The "Back to Eden" Method of Permaculture Gardening 

He’s right… explaining stuff is totally his thing

What i consistently love about you guys is that your videos are actually rooted in common sense instead of hype. Alot of channels preach common sense but they coukd take a lesson from yours. Always a pleasure to follow your journey.

I have found it best to start a wood chip garden area with at least 8-10 inches, and the chips improve over the years as it decomposes, but it is best to keep adding more chips every year or every other year. In the beginning, you will still need to throw comfrey tea or something around the plants (just throw the tea ontop of the chips and the rain will water it in) as the fresh chips just don't put off enough decaying compost tea as they will in a year or two. Having your chips 8-10 inches deep will be a blessing to you as it helps to keep moisture in to the point that even during a drought the tomatoes or other goodies in the wood chips do not need watering! Its great. But for sure, more than a couple inches of chips or you will be disappointed with the amount of work to maintain such a shallow application, they dry out much quicker too at only 3 inches, best to do it deep to begin with ;)

Amazing video. My family just started a plot in my church's public garden. And it so happens that we are using the back to eden method.

i got addicted to Paula's voice! She sounds like a garden fairy ☺️

We have a huge amount of oak leaves in the fall. For years we have mounded them up either waited for them to decompose or lately we started using them as mulch and then pull them aside to plant. I just recently learned this is a ‘thing’. Awesome!

this is the first video I've seen that does such a good job of explaining natural gardening methods, especially the less work methods. Thank you so much! Please keep the videos coming. They are so helpful.

Back to Eden Garden got me excited about gardening. 4 years in and I’m SUPER happy with this method.

Haha. "Woodchips!" You two are so cute together. I aspire to be as happy and co-productive in my own marriage one day, God willing.

It feels really weird to me from my French eyes seeing all these different methods being given different names whereas they all have the same goal : building a living soil that'll feed and protect your plants. In France I like that we call it "agriculture sol vivant" or "living soil farming". And this term encompasses all the methods you're mentioning : straw, hay, wood chips... It also works with cover crops (although the timing is delicate, so people usually use both cover crops and mulch). And you can use compost or manure as well, basically living soil farming is about building a living soil with whatever materials you have nearby. It's also not exclusively organic, and it's either for family gardens or larger farms. At the moment about 200 farmers are doing in France. Some use ramial wood chips, some use straw, some use hay... It depends what you have, and how good your soil is when you start. If your soil is poor, you may have to supplement with compost or manure in the beginning, as the mulch won't have time to build humus and generate fertility and you create what's called nitrogen depletion. And no, it does not only happen when you till the soil, that is completely false. Those 200 farmers know it well. It also happens if you start a mulch on a soil that was PREVIOUSLY tilled in the past and is low in fertility. The important parameter is the organic matter percentage in your soil. A good soil has 4-6 %, with an average of 4.5 in France. Soils tilled to death in my country have sunk as low as 1% which is a disaster. It's a soil that's just rock, and you can't farm without fertilizers and tillage, your plants are often sick, and you get a ton of weeds because the soil is a living organism and is trying to use weeds to heal itself. With a permanent mulch, you gain 0.5 % of organic matter every 2 years... So it's a very long process to restore those soils... And on these soils, if you put 10 cm of wood chips with nothing else, you'll have a disaster. If it's not too compacted, you can just add compost to combat the inevitable nitrogen depletion. If it's compacted, you need to incorporate the mulch in the first 10 cm, to help the earthworms who can't break that surface crust, and add more mulch on top. If you put mulch on an old meadow, forest, or wildflower field, that hasn't been tilled in the last 10-15 years, then yeah there's enough nitrogen reserves so that adding the mulch won't become a problem. Nitrogen is stored in humus in stable form, and is leaked in mineralized form continuously to be available for plants.

Love your simple but full explanation on how things work. Very helpful and to the point. Keep up the good work.

My husband and I LOVE watching your videos. One day.. One day we'll have the space.

The way you 2 do your videos is so informative, & to the point. it's so great.

I like you guys. You seem happy, content and enjoying nature. That's how I am when I'm outside working. I have been gardening since 2008 but just found out about all these other techniques. My granddaughter and I started farming hens (just 3). I want to be able to sustain myself as well as my extended family. Stay bless!!!!

I have watched SO many lengthy videos on BTE. This is by far the best explanation of how it works! Short, precise, very clear, well done!

Beautiful video by a beautiful couple!

Thanks for sharing. I think I was thinking to much and you made it more simple to understand. Have a great day

love you guys. ..it is so much fun to listen to the way you present it

We started this method in 2017 atop very sandy soil and ended up with a 30 x 40 plot. The vegetable yield was awesome! This is our first food garden and we were blown away. We used free cardboard from clean recycle dumpsters. The rest was as you did here. We grew 12 different veggies including garlic and organic potatoes we had that sprouted 😁. We sprt of put the potatoes in as a test and were amazed at what a few cur up potatoes yielded. We also used the method to cover the soil around our raspberries and blueberries which really took off after we did that. After such a successful 1st season we added herb beds on the 30’ edge this garden. I cannot wait to plant 2018!! This works very well and we had almost no weeding or watering. The garden has 5 young fruit trees on the 40’ side. I would recommend this to anyone especially those who think dogging and tilling is preventing them from starting a garden. We did none of that and we bought a huge tiller. We never used it!

Wow this is amazing. So lucky to have found your videos

How am I just now seeing this channel?! It is gardening meets Bill Nye the Science Guy

Thanks for sharing that! It's fun to see you guys work together

I found you two by accident one day about a month ago and I look forward to seeing your videos! Congratulations on the new home

Now you are speaking my language! My small yard is BTE. The main difference is language. Instead of sheet-mulch, the wood chips (or hay as RS uses) is referred to as the cover. Sometimes the first year or two can be disappointing because of the time it can take for the cover to start breaking down and making "compost tea" from the cover. (I see you hedged your bets by putting down a layer of compost under the cover) Many, like us, keep a compost pile. The beauty of BTE is that we no longer turn our compost regularly. Once a year, usually after the pumpkin harvest, we turn the rough compost back into the compost pile AFTER screening the fine, decomposed bits into the wheelbarrow. Then in the fall, we toss the fine compost (and it IS amazing and sweet) onto the chips, to be rained into the soil as compost tea (we learned this from Paul Gautschi, the subject of the Back to Eden film). We are in our 3rd year and will not go back. If there were space I would tell you how amazing this method is for our tomatoes, corn, beans, squash, apples and pears... but you should find out for yourself, because as I like to say when sharing my experience ...your mileage may vary. Debs in Everett, WA (USA)

As usual, it's always best to imitate nature! And you have such a good way of explaining things.

You are a REALLY good teacher.

great vid as always. good to see all the different methods

I always learn so much from your videos. 😀

Very good video and the effort you put into the graphics really helps. Thanks

Great explanation!!! In depth with an executive summary. Love it!

I really like the way you explain everything. Your animations are excellent and do a wonderful job of illustrating what you're talking about.

This was pretty cool! Thanks for the guide, job well done - very nicely presented.

Be like nature and you'll be just fine. Man you're brilliant!

I respect what you do. Keep going

Excellent brief version of the Back to Eden documentary. Will be sharing with my mates.

Another really great and educational video! I always look forward to your new content! Thank you very much for sharing! All the best :)

You do an amazing job at describing the terminology used with gardening. I totally agree with the science guy vibe!

Thank you for this clear explanation! Very good video for a beginner :)

Thanks guys for your awesome effort! And high quality videos! Any time I feel stressed from the city I go running to your channel 👍🏽

You guys are awesome! I love your videos! Keep up the amazing work!

Great video guy and gal. And awesome graphics.

Very nice . Tons of back to eden videos out there now, but this one paints a simple clear picture of how it works. Thx

Like the concept of Building the soil with compost and then wood chip. You also need to mulch the pathways between beds to reduce weeds in walkway.

I'm pleased to see you do this. I'm working on a quarter acre on Back to Eden garden just outside of Waterloo this spring after a huge success in my small backyard garden last year. I hope this goes well for you.

Love the animations

This is a awesome vid! Thank you so much

Great info.-- presented nicely and methodically. 😃

Really appreciate the cptr graphics, well-made vid.

Thanks for explaining the nitrogen connection! This is the part I didn’t understand until today.

Back to Eden is more than a sheet layer. It's constant building of the soil and putting back more than you take out. Big difference.

excellent! you guys inspire me and my partner so much! we plan to buy a stretch of land this summer after working a couple of years in warehousing ( crap job, but pays well with overtime). Hopefully we have enough resources in us to work with permaculture! We are waiting for the next video! Love!

Thank you for the info and the effort you put into it!

Thank you! Great video

The paper I used was the large roles of paper you can buy at Home Depot and other home improvement stores. Makes covering large areas super easy.

I like your style !! 😉

I love your videos. Very well splain. Hello from Spain.

❤ your video's 👍, been watching since the beginning. love what your doing. thanks for all that information.

ABSOLUTELY SUBSCRIBED AND GRATEFUL FOR THIS CHANEL!!!!

Awesome

Very well explain !!!👍🏼🌱

your videis are wonderfully done and explained so well in terms of natural processes or what mother nature does. Keep up the good work.

I really like your video, very informative and entertainment too 😊 thanks for sharing, great work.

Great presentation!!!

Las ramas de los árboles, se descomponen y sueltan la tierra. Es interesante ponerlas. Un saludo, amigo.

Great video guys

Hey Derek, you should submit your videos to a TV station. You are a great presenter. Permaculture can be used in small suburban gardens as well. You make it so understandable. Have watched all your videos from the get go. Cheers from Australia.

THAT was an excellent explanation! And another great video. BTW - with the mulch, keep an eye on your pH levels. Some mulches can change your pH quickly. Can't wait to see what's next!

You'll have to weed it in a couple of years. The woodchips will break down. Fungus will break down the woodchips and the worms will make them into wormcastings. If you don't want to do much weeding you will need to add more woodchips. But at least it is easier to pull the weeds. But what you did is wonderful and I grew a bumper crop of butternut squash in a bed I prepared similar to what you did in this video. A few years of adding to your soil like this will restore it to it's natural fertility.

Very Helpful nice video! Thank you!

great explanation.

Wow your explanation, visuals, and content are fenomenal!! Thank you! I'm just taking a permaculture design course and stumble upon your channel, beautiful work! 👏👐💯

I like that in this channel most of what you say is common sense... which is the least common of the senses. cheers for that guys you rock!!

Great video! *Goes back to actually watch it.

That was a awesome video thanks

Excellent video - you're very good at explaining things :-) I use a variety of mulches in my no-dig garden (straw, hay, spent mushroom compost, grass clippings, coffee grounds...) depending on what I have and what veggies I'm growing. However, I prefer using woodchips as a mulch for my perennial edible plants. This year we're clearing a new area under our apple trees - we covered that with cardboard + wood chips and I'm planting winter squash and zucchini through the mulch. Next year the herb layer will be planted with a mix of perennial vegetables. We're doing this in phases since the herb layer requires an enormous amount of plants and we're growing most of these ourselves to save money.

This reminds me of a story from Japan which I've heard from a tv documentary, because of rapid deforestation, topsoil eroded and winds further the erosion. So they seek help and came with the idea of mulching. But because of strong wind, it quickly blew away, so they mix with seaweed instead because it was heavy and moisture retaining!

There's a couple of things many gardeners got wrong about Ruth Stout and Paul Gautschi ('Back to Eden'). First, they both tilled for years before adopting no till methods. Second, Paul used wood chips in the orchard, but never used wood chips in the vegetable garden. Instead, he uses compost from his chicken run and even buys finished compost instead. Actually I think Paul got it wrong...he looked in the forest and somehow deduced that wood chips were an answer. But the forest doesn't drop wood chips, but instead drops leaves and needles. So for what it's worth, I think a smarter mulch is shredded leaves and grass clippings. 😊

Oh, this is good! :)

Hey, y'all...you can keep deer out successfully with just a knee high single strand electric fence. We've done it like that for over 40 years, so that stockade you have planned isn't going to be necessary. Love watching your experiments! I have been doing BTE for the past 3 yrs but have had trouble sourcing chips enough, so switching to hay this year. Love it so far and it's cheap, easy to use and easily sourced. Can't wait to see how it does this spring.

ok that was hilarious and adorable and informative! Please do more! :)

This info you have is fantastic....I have just started a 850 sqft rooftop garden in Algarve Portugal and am using all compost from my juice bar that my new worm farm is helping out with. I want to implament this technique on my farm.. im using all recycled fruit baskets and pallets for shelves, the idea is to feed my and Anna also providing some very valuable produce for my juice bar.. I am definitely greatful I found all this info.

There is actually a big difference between wood chips and other sheet mulches, and its fungi. Fungi is what is key to a forest to hold and move water and nutrients around to the network of plants and trees in it. That's why it is so important to get wood into the growing layers, from chop and drop methods etc, to mimick what nature does naturally through falling branches and trees that feed the fungi in a self sustaining forest. I started with this method, but have evolved into using a more woody mulch from coarser material with branches with leaves from hedges and chop and drop, because they attract far more plant friendly insects like mantis and spiders etc to help control pests. The chips create more of a friendly bug desert

Great presentation. I'm enjoying the scientific experiment. We have done a back to eden style this summer, and with a second growing season in zone 9a, getting a first stab at cool weather crops right away. Nice garlic bed LOL i can only imagine that garlic expansion.

Super Rad! I went from 2 raised beds to a 50x25 "deep mulch" garden - I covered half the garden in woodchips, and half is just fall leaves. That was in November of last year, and now that it is actually planting time, I'm basically ignoring the wood chip side in favor of the leaf mulch side. My wood chips were WAY too thick - or at least it seems that way. I think I had too many sticks and not enough "chips" - but I look forward to seeing the results of your B2E bed this year :)

Thumbs up. ENJOY... THE SIMPLE LIFE

This is an amazing channel. Your editing skills are amazing.

Your channel is amazing guys! Amazing use of visuals, common sense and easy to follow explanations. I had success using various combinations of companion planting and planting undesirables like garlic on the edges as opposed to fencing. We still lose a little here and there to my worst enemy the rabbits, but all in all it is working out great.

BRAVO RESPEKT

greati idea

Good story, thanks for the wise words. #happyMulching

sharing!

Great channel. Subscribed.

hey bro im a new sub, this was well done, you folks are livin the dream thx for the share, gonna go catch up now. We live in the suburbs doing permaculture but are looking for what you have.

There are down sides to sheet mulching with wood chips. For all practical purposes you can't til a seed bed. Any annual planting becomes a bit of a chore as to "set in" each plant you set in you have to pull back the chips until you hit dirt then avoid getting chips in the planting hole as you put the seedling in. I use sheet mulching extensively on perennial bushes and trees but in the garden they are only used in paths that won't be tilled for several years. I opt for straw over wood chips in the actual garden as it breaks down annually.

Touches on so much! Excellent....I'd like more experiments with weeds - as in not actually removing them, except for immediately around the plant...I saw 'the morning gardener,' does this. HIs garden, full of weeds, and he just pulled some out a few inches around for his seedling, and planted right in there, great, fluffy soil...And- the gophers stuck to the weed roots, and left his plants alone!

if you guys plan to continue to smother out grass with things like paper and cardboard, a good place to look for free materials would be college dorm dumpsters. At the start of each new semester students usually toss out so many cardboard boxes that the dumpsters are over flowing. Don't forget your box cutters ;)

What gets me is the hay method is basically exactly how people plant new lawns.

Congrats on your Back To Eden garden. I going to be planting my third year in this method of gardening. One thing maybe you should have added is when adding the chips, use leaves too. I have talked to so many here in maine and online friends about the BTE and they go out and buy bag after bag of wood chips from the big box stores. Yes it will probably help some, bot not like the mulch that you get from chipping brush, or from the tree services that chip up trees, limbs and the leaves. I have watched a few of your videos now and excited to follow up on this one and also subscribed. Many blessings to you and your family, Jim

From all the research I've done, I've come to understand that annual beds prefer straw, hay, and green mulch, while perennial beds (as well as trees and shrubs) prefer wood chips and leaves. This is because annuals tend to grow better in bacteria-dominated soil (higher nitrogen balance), while perennials and woody plants grow better in fungal-dominated soil (higher carbon balance + cellulose and lignin). But I haven't done any scientific tests to confirm that, and I'm sure that regardless which mulch type you use, a deep-mulched bed will build soft, rich soil that's vastly superior to conventional gardens.

Mulch builds soil:)