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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Comment on Jeavon's Work

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Comment on Jeavon's Work
  • Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 10:27:42 -0700


Excellent material, thank you. I don't plan to fight weeds myself. After
some initial weeding in new beds I expect mulch, intensive planting, and
avoiding cultivation will keep down weeds. Some weeds will also help
confuse pests, if any show up. I'll also put in some drip this year, got to
save time. I'm counting on the initial soil preparation with lots of aged
manure and alfalfa meal and mulch to conserve moisture and go easy on the
well. We located the Bernallio county chipper-shredder place with a
mountain of wood chips; they load your pickup for $5. We'll make a few runs
down there when it's too windy to work the garden. March came in like a
lamb ;-)

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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

On 3/22/2007 at 11:54 AM Sharon Gordon wrote:

>The only other person I know of who has done a complete nutrition garden
>and
>kept good time and yield records and made them available to others is
Albie
>Miles.
>http://www.cityfarmer.org/albie.html
>His nutrition garden covered 4,500 square feet, including paths,
>propagation
>area and compost piles, and 2,500 square feet of French intensive bed
>space.
>
>Here is what they say about the time spent:
>
>"Except for the first propagations in January, Miles did all the work
>himself. In the first few months he needed only about an hour a week for
>propagation and early sowings.
>
>"But the heavy work began with the planting in mid March. From then until
>June 10 he worked an average of five days a week, six or more hours a day,
>double-digging the beds, spreading compost, transplanting seedlings, and
>irrigating, cultivating, and weeding.
>
>"From mid-June through August, maintenance and irrigation kept him busy an
>average of four hours a day, twice a week. Then, once harvesting began on
>August 22, he was back to six-hour days, but still only two days a week.
>That included time to build compost piles, process the grains, and put in
>cover crops and winter crops.
>
>"The cover crops, which protect against erosion in the rainy season,
loosen
>the soil, and contribute to compost in the spring, consisted of vetch,
>oats,
>and bell beans. Miles finished work on the garden in early November. "
>
>So if you you change everything to a 5 day work week, your daily work
>average is per day:
>January-Mid March 0 hours 12 minutes a day
>Mid March-June 10 6 hours a day
>June 10-August 21 1 hour 36 minutes a day
>August 22-?November 2 hours 40 minutes a day
>
>Jeavons also believes that everything should be hand watered. If you use
>drip hoses or have consistent rain, you can reduce the time spent
watering
>to very little, but drip hoses will increase the cost. Jeavons' method is
>likely to use less water as you will stop once you see you have watered
>enough and it increases the chances that you will note problems early on
>looking over your crops while handwatering.
>
>Also, Miles time data was at its highest because he double dug all the
beds
>new for the garden that year. Once the soil is in good shape in future
>years, many of the beds will only need fluffing with the broadfork tool
>that looks like several pitchforks joined sideways. This is much faster.
>http://www.johnnyseeds.com/catalog/product.aspx?category=292&subcategory=63
6&item=9338
>
>Previously when I had well prepared beds, I could weed each biointensive
>bed
>once every 3 weeks in 5-15 minutes. Presently I am using a new to me
>garden
>space where thistles were allowed to go to seed for 30+ years so I have
10s
>of thousands of thistle seeds, so weeding every three days or so is
>important.
>
>Also consider which crops are easier to weed and can be weeded quiickly
>with
>a hoe or stirrup hoe. For example I can weed 100 square feet of potatoes
>or
>tomatoes faster than I can weed 100 square feet of spring onions. So when
>designing for nutrition, you might also consider gardening time per bed
for
>a given amount of calories and nutrition and ditto for harvest time.
Steve
>Moore has noted that it's more cost/time efficient for the market gardener
>to grow head lettuce than mesclun for instance. If you keep time records
>by
>bed/crop, you can soon determine what is most efficient for your area.
>
>For the long term, also plan for your garden to include a number of
>permanent plantings like fruit/nut trees and shrubs, asparagus, grape
>vines,
>perennial herbs, etc. They take less time after the first year or two and
>also can be worked on when the rest of the garden is not needing your
>attention.
>
>To save food preservation time and to spread out harvest time, you can
grow
>winter crops to full size in the fall and then use four season harvest
>techniques and and an unheated greenhouse as a sort of living
refrigerator.
>See Eliot Coleman's Four Season Harvest book.
>
>If you'd like to collect time and yield data on a small basis to see how
>much food you can grow with minimal time and money, you can join the 4
foot
>by 4 foot garden challenge at 4x4Garden@yahoogroups.com .
>
>Sharon
>gordonse@one.net
>
>
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