Ruth Distad

Thank you, Todd! I will definitely set aside time for that!

Thanks, John! Good to know. We will most likely be using it for firewood. I'll have to keep an eye out for any others- I do actually make furniture, I just tend to buy Home Depot lumber.

Thanks so much for your help, folks!

I live in Virginia,  zone 7a.  

I honestly have no idea what the predominant rock type is.  Can I say "big?"

Do you have a recommended compost extract?

I am hoping to move toward a food forest, though I'd like to do so without too much disruption of the forest that's already there, so I'm planning to leave most of the trees in place and work on changing what's under them- raspberries and blackberries instead of the wild, mostly-thorn versions, to start.

If I put down the wood chips directly on top of the existing soil, will the cover crop seed be able to take root through those? Or would the green manure need to wait a few seasons for the wood to compost?

Thanks so much! I appreciate your help and your not laughing at my lack of knowledge.

Hi friends! I've recently moved into a new home and just finished reading Gaia's Garden, and I'm raring to go. However, there's still a lot I don't know.

Most of my land is already heavily wooded, so I'm working on thinning out the woods enough that I can plant some things below. I have an area where I've already slashed down all the thorns and tiny saplings, and have taken out two 6-8 inch trees.  The ground is very uneven and rocky, so my plan at this point had been to find some fill dirt and then put down a spring cover crop and slash it down in a few weeks.  However, I don't have a dump truck and am having some trouble getting the fill dirt. My neighbor owns a landscaping company and has offered me all the free wood chippings I want.

Should I keep looking for fill dirt? If I get it, should I top it with the wood chippings or the green manure? Or both?  I'm planning to put blackberry and raspberry bushes for now, though I eventually want to expand it so that they have guilds to support them.

Or is there something I just don't even know about that I should be doing instead?

Thanks!