"Back to Eden" Gardening

At the Preparedness fair I attended the gardening classes when I was not sitting at the desk and helping people find their classes.  One of the suggested resources was the Back to Eden gardening method.    I am really souped up about this!

A second really succinct video, also short, on how to start a Back to Eden garden is here.

The 80-year-old man who was teaching the gardening classes at the Fair promised to find a place where we could get the ground up wood chips that could be screened, which is the easiest way to make a garden.  However,  in this video, I got the impression that contractor's paper, organic matter you have on hand, compost which you might have to buy, and wood chips put down in the fall could be ready for a first garden in the spring.  I want to do this.

You will notice that I said "I want to do this".  It is just marginally possible that I am alone in this desire.  As it happens, I have tried very many gardening schemes over the years which had varying degrees of success.  You know that story about the boy who cried wolf?  Well, this girl who tried gardening in unusual tricky ways does not have a lot of credence to her ideas anymore.  Sad.

Having said that,  I have sent an email to the real estate office to find out how to get in touch with the Homeowners' Association committee in charge of how our property looks to see if we can even have a garden.  There is some thought that we cannot.  We certainly cannot have chickens in the back yard, of all silly things.

If the HOA committee says ok, go for it, then I am inclined to lobby a little harder for this to happen.  Dear One did say he was willing to bring in a load of dirt for a garden.  The reason this all comes up is that the soil here is some awful orange stuff that I have no idea where it came from.  It was trucked in and dumped.  At least it was at the neighbors' houses which we saw happen.