Our farm tour is a little different from most, as we have a free-ranging meat bunny, chickens who think they own the place and several gardens that always try to take us over!
However, I think you will enjoy walking around with us this evening as we tour the main garden and our newest Hugelkulture (Hill-garden) bed. I’m hopeful to get a late harvest of Roma tomatoes as long as the frost holds off, we should be alright.
The opening scene of this video is of the bees on our chives. They have really flourished this year in the Back to Eden garden environment.
I will say that in years past, by late August, we had already given up any hope to control the weeds and just let everything go, harvesting what we could from the weeds. This year, we have improved some areas by implementing the Back to Eden method of gardening in some parts of the garden and the Ruth Stout method of gardening in others.
What is Back to Eden Gardening?
The Back to Eden method of gardening is when you use a layering method of usually, cardboard or newspaper, compost, and wood mulch.
We started out the gardening season this year using the wood chips we could make ourselves and the leaves that we could rake up from last year. We would just do a row at a time with what we could gather up. Then, we found a chip pile and someone willing to load it so we brought home 2 truckloads and that has been our best time investment for the garden this year.
The local electric company came through with tree trimmers so we asked them for as many loads as they needed to dump and so far, they have brought 2. I’m hopeful for more but still thankful for the 2 loads they did drop off. They are too hot right now to use on my plants but we have utilized on the fence rows and walkways already. You can see the 2 huge piles in the video below even though I don’t mention them.
What is the Ruth Stout Method?
The Ruth Stout method is using old hay that can’t be fed to the animals. She planted potatoes right in them and they grew without being dirty! This is also a great way to suppress the weeds while keeping the moisture in the ground from evaporating.
We immediately started bagging the grass so we could dump it in the garden to kill weeds. We just put it down on the rows as we were planting. A few bales of straw were purchased and several bricks of wood shavings, but we were determined to grow things without weeds this year! So far, we are winning in some areas and some areas have gone wild, but we will keep working at it.
The Farm and Garden Tour Video
Here is the video of our walk around the farm and gardens at Wild Heaven Farms. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. Check out the first time the young pullets meet our Bunny, it is so cute!