Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Hey, if Jeavons actually meant biointensive would take working 10 hr./day,
every day, just for food, he would have been dismissed as a crank years
ago. Obviously that's a misreading, perhaps taking his statements out of
context. Bottom line: if his biointensive took such a ridiculous amount of
time and labor, the book would never have gone through so many editions, or
been translated into many other languages, or sold more copies than just
about any other gardening book in print today. 

I think a fair comparison would be to compare biointensive to conventional
row cropping of vegetables. How much daily time does it take to grow the
same amount of produce by conventional methods? Figure it takes an average
20,000 to 40,000 sq ft to grow the same amount as biointensive grows on
4,000 sq ft. If you can't take care of 4,000 sq ft, you'll never handle
20,000 to 40,000 sq ft of garden alone. 

I have his 1991 edition.  On page 70 he states about "5-10 minutes a day to
maintain a 100-square foot area--an area large enough to provide one person
with vegetables 12 months a year in an area with a 4-6 month growing
season." But what's involved in the "maintaining"? Hand watering? Planting
and harvesting? You can take ten minutes just getting to and from the
garden and inspecting it. And of course, the other 6-8 months of the year
in that climate don't have any plants to "maintain". And you're figuring
that 40 such beds would take 40 times as much time as a single 100-sq ft
bed, which doesn't hold. With more beds you'd be using some time and labor
saving devices such as drip irrigation etc. with economies of scale. 

I don't see 4,000 sq ft of beds required to feed each person (40 x 100 sq.
ft beds) in my 1991 edition. I have to assume that 4,000 sq ft would have
to include all food consumed by one person, meat, fruit, and grains in
addition to vegetables. If so, then at least fruit and grains shouldn't
take much time to "maintain" all year

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

"John's methods are nothing short of miraculous" -- Alice Waters, from the
forward in How To Grow More Vegetables, Jeavons. 

And from Bob Bergland, former Secretary of Agriculture, quoted in the same
book, "The Jeavons approach has done more to solve poverty and misery than
anything else we've done".
http://www.growbiointensive.org/publications_main.html#comments

"it takes commercial agriculture 22,000 to 42,000 square feet to grow all
the food for one person for one year, while bringing in large inputs from
other areas."
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC42/Jeavons.htm


*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 3/21/2007 at 9:10 PM E. E. Mitchamore Jr wrote:

>In order to properly consider all approaches to intensive gardening, I'm
>reading Ecology Action's How to Grow more Vegetables......  In one place
>it indicates their research shows 4,000 sq ft of beds required to feed
>each person (40 x 100 sq. ft beds).  In a different place in the book, it
>indicates "only" 15 minutes per day to maintain each bed, once they are
>properly prepared.  I woke up this morning realizing that is 10 hr./day,
>every day, just for food.  I can't do that.
>
>E. E. "Mitch" Mitchamore
>www.hillcountrynatives.biz
>