J Riley Harrington

Dave Bross wrote:
One thought....if you do more beds perhaps run them across the slope to slow the water runoff and let it soak into the beds.

Aha. Good point on going perpendicular to the grade. I'll keep that in mind and will be able to do that as I expand down the hill but I was a bit squeezed into this particular corner because planned build project around the front of the house. I also don't intend to keep up the grid-like pattern anyways and hopefully it will just grow organically as I get more confidence to expand. :)

Thank you to everyone to gave me such great advice, contributed and took interest in my adventure into gardening! We've gotten past the point of me being able to respond to everyone but know that I've been reading, digesting, and am appreciative of everyone's responses! I very much resonate with small controlled expirimentation as a way of learning. I very much enjoy taking notes and iterating on approaches as I have done in several other hobbies like rearing insects and aquarium building. I think perhaps similar principles will apply and things tend to just get easier after you do it the hard way 10 times, suddenly you see an (obvious in hindsight) better way of doing it.

For those who are curious, I think I will opt to go with more of a permenant, perrenial ecosystem rather than classic veggie gardens. Fruits, nuts, berries, and perennial herbs that can reset on their own with a little bit of effort each year. This has been where a lot of my reading has lead me and what seems to be getting me the most excited. And not just because I am lazy! (although I can't say the low effort part is a little bit appealing) but also I just LOVE the idea of thinking about perhaps being able to transform my land so much so that it could even outlive me. Maybe one day some future human will buy my land and find a little corner of the woods that still pouring out produce and feed their family with it Love that..

P.S. I have included update pics since I submitted the post originally. I've got all the sheet mulch beds down in one (I think managably sized?) corner of my yard. Its 4 beds with paths between that total roughly 280sqft. Hopefully that won't be too much for years one... Also I've started some seeds in my basement of a few species that really interest me like seabuckthorn, table grapes, and walking onions.

Oops. I should have probably clarified (or used more thoughtful language) that by wivestales I was using a turn of phrase and what I meant to say was oral tradition. Not specifically anything about who was saying it. 😅 But I hear your point that perhaps I shouldn’t really discount or prejudge oral traditions either. So I apologize for that. This is really my whole issue is that I don’t have the grounds to know what to what to take to heart at all.

I’m so glad to hear this endorsement of Gaia’s Garden because it’s actually already on my reading list that I got from the library earlier this week! Happy to know I randomly picked well! 😄

It's possible that I might have undersold exactly where I was in terms of skill. I have done a few years of raised beds and do germinate from seed each year. I could certainly bring a plant to harvest with some effort but its usually a lot of effort and depressing harvests in the end. My gardens are just kind of terrible so I am specifically trying to learn new techniques such as guild planting and other permaculture specific philosophies. It's just been very hard (for me) to discern who's trying to sell the "one easy trick!" type content or who is legitimately dishing out widsom.

RE: sqft gardening, I've actually done this as well last year! Specifically with standing beds that are up near my house on my deck instead of out in the garden. I made 3 4'x2' tubs on waste high stands with Mel's mix and do root veggies in them. The raddishes came out decent but it was about one sittings worth of food for a month. Still it was very gratifying to take something into the kitchen so I appreciate the sage advice there.

RE: The One-Straw Revolution. Thank you so much for the book rec! I LOVE a good book rec from someone with more experience than I. Books are my favorite place to start but it very much feels random pullings things off the shelf without recommendations. I will definitely read this.

Thank you for the warm welcomes, insights, and relaxing my anxieties about asking newb questions! I think perhaps joining permies is going to be a good move for the health of my future garden

Let my preface this... perhaps unnessicarily... But I've joined several online communities in the past for a pretty wide variety of (unrelated) hobbies and interest, some that I am a newb and others that I'm a bit more experienced in.. but either way, one really common observation I've made within these online forums or message groups is completly inexperienced folks somewhat flooding the community with questions that are sometime difficult to even answer because they might not even be on the same page yet to have a useful discussion. The classic "Where do I start?" question.. I usually try to help those people if I do have something to share but its admittedly exhausting and somewhat degrades the content of the space to have to re-explain fundementals over and over. This is not what I'm trying to ask and I have spent many hours now reading about the fundementals of permaculture but I still currently feel like I have basically zero hands-on experience with gardening or permaculture. Before this year (starting last fall when I picked up my first book on it) I've only ever had a few lack luster raised beds with garden store variety grocery store veggies taht never were never all that healthy.. Despite having a heightened awareness of invading this community with ignorant questions.. what I do have is...
1) a really intense resonance with the philosphies and ethics of permaculture
2) a bunch of books and some sheet mulch beds ready to plant (with something) in the spring
3) a million burning questions

Okay so what am I still feeling lost on???

So my first instinct was to check out a lot of books on it from my Library.. After having read some (and suplimented with some youtube series) I still have this sinking feeling that gardening is the type of thing that you can't _really_ learn in a book. For one, I think its hard for a know-nothing like me to discern fact from fads. I've observed numerous vehement contradictions from various authors and content creators. (Despite both sides of an argument seemingly having pictures or videos of healthy looking gardens) and for two, every book I've read seems to spark more question that I wish I could ask the author to clarify that I probably won't get an answer to unless I try it out.

My next natural instinct is to just dive in and just try things.. I normally have no problem what-so-ever with expirimenting and failing as a way to learn. That's my best advice for getting into arts or crafts, start easy and be okay with failures... but something about that seems not great to do with living ecosystems. I get a little bit emotionally attached to my plants and its really sad to see them fail because of a mistake I made. I'd much rather give them the best possible chance to succeed from the get go than spend years settings up a garden to fail. (Not to mention, I'm trying to buy very little but seems like it could become costly and then you must suffer a whole winter before you can try again)

And my final observation with gardening specifically is that its SO area specific! More so than any other hobby I've seen. People can genuinely swear by one technique that is a never fail, best thing they ever learned and its simply doesn't work for someone else in a different zone or ecosystem. That's kind of a huge part of the intrigue of permaculture to me is that its a style of gardening custom tailored to where I live but it also means that good solid advice might simply be wrong for me. It makes me so eager to just find a person who's done gardening right in my area and learn what they know but my neighbors are either big green lawns and box store flower beds or traditional monocrop farms.


Maybe to sum this up...
1. How does one come to learn the difference between factual gardening advice, internet influencer fads and wivestales?
2. How does one expiriment ethically without being destructive to their gardens or ecosystems?
3. How do you guys parse through guidance material online that could come from anywhere in the world? (I see that there are regional forums here on permies but even still I don't want to flood those forums with ignorant questions either)
4. Any other sage advice for questions I failed to ask?

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P.S. Okay so I appologize for the wall of text and see the irony in this being my preface being about not wanting to make ignorant posts (I think I might just be a little despreate to actually talk to a human about it.).. But I'm standing in front of the initial barrier to entry on gardening and its daunting... My parents did not garden. I lived in a shoebox aparentments in the city for years without any access to gardening. Its really uncharted territory for me but I've had a very intense urge toward it for many years.

P.P.S. Just a little extra info about me. I live on 17 acres in heavily forrested area at the base of the Catskill mountains, Greene County. I think its Zone 6a. I have an 1/3 acre pond and 1/2 acre lawn on a slight incline that I've been slowly working on killing grass and converting to sheet mulch beds, framed with logs I drag out of the woods then layers of cardboard, leaf compost, and wood chips (in that order). The rest of the land is thick forest that I really just want to preserve for wildlife but don't know much about land management or forrestry either.