Abby Davis

Michael Cox wrote:
The basic principle of the Back to Eden approach is add huge amounts of mulch (usually wood chips). The wood chips break down over an extended period of time, feeding the soil life beneath, adding nutrients and improving the water holding capacity of your soil.  This is a long term process, not a quick fix for planting in a single year. When you talk about buying topsoil, and compost, it makes me think you are after much quicker results than this. If that is the case you might be better off looking at raised bed gardening or similar.

Hi! Thanks for your response! I'm fine with it taking a while to work, I was just confused on how to start the method properly and make sure the soil is healthy enough for my seed to be successful.  

Oops! Looks like I can't count, I'll fix that, haha. Thank you so much for your help!!

Hi! I am super new to gardening and stumbled across the Back to Eden Method and really want to implement it into a new garden. I'm very late in the game but will start making beds in March and planting. I'm a little confused with the method and I have a TON of questions, haha.

1. Do I buy organic topsoil from the store and add my own organic compost? If so, what organic topsoil is the best to use.
2. Do I mix the organic compost in with the topsoil?
3. If I don't have chickens or animals, and use store bought non-organic vegetable peels and egg shells as compost, will that disrupt the organic quality of the organic seed, and eventually the plant, and make it not organic anymore? Should I only give my soil organic peels and egg shells?
4. Am I able to dig up a part of my yard and use that as topsoil? If so, can I lay a couple of layers of newspaper down, cover it with the topsoil I just dug up from my yard, add my own compost, add wood chips, and immediately start planting my seeds in March? Or is that too soon for the decomposition of the wood chips to even consider starting to plant my seeds?
5. Do I have to wait until it decomposes a bit to start planting?