Best Practices for Back to Eden Gardening

In my research, I’ve found a ton of stuff about what Back to Eden gardening is, and what it is not. I’ve found lots of useful tips tucked away in articles and videos. There’s tons of great stuff out there on using it to establish a food forest or other perennial garden bed. What I haven’t found is crop-specific information on best practices for annuals. So, this article is a place where we’ll share our lessons-learned for annual food crops in this style of growing. We will update it year over year, with a view to creating a comprehensive guide for our core crops.

So far, we’ve found that we use three main techniques: planting seedlings through thick mulch; direct seeding or transplanting through a thin mulch, and pulling back the mulch to direct seed or plan (and sometimes re-mulching later). First I’ll explain how we work our garden, describe each technique, then list which technique we’ve found works best for each crop.

First, a word on our annual maintenance. Our garden beds are lightly terraced down a slope. The paths are dug as swales – or shallow ditches on contour – which we fill with 8-10” of mulch. We also toss the bigger pieces of wood or branches we find in the beds onto the paths to break down a little more. We find that the smaller pieces tend to wash down to the bottom over the course of the summer, and the top layer is the bigger/dryer/less composted stuff.

In the fall we re-shape our beds. We chop and drop woody stems (like tomatoes, peppers, corn, etc.) above ground level and leave the roots in the ground to decompose. We use a flat rake to scrape the coarse/dry material off the top of the beds and paths and expose the partially composted stuff below. We pile the composted chips from the paths onto the beds (often burying last year’s crop to compost in place), put the coarse material into the hole, then top it up with fresh chips. Over the late fall, winter, and early spring, the composted material will work its way down to the planting beds to feed the next year’s crop.

Before we plant in the spring, we rake off the coarse stuff into the paths again, usually right before planting a bed.

Methods

Thin Mulch

We scrape pretty much all of the mulch off of the bed and into the pathway, then plant our seedlings or direct seed into the cleared area. After everything is planted, sometimes we’ll add a bit of the mulch back to the bed to help retain moisture.

Seedlings through Deep Mulch

We mark out the spacing of our plants with rocks, then dig the mulch out in about an 8 inch radius around where the plant will go. Then we dig the hole and plant as we would for any other seedling, including a generous pile of compost which partially fills up the hole. Once the seedling is planted, we’ll push the mulch back around the seedling, making a well that slopes down towards the stem.

Pulling Back Mulch

Kind of a hybrid of the other two, we’ll pull the mulch back to make almost bare rows or patches for planting on the recommended spacing, then direct seed or plant in the rows. Deep mulch remains between the rows. For wider spacing, we’ll then add mulch back between the plants. For some crops we’ll scatter a thin layer of mulch on top of the seed to preserve moisture.

Crop	Method	Planting	Notes
Arugula	Pull Back	Direct Seed	Mulch between rows once established
Basil	Deep Mulch	Seedling
Beans	Pull Back	Direct Seed	Keep bare patch wide when young to protect from slugs
Beets	Pull Back	Seedling	Keep mulch thin until established
Broccoli, Brussels Sprout, Cauliflower	Deep Mulch	Seedling
Carrots	Thin Mulch	Direct Seed	Almost bare until thinning, then re-mulch between the rows.
Corn	Pull Back	Direct Seed	Can mulch right up to the stem once established.
Cucumbers	Deep Mulch	Seedling
Dill	Thin Mulch	Direct Seed	Re-mulch once established.
Eggplant	Deep Mulch	Seedling	Keep wood chips off of stem - ie, bare soil around - until established.
Endive	Pull Back	Seedling
Kale	Deep Mulch	Seedling
Lettuce	Thin Mulch	Seedling	Keep almost bare due to slugs.
Mustard	Pull Back	Direct Seed
Onions	Pull Back	Seedling	Re-mulch once established.
Parsley	Deep Mulch	Seedling
Peas	Pull Back	Direct Seed or Seedling	Re-mulch once sprouts emerge.
Peppers	Deep Mulch	Seedling	Keep wood chips off of stem - ie, bare soil around - until established.
Potatoes	Pull Back	Direct Seed	Use straw to hill up, rather than wood chips.
Radicchio	Pull Back	Direct Seed
Radish	Thin Mulch	Direct Seed	Re-mulch between rows once established for storage varieties.
Salad Mixes	Thin Mulch	Direct Seed
Squash	Pull Back	Direct Seed	Re-mulch once established
Sunflowers	Pull Back	Direct Seed	Re-mulch once established

Swiss Chard	Deep Mulch	Seedling
Tomatoes	Deep Mulch	Seedling	Not fussy about woodchips around stem once established.
Zucchini	Deep Mulch	Seedling	Not fussy about woodchips around stem once established.