>> JOHN: This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, another exciting episode for you and this
is one I've been looking forward to for a long time.
So I'm here at the very site where about a year ago I filmed a video entitled
Amazing Permaculture Garden and for those guys that haven't seen it be sure
to check out my past videos, actually I'll put a link right below this video.
So you can check out this amazing place.
I'm here a year later and now I'm really interested in learning about some of
the secrets and specifics on how they're growing the food here.
One of the main reasons right here I'm sitting on top of the woodchips and
actually these are some cedar wood chips, it smells pretty nice.
Kind of like that rabbit cage that I used to have when I was a kid.
But in any case we're here today to look specifically at the garden bed right behind me.
They've been growing literally in wood chips for about 5 years now.
In this area there's some amazing growage.
[laughs] Going on.
So what we're going to do next is we're going to head down to that garden bed.
I'm going to show you guys how well the plants are growing in the wood chips.
Some rock dust and mycelium spores that they incoulated with so let's head down there and
check it out.
[laughs] Now we're looking at part of the garden where
they've got wood chips down below.
They're growing some nice rich dinosaur kale.
Let's check this out, check out how nice and large these dinosaur kale leaves are.
For just growing in wood chips.
Sike!
So for the non-Americans what sike means, that means hey I'm just joking.
This is actually their area of their yard where they're growing a conventional garden,
grown in compost and rock dust and not necessarily the wood chips although they are using the
wood chips on top.
For a molch to conserve water.
So these look fairly healthy and fairly good, I've definitely grown larger ones than this.
What I want to show you guys next is actually the garden where they are growing
in 100% wood chips and the rock dust so let's head over to that garden next.
Alright so now I'm sitting in the bed that I wanted to show you guys that they
have been growing in wood chips here so this has been a total of 5 years.
Basically after about 3 years the wood chips that they put down had broken down
into nice rich black growing meat from humus to feed the plants
and here are the results, this is a standard dinosaur kale plant.
No special strains, no special varieties, it actually grew the same one you just saw
down their these were planted at the same time but with proper soil nutrition,
like the wood chips and the rock dust provides, you're going to get amazing growth.
What does amazing growth mean to you?
It means more food for you in a smaller amount of space.
So I would encourage you guys to build your soil but let's check out this dinosaur kale
leaf.
Normally you go to the store to buy dinosaur kale, maybe you didn't harvest them, out of
your yard it looks like the one I showed you.
But check it out, this is ginormous.
This is probably getting near the genetic potential of dinosaur kale.
These are nice, large and rich.
The gardeners should leave this to specifically the wood chips.
This was basically unimproved clay soil when they moved in but now with wood chips this
is what you get.
Totally amazing.
So I know you guys are probably super impressed with how large those dinosaur kale leaves
actually were.
I know I am and I tasted them, let me tell you - they tasted as good as they look.
So large, so amazing and they taste excellent, some of the best dinosaur kale that I've actually
ever tasted, including maybe and possibly better than my garden.
So, how do they get these amazing results.
Well the answer is very simple.
It's a free resource that may also be available to you as well.
Behind me you can see that huge pile of wood chips.
Over the past 5 years they've got a total of 214 dump truck loads full of wood chips.
This equates to about 530 tonnes of wood chips that got dumped in that very spot and wheeled
around all over this land about 1 acres under cultivation.
To basically go to the store and raise it up because this is all on the slope,
of a canyon and actually many of the other houses and what not in the area have erosion
because when you're not building, retaining walls.
The earth will slide.
But when they've added all these wood chips to raise up the level and also
build their soil, it also acts like the sponge to hold a lot of the water so that they
don't get the run up and they don't get the erosion problems.
Imagine if wood chips were simply used for erosion control but also to grow in.
There is amazing research that many tree companies or arborists that have chippers literally
have to pay to dump their wood chips off at the dumps.
When you may be even to get them for free and start building your soil.
What are the secrets to building your soil with wood chips?
Well, let's go over and take a look at some of the soil that they have built using the
wood chips and I'll explain more about how they have
done that.
Alright guys look at the wood chips and here they are in this area.
They've been wood chipping this area right here I'm standing on and that you guys are
looking at for the past 5 years.
Definitely the top layer you can basically see wood chips but if we dig
this down just a little bit we're going to get down here lower and check this soil out
they've been creating.
This is basically the product of wood chips, a nice dark rich soil much like the compost
you buy.
But man this stuff is super rich.
Totally amazing, now how they have been able to get their wood chips to break down and
then 3 years to make it look like this soil here,
is very simple basically they added things like rock dust which feeds the bacteria.
But they also added a pound of mushroom spores and some white cap mushrooms.
So what that stuff does is actually helps to bring and hold the wood chips together
like a sponge.
The mushrooms work on breaking down the wood chips so that they can get this amazing growing
medium.
I just saw how they're turning the wood chips in to fertisle soil by adding the mushroom
innoculated and also some other mushrooms and the rock dust to
create nice, rich, fertile soil.
But there's some other ways that they are using the wood chips.
The wood chips are a very valuable resource to have and in many cases it's getting dumped
away in a landfill.
Two of the ways they're using the wood chips are here, 1, they're using it for their pathways.
All their pathways are molched with wood chips and they're doing the sheet molching so they
put down some cardboard and the wood chips on top so that prevents things
growing up in their nice walkways.
Also the wood chips are also breaking down so it's building the soil below the pathways.
Also besides using it as pathways they're also using it as a standard molch.
So this helps to retain the water in the soil so that they're water borough isn't as high.
Now I'm going to explain to you guys how you can start using wood chips to increase your
soil fertility.
Number 1 is source your wood chips, start getting wood chips down on your property.
Many residential areas you may not be able to get wood chips dumped in your property.
They may not even be able to be stored or seen from your front yard, depending on your
locale, it can look kind of I don't know - funky for most people.
But you can definitely do it in your backyard.
I definitely recommend this style technique if you have half acre to 1 acre or more.
If you're a small residence, you might want to work with some wood chips in the back and
build the pile of wood chips and help it break down and then take that to distribute
it where you're going to be using it to grow in.
What's the easiest way you can start using wood chips today to start building your soil?
Well there's a few ways, 1 if you just want to build your soil like they did here then
literally they just started dumping wood chips on the top of their standard soil,
adding some of the mushroom spores and the rock dust to it.
They're literally just covering up their dirt like this, the little dirt path here with
the wood chips.
As they got more they kept piling it up and piling it up and over about 3 years, yes it
takes that long.
3 Years, finally the wood chips that they added 3 years ago started breaking down and
turning in to that nice, rich soil you saw.
If you do want to start planting before the 3 years is up, what you want to do is
actually take the wood chips that you've now piled up on top of the soil here.
You're going to dig a little hole down to the soil that you had existing.
It's very important not to mix the wood chips in with your soil.
If you start tilling this in the wood chips will basically start sucking the nitrogen
from the soil, to balance but if you're piling them on top
you're not going to have that problem.
If you do want to plant you're going to basically make a little mound here and you're
going to dig out the dirt from down below.
Once again you're not mixing the wood chips in with the soil.
You're going to take your start and we have a magenta spreen lambs quarters start here.
I'm just going to go ahead and plant that in the little hole their and then pile some
of the soil on top.
Then basically what we're going to do now is we're going to add the wood chips as a
molch around the plant.
So once again don't mix the wood chips in with the soil.
This is an easy way you can plant if you don't want to plant it would be easier just to pile
on the wood chips for about 3 years and if done properly you'll
have some black soil like they did there.
The last thing we're going to get to do today is talk to Gabriel, one of the stuards of
the property here that has made this all happen with her husband
Thomas and the community.
Let's go head up to the wood chip pile where it all started and talk with Gabriel.
>> JOHN: Now we're here with Gabriel, one of the stuards of this permaculture grace
garden and we're just going to ask her a few questions about
how she made this amazing garden, you guys just
saw how big her kale was, even I'm not growing kale that big yet, but I will one day have
to catch up here.
But nonetheless it's amazing just what she's done with literally that free resource of
wood chips which you can see this huge pile behind us,
also some rock dust which I'm a big advocate of and also
the mycelium or some of the mushrooms.
So Gabriel why don't you tell us why you decided to use the wood chips and
do this to make this happen instead of growing those standard compost that many gardeners
out there do?
>> GABRIEL: Well Oregon where we live has 3 months of drought every summer.
If we're going to have a crop we have to water, wood chips initially I saw them as a molch
to keep the soil covered so we would retain the water.
Then I started to notice that the plants with the wood chips were happier and began to research
and learn some things that when the wood chips rot they actually create a fine soil.
You can increase the rate of decomposition by inoculating the wood chips with mushrooms,
mycelium, or just take some mushrooms that you find
and throw them around your garden.
They'll do the rest, we bought a pound of spores because we had so much land to improve,
this was all clay sub-soil 5 years ago when we bought it, it's a very steep hitch and
we knew we had to do something, we couldn't grow anything.
We did bring in a lot of compost but you can only buy so much compost.
Our neighbour to the left way has a minor business as an arbarist and he has to pay
the dump $10 to $25 to $50 every time he dumps his
tonnes of wood chips.
We said look, if we create a place where you can dump these will you dump them here?
[laughs] We'll take anything you have, whether it's
got firewood in it or sticks or leaves.
So for 5 years we've been getting this pile and we put it around, my husband wanted to
change the grade of the land so he actually created
what he calls a patio 4 feet high and that's where that hill is.
It's had enough time to rot so that kale is growing in about 2 feet of rotten beautiful
forest created from wood chips.
I'm amazed, and the back to eden information really recommends this as, we're not buying
anymore compost we're just waiting for our wood chips to rot.
>> JOHN: Wow.
So tell me more about the rock dust because that's one of the ingredients to what you
used to adding to your wood chips and also you told me about the apple tree
that we're sitting almost under.
[laughs] and how this is doing so much better in yield
and so much more crop once you started putting the rock dust and working with the wood chips.
>> GABRIEL: Yes, the only fruit bearing thing on this whole 3 acres is this 100 year old
apple tree in a terrible condition, wormy maggoty apples every year.
Some years no apples at all because it's not been well cared for.
We didn't really focus on it but I believe that I should get my minerals from plants
then from a pill.
So I've always put rock dust, a product called azomite which is a volcanic form of trace
minerals, every time I garden.
Just a little sprinkle every year and the apple tree benefited from that, we cleared
the tangle away, it's got a nice little bed of wood chips on
it and I noticed every year particularly this year that the apples are better.
Almost no worms or maggots at all, we never spray it we can't, it's too big.
Beautiful, tasty, so I think the tree is thanking us.
[laughs] It's performing even in its old age in a much
better way.
The minerals are important, I couldn't believe you could grow a plant in rotten chips so
I felt like I had to add something.
So what I added was some minerals and to me that's the perfect soil.
>> JOHN: Wow.
So Just 1 last question for Gabriel, Gabriel do you have any last departing tips for my
viewers so that they can have a nice luscious garden like this?
>> GABRIEL: Well, ask your garden to help you.
Learn to listen to what he's showing you, the world of nature is a lot smarter than
us gardeners for what it needs and they will help.
>> JOHN: I absolutely agree, so many times we want to love our plants by giving it too
much water, not enough water and many people basically
on purpose, purposely kill their plants by trying to over love it.
But if we listen to their needs and respect that and give them what they need then they're
going to grow healthy and yield lots of food for
you guys to eat.
Hopefully you enjoyed this episode learning more about the power of wood chips and how
they can increase your fertility and how you can have amazing dinosaur kale
like you saw here.
Once again my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, we'll see you next time and remember, keep
on growing.