WE ARE DONE! with Back to Eden and Hugelkultur 

try more pete moss in your raised beds,pete moss is the key here,it help hold moisture in your garden ,fire ants- 4 oz of orange oil per gallon,for a good size nest,5 gallon i use,it kills them dead at a slow pace,what it does is eats their skin off and with 5 gallons you more than likely will kill the queen or queens,,,raised beds- pete moss,compost,perilite,cow manure [use caution here on the manure,most farmer today feed their cattle or stock with hay that has been treated with a wide leaf spray,which will pass throw the animal and kill your garden]

@@maybeso1940 man thats a lot of work when I can just plant it in thd ground and run a wheel hoe through it. I live in mississippi as well and I've tried the orange oil and it just dosent work for very long. It gives you a few weeks at best. Also i have no idea where to get peate moss. Its really cheap to do conventional gardening we have cows so manure is easy to come by. These methods may work well elsewhere but ive had terrible luck with them before. The bucket gardens work if you spray bifin around the bottom few inches of the bucket. But i hate to use pesticides so I dont do that anymore either.

T Y, Im now starting to get serious with permaculture fruit orchard, planted on swale...planning to create 3 to 4 more swales 19 ' apart. Largest existing swale is half circle, 220'w x 210' ht. Adding the swales inside existing one. Planning to add woodchips on top of swale,( tree rows) 5' w.

Ants are fine, fire ants are a pain...literally.

Fire ants are like your Ants you have (Jack Ants?), but they are smaller and they are a scourge to to gardeners and outdoor lovers in the American south. They are originally from South America and came from cargo ships in the late 19 century. The warm humid environment and lack of predators to control them has resulted in a population explosion of them in the American south region and their colonies are huge. There is a gentleman on youtube that makes and sells sculptures with molten aluminum showing their tunneling which shows how large and vast their colonies get in a short period of time. They harm native ants and other insects and animals. Some people are allergic to their bite. They are unwelcome and they tend to harm roots of native and non-native plants by their deep and extensive tunneling in the soil. This will cause the moisture and water to leave the root zone too fast which requires more watering and heavier and more harmful fire ant control methods to the environment which runs off into our water systems causing other problems. I try not to use fire ant insecticides unless I absolutely have to, and try to stick with citrus oil and other organic methods when I can, but it is a constant battle since there aren't really any natural predators in the region to keep them in check. Fire ants are the worst species of ants and they are way too prolific in the south because nature for over 100 years hasn't provided something to keep them in check (cold weather, predator, etc.) so we have to intervene. The University of Florida is looking into in flies from South America that will lay eggs on fire ant foragers which will keep their population in check, but I don't know if they will eventually target native ants as well. There is also a fungus from South America that will get in their brain paratisize them and when it blooms then spreads spores to the entire colony, but this fungus doesn't discriminate so it would decimate/harm beneficial insects and bees (honey bees and our many native bees) which aren't prepared for it & really isn't an option either.

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Put a tablespoon of orange peel oil in a five gallon bucket and fill with water. Locate the ant hills and dig into around the center to create pockets of air under their entrance. Then slowly pour the solution in the holes. I've exterminated hundreds of colonies this way and it's not toxic.

Yep! Everywhere!

@Nuts and Bolts laughing so hard at that description. I live in NE TX and I couldn’t agree more about those dang ants. Prepare a veggie bed and the ants are like: woo hoo a new condo for everyone!

I agree wholeheartedly! Except I came over a year ago, to this as my first homestead channel specifically to learn to grow & process sugar cane. I knew it would be needed in a shtf scenario to help preserve foods. Salt I already knew where & how to procure.

Jim, what if you plant cover in late summer, mow it down, and then plant within the drying cover crop? You get the benefits of a mulch without actually spreading any wood chips. This is essentially how beans and other row crops are planted in no-till, dense-cover applications. There's a lot of videos on the technique.

Dunno if you guys cares but if you guys are bored like me during the covid times you can stream all of the latest movies on InstaFlixxer. I've been streaming with my girlfriend for the last days =)

@Kash Chance Yup, been watching on instaflixxer for years myself :)

@Kash Chance definitely, have been watching on InstaFlixxer for since december myself :D

Instead of tilling turn the chickens loose to do the tilling (scratching everything up) and fertilizing (popping).Saves a little time.

it might work if you put logs and woody stuff on the ground and then build your layers (for instance if you want to be higher because of slugs. Fire ants seem to be bad - and here it thought slugs are the bane of the gardener. The wood, branches etc only take up nitrogen from surrounding soil but they soak up water and even more so when it breaks down slowly. Now - they say to make sure that there are no larger airpockets in such a higher raised beds (Maritime Garden has a video on it, how to save soil - he needs to be above ground or it is too wet. and the logs are a good filler and slowly break down and build fungal dominated soil, while he grows stuff above it). Of course if the termites (or fire ants) go INTO the middle of the soil to get the wood .... the wood boards are partially exposed to air.

oof, those are incredibly toxic because they are treated with creosote.

I would say to try cement blocks, which I have done, but have simce found out that they can maybe leach out unwanted chemicals into your soil too... I haven't researched that much yet. I have also used metal cattle water tanks, I try to not buy them new but use old ones farmers don't want anymore. Also, one can use a border of straw or hay bales, but that can bring a slug problem. Sounds like fire ants r a problem w any raised bed in the south, anyways ? ( I put holes in bottom of my water tank beds btw). I only had raised beds for trying to not bend over so much. Doesn't really help because I'm tall & leaning over isn't any better. I'd rather scrouch down anyways. I n ground is best even up north, for balancing moisture levels over all. Improving soil w compost is the key, for anywhere.

PS the other mistake that you make in the south is my raised beds. Never never garden in a raised bed even in the north they dry out really fast. Always garden in level soil even if your bed is sloped. Good luck my friend

@@SirCracker check out Doug & Stacy OFF GRID somehow they love their raised beds & do well with them, they live in Northern Missouri (or central) I guess if you live in an area that gets cold enough winters for the bugs to die off than raised beds might work. Sounds like the heat in the south with mild winters is not a good combo for the raised beds. But trying to figure it out, so I know where to buy the best land to garden...

In Oregon you have at least cooler nights, and maybe your raised beds also heat up earlier in spring when the underground is still pretty chilly. - It is interesting what works in differnt zones. - Where I live the slugs and sometimes voles are the bane of the gardeners. But fire ants might be worse ;)

From Eastern Tennessee you made me laugh at your Best Stand Of Bermuda Grass! I felt so bad for you.

you are not supposed to work the chips INTO the soil. As top cover they break down slowly enough that they will not bind much nitrogen. The fungi that decompose the woods will release the nitrogen eventually, but that takes a while.

Wonder where you are gardening at? Your comment reminded me of when I grew up in PA, we kids could spit watermelon seeds into a pile of dirt & "viola" to our surprise a plant would grow...

I also heard that hulls of rice (or whatever that residue is called) are good mulch. However ! you want to be aware of the herbicide aminopyraline, they use if for grass - meadows but also grasses like wheat, rye (probably not rice if it is grown in water). So it could pop up in straw, compost, hay, .... or the hulls of grains even. They do not use aminopyraline for cotton, but it is heavily sprayed most likely with something else.

That is the advantage if it is possible to use wood chips - usually they are not sprayed, so if they do not have higher levles of radioactivity (tests of the 1950s and 1960s, in some areas the trees built it certain minerals, and accululated radioactive material). Aside from that wood chips are good.