I find it hard to understand how identical climates would guarantee performance in plant growth. It has at least as much to do with soil composition. You find a locale with identical climate with acid soil, while your bed has alkaline soil, for example, your comparison will be next to meaningless in terms of growth potential. You're never going to make your alkaline soil acidic.

"I'm a new gardener and really can't say what makes my area's climate unique "

Then learning about your own climate should be your goal. Other world climates are not relevant to success. Central Georgia is an ideal gardening location in many respects, envied by many in other parts of this country. Literally thousands of varieties of plants are already well documented as ideal for your climate.

Once you have a good knowledge of Central Georgia gardening then you need to focus, as Dan said, you focus on your soil, your amount of sun exposure, the planting dates for your location, the plant nutrient and water needs, etc. That is what guarantees success. Climate is only one aspect of gardening.

Begin with your local county ag extension office and then check out all these links about gardening in Central Georgia.

https://www.google.com/#q=gardening+in+Central+georgia

Dave

As others have mentioned. learning your own general climate, and what may make your individual microclimate unique, is much more pertinent than looking to other places in the world. As you learn your own micro, and macro climates, you may find that you have things in common with many parts of the world - and not just those that have similar macro climates.

I live in Tn. Up north, plants like kale and turnips are spring and fall crops. Here, they can be grown all winter (in most years) without any special covering.

Georgia has a long growing season, so there are a lot of crops that can be raised there that have difficulty in other regions. And what can't be grown in the summer heat, can be raised in the spring, fall, and winter.

There are some exceptions though. For example, certain fruits require so many 'cold days' in order to flower properly. You will have to learn which varieties will work in your region.

If you have a typical Ga. climate, you may not have good success with northern blueberries. Instead, you can look to rabbiteyes. However, if you were in the mountains, or in a very low valley, you might be able to grow both the northern, and rabbiteye varieties.

So, learning your own macro, and micro climate is the best use of your time and energy, then as you learn, you can look to other areas and discover what works for them. Keep in mind that many, many gardeners have learned simple tricks to expand the types of crops they can grow. Northern climates can use a brick wall to act as a heat sink. Southern gardeners can use shade cloth to cool a crop.

First learn your own conditions, then when you find a crop that looks interesting, even if it doesn't 'fit' perfectly with your climate, there are often easy ways to expand your options.

Middle Georgia has mild winters and HOT summers which as Dave said it shares with inland areas from South Carolina to Texas. Possibly North Africa and parts of the middle east may have similar climates. Southern Japan has the mild winters but not the Hot summers. We can grow just about any vegetable here by growing at the proper time of year. Example. We grow most of the European vegetables in Spring fall or winter. Just have to avoid summer. Ditto with Korean, Japanese,-and Chinese vegetables. Summer we can grow Indian, African and southeast Asian varieties. Most seed vendors are already importing seeds from these areas so there are plenty for you to try. Baker Creek offers lot of OP varieties from these areas. Kitazawa and Evergreen specialize in Asian varieties. Since you posted in the vegetable forum I am assuming you are looking at vegetables, but many nurseries sell exotic perennials. One need to be careful tho. Many imports can be invasive, witness the very vigorous Kudzu.

You you should be able to grow most any kind of radish, turnip, or spinach right now. Direct sow the radish and turnip. Spinach germination can be tricky. Do some research and run some trials. Those three above should be able to withstand any frosts typical of middle Ga.. Try growing any kind of leaf lettuce in a container. Bring the container in if a real hard frost is forecast.

Take a look at the Köppen climate maps, PlantID1.

Use that search term in Google and in combination with the classification of your Georgia climate. Just doing a quick glance, it looks like you may find similar climates in China and Australia.

Mountainous areas have a crazy quilt of climates. For the annual vegetable garden, the growing season may differ from winter and weather during winter may have a good deal less importance to the gardener.

I live near the northern border of what is considered a Mediterranean climate. If the area is more "Continental," it's the winter cold and snow that is influencing the designation, rather than the arid weather of summers. My understanding is that northern Spain in some of the higher elevation agricultural areas have similar weather. Somewhere near Burgos there may be a similar gardening environment ... Probably, I'd need to find a higher elevation since Burgos is at a more southern latitude. I have used the Weather Channel website to check on the daily weather there, now and then.

I'm not really ready for the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona but exploring the ingredients of the tapas served at an outdoor table along the Camino del Santiago might be a good introduction to the gardening of some of the local residents ...

Steve

Thanks Farmerdill! Your reply was especially helpful and particularly this part:

"We can grow just about any vegetable here by growing at the proper time of year. Example. We grow most of the European vegetables in Spring fall or winter. Just have to avoid summer. Ditto with Korean, Japanese,-and Chinese vegetables. Summer we can grow Indian, African and southeast Asian varieties."

One thing to learn being a new gardener is the proper time to sow seed. The university of georgia has a planting chart but it is only for the typical plants grown in my area and the typical cultivar of those plants. I am working on ordering seed from several plants not mentioned on the uga chart, like egyptian spinach, jewels of opar, sea kale, etc.

How would you suggest I determine when to plant certain plants that I cannot find a "when to plant" chart for?

digdirt2 said, "Literally thousands of varieties of plants are already well documented as ideal for your climate."

Where can I find this information?

I'll check out those climates map, digit.

When it comes to gardening, there are endless variables to consider. What grows good in an area and what does not seems to be based on endless variables as well.

My gardening strategy will be to keep the soil covered with mulch and cover crops at all times and never till, add fertilizer or pesticides. I really do not want to water crops either, but I will water if I have to...

I plan to save seed from my crops in hopes they will acclimatize themselves to my gardening practices and environments over the generations.

When I read your OP, I thought, why not ask locally, and plant what works, locally.

Now, after following this thread, I think I understand the basis of your OP. The world is not flat.

Please do not import invasive species in your quest.

If somewhere has a similar climate to you but completely different soil, that will affect how things grow. Or temperatures, soil, and rainfall may be similar, but sunlight may differ--and to some plants, an extra couple hours of strong sun is more important than temperature. Also, keep in mind that places with similar climates can have radically different disease and pest pressures. In addition, things that do well in dissimilar climates may still do perfectly well in yours. Transposing plants from a growing area you think has the climate in no way ensures success.

What I do is make up a list of edible plants I want to grow then research them to see whether or not they do well in my area. It's easy to weed out those for which I don't get a long enough growing season. From there, I do searches on forums and read reviews on seed vendor sites from people in my area. It's not hard, but it takes time; there's no magic shortcut formula for picking the perfect plants for your garden. For more exotic species for which there's no good information, you just kind of have to take the plunge and see what works. For the sake of posterity, do a write-up of your experiences with the less common varieties and post it on the web somewhere.

Also, you can grow almost anything anywhere if you're willing to do what it takes, i.e., starting them indoors very early, using greenhouses, taking advantage of shade, refrigeration, irrigation, etc. So decide how much you're willing to spend energy-, time-, and money-wise and then see what plants you want to grow can thrive under those conditions.

plantid1: Where can I find this information?

Your local county extension office is a good place to start.

"My gardening strategy will be to keep the soil covered with mulch and cover crops at all times and never till, add fertilizer or pesticides. I really do not want to water crops either, but I will water if I have to..."

That reads as if you want to create a totally care-free "garden" where everything just sort of takes care of itself. A "garden" that requires no real effort or attention from you yet produces food for you. At least we assume your goal is food rather than ornamentals since this is the Vegetable Gardening forum.

A nice dream but a very unrealistic one in vegetable gardening. No-till gardeners still use fertilizers and pesticides, so do organic gardeners, so do xeriscape gardeners. And rainfall-only may work in the Pacific Northwest but in Georgia in the summer?

Gardening is a work = reward activity. Even xeriscape gardening, the most minimalistic form, requires active involvement by the gardener in all its aspects to be successful regardless of where in the world it is done.

Dave

Agreed. If that's the goal, plantid1's best bet is to stick to edible native and naturalized weeds. Even many of those would require some attention to pests if they're to produce any significant quantity of edible matter.

That's an excellent suggestion about edible weeds. They are perfectly suited to the climate you're in (so you don't need to scope around figuring out what climate you're in!) and they are abundant because they don't need any care. I have my own favorites here, but in Georgia, your choices might start with Kudzu! Cook the leaves like spinach. Delish and very nutritious. You'd be doing your environment a big favor by eating it, since it's trying to take over everything. No, Kudzu isn't exactly native, it was introduced 150 years ago, but it is *perfectly* suited to the SE US climate. I guess you could plant it and pretend to "garden" it, but it really won't need your help. You'll probably eventually be beating it back.

I should say that given that Kudzu is highly invasive and is being actively fought, you should be careful to avoid Kudzu that has been sprayed with herbicide.

to support Dan's idea, there is the fact that weeds are typically more nutritious than vegetables. Being able to survive unaided in the wild translates into a stronger organism which is more efficient at in-taking minerals, and making phyto-chemicals (such as vitamins).

I have always eaten dandelion (collected from the paths of my garden) in spring and fall, and I have some vegetables (smallage, red mustard greens and chicory) that have naturalized everywhere in the garden and that we consume in great amounts (typically we freeze 20 gallon bags of smallage in late fall, just for winter). but recently I have started eating/juicing weeds and cover crops(together with some more traditional juicing vegetables, such as carrots and beets), for the same reason. These include buckwheat, plantain, thistle and clover. The thistle thorns stay in the pulp. one of the nicest parts of it is that it does not take any work to produce them.

"Being able to survive unaided in the wild translates into a stronger
organism which is more efficient at in-taking minerals, and making
phyto-chemicals (such as vitamins)."

Never heard that. Is that for real? Reference? Now, many of the wild edibles I've heard of happen to be pretty nutritious, but I always figured that was just a coincidence. Makes a good story. I can think of a few wild edibles that aren't especially nutritious. Berries in particular.

I dunno. It seems like it would have more to do with the fact that domesticated crops have been selected over millennia for higher palatability (higher starch and sugar content, higher caloric contribution, less fiber content, less bitterness), greater size, especially of the parts of the plants that offer the most energy, faster maturity, etc. For obvious reasons of both survival and natural human preference. In more modern times, we've also focused on producing plants that look nice and uniform and ship well. We have also spent most of our time as a farming species concentrating on tailoring our growing conditions to produce food with these characteristics, not to produce food that is, say, high in phytonutrients (although we may see that change now, i.e., high-anthocyanin or high-lycopene tomatoes).

My guess is that this is the real reason why our domesticated crops tend to have fewer medicinal compounds than wild plants, i.e., it's not that being wild causes plants to be better at taking in minerals or whatever therefore they have more beneficial compounds so much as that we've actively bred out the accumulation of said beneficial compounds in our domesticated crops. Remember that these compounds are often part of a plant's defense system against the environment, including against animals like us that want to eat them, so they tend to taste bitter or challenging in some way. Some cuisines have developed an appreciation for the tastes of these compounds, i.e., some cultures appreciate bitterness and strong herbal flavors, but others have not. And even in cultures that appreciate bitterness, etc., it's usually as an infrequent counterpoint or accent. I can't really think of a cuisine in which everything is bitter and challenging.

I like to forage and a "wild" garden is what I aim to create. I'll still water and baby some plants if I need to but the goal is to find those that produce the best and take care of themselves. In order to do that I plan to grow lots of varieties of crops to find what's best. Luckily, as mentioned by an above poster, several seed companies are already selling seed from around the world and introducing exotic, "new to mainstream america" edibles that I can try out. They are scouring the world for me!

This past spring was basically the second garden I've ever grown and I got busy so I had to stop tending to it. When I did, several crops shriveled up almost immediately; however, papalo, amaranth, jewels of opar and wild spinach still grew well, even while not being watered in over 100 degree weather. Wild spinach, (chenopodium album), grew as a weed that I identified and let live. Chenopodium album turned into basically a spinach tree over six foot tall and probably four foot wide! I bought fancy amaranth seed and they did great but palmar amaranth also grew as a volunteer weed and thrived on the neglect as well. Papalo was almost as tall as the wild spinach. I planted jewels of opar from seed and it formed nice tap roots and vigorously grew back even after being given no water, facing over 100 degree weather and being ran over with a lawn mower! Jewels of Opar is perennial and I'm excited about growing it again.

I will have a garden that is somewhat in nice straight rows, weeded and watered (maybe even fertilized and sprayed with some organic pesticide) but I also plan to "sprinkle" edibles all over my yard. I'm aiming for edible perennials and self-seeding annuals that grow like weeds. As noted above, I already have positive personal experience with papalo (not sure if it will self-seed), amaranth, jewels of opar, and wild spinach and can start with those.

I've been foraging for about a year and a half now and have been constantly scanning my local environment so see what I can eat and I check out local people's gardens. So, I already know several edible perennial and annual plants that can thrive and take care of themselves in my locale without irrigation, pesticides or fertilizer.

Top of the list for perennials are: figs, wild persimmon, blackberry, blueberry (also wild sparkleberry and deerberry), pear, prickly pear cactus, pecan, muscadine grape, silverthorn, pindo palm, wild mulberry, wild crab apple, redbud tree, asparagus, chickasaw plum, spurge nettle, florida betony, dwarf paw paw, some types of peaches do okay, sumac, sassafras, pine for pine needles, tupelo, hibiscus, american groundnut, and more (taking too long to remember them all now but I do need to make a list!).

Top for annuals are: dandelion and false dandelions, plantain, wild spinach, amaranth, florida betony, sorrel, sheep sorrel, kudzu, wild lettuce, violets, kale, collards, purslane, thistles, begonia, basically all the edible weeds in a book called weeds of southern turfgrasses put out by the univeristy of georgia. I can't list other cultivated annuals other than already mentioned that thrive on neglect and self seed because they get babied in gardens and probably are not allowed to go to seed! Maybe a three sisters garden could thrive on neglect?

About no-till practices, I've been influenced by the back to eden garden method; check videos out on youtube; they are numerous. Ray Archuleta is more mainstream and scientific and is doing great things by helping big commercial farms convert to no-till. They both understand that soil that is tilled, exposed to, and baked by the sun is a problem.

About fertilizer, I've read that plants and micro-life form symbiotic relationships under the soil and basically create networks of under ground nutrient delivery systems. Tilling can disrupt this network. Roots from different trees can fuse together and the trees can share nutrients. Nutrients can be carried long distances underground via fungal networks that deliver them to plant roots in exchange for sugars. Check out Paul Stamets for more!

Most of us are familiar with minimal-intervention, no-till, etc. and the people who are proponents of these things. We aren't pointing out their difficulty and imperfections for raising vegetables because we're ignorant.

It's not impossible to have a garden that doesn't use store-bought fertilizer (although note that you will still be using fertilizer, just not something you can buy in the stores). It's just difficult and requires many years of literal groundwork and lots of maintenance. It is in no way easier than using more conventional methods like tolerating the use of fertilizers and judicious use of pesticides, even after the many years of groundwork.

As for tilling, it's my personal opinion that many no-till proponents are religious, not scientific, in what they promote. Everything has a tradeoff, and tilling can be done to many different degrees. It's not just a matter of pristine, wonderful no-till vs. destructive tilling that nukes the soil. Also, for those of us who want to use as few pesticides as possible, tilling is an essential tool in knocking back pests that require a lot of ground cover and which pupate or develop in the soil, for example. For those of us with small gardens who use a square foot gardening type philosophy to maximize available garden real estate, no-till is nonsensical, since the simple act of planting ends up essentially tilling the whole garden anyway.

Re: exotic plants that supposedly do fantastically--they're like any other plants. Some do well, some don't. Note that there is often a "grace period" the first year or two you plant a new species but that diseases and pests often find them in subsequent years and establish themselves in your garden as you continue to provide host material. Very few plants are so far removed phylogenetically from what is common in a given area that nothing will infect or eat it--not to mention that we have plenty of invasive, non-native pests and pathogens willing to step up and destroy our exotic edibles.

This is why I recommended native and non-native-but-established-as-long-as-not-destructively-invasive edible weeds. While I love wild greens, I also love many domesticated vegetables and fruits and have a garden just so I can grow the rarer, more delicious varieties that don't have the traveling capacity to be available at markets but which can only really be enjoyed if grown at home or which suffer in flavor after even a day off the plant and which are a heavenly experience eaten straight out of the garden. For my goals, your approach wouldn't really work.

Good luck with your experiments, but beware rigid purism and remember that all philosophies require some compromise and adaptation unless you're willing to accept very low yields.

Re minimal intervention, no-till, no artificial fertilizer. Sure, you can garden without it, but your crop will likely be smaller. There are people who judge success by the size of their crop, but many are just pleased to get anything. That's what you'll get with a "wild" garden, and more power to you.

I think edible landscaping might be a better fit with plantid1's goals. I think there's a forum dedicated to that on here.

"I dunno. It seems like it would have more to do with the fact that
domesticated crops have been selected over millennia for higher
palatability (higher starch and sugar content, higher caloric
contribution, less fiber content, less bitterness), greater size,
especially of the parts of the plants that offer the most energy, faster
maturity, etc. For obvious reasons of both survival and natural human
preference. In more modern times, we've also focused on producing plants
that look nice and uniform and ship well."

Exactly right. But I don't think that translates cleanly to a weaker organism which is less efficient at in-taking minerals, and making less
phyto-chemicals (such as vitamins). Domesticated crops are largely not bred for nutrition.

Yes, domesticated crops are largely bred for only one thing, profit. Nature breeds for survival. Survival depends on a better metabolism. Profit does depend on adaptability to adverse environments, which is a good thing, but generally not on nutrition.

It is best if we define the parameters of "nutrition". Let us assume it is micro-nutrients, that is phytochemicals and minerals. It is also best to limit ourselves to leaves, roots and other structural parts of the plant (I will address fruits and seeds later). If that is the case, purslane (a favorite of mine when living farther south, 2604) and dandelion show vitamin density generally better than lettuce (2475) but worse than kale (2461), and mineral density better than both

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2604/2

http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/dandelion-herb.html

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2475/2

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2461/2

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2396/2

I have added celery (2396) at the end since weeds take the place of smallage in my juices (though I think smallage is much more nutritional dense than celery). Stinging Nettle follows the same pattern

http://www.nutritionvalue.org/Stinging_Nettles,blanched(Northern_Plains_Indians)_nutritional_value.html

However, dandelion and thistle have far greater medicinal properties and are considered as major herbs for the liver. Thistle is the sole source of sylimarin in anyone's garden (unless you grow cardoon). Nettle is also considered a major herb. Further, by eating weeds one accesses different families of plants, regrettably most of our vegetables come from just 6 families.

In regard to berries, it depends again. When it comes to anti-oxidant power, they occupy most if not all of the top ten spots in the fruit category (excluding dried fruits which concentrate nutrients)

http://www.orac-info-portal.de/download/ORAC_R2.pdf

These high ORAC values are obtained with relatively little calories (list of fruits starts at page 18). Edit: I note that the list makes no mention of the two highest berries, aronia and sea berries, both extremely common here.

glib: Yes, domesticated crops are largely bred for only one thing, profit.

Modern commercial crops are largely bred for profit. But modern commercial crops make up only a very small number of domesticated crops.

glib: Survival depends on a better metabolism.

Survival depends on a metabolism that is better adapted to its environmental conditions. There is no such thing in nature as simply "better". Everything is context in biology.

One of the reasons why domesticated crops are not better survivors is because they're, well, domesticated. They have been bred with dependence on human care, in part because they have been uprooted from their native environments and traveled with us all over the world to radically different environments, in part because we have made the evolutionary bargain to need to invest more care in the plants in order to get more usable food from them where we want it, when we want it. Just as a pack of Golden Retrievers won't do as well when plonked into the wild Yukon to fend for themselves when compared with the wild wolves that live there.

Sorry to be nitpicky, but it's a pet peeve of mine when people are glib (no pun intended) and imprecise when talking about evolution and biology.

As for herbs and edible weeds (many herbs are edible weeds), yes, they have many good things to offer nutritionally. But they alone would not have provided enough calories to sustain the development of concentrated human civilizations, which is why we have domestic crops as well. Many cultures continue to routinely eat these plants, even cultivate them deliberately for profit. But North American modern cuisine doesn't, and it would be a good idea to reintroduce them. I do have to say that, worldwide, wild edibles are gaining high-end cachet in many restaurants, and maybe this is a fad that will trickle down and stick around. In high-end markets in NYC, one frequently sees "weeds" and foraged foods.

But I'm sorry--there are few things that can beat a Kamo eggplant picked fresh from the garden and fried gently in olive oil or a well-roasted black futsu squash that I grew myself, and I have to admit that I don't really care about how many phytonutrients are in them. While I also love many edible weeds and foraged foods, I like them for their taste. I could never treat food as medicine alone, as I would find that rather joyless.

So rather than actual vegetable gardening what you are really seeking to do is establish edible landscaping with a bit of native plant foraging.

Edible Landscaping forum

Native Plants forum

Dave

So there is no foraging forum?!

To be quite honest, Houzz is about buying things for the home. I don't fault them for not hosting a foraging forum. But there are many foraging forums out there.

Yes, gorbelly, the weeds are complementary to regular agriculture. They can not stand alone. But they do have something to offer, that regular crops do not have. the very low glycemic index of weeds is also generally beneficial to me.

No forum titled that per se but there are many discussions about it on both of the forum I linked above that the search will pull up. Some on the Herbs forum too.

Foraging discussions

http://www.wilderness-survival.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?29-Foraging-amp-Wild-Edibles

http://www.americanpreppersnetwork.net/viewforum.php?f=129

Dave

Foragers might enjoy eattheweeds.com.

Just a caution for those who like wild greens: many of them are pretty high in oxalates, so that's a flag for anyone who has a history of ailments like kidney stones or gout.

Plantid: You may also be interested in a book called The Resilient Gardener by Carol Deppe. Much of the book is specific to the climate in which she grows, but the information on her decision making process could be useful to your endeavors.

In addition to edible landscaping, another area for you to research would be permaculture. There are a myriad of books on the subject out there, some heavy handed with philosophy and some quite dry. One book with some interesting plant tables is Paradise Lot, by Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates. I believe Toensmeier worked another book with even more extensive plant tables but my library does not have it so I have not been able to review it.

I checked into Carol Deppe. She has developed what she calls "eat-all" greens and sells seed for them. That's right up my ally thanks!

Most greens are already eat-all, aren't they? But hers are especially productive, I guess. I think Carol Deppe has developed a dozen or so different varieties that work that way.

My goal was to find climates around the world similar to mine and then
research what crops grow there to find if I can grow any here.

There are people that do that for a living - plant hunters - they are usually working for a botanic garden or university.

Unless you are wildly well-funded, your changes of finding something before they do are slim to none.

Learn to grow the common things in your area first, then branch out into the rare stuff. Local plant sales at botanic gardens and arboretums will have speciality plants for you to try.

I don't think plantid1 had any delusions of discovering previously unknown plants. I think s/he just wanted to be able to compile a list from among known food plants.

In life, there are seldom all-inclusive one-stop information sources that will hand over exactly and all the information you need in one place, though. Learning generally involves research.

That said, those of us who had to do research before Google will be proper crotchety old farts and point out that such work is easier today than it ever has been.

Whatever I grow here in Central Texas, I'll bet you could grow perfectly well in Georgia. (With the soil pH caveat.) There isn't any climactic "secret sauce" that makes my site or yours better or worse.

As far as soil ph is concerned, I do have one belief that is perhaps delusional: That if no-till practices are used and organic matter is layered over the soil through the years (such as in a natural forest) then ph will not be an issue. The Paul guy with the back to eden garden said his hydrangeas have both blue and pink flowers because his soil is neutral.

I studied vermiculture for a while (google research combined with my own mini worm farm and went to a worm farm in georgia). They "eat" (well organic matter passes through them and they actually eat the microbes in it) organic matter and after it passes through their bodies it is more nutritious for plants, more bio-available and has a neutral ph.

Hugelkultur seems to be a good idea as well. Permies guy says if enough wood is used one will not have to water.

Decayed organic matter is a fertilizer; but perhaps just as important are all the microbes that live in decaying matter that facilitate plant growth.

Organic matter can be grown on site: sunhemp, horsetail, giant miscanthus, and maybe bamboo could be some good organic matter crops.

That's unlikely. I'm in a limestone region, and the ground water is alkaline. So you can acidify the soil all you want, with organic matter, sulfur, nitrogen fertilizers. Basically replace all the limestone in the soil. But every time you irrigate, the pH gets pushed up. It's a losing battle. I guess if you stick to rain water, you might be able to make it work.

Oh yeah.. I did not consider the ph of irrigation water. Irrigating with pond water could be an option. Maybe creating swales.

Organic matter holds water and lessens that need to irrigate. Huglekulture (burying wood and letting it decompose then planting over it) can eliminate the need to water.

Well, that won't work in my heat zone - eliminating the need to water. But you may have a chance where you are.

you need a lot of it. The pH of my water is 9.2, but in the first several inches I have 20% OM. I do bury logs in beds, specially because I have dozens of mushroom logs that eventually stop producing. I am just waiting for first frost to bury about 20. They do help.

I think you're overestimating the potential of "organic matter", plantid1. I mean, yes, given enough time and enough organic matter, I suppose it's technically possible, but permanent "base" soil pH and moisture retention properties in a region has usually been established by geologic and ecological processes over geologic time. A few years of putting organic matter on the surface of the soil is unlikely to make any permanent change, and the temporary changes will likely not extend beyond the top couple inches.

It seems like growing the sheer quantity of organic matter you'd need to make and maintain any kind of meaningful pH or make soil never need watering, if that's even possible, means a really huge amount of work for what is supposed to be a minimal-intervention, "natural" approach.

Maybe it would make more sense to stick to plant species that do well in the "macroconditions" like soil pH and moisture conditions you already have? You don't state what your pH or water problems are, but are they really that severe?

Creating a self-sustaining ecosystem that differs from what is already there on a relatively small piece of land is difficult to the point of almost impossible, IMO. If I wanted to be as hands-off as possible with my landscape/gardens, I'd maybe concentrate on native species, i.e., trying to replace the native species displaced/disrupted by human development that would grow in the conditions available on my land. Even that would require human interventions, as developed areas are more or less permanently disrupted, but I think that would best minimize how much input I would have to make.

I think there is a segment of the culture that tries to sell the notion that gardening can be "all-natural". Gardening is, by definition, an intervention in nature, and involves varying degrees of forcing of nature to our goals, regardless of whether we use conventional or organic methods.

I guess I'm a little confused by your goals, as you want minimal intervention but then talk about big projects like Hugelkultur and essentially farming plants to use as organic amendments. Forgive me, but you say you are new to gardening. New concepts like no-till, no-"fertilizer", Hugelkultur, permaculture, etc. are very exciting, but not all aspects of them are compatible with one another, and all of them have a tendency to not work out ideally in actual practice. If you could clarify your goals and prioritize them, I think that would be helpful to you and to those you ask for advice.

I, too, am in a limestone based soil and water aquifer area. Yes, organic matter can help with the pH, but it takes many, many years. In Colorado, I think I saw studies from one of the Universities where they noted that repeatedly amended soil did improve in pH but that it took more than 20 years.

I find hugelkultur intriguing but I am not convinced that it would eliminate watering in my climate. It would take many, many years for the water to penetrate enough for the wood to absorb enough water to work in this way. The predictions for snowfall/precipitation in this area are for below normal this winter so any hugelkultur I work on establishing definitely falls into the long-term experiment category.

I don't know the soil ph of my area and was under the impression that two areas close to each other could have totally different ph levels. I induced from that that the big farms that rely on ph testing must alter the ph by broadcasting substances (lime or ammonia) over large areas and that creates a uniform ph.

I've read weeds can tell you alot about the soil they are growing in. Maybe I could identify a weed and then find out what ph and soil type it usually occurs in then find edible plants that like the same things and grow them there.

Huglekulture and moving in lots of organic matter can be not much work because of oil-powered machinery. Its the natural approach in the sense of that is what is on the ground in natural forests. Its unnatural in my garden because I would have to get it moved in using oil-powered machinery. I'll probably get some hay bales and wood chips for my garden.

But then again words have so many connotations and denotations that they can basically be considered meaningless. I have an idea of what most people mean when they use words but the word natural is loaded. One could argue humans are natural so everything they do is natural. Humans creating chemical pesticides and spraying them on crops could be considered just as natural as any animal using any tool, depending on how you look at it.

Just FYI, I'm pretty sure that at least soil in the Atlanta locale is pretty acidic. In fact, blueberries, and not peaches, are the leading fruit crop in the Peach State. Blueberries DEMAND acid soil. I believe Georgia cooperative extension has a number of good online publications about flavors of Georgia soil, which apparently change with latitude, in terms of soil chemistry. Bottom line - I think soil, rather than climate, is going to be the determining factor here.

If you want to know about the soil that stuff is growing in, don't bother analyzing weeds. Just get it tested.

plantid1: I induced from that that the big farms that rely on ph testing must alter the ph by broadcasting substances (lime or ammonia) over large areas and that creates a uniform ph.

As mentioned before, pH is not easy to change permanently, which is part of the reason why pH has to be amended on the regular if the soil pH in an area is not amenable to a certain crop.

Dan's recommendation to get a test is a good idea. A soil test is cheap and easy, and knowing the result will focus you and help you tack down your long-term goals and your specific immediate steps.

But then again words have so many connotations and denotations that they can basically be considered meaningless.

Words are not meaningless. They do, however, require context. I hope the following does not make you feel insulted, but:

I get the impression that you're still trying to define your own goals and decide on what you value in gardening based on a lot of theoretical reading about idealistic gardening philosophies (which I'm 100% in favor of, but not as the sole basis of a garden plan). You seem to ask for a lot of opinions and advice but keep going back to what you've read about [insert multiple trendy organic methodologies here].

As with all new pursuits, I think it's more manageable and easier to learn from if your first experience is tightly focused and expansion of your activity and the expertise you gather builds on what you learn from modest starts. A big HUGELKULTUR-NOTILL-NOFERT-NOCONVENTIONALCROPS-phREMEDIATION-NOIRRIGATION-GROWINGYOUROWNAMENDMENTS-NONDOMESTICATEDPLANTS(?) project seems kind of like the wrestling-a-giant-octopus version of a beginner's garden. Just my personal opinion.

Remember that you don't have to hit all the righteous notes on your first try. Chances are high that you'll accumulate and travel between methods and crops, philosophies and approaches during the course of your gardening life, learning all the way... unless you make yourself so miserable with an impossible bar you set for your first time out that you give up on gardening altogether!