“Back to Eden” invites you to take a walk with Paul Gautschi as he teaches you sustainable garden growing methods that are capable of being implemented in diverse climates around the world.
Our family has used many of these principles for years with good success, so I was pleased to find this inspiring Back To Eden film confirming our thinking.
Many of you have emailed, commented, or messaged questions about how to get started gardening with no experience or little natural resources. Unfortunately, there is much misinformation ‘out there’ on good sustainable garden practices, but this approach is closest to God’s design.
Go From Unsustainable
To Sustainable
After years of back-breaking toil in ground ravaged by the effects of man-made growing systems, Paul Gautschi has discovered a taste of what God intended for mankind in the garden of Eden, the perfect sustainable garden.
Some of the vital issues facing agriculture today include soil preparation, fertilization, irrigation, weed control, pest control, crop rotation, and PH issues.
None of these problematic issues exist in the unaltered state of nature.
Sustainable Gardening:
How to get free wood chips:
Find a source of mulch to act as a “covering” on your garden. There is an app you can gett to connect you to arborists that will give you wood chips in exchange for a place to offload them. We have done this for many years here on our land.
Steps for creating a sustainable ‘back to Eden’ garden
STEP 1
Decide where to put your bed. You can do it where you have an existing bed, or you can do it where there is grass, dirt, rocks, or whatever. You don’t have to till up the soil for this method. We have raised beds and do this method right in the raised beds!
STEP 2
(optional to suppress weeds) Cover the ground with newspaper. Make sure there are no gaps as weeds/grass will make their way up through any gaps. Cover with at least 3 sheets over the whole space.
We did this the first time but have since found that if we cover the ground with at least 6 inches of wood chips in step 4 then we don’t have anything coming up through. Contact your local newspaper and see if they have any that they plan to dispose of. Most are printed in soy ink today.
STEP 3
Cover the spot with 3-4 inches of compost Make sure whatever you get contains nothing you would object to your food growing in… We have used mulch that has been decomposing for 2 years and supplemented with our neighbors horse manure for the very richest compost.
STEP 4
Cover the compost with 4-6 inches (6 inches is best) of wood chips. Be very careful about what you get for this step!
You don’t want lumber chips from treated lumber, and you don’t want wood chips that have been composted and are very small. You need the results of entire trees with their branches, bark, and leaves included being put through a chipper. We found ours through the city’s tree trimmer crew working along the side of the county roads. When we asked him if he had mulch he could give us, he was overjoyed to dump on our spot….FREE! We let it ‘cook’ and break down (which causes a lot of heat) for about a year before using so we don’t burn our young garden plants.
STEP 5
Start planting! If you are using compost or screened wood chips, you can plant directly into the composted material.
If you are using raw wood chips, then pull them back and plant them directly in the soil or compost (material below the wood chips). Allow the seeds to sprout and develop strength before pulling the wood chips back gently around the base of the plant.
If you want to prep the beds early and let them rest for a full season, then the soil will be amazingly rich when you go to plant!
(Source)
Be Prepared, Be Sustainable
There is a huge need for people to catch a vision for growing a sustainable garden.
Our country and world is ripe for economic and political upheaval unlike anything we have ever seen. I am not a prophet, but it is biblical to be prepared (Gen. 6: 21, Gen. 41: 1-38).
Families must prepare. To be able to provide your own sustainable food supply is one of those ways to rely less on ‘the system’ and more on the God-given gifts you have been given to care for your family, so please share this with those you love and care about.
Raised Bed Gardens: How To Build the Perfect 4′ x 8′ Box
“Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.” ~Genesis 2:8
Rachel
I can’t wait to watch this! Thanks for sharing!
JES
You just solved our Friday Movie Night “crisis”. Really there was no crisis but nothing worthwhile to watch… Now there is 🙂 YAY! This will really come in handy for us!!! Thanks for sharing this resource!
Jacqueline
Hey, there, JES! You’re right about nothing good to watch! I hope this helps us all with the basics for gardening~ the soil! Love to you all! J
Toni
This is such good advice! It makes more sense to spend our time in constructive endeavors than in worrying about the economy. We grow some of our food, but not all by any means. I’m looking forward to watching the movie. Thank you for another great post!
Gretchen
Oh! This looks so good! I am a novice gardener that has never been succesful with anything except marigolds and chives, but I am motivated to try again! I’m digging up the lawn this year. 😉
Gretchen 🙂
Margaret Burrow
No need to dig up a lawn with the BTE system. We just put down newspaper as instructed and layered the wood chips on top. Ready to plant in a few months!
No back breaking work this way.
Jacqueline
Margaret,
Thank you for sharing of this method. I don’t doubt it, and you don’t disturb the microbiology either! Excellent tip!
Jill's Home Remedies
I have heard of this film – would love to watch!
Jacqueline
I can’t wait to implement more of the things we have learned!! And lots less work, too 🙂
James Ulmer
It is an awesome film.. My wife said it was the best sermon she had heard in a long time….
Love to hook up with you on Face Book……we also have a FB garden sight.
Blessings in Christ…………James & Yvieta Ul,er
Pattsy Dayley
I am really enjoying your site here.
I started the back to eden gardening method last june. I’m in the desert so I think it’s going to take me several years to get it to produce without fertilizer and watering often. I didn’t have good luck until I started to fertilize once a week and to water every day. My greens tho did really good in the chips. I also got the composted chips from the landfill that were black. They were so hot we had to wait a week before planting. I think it will be better now that I’ve been doing the method for 8 months.
Thank you for sharing your blog.
Jacqueline
You are so welcome, Pattsy! I applaud you for your persistence…in the desert, no less!! I would love to know how your garden does this year!
Pattsy Dayley
It’s the end of April and my garden is outstanding. I can’t believe how well it’s doing in less than a year. I have added lots more gardening areas and opening up more places and added fruit trees and a blackberry bush. I love this method. The food tastes so good. I love how Paul says God talks to him in his garden. That is reason enough for me to garden God’s way. I’ve watched the film at least 8 times. I’ve lost count but when I need a boost, I watch it again.
Patricia
I also live in the high desert of NM and am having a terrible time with gardening this way. If you don’t really have soil to start with this will take a long time. You must water the chips if it doesn’t rain or snow much as the moisture is what breaks the chips down. We got almost nothing in the last year and I kept waiting for the snow we were supposed to have. So I didn’t water. I started this last May. The only thing that really produced last year (we dug down and put mushroom compost and soil in with fish fertilizer first) was spaghetti squash, beans, chard, carrots, and a few beets. I lost all the tomatoes and green chile. This year the garden is close to 1/8 acre and most has been covered since last fall with 6 inches of chips over 3 layers of paper. Even the paper hasn’t broken down completely! I moved here from Indy, where we had a great Eden garden. This is a whole different ball game. I am just so disappointed as my 120 tomato and chile plants are doing terrible. This year we pulled back the chips (moving 6 inches of chips is not easy-and where do you put them when you dig up the ground in order to set in plants?), took out the mostly sandy (and a bit of clay) soil and replaced with mushroom compost, mychorrizae, worm castings, amozite, and potting soil along with a bit of the sandy stuff. We side dressed with a complete organic fertilizer. First the tomatoes turned purple, really purple, fast. Watered with fish fertilizer and sprayed with epsom salts. Ok, better, but then they started turning yellow and are growing slooooowly. Got a water meter and thought we might be watering too much, but they are more yellow than ever. Everything in the garden is turning yellow.
I also followed Paul’s advice on strawberries. He said that in the fall, just cover with 6 inches of chips and the adult plants die off while the babies will push through in the spring. Only about 1/4 of my strawberries returned.. And they aren’t producing. That was a real blow to me. My raspberries refuse to grow more than about a foot high. Blackberries are much better this year though. So now I spend 4 hours a week watering just the chips=soaking them really to see if they can break down better.
Doing this in the desert is very difficult because I am trying to make soil where there really isn’t any. Making soil takes years in the midwest. Imagine trying to make it without moisture! This works great where you actually have grass to die off and worms to compost it for you. I have only seen 2 worms in my garden, though as an interesting note, we found last fall that at the bottom of the chips were grubs! Yes, those ugly lawn eating grubs! However, grubs only eat fresh stuff when there is no dead matter for them to consume. They actually were breaking down our chips! When we planted we just pulled up every grub we saw and the chickens had a feast!
Jacqueline
Oh, my goodness, Patricia!! I am so amazed that you are getting anything in that climate! Well, I am going to pray for you when I’m working in our garden that the Lord will give you wisdom and the favor of more rain and many, many earthworms to work it into a fertile ground! I can’t imagine the tenacity you must have to persevere! God bless you, your family and your garden (the work of your hands!)
Jacqueline
Janet Westrup
I started the Back to Eden gardening method last summer.
I already had my garden in and was half grown when I saw this video and tried the method. In short of a few weeks after applying the mulch my garden became most vigorous. The weeds didn’t come up any longer, I didn’t need to water at all until the end of summer and then only minimally. I notice quite a change in the color and texture of the plants I’d never noticed before in bare earth gardening. The plants had greater water content in the leaves, they were more plump and the insects weren’t nibbling as before.
Since the mulch insulates the soil when winter arrived I still had strawberries ripening, Swiss chard and root veggies still plump and sweet.
Its Jan. 19th with temps in the 20’s and there is snow on the ground as I speak. Although the strawberries are not producing berries now, the plants are still vigorous, spreading and tall. Beets and Swiss chard are thriving and garlics/onions are appearing.
Have started a test garden in another area of the yard to plant a dwarf apple tree and some more melons and corn this year. We’ve never been able to grow melons here before, however after mulching the tiny plants, at seasons end we had 8+ melons from three different types of melons. Honeydew, red and yellow watermelons.
I’m so looking forward to the garden this year. Haven’t touched my tiller and am looking forward to an easier summer in the garden this year with bigger yields.
Janet W.
Jacqueline
Janet,
I am so excited!!
This is but another confirmation that this helps on so many fronts! Thank YOU so much for adding your experience here! I would LOVE to know how this years goes and what your best producers are when all is said and done. Blessings!
Kristen @ Smithspirations
I had planned to watch the video this past Saturday and was interrupted by unexpected guests. I actually forgot all about it only three days later! Isn’t that called Mommy Brain? 😉 Thanks for posting. I needed the reminder! I’m excited to watch it.
Jacqueline
Haha! Kristen,
I’m glad to be that alarm clock! I have seen most of it, but want to see it all in one sitting myself! I do hope others are finding it helpful and inspirational. Blessings and a hug!
Tauna
Thank you so much! Can’t wait to watch it. 🙂
Jerica @ Sustain, Create and Flow
I have been wanting to watch that film! Thank you for reminding me and for sharing this on Wildcrafting Wednesday 🙂
Katyrose
Gosh what a wonderful and encouraging post! Thank you so much!
kathy
I have heard much about this, I have tried to get the dvd at the 7th Day bookshop here in South Africa, but I wonder why it takes months waiting, I would have preferred a book, so is you have any ideas for me, please let me know, look forward to a reply in my inbox
Jacqueline
Hi, Kathy 🙂
I am sorry, but I don’t know why it takes so long there. I’m sure each local store has to decide what they can and can’t carry based on the demand. It is an excellent DVD for the whole family. I would consider just ordering on Amazon: http://amzn.to/16E1Ok7