I'll ask you the same question I asked another anon here...
As a professional farmer (you, not me), I'm curious about your views on the Back to Eden method for gardening. I've watched the video a few times, looks almost idyllic, but I can't help but wonder if the BtE method is suitable for all climates.
BtE is fine for small scale gardening, it has it's uses and used to be called the No-Till method until the BtE filmmaker came along. It's not useful for doing any real growing though if you plan on feeding people. It's great for some types of flowers and some fruits, tomatoes would do well. But potatoes would suffer badly with that method due to a lack of acidity.
BtE has one really great use and that is reclaiming forest. I have a 2 acre spot in the corner of my property and I paid two guys with some heavy machinery to rip out all the pine trees there and grind the stumps down. I left the wood chips there for two years and then sold them off and had people clear the area down to dirt. Now it's a very prolific sweet potato field.
Thank you so much for your response. It seems from this and the response from another professional farmer here that maintaining proper soil composition/chemistry (if that's the correct term) is not only key to successful growing, but not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Regionally there are vast differences in soil so I've questioned whether or not the BtE was suitable.
My limited experience of home gardening comes from my childhood where we had a mostly successful, substantial garden in our backyard. I'd go pick the salad veggies and other veggies for our evening meals. Pick, wash, eat = amazing taste. One grandmother grew up farming in "the old country" and had an amazing green thumb. Right now I'm not in a position to have a real garden, but am dabbling with indoor container items (just herbs, potatoes and spinach have been successful), hope to someday have a real garden. It's definitely a learning process.
100% - I have a degree in soil management. It not only changes per region, but per section of your yard.
I have fields and fields of stuff, but my personal garden is my happy spot. I have 10 raised beds that are 6 feet by 10 feet each and I am constantly taking soil samples and messing with the pH of the soil and NPK composition so I can properly grow things.
Over the summer my grandkids all got together and bought me a smartphone so I can use some different gardening tools which I've found amazing. My oldest grandson who will probably take over the farm when I shuffle off this mortal coil introduced me to a really great podcast called Joe Gardener, the guy is pretty funny and he knows his stuff - I think he lives down by Atlanta. He has guests on each week to talk about a different veggie and goes into the whole history of it and how to properly grow it. It's a lot of fun!
Growing indoors is a whole art, I have a bunch of herbs indoors and a few tomatoes I'm playing with and I have a whole light setup and stuff. It's a lot of fun too.
As someone who lives on and runs several farms, I would LOVE if people started growing their own food.
I'll ask you the same question I asked another anon here...
As a professional farmer (you, not me), I'm curious about your views on the Back to Eden method for gardening. I've watched the video a few times, looks almost idyllic, but I can't help but wonder if the BtE method is suitable for all climates.
BtE is fine for small scale gardening, it has it's uses and used to be called the No-Till method until the BtE filmmaker came along. It's not useful for doing any real growing though if you plan on feeding people. It's great for some types of flowers and some fruits, tomatoes would do well. But potatoes would suffer badly with that method due to a lack of acidity.
BtE has one really great use and that is reclaiming forest. I have a 2 acre spot in the corner of my property and I paid two guys with some heavy machinery to rip out all the pine trees there and grind the stumps down. I left the wood chips there for two years and then sold them off and had people clear the area down to dirt. Now it's a very prolific sweet potato field.
Thank you so much for your response. It seems from this and the response from another professional farmer here that maintaining proper soil composition/chemistry (if that's the correct term) is not only key to successful growing, but not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Regionally there are vast differences in soil so I've questioned whether or not the BtE was suitable.
My limited experience of home gardening comes from my childhood where we had a mostly successful, substantial garden in our backyard. I'd go pick the salad veggies and other veggies for our evening meals. Pick, wash, eat = amazing taste. One grandmother grew up farming in "the old country" and had an amazing green thumb. Right now I'm not in a position to have a real garden, but am dabbling with indoor container items (just herbs, potatoes and spinach have been successful), hope to someday have a real garden. It's definitely a learning process.
100% - I have a degree in soil management. It not only changes per region, but per section of your yard.
I have fields and fields of stuff, but my personal garden is my happy spot. I have 10 raised beds that are 6 feet by 10 feet each and I am constantly taking soil samples and messing with the pH of the soil and NPK composition so I can properly grow things.
Over the summer my grandkids all got together and bought me a smartphone so I can use some different gardening tools which I've found amazing. My oldest grandson who will probably take over the farm when I shuffle off this mortal coil introduced me to a really great podcast called Joe Gardener, the guy is pretty funny and he knows his stuff - I think he lives down by Atlanta. He has guests on each week to talk about a different veggie and goes into the whole history of it and how to properly grow it. It's a lot of fun!
Growing indoors is a whole art, I have a bunch of herbs indoors and a few tomatoes I'm playing with and I have a whole light setup and stuff. It's a lot of fun too.