Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

She writes this about her system versus biointensive:
   "One of my biggest worries is peak water, even here in our lush rain 
forest-like zone.  I water some crops, but most of our gardening utilizes the 
dust mulch method, which requires wide spacing between plants and rows.  This 
isn’t new, this is what people have done in our climate for years, and still 
are doing on the truck farms that have survived.  Anne and Eric Nordell have 
coined the phrase “bio-extensive” to fend off the “bio-intensive” hecklers.  
It’s a sad commentary that sometimes they are chastised for not using 
irrigation.  Go figure..
   "I have a real problem with the methods outlined by John Jeavons and Mel 
Bartholomew using so many inputs.  In a frugal garden, and in low water times 
where do they actually expect people will get all the extra fertilizer and 
water to take care of these intensive gardens.  I know there is no easy 
answer, and it’s easy for me to say when I have ample space.  People tend to 
take soil and water for granted.   But it isn’t my fault that California is 
trying to get the water from the Pacific Northwest to continue irrigating a 
desert.  Or that people even live in a desert to begin with.  If you live in 
an arid area and your water comes from a tap, what shape is the aquifer 
beneath you in?  The ones here are shrinking, and we are in a high rainfall 
area.  Aack, I need to quit ranting and nagging, that never works.  Sorry.  I 
am not saying use no water, but maybe just think of the alternative, at least 
a little… ."

My reaction: we can all work it differently. But with the economy what it is 
and bound to get worse, the most urgent need is for millions to fall back on 
growing what they can with limited space. The unemployed or underemployed, 
the students flipping burgers with staggering college debt, the stay at home 
spouses with time to garden - millions of these can help themselves by 
growing some of the food they can't afford to keep buying. Few of them will 
have a big farm like that or money to invest in it. They'll need free or low 
cost soil amendments and mulch (to save water and weeding), and they'll need 
to get the most from whatever space they have to grow in without tractors or 
even tillers. They need biointensive, permanent beds.

Her "dust mulch" method admittedly wastes a lot of garden space, and why she 
uses it is a mystery in a "lush rain forest-like zone". Even with an 
inefficient row system she could easily double production by irrigating a 
little more and giving up wide spaces between rows that were needed for dust 
mulching. Besides, dust blows away. Remember the Dust Bowl? Dust mulch 
farming is simply unsustainable.

She questions the cost of intensive growing, "where do they actually expect 
people will get all the extra fertilizer and water to take care of these 
intensive gardens"?  Well, I don't buy the commercial amendments Mel promotes 
and neither does Jeavons. Forget fertilizer. People will need to locate 
organic waste, manure and trimmings and compost and such, as many of us do 
now. I used to collect lawn bags to compost. And I suspect many backyard 
gardens could be watered with greywater now going into the city sewer 
systems, along with rainwater catchment. We're semi-arid on a well on a 
closed fossil aquifer where the worst usage by far is some huge alfalfa 
fields with pivot sprinklers, and that mostly goes to livestock that take far 
more water to grow than using it to grow food directly.

Most of us won't have enough rainfall or space enough for dryland farming, 
much less unmulched, inefficient tractor rows. She may grow successfully, but 
not sustainably, and somebody needs a lot more food from the amount of land 
she uses inefficiently.

My two cents on it.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net


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

On 11/24/2010 at 10:28 AM EJ wrote:

>Here is an example of someone who has successfully dry land, row
>gardened for years:
>http://matronofhusbandry.wordpress.com/2008/08/16/vegetable-tour-progess-and-notes/
>
>http://matronofhusbandry.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/a-little-garden-time/
>
>Which gardening method works depends on many conditions - soil, weather,
>climate, what you want to grow, water availability, livestock and what
>lastly what feels right for the gardener.
>
>
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