, and greens do really well too (lettuce, spinach, beans, snow peas). I'll gladly plug this system.

[applepansy]

This year I found two tree services who were happy to dump the chips in my garden area. Some weren't uniform and nice, but I didn't care. We spread them out everywhere. The only weeds that grew through was morning glory (I hate morning glory). We didn't need to water every day. The corn, potatoes, and raspberries did very well.

My husband also brought home two loads of mulch from the dump in Davis County. It was chipped and composted well. We planted some things directly in it and other places we just turned it in.

I also moved our tomatoes back up by the house. For two years I've tried to grow them in one of the square-foot-gardening boxes and we've gotten very few tomatoes. I'm amazed at how many tomatoes we've gotten and they just keep coming. I planted them in almost straight mulch. (The peas didn't do as well as the tomatoes in straight mulch but the plants that survived are still producing sweet yummy peas . . . and its September.)

I have two more loads of mulch to spread out on the field in back. Everywhere we put the wood chips plants, trees, flowers, veggies all flourished. I'm truly amazed at how one little thing can make so much difference.

We have decided to put wood chips down everywhere we don't want grass. It may take several years but we'll just keep plugging along as long as the tree services will keep dumping their chips here. :)

[NightSG]

I've only got a cement lawn (I think they call those things patios), so I grabbed the SFG book from the library and made my own garden boxes (2'x4'). I even have my own trellis that I re-twine every year (I thought these boxes would be a simple experiment and then I would move on to something more enduring - turns out these things work just fine and I reckon I'll continue to use them until I move). I get a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes, and greens do really well too (lettuce, spinach, beans, snow peas). I'll gladly plug this system.

I think they mention it somewhere on the site, but the uniform, loose mix is also excellent for root crops like carrots and potatoes. I used it in regular pots for a winter crop of radishes, too.

If you're feeling industrious about setting things up, it's not expensive to rig up a small irrigation system for it, too. Then all you need is a regular hose timer to make the garden pretty low maintenance.

[LeSellers]

People with brown (or black) thumbs might like to check out LDSPrepper's YouTube Channel. Green thumbs welcome, too, I suppose.

His wife is a Certified Master Gardener, and his out produced her garden so much that she dug hers up, and installed one like his.

He's very much into the Mittleiter system: no "soil", per se. He's done it in Houston and Rexberg. Seems more'n happy with it.

Lehi

[teedee]

My wife the, master gardener, had used newspaper to keep weeds away and found it was only good for 1 year if at that.  She tried some heavy brown paper and that was better but just.  Then she tried rolls of tarpaper and while that has worked for a number of years it was expensive and hard to use.  She saw a couple of piles of broken shingles at Home Depot and asked if she could get a deal on them.  The guy said sure it will keep us from having them hauled off.  While she got a good price $5 a bundle for 4 bundles, there she tried a smaller local lumberyard and he had 3 or 4 pallets of broken and mismatched shingles that he sold for $100.  It was a full trailer load.  I have also read of using billboard vinyl sheets if you can find a source.  That may be ideal because of the size and they would probably be free.

[lds2]

Billboard vinyl (used) can be bought for around $40 on KSL (Utah) I have not tried it in the garden.

So 2016 garden, my corn, tomatoes, celery, kale, onions, carrots, basil, berries, etc. did well where I have been lasagna-ing for a number of years. What I planted in the newest area didn't grow beyond a few inches even with regular fertilizer (not enough real soil yet I guess). I seldom weed after the early spring except for a bi-weekly go over for wild morning glory in the garden and orchard. But then I only water where the plants are.