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This is great stuff! I have
several questions:
1) Did Ecology Action document their time &
labor in any of their publications (other than what I've already referred to),
so as to compare with this study?
2) Has anyone done any similar yield/labor studies
for raised-bed no-till relative to feeding oneself in a sustainable
manner?
Actually, I have another question: Now that my
garden's planted (it's been drizzling for a few days), I need to apply mulch,
but I don't recall any conversations about what kind of mulch to use. I
have three main choices:
1) Double-ground and aged hardwood mulch (mostly
Oak, and fairly coarse).
2) Compost, which is #1 plus paper, spoiled milk,
manure, etc. and aerobically composted.
3) Fresh shredded hardwood from my own
trees.
Leaf mulch, pine bark, and other, commercial,
mulches are also available, but more expensive.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 11:54
AM
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Comment on
Jeavon's Work
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=636&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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