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  • From: "E. E. Mitchamore Jr" <emitch@att.net>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Comment on Jeavon's Work
  • Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 16:35:40 -0500

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.
 
E. E. "Mitch" Mitchamore
www.hillcountrynatives.biz
----- 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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