Last of the replies for Emily, sharing back here.
There were a lot of questions about the wood chip deep mulch system. So let’s start by clarifying what the original “garden” deep mulch system was and show how much of this was lost upon views of the original documentary (below) and subsequent YouTube videos by folks saying they are doing it, but not really succeeding at it. By reading through this material first and then watching the documentary you will be ahead of almost everyone in picking up on all these missed subtle and not so subtle clues presented in the documentary. The notes and process described below is what is recommended throughout the documentary, but it may not apply to everyone. In my situation I don’t have a rural property to have large piles of wood chips composting, I would get a fine for having that visible where I live. Instead I implemented Paul’s Orchard system as I could get the wood chips immediately carted to the back yard and out of view. I used local resources such as Texas Green Sand and local city waste treatment compost made from what was in the recycling bins at schools and homes in the area. I also gave my bacteria and fungi a kick start shot of an initial application of urea on day zero of implementation. In short I was making best within the limitations imposed on me by my location. I understand it will take some more time (years) to develop my system to the point where someone that can follow the tips below can from day one.
Q. Who is the person in the documentary, is he Italian?
A. Paul Gautschi. No, the Gautschi family is originally from Switzerland.
Q. Is there not just one wood chip method shown in the documentary?
A. No. There are two. Paul’s Garden and Paul’s Orchard. In one of the first opening shots of the documentary, you see Paul’s property, an aerial view from a plane that was filmed in the middle of Winter. You can see in the photo below the separation of the garden and orchard.
From this photo alone, you can clearly see that the ground looks different in Paul’s garden and orchard. The garden has a dark, rich, black gold compost that looks similar to topsoil. The orchard has a much lighter shade that resembles arborist wood chips. Why do they look different? They are both wood chips from tree trimming waste. The difference is they have each been processed using two different methods. Confusing? Let’s dig a little deeper.
First is a photograph of Paul in Paul’s Garden, pay close attention to the surface and how different it looks to pictures of Paul’s Orchard.
Q. What does Paul add to Paul’s Garden to grow so well in it?
A. In the documentary there are only two times that it is shown where Paul adds new organic matter to his garden. The first time Paul adds compost to his home garden is after he visits a compost facility. Steve Johnson, the owner of Lazy J Tree Farm, invested in a tub grinder to chip up green yard waste. Steven then composts the wood chips for several months and sells the composted wood chips back to the community. In the film, you see Paul receive a truck bed full of composted wood chips that have also been screened.
This is so important to understand and perhaps the biggest point that needs clarity: composted wood chips that have been screened are different than arborist wood chips that have been freshly chipped. In the documentary, the film producers show 3 types of “wood chips” that were all processed differently.
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Arborist Wood Chips - Raw wood chips from tree trimming waste that have been freshly chipped and have not had time to decompose.
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Composted Wood Chips - Wood chips from tree trimming waste that have had at least 6 months to decompose. Learn how to properly compost wood chips here.
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Composted Wood Chips that have been Screened - Wood chip from tree trimming waste that have composted at least 6 months and then were screened to remove large wood chips that have not decomposed.
The documentary never shows Paul Gautschi adding fresh arborist wood chips to his Back to Eden garden. Why? Paul does not add fresh arborist wood chips to his Back to Eden veggie garden at his home. Paul adds composted wood chips that have been screened. Why? Wood chip compost is ready to plant directly into and will immediately give your plants the nutrient food they need. In the documentary, you watch Paul add the composted wood chips that have been screened onto his garden plot, carefully raking them to a thickness of 2 inches. Paul at the time of filming said he reapplies composted wood chips that have been screened every 3 years.
Let’s say you just got a FREE delivery of arborist wood chips dropped off at your garden using the Chip Drop App. You can create your own wood chip compost by hot composting your wood chip pile. The goal is to keep your wood chip pile in the active to hot range which is approximately 100-160 degrees. It also helps you from overheating your pile and drying it out.
How to speed up composting
- Smaller wood chips compost faster
- Bigger piles compost faster (within reason, extremely tall piles can starve oxygen near the bottom and cause sour compost)
- Increase the nitrogen to carbon ratio
Arborist wood chips have a high carbon to nitrogen ratio that typically is 300:1 or higher. You want to make sure that there is a source of nitrogen in your wood chip pile. You should see green leaves and needles also called “green yard waste.” The microbes that break down the wood feed on nitrogen. Therefore, the microbes will be able to work quicker if you have nitrogen. Don’t panic if you don’t see a lot of green yard waste. You can add excellent sources of nitrogen including animal manure, blood meal, grass clippings, or leaves to your pile.
Note in the photo above there are smaller branches and leaves from the chipped trees. This is not sawdust from a lumber mill cutting up treated lumber (toxins) or other material you will see some folks using without success and then say this method doesn’t work.
- Incorporate oxygen and water
- Add bacteria and fungi
- Be patient (most people decompose arborist wood chips into composted wood chips in about 6 months but there is no set time as each pile will compost differently to the next)
Q. OK, I have composted wood chips. Now how could I use it in a garden?
A. How to start a vegetable garden.
- Apply at least 3-4 sheets of newspaper and wet them down.
- Apply at least 3-4 inches of organic compost.
- Apply at least 3-4 inches of wood chips as a mulch on your garden.
- Apply a dusting of composted animal manure as a natural fertilizer on top of your garden as needed throughout the growing season. Do not add chemical fertilizers, herbicides, or pesticides!
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DO NOT TILL THE SOIL! All of the materials you used to mulch your garden plot are biodegradable and will immediately begin to decompose, breaking down into nutrient-rich soil.
- Make sure your garden plot is always mulched! Mulch provides a protective covering on top of your soil that helps retain moisture which reduces watering, weeding, and work. Wood chips also decompose into rich soil overtime.
Q. But this is not what you just said Paul does above in Paul’s Garden?
A. No it is not, this is creating a new implementation and not a maintenance layering of new organic material on top of an existing wood chip garden system.
Q. What does Paul use to fertilize his garden?
A. Composted chicken manure created on the property thus avoiding pitfalls of importing manures (See Long term garden damage from modern persistent herbicides)
The second time Paul adds compost to his home garden in Back to Eden documentary is after he sifts compost out of his chicken run. Paul calls his chicken coop his “soil manufacturing plant.” He feeds his chickens the green waste that comes out of the garden – from weeds to expired greens. In the Fall, Paul uses a screen and wheel barrel to sift through the soil in his chicken run. He then applies about 1/2 inch to 1 inch of the composted chicken manure onto his garden. Organic composted chicken manure is one of the best sources of nitrogen for fertilizing your garden. Since Paul has been doing this for so many years, he says he needs to add less fertilizer every year and less often over time. At the time of filming of the documentary, Paul told the producers that he reapplies composted chicken manure every other year but in the beginning it is recommend doing this every year when you are getting started with your Back to Eden Garden. Again, if you are using Raw Arborist Wood Chips you’ll especially benefit from adding organic fertilizer to help break down the wood chips into compost.
Although in the film you see Paul applying composted chicken manure to the garden second, during the Fertilization chapter, Paul actually applied the composted chicken manure first and then covered it with the composted wood chips from the compost facility. The reason he does this is to reduce any weed seeds from sprouting that are in the composted chicken manure.
Q. OK, if that is how Paul does Paul’s Garden, what about Paul’s Orchard?
A. In the documentary, Paul mentions that in 1979, he first added straw and sheep manure to his orchard but then switched to wood chips. Paul told the producers that initially, he added 12 inches of fresh arborist wood chips to his orchard. He allowed the wood chips to compost in place without tilling. He goes on to explain that after 17 years of tilling his garden, he went out to his no-till orchard and began digging with his hands. He says he dug “down to my elbow in this beautiful black compost.” He had been laboring in his garden, tilling and bring in organic material to try to build compost. In his orchard, he didn’t do any work other than initially covering it with fresh arborist wood chips. At that moment Paul says God told him, “it works in your garden the same way.” Paul then threw away his rototiller and began covering his garden with composted wood chips. Paul told us he does not add chicken manure or other fertilizers to his orchard. The raw arborist wood chips built fertile enough soil on their own over time. He also adds the waste from his wood stove to his orchard over the winter, because he has it.
If you do the math, by the time the production team arrived to film the documentary in 2010, Paul had been growing a no-till wood chip mulched orchard for nearly 30 years and a no-till wood chip mulched vegetable garden for nearly 15 years. Therefore, the documentary shows the results of a no-till wood chip vegetable garden after 15 years and the results of a no-till wood chip mulched orchard after 30 years. This is a really big deal for those of you who are just starting a Back to Eden garden and/or orchard and are hoping to see results like Paul. The good news is that you can see results like Paul, it will simply take time and patience.
BACK TO EDEN GARDEN TIPS
- Do not plant seeds directly in fresh arborist wood chips. Arborist wood chips need time to decompose before they are ready. That is it is recommended to mimic nature and add arborist wood chips in the Fall. Then in the Spring, pull back the coarse wood chips and plant in the soil and/or compost beneath them.
- Add composted wood chips (ideally, that have been screened) instead of fresh arborist wood chips if you have access to this resource. Of course, not everyone has access to this premium organic matter. If you want, you can allow your delivery of arborist wood chips to compost before you add them to your established vegetable garden using the hot compost method.
- Do not till the wood chips into your soil! Since wood chips are high in carbon, they can tie up nitrogen when they’re tilled into the soil.
- Be patient! Every year you are building more and more soil in your vegetable garden by adding organic matter which is creating more nutrient-rich food for your plants.
Q. Paul has a mystic almost read-between the lines teaching technique?
A. This is not accidental. The documentary producers “drilled” Paul to present a “one size fits all formula” for his gardening method. Paul knows that this will never be the case for every implementation of his gardening method by others. Paul constantly reminded the production team that he wanted people to get connected to nature in their region and adopt what works best for them. As frustrating as this can be for people who prefer rigid instructions, it was genius in a way on Paul’s part to present this way. There isn’t just one way to start a successful Back to Eden Garden. But there certainly are some things you shouldn’t do.
Q. OK, so what shouldn’t I do?
A. Almost all of the problems faced in Back to Eden growing resolve themself with time. And most importantly, Back to Eden growing technique gets easier with better results every year. But there are some problems you should try to avoid.
Problem 1. Nitrogen Problems with Wood Chips
- Fresh wood chips are any wood chips from tree trimmings that are less than three months old. When you get fresh wood chip loads from tree trimmings you should be able to see green leaves mixed into the pile. Leaves are the wood chip piles primary source of nitrogen. Nitrogen is required for your garden plants to grow healthy, green leaves.
- Composted wood chips are wood chips that have been composting for at least three months. The main difference between the two is the amount of nitrogen that has undergone mineralization to turn into an accessible nutrient for plants.
Many people claim that neither composted or fresh wood chips are good for adding to vegetable gardens and that they should only be used in pathways or around perennial shrubs and trees. Those people usually go on to explain that this is because they expect the high content of carbon in wood chips to “rob nitrogen from their soil” and thus hurt their veggies and plants growth. This has been shown in the documentary to not be true. Wood chip piles do contain enough nitrogen to break down and supply nitrogen for your vegetables. When the leaves and chipped wood branches break down the nitrogen and carbon turn into a healthy compost. The ratio of C:N varies greatly in each wood chip pile. Some researchers claim wood chips contain an average of 200:1 ratio of carbon to nitrogen. This would mean nitrogen would benefit from more nitrogen containing material being added. However, a scientific study on the effect of wood chips on fields of crops that the addition of wood chip mulch did not cause the soil to show nitrogen deficiency even in the first year. In other cases nitrogen was found to be ‘tied up’ during the decomposition phase of the wood chips during the 3-6 months. But after the first year of decomposition the nitrogen would be released back into the soil naturally. Carbon affects the chemical and physical properties of the soil, such as water infiltration ability, moisture holding capacity, nutrient availability, and the biological activity of microorganisms. The addition of carbon and nitrogen to our soils are essential to building healthy, fertile soil and regenerative food growing systems.
Paul 's beets growing in composted wood chips (left) and in fresh wood chip mulch (right).
Paul Gautschi uses composted wood chips that have been screened before he adds them to his vegetable garden. Additionally, he adds composted chicken manure to fertilize his vegetable garden. Paul does not add fresh wood chips to his home vegetable garden. He only adds fresh wood chips to his orchard. However, Paul Gautschi also has a second property which is also featured in Back to Eden Film about 15 minutes from his home where he allows tree services to dump loads of fresh, unscreened wood chips. His veggie and fruit gardens on his second property that uses fresh wood chips grow with just as amazing results as his home garden. This is because after applying fresh wood chips to any soil for many years, the growing medium of your plants will be in the composted wood chips below the freshly added wood chips.
If you add fresh wood chips to your soil and want to plant in them in the first 3-6 months, you will need to add an organic nitrogen source such as Compost, Blood Meal, Kelp, Composted Chicken Manure, Composted Horse Manure, Bat Guano, or Fish Emulsion. Using fresh wood chips without the addition of compost, composted animal manure, or organic nitrogen fertilizers can lead to vegetable growth problems, initially. Again, the nitrogen levels will naturally improve with time even without the addition of fertilizer. See the photo below, on the left are beans growing in compost with fresh wood chip mulch and on the right are beans growing in fresh wood chip mulch without compost added. The leaves are turning yellow on the beans growing in fresh wood chips indicating a lack of nitrogen. If you see leaves turning yellow in your garden, you have a nitrogen deficiency in your plants and will need to add a source of nitrogen.
Beans Growing in Compost (Left) and Beans Growing in Fresh Wood Chips (Right)
Most of us don’t have access to already composted wood chips from tree trimmings. Usually Back to Eden Gardeners end up getting fresh wood chips dumped at their properties and often begin laying them down on the soil as soon as possible. However, many Back to Eden gardeners have proven that issues with nitrogen deficiency naturally disappear with time (as little as 3-6 months) after applying fresh wood chips onto a vegetable garden or orchard.
Garden Mulched with Composted Wood Chips
In conclusion: Yes, you can grow a vegetable garden mulched with wood chips without nitrogen problems if you have either time or have access to composted wood chips or have allowed your fresh wood chips to compost in place for at least 3-6 months before planting a garden, you will not not need to add nitrogen for most plants. Nitrogen levels will be sufficient and nitrogen will no longer be tied up in the process of wood chip decomposition. If you apply fresh wood chips on top of your soil, you need to add an organic nitrogen source for improved growing results immediately. Add organic fertilizer as needed.
Problem 2. Not All Wood Chips are the Same Quality
Almost all wood chips are beneficial to use in vegetable gardens, orchards and farms. However, wood chips can be a difficult mulch material to analyze due to the many uncommon denominators in the size, tree variety, and quality of tree trimming waste. No two deliveries of fresh wood chip mulch will be exactly the same.
Paul successfully uses a large variety and of hardwood and softwood varieties of trees in his gardens and orchards. Both varieties offer similar benefits in vegetable gardens and primarily differ in their decomposition rate. Soft tree wood chips are nice if you are just starting a garden because they decompose faster. But hard wood chips will provide a slow release for a longer time and not need to be added on as often due to slower decomposition. Take note, the decomposition rate of wood chips is greatly effected by the size the chips are chopped up to and the amount of leaf content in a load.
Don’t use bark nuggets, sawdust, or treated and dyed landscaping wood chips for your vegetable garden! None of these materials will provide the paper ratio of carbon to nitrogen to build healthy compost. You will likely see yellowing leaves of plants, wilting and stunted growth when you use one of the materials as a mulch due to the lack of sufficient nitrogen, nutrients and biodiversity.
Problem 3. Back to Eden Gardening Takes Time
Studies have found that one of the reasons wood chip mulch leads to better vegetable gardening results than straw or other mulch sources is because of the slow release of nutrients. Instead of breaking down and disappearing after one season, wood chips can continue to deposit compost-tea nutrients into your soil for many years to come through natural rain fall. However, the slow process of wood chips breaking down can also be challenging for some gardeners to get used to. The beginning stage of transforming clay and rock soil into fertile growing plots, takes time. Paul’s results show us what great results you will achieve after a little time.
It’s important to remember that Paul Gautschi started adding wood chips to his gardens and orchards decades before the production team showed up to film the documentary (2011). You should expect to allow your wood chip mulch in your garden bed to compost in place for several months before seeing soil improvements. Benefits you will see immediately in wood chip gardens include less watering, less weeds, and less soil erosion. However, if you have access to already composted wood chips, you can add a layer of 3-4 inches of composted wood chips before covering it with fresh wood chips for immediate growth benefits.
Paul Gautschi’s hard clay soil before wood chip mulch (left) and after wood chip mulch (right).
If you are adding fresh wood chips with the addition of any organic nitrogen rich fertilizer and keeping your soil covered you will see improvements after just one growing season. Fresh wood chips can be used in your garden as mulch right away. However, adding a layer of composted material below them and some organic nitrogen fertilizer will help the wood chips benefit your garden immediately. If you can find or create composted wood chips they will offer the accessible nutrients for vegetables immediately. Make sure to seasonally add a layer of visible wood chips on top of your composted wood chips material to experience the most benefits of mulching. A healthy compost ratio is usually 30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen. Look at your wood chip pile and if it looks like there aren’t enough leaves (nitrogen), add more leaves, manure, or organic fertilizer to help them break down.
Problem 4. Finding Free Wood Chips Near Me
I have received all my wood chips personally through the ChipDrop App. I would suggest that you request a free load of wood chips several months prior to really needing a wood chip delivery in your garden. ChipDrop was created by a tree service professional who watched the Back to Eden documentary and decided he wanted to help gardeners get access to free wood chips. After ten years of getting loads of wood chips from different tree trimming services. It is a free service to you and saves the tree trimming services companies dumping fees for every load they deliver to you instead.
If you don’t get a delivery using ChipDrop, search on Yelp for tree trimming services and send a message to all local tree trimming businesses near you with one click. You could receive a wood chip drop within a day to months after posting a request. It all is determined by how many tree trimming services companies in your area are using ChipDrop. If you don’t live in an area that has ChipDrop, again search Yelp or GumTree or local phone books for tree trimming services companies and call them and ask. You can also offer them a small amount of money ($20-$40) to drop off wood chips to your property as an incentive. This is not a lot of money considering the price per bag of mulch at the local nursery or big box store gardening center as tree trimming services trucks can contain many cubic yards of wood chips.
Problem 5. Planting Seeds in Wood Chips Is Difficult (This one is for Emily)
Wood chip mulch hides sunlight from the soil preventing many weed seeds from germination. The same can be true for some types of vegetable seeds if you plant beneath a thick wood chip mulch. Especially small seed varieties like carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, oregano can be difficult to germinate when underneath a thick layer of mulch. On the other hand, vigorous weed seeds and many hardly plants like squash will have little difficulty pushing their way up through the wood chips on their own. A common issue when raking away the wood chips for planting seeds is when the mounds of chips pile up on the sides of the seed furrow, you walk away thinking you’ve done such a great job taking extra care for your seeds and you come back a few days later to find wood chips covering your carefully cleared rows. After all, the bare soil wants to be covered by nature’s design! Gravity, wind and watering will easily cause wood chips to cover a narrowly cleared area of soil and prevent sensitive seeds from growing.
Planting seeds in wood chip gardens requires raking the wood chips on the top of the soil away from the seed rows and planting the seed in the soil or compost. Make your rows side or remove some chips if this is happening to your rows. To improve the germination of seeds planted in wood chip gardens make sure you pull the wood chips far enough away from the rows of seeds so the wood chips don’t fall back onto the seeds before they have germinated. If you are planting in fresh or very thick wood chips you may have a greater challenge germinating your vegetable seeds.
Composted wood chips can be planted in more easily since the wood chips are not coarse and thick enough to bury the seed before it sprouts. You can add some compost directly to your rows before planting to prevent the wood chips from burying the furrow made in the wood chips. It’s also beneficial to add composted fertilizer to your garden before planting to improve growth.
Allow the seeds to all come up and reach 2-3 inches in height before side dressing them with the previously removed wood chips. If your seeds are not germinating well in place try seed starters to transplant into your garden after they reach at least 2 inches or roots are established. Make sure when you transplant the wood chips will not bury the base of the plant until it is well established. A trick for preventing small seeds like carrots from falling into the soil or wood chips too deeply to grow is to play a layer of toilet paper down in the furrow, add about an inch of compost to the top of the toilet paper, surface sow your seeds and then water to keep the paper from moving. All of these challenges with germinating seeds in wood chip gardens will be eliminated with time as your soil improves. You will find yourself able to grow anything easily the longer you have been growing a Back to Eden Garden. For improved seed germination in your wood chip gardens remember to add your wood chips to your garden in the fall or winter so they have time to break down instead of waiting until the spring. When plantings seeds in any type of mulch, wood chips straw, grass clippings, leaves, cover crops, the same tips apply to improving seed germination in your no-dig garden garden or regenerative agriculture farm.
Problem 6. Garden Pests in Mulch
For pillbugs (See Pillbug post above)
Some people experience challenges with increased insects or tunneling pests when they first start their Back to Eden Gardens. After all, you just turned a barren desert-like environment into a lush life-giving garden, flourishing with nutrient dense plants, soft soil, beneficial microorganisms and an abundance of growth. People and animals alike will likely notice your gardens. How you treat these problems can be a personal preference but a lot of these problems will resolve themselves when you learn to restore balance to the garden environment.
As Paul Gautschi shows in his gardens and orchards, when your plants are in good health they will be able to naturally fight off the occasional damage from insects and even the occasional animal damage. Even though a thriving Back to Eden Garden may see signs of minor damage from slugs, aphids, squash bugs, etc. the plants will be strong enough to survive abundantly due to their growing conditions.
It’s easy to over water because people do not take the time to reach down into their soil below the wood chips and touch it to see how wet the soil itself under the mulch really is/ The mulch on top can appear to be very dry even when it’s very damp below. Too much moisture again causes rotting in plants and therefore attracts more insects to your plants when they begin showing symptoms of weekend immunity. If you see a plant with an infestation try to understand the root of the problem. Plan your garden plot carefully so that only those seeds needing to germinate are getting watered regularly until they sprout and not your established plants elsewhere in the garden that do not need watering. In conclusion, water less, add fully composted wood chips to avoid attracting insects that feed on raw organic matter like slugs, snails, and pillbugs.
Natural insect control methods that are deemed safe for use in organic gardens include:
- Diatomaceous Earth: You can use diatomaceous earth to help manage an out of balance population of insects with an exoskeleton like ants, Japanese beetles, earwigs, potato bugs etc.
- Neem Oil: Neem oil can be diluted in water with natural dish soap in a spray bottle and sprayed onto plants for treatment again many types orchards and vegetable garden insects as well as an effective preventative of fungal disease and mold on plants.
- Beneficial Nematodes: You can also add beneficial nematodes to your soil.
Make sure to read instructions on how to use these organic pest control treatments with care so that you don’t accidentally hurt your plants or beneficial insects.
In conclusion, don’t over water, don’t add too much raw material during the growing season, don’t over crowd when planting, don’t use pesticides.
FINALE
You made it this far, congratulations, you now know more than most who have already watched the documentary and forgotten all the finer points that were being taught. With all this in mind you can watch the documentary either for the first time or watch it again but this time you will be able to catch everything that is going on and gain a tremendous amount more of benefit from it than going in “cold turkey” as it were.
Click this to watch the documentary on YouTube: Back To Eden Documentary, full length documentary
Edit: For those not aware, Paul’s exposure to Agent Orange in the Vietnam war has influenced his dedication to growing his own organic, chemical-free food all these decades.
Paul gave free tours and free food from his orchard and gardens to any that came to visit giving freely of his method and himself. His condition has deteriorated to the point that he no longer can walk and get around to give the free tours.
One of the last tours that Paul gave for those that missed out to experience what they were like. Click here to watch the June 2021 Full Tour.
Late Edit: Here is one of the more recent interviews with Paul where you can here what he does and his advice.
Late Edit: 200+ fruit trees in Phoenix AZ.
. They are said to be a great source of protein, and they have a unique, savory flavor. It is said that isopods can be cooked in a variety of ways, such as deep frying, sautéing, boiling, and steaming. You can also mix cooked isopods with vegetables and other ingredients to create a delicious, protein-packed meal.
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Just kidding. We have lots of pill bugs, but I have never noticed them bothering my garden plants.
