Worms also are so active that the leaves and peelings disappear overnight. Leather boots take a little longer, jeans a week or so, and dead ducks a few days. Whether from neighbours untended fences, or from the uncontrolled edge of your own cultivation, the mulched area of zone one is under constant attack from ground invaders. Comfrey or any vigorous herbs should be planted as a barrier around your protected area, mulch it with cardboard, sawdust and straw, and rest easy from the labour of keeping your borders safe. The same approach can be used to contain useful rampant species, so that blackberries can be confined to openings in the forest, reedmace to pond edges surrounded by alder, and mint confined by shady dense bushes, rather than in tubs.
Hens make a mess of mulch, but ducks can be released in mid winter to clean up slugs and snails.
Sawdust, toads, frogs and birds protect from slugs, snails, wood lice and earwigs. There is no need to rotate plants in this system, or to 'rest the ground'. Potatoes are simply placed on top of the old mulch and re-mulched. But then there is no need to leave room to hoe or dig either, so plants may be stacked much more closely, preferably in mixed beds rather than in strict rows. Overall vitality is raised.