Back to Eden after 1 year

[chic rustler]

I made a video on the difference in my soil after a year of bte. The results are not what you would expect

 

[Nyboy]

Great video I like your rabbit set up

 

[chic rustler]

Thanks!

 

[baymule]

I'm on satellite internet out in the boonies.....I get the circle of doom.....but I was able to get the general gist of the video. You have made amazing progress!

 

[flowerbug]

already planting out, you must be towards the southern states. looks like you have a little clay in that sand, which is actually better than almost all clay and only a little sand (what we have in most gardens here). both work for garden soil, do you have worms around in there when you dig?

random thoughts...

if you find you have a lot of bug issues you may want to include a few perennial plants here or there (like 1 per 20sq ft) in your garden space to act as a refuge for the good bugs to have homes during the off season.

the fresh wood chips will eventually turn into humus after 4-5yrs. we use a lot of them here, but in the pathways or around the perennial garden plants first for several years before they break down enough to use in the gardens. after they are half or more digested then i scrape them up and replace them with fresh chips and the good black stuff goes into the vegetable gardens.

those piles of wood chips, will start growing mushrooms if you leave them undisturbed and they get enough moisture. i'm not sure of your location, if it is arid there or not much of the season... that will help them rot faster and turn into humus.

i like seeing the various mushrooms that pop up in the wood chips.

they do work well for smothering things and then after a few years are a good place to let strawberry plants run all over and fruit. by the time the strawberries are due to be replaced/renovated the whole area may begin to get weedy anyways and you can stir it up, get rid of whatever weeds you can remove, save the younger strawberries, put down some cardboard with holes for the strawberries and then top mulch the cardboard with fresh wood chips to repeat the cycle.

all the extra N you put on may not be great for certain plants. if you find out that you get a lot of leafy green growth but not much actual fruiting/production that may be the issue.

 

[canesisters]

Excellent video. You should be VERY proud of what's been accomplished on your land - not the least of which is what your kids have learned (much more than how to grow a garden )

 

[chic rustler]

already planting out, you must be towards the southern states. looks like you have a little clay in that sand, which is actually better than almost all clay and only a little sand (what we have in most gardens here). both work for garden soil, do you have worms around in there when you dig?

random thoughts...

if you find you have a lot of bug issues you may want to include a few perennial plants here or there (like 1 per 20sq ft) in your garden space to act as a refuge for the good bugs to have homes during the off season.

the fresh wood chips will eventually turn into humus after 4-5yrs. we use a lot of them here, but in the pathways or around the perennial garden plants first for several years before they break down enough to use in the gardens. after they are half or more digested then i scrape them up and replace them with fresh chips and the good black stuff goes into the vegetable gardens.

those piles of wood chips, will start growing mushrooms if you leave them undisturbed and they get enough moisture. i'm not sure of your location, if it is arid there or not much of the season... that will help them rot faster and turn into humus.

i like seeing the various mushrooms that pop up in the wood chips.

they do work well for smothering things and then after a few years are a good place to let strawberry plants run all over and fruit. by the time the strawberries are due to be replaced/renovated the whole area may begin to get weedy anyways and you can stir it up, get rid of whatever weeds you can remove, save the younger strawberries, put down some cardboard with holes for the strawberries and then top mulch the cardboard with fresh wood chips to repeat the cycle.

all the extra N you put on may not be great for certain plants. if you find out that you get a lot of leafy green growth but not much actual fruiting/production that may be the issue.

No worms yet. I'm thinking of buying red wigglers

 

[chic rustler]

Excellent video. You should be VERY proud of what's been accomplished on your land - not the least of which is what your kids have learned (much more than how to grow a garden )

Thank you.

 

[flowerbug]

No worms yet. I'm thinking of buying red wigglers

make it an adventure to find some (local woodland, ditch bottom, rotting wood piles, etc.)

when i started my worm farm inside the house it was during one of our dry summer spells and there wasn't a worm to be found even in all the likely places. i actually did buy some composting worms at that time, but they are not native and will not survive our cold winters. so i've been gradually building up my native worm populations so that when i put most of my worms out into the gardens in the spring they are helping to increase the worm population.

many worms will not do well when transplanted (the youngest ones are the ones that can better adapt to the new conditions). luckily the composting worms like red wrigglers are among those that do better because they are so ephemeral.

many of the gardens here have no worms in them at all when i start renovating them, it takes about three years before i see a noticeable increase in the natives that stick around. mostly because i'm always short on organic materials and they have few places to hide from the heat/dry summer spells or the winter cold freezes. i've buried things down a few feet to give them places to hide.

i know i'm getting somewhere when i start finding the night-crawler burrows. those are not so easy to transplant. there weren't many here before, but some simple things have helped them out. no-till/low-till and some cover up top so they have things to eat. the are so interesting. they develop their burrows as they grow bigger they have to keep making their tunnels bigger. if you find a night-crawler out of it's burrow it is in trouble. dig up some ground to make it looser and easier for them to start over again and bury them. a regular earthworm can start a new burrow a lot more easier than a night-crawler...

 

[canesisters]

I stopped at a bait shop once and asked for a couple containers of worms. I happened to mention that I was going to toss them in my compost pile. The owner swore up an down that these were not the right kind of worms to compost.
I know pretty much nothing about worms... but I was pretty sure that a worm was a worm was a worm and that they all would do their little wormy thing in the dirt...
Guess not... I didn't buy them. (mostly because she was so rude and made me feel like a some kind of nut)