# Gardening Wiki A karpathy-style lab notebook. Everything I'm learning, trying, failing at, and iterating on in the garden. Links out to specific experiments and references. Update freely. ## Operating philosophy - **Back to Eden** — woodchip mulch over compost over soil. Minimal tillage. Let fungi do the work. - **Vermicomposting** — red wigglers turn kitchen scraps into castings. Castings > synthetic N. - **Hugelkultur** — buried wood core as long-horizon water battery and slow fertility release. - **Food forest** — stacked polyculture: canopy → understory → shrubs → herbaceous → ground cover → roots → vines. - No synthetic inputs. Observe before intervening. Soil biology first. ## Current experiments - [ ] Woodchip depth study: 4" vs 8" — moisture retention differential - [ ] Worm bin feeding cadence — optimizing castings throughput - [ ] Hugel bed year-N settling log - [ ] Guild design around primary fruit trees - [ ] Chop-and-drop rotation schedule ## Zones / beds _(Add a note per bed: location, sun, soil state, planting log, observations.)_ - [[Bed - Main Annual]] - [[Bed - Hugel 1]] - [[Food Forest - Canopy Map]] - [[Worm Bin Log]] ## Plant notes _(One note per species. What I planted, when, from where, how it did, what I'd change.)_ ## Reading / references - _Back to Eden_ (Paul Gautschi) — film + site - _Gaia's Garden_ — Toby Hemenway - _The Market Gardener_ — JM Fortier (for intensity, not orthodoxy) - _Teaming with Microbes_ — Lowenfels & Lewis - _Restoration Agriculture_ — Mark Shepard ## Open questions - How to sequence hugel → BTE mulch without nitrogen lockup in year 1? - Optimal C:N ratio in my worm bin for my climate? - Which nitrogen-fixers pull their weight in _this_ soil? - Year-round chop-and-drop species list for my zone? ## Decisions log _(When I make a non-reversible call — tree placement, bed shape, species removal — log it with reasoning.)_ ## Related - Board: `board-of-advisors/boards/gardening.md` - Claude Chat project: **Gardening Lab**