Ryan Hobbs wrote:I did a garden bed like this before I knew about permaculture. I had a bag of potting soil and it wasn't nearly enough to plant in. So I made a pile of debris (leaves, pine needles, sticks, old pine cones, etc), threw some bbq ash in and dumped my potting mix on top. I planted tomatoes and basil in it. Not long after planting we had some minor flooding and the garden floated. I drove some sticks through it and into the ground to keep it from drifting away. It came back down on the same spot and I got tomatoes off of it that season. I was thinking of chinampas when I did it. We were next to a swamp and I knew about the periodic flooding.
Well I did a similar thing with my orchids and peace lilies. I got potting soil off of amazon and planted some flowers. It worked tho. Moreover, I tried tomatoes like you, they also grew great. Turns out even debris helps out alot.
