Before the PDC education I happened upon an interent/computer movie titled "Back to Eden Film", describing a process of growing an orchard and garden in a bed of woodchips. The process is basic, as a thick layer of wood chips decompose, it acts similiar to the forest floor in holding moisture and providing nutrients. Depends on your climate, I suppose, as to how fast the process will engage, or how well it works.

Do know I would have set this bed up differently now that I've learned a few PDC taught patterns. This Back to Eden bed is in a rectangle pattern, 20'x30', all four sides built up in hugelkultur, the whole works over the top of an old going-to-soil pine sawdust pile. So this Eden Bed had a headstart in this spot.

My experiment has two summers and one very wet lets-get-things-going winter under its belt.

Planted three nectarine trees this spring along the north hugelkultur, and this is when I started the PDC, so the decision was made to place my work on hold in the event I learned something new. Oh, golly, now I have plans! This is going to be a marvelous bed to start a diverse planting of bean, fruit, nut, and berry trees. An understory of food bushes. Rhubarb, asparagus, turkish rocket, so many choices!

Oh, and by the way, I managed to plant a few rows of potatoes in the spot that did quite well: