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the chaos!
Why a chaos garden?
Work smarter, not harder! The basic idea behind a chaos garden: Mix the seeds in a bag, scatter in loose soil and then sit back and see what happens. As long as you start with soil that’s somewhat loose and bare on the surface, some will sprout and take root. We choose to use cattle to “disturb” the land instead of some means of mechanical tillage because with mechanical tillage we would definitely destroy the habitat of the millions of microbes that take residence in the top soil. If we destroyed the habitat for the microbes in the soil we would not be on the path to regenerating or “building” soil.
Why a seed chaos mix? The way we see it is that nature doesn’t grow in rows or in monocultures so why should our garden? Nature actually thrives in chaos and we believe our garden will too. If some seeds don’t like the growing conditions, that’s fine they just won’t grow. Consider it a game of survival of the fittest.
The chaos seed mixture, the cattle to disturb the soil, the straw we used to cover the garden after seeding is all just some of the tools we are choosing to use to make progress on building the soil and regenerating the land.
Garden 2022
Summer of 2022 we had an incredible yield compared to previous years. We had zucchini, radishes, lettuce, carrots, squash and so many pumpkins. We also got two 5-gallon buckets of no-till potatoes!
Garden 2021
In 2020 we did not have much success, we yielded one radish. BUT, this year we had 7 radishes! We will keep you posted in further yield success!
The forest
the edible forest!
With the same theory of survival of the fittest, we have planted Raspberry, Blackberry, Saskatoon, Gooseberry and strawberries. They're among our trees and in the grass beside the chaos garden.
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