Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Planting beets when there is a thick mulch layer over the soil...Back to Eden style.


In a Back to Eden garden planting seeds is done differently. The very thing that keeps a BTE garden pretty weed free, makes it impossible to plant in the usual way. Simply put, seeds cannot grow in wood chips. So here is the process I used to plant my Winterkeeper Beet seeds.
First, use a hoe or a rake and make a trough through the chips down the the soil. In my New BTE garden, that is down about seven inches. 
I then sprinkled a layer of bone meal and spread the seeds down the trough. When I was at Buckerfields the other day I picked up a bag of Sea Soil for this planting. I then covered the seeds with about and inch of Sea Soil. I then watered which reduced the sea soil depth to about the 1/2 inch it calls for. 
As the beets start to grow, you just gently push the mulch (my layers of wood chips and horse manure) into the trough little by little. Easy peasy. 

4 comments:

Alison said...

I bet they are going to be incredible! I can't wait to see the beauty of your food using the BTE method. The more I read up on it the more it just makes sense.

Erin said...

My garden is actually growing better than it ever has. We have been here since 1979 and I've never had any luck with gardening. Rock hard clay!!

Gardeningbren said...

Am excited you are doing this so I can follow your progress. No beets planted yet but hopefully by end of day.

Erin said...

I cannot believe how well the BTE system is working. I am so impressed with it. I planted an apple and almond tree today, and the clay is really breaking down. It was 36 years of making no progress at all, and then in six months it starts breaking down. Yayyyy.