Permaculture Skills: Soil, Compost, Cover Crop, Biochar, and More

This workshop is part of our 2026 Permaculture Earth Skills Series.

Grow Healthy Plants and Healthy Humans! Learn the Fundamentals of Permaculture Gardening Methods to Build Rich, Deep Soil.

We can turn the most depleted, compacted, eroded dirt into soil, rich with life.

Regenerating soil may be one of the most important tasks of our time. There is almost nowhere in the Piedmont that hasn’t been damaged by hundreds of years of over-cultivation, over-tilling, and over-development. Nutrients run off the land into streams where they become pollutants. Most of us know this story.

Yet there’s a different story we could be telling with our hands and our care. It’s one that leaves a tangible, physical hope for the future: we are the people that rebuilt the soil.

Permaculture teaches a whole collection of techniques, new and ancient, to turn dirt into deep, dark, wonderful smelling soil you’ll want to put your seeds (and hands!) in.

With these practices, it doesn’t matter if your soil test reads like a desert. I know, because mine has! You can build soil anywhere, using what’s around you and easily available.

Many Good Ways to Begin

While you can find ten thousand videos online of how to make rich soil, the sheer number of choices can be overwhelming. The opinions can be intense and contradictory.

I’ve found that with all the information out there, many people I work with just want to know how to get started, and they want to see it in person and try it with their own hands.

This workshop is to teach you the practical skills that will make you comfortable and confident in creating soil right where you are. You’ll be able to bring these skills home to prepare garden beds for next year’s planting with soil that will be far better than what was there before.

… and yes, we will include hands-on practice!

Some Practices We’ll Cover:

• No-till, or till-once gardening – how does it work, really?
• Lazy composting
• Sheet mulching
• Turning weeds into abundant soil with “chop and drop”
• Creating homemade biochar (if fire weather allows 🙂 )
• Using cover crops wisely
• Hugulkultur – burying wood as a carbon sponge
• Water-smart gardening
• Other creative sources of fertility available in your community
• …Plus, a whole bunch of ways you can eat or use common garden “weeds”

Good soil is more than the foundation of good gardening. It’s the greatest ally you will have for healthy plants that can take care of themselves.

Learn and practice these techniques, and the generations after you will inherit a far deeper soil than what you started with.

Venue and Workshop Details:

Our Saturday afternoon workshop will be held at Jubilee Healing Farm – a beautifully tended small farm located on 10 acres in Hillsborough, NC that supports volunteer and community-building activities and workshops for people seeking healing.

We’ll have the workshop outside unless the weather is truly extreme.  Please wear comfortable clothing for the day. If it’s going to rain a little, bring rain gear.

We may do a little forest walking.  Good to wear compatible footwear.  If you’re concerned about ticks or other itchy expressions of the local ecology, please bring non-toxic insect deterrent.

What to Bring:

• Journal and pen
• Your own lunch and any snacks you need (kitchen available to heat up food)
• Water bottle
• Work clothes you don’t mind getting a little dirty

Also:

• Openness to different ways of seeing and living
• Kindness towards the plants, animals, soil, water, and other people here
• Inclusivity and welcoming spirit towards the people in the workshop
• Willingness to put your phones away and tune into your senses
• Curiosity about life and what each other and the land has to say

Sign-Up

This year, we’re offering sliding scale tickets at two different prices. Please only take a reduced price ticket if you are in significant financial need. Full-price tickets make it possible for us to continue this work. Thank you for your support.

In the morning before this workshop, we’re also offering a class on Local Herbal Medicine Making. Come to either or both!

Check out the other workshops in our Fall 2026 Permaculture Skills series

About the Facilitator:

Matthew “Watersong” Tracy started practicing Permaculture in 2011 and received his design certificate from Wild Abundance in 2015. He has been consulting and teaching as a Permaculture Designer since 2018.

Along the way, he learned from numerous Permaculture teachers, tended land with minimal inputs, worked with around 70 clients on their land, lived off-grid for a decade, and made (… and still makes!) a whole lot of humbling and valuable mistakes on his way back to life in harmony with the earth. 

Matt is also an herbalist (…in training, like all herbalists..!) and has been putting strong-tasting plants in bottles to make helpful things happen since 2007. He prepares dozens of local herbal medicines for his community every year. 

With all that experience, Matt is ever a beginner and student of the land. Nature is infinite. What can we do but listen and try?

Matt is honored to be a Permaculture guide to anyone interested in coming a little closer to the earth. Becoming a father in 2023 has made passing down these teachings that always consider future generations more important than ever.

Read the rest of Matt’s bio here.