By
Jonathan White, environmental scientist.
Traditional
vegetable gardens require an enormous amount of hard work and attention -
weeding, feeding and strict planting schedules. There is also the problem
of seasonality, allowing beds to rest during the cooler months producing
nothing at all.
Then we are told to plant green manure crops, add
inorganic fertilizers and chemicals to adjust imbalanced soils. It takes
a lot of time, dedication and a year-round commitment to grow your own food the
traditional way.
But does it really need to be that difficult?
Let me ask you this question. Does a forest need to think how to
grow? Does its soil need to be turned every season? Does someone
come along every so often and plant seeds or take pH tests? Does it get
weeded or sprayed with toxic chemicals?
Traditional
vegetable gardening techniques are focused on problems. Have you noticed
that gardening books are full of ways to fix problems? I was a
traditional gardener for many years and I found that the solution to most
problems simply caused a new set of problems.
In other words, the problem
with problems is that problems create more problems.
Let’s
take a look at a common traditional gardening practice and I will show you how
a single problem can escalate into a whole host of problems.
Imagine a
traditional vegetable garden, planted with rows of various vegetables.
There are fairly large bare patches between the vegetables. To a
traditional gardener, a bare patch is just a bare patch.
But to an
ecologist, a bare patch is an empty niche space. An empty niche space is
simply an invitation for new life forms to take up residency. Nature does
not tolerate empty niche spaces and the most successful niche space fillers are
weeds.
That’s what a weed is in ecological terms - a niche space
filler. Weeds are very good colonizing plants. If they weren’t,
they wouldn’t be called weeds.
Now back
to our story. Weeds will grow in the empty niche spaces. Quite
often there are too many weeds to pick out individually, so the traditional
gardener uses a hoe to turn them into the soil.
I have read in many
gardening books, even organic gardening books, that your hoe is your best
friend. So the message we are getting is that using a hoe is the solution
to a problem.
However,
I would like to show you how using a hoe actually creates a new set of
problems.
Firstly, turning soil excites weed seeds, creating a new
explosion of weeds. And secondly, turning soil upsets the soil
ecology. The top layer of soil is generally dry and structureless.
By turning it, you are placing deeper structured soil on the surface and
putting the structureless soil underneath. Over time, the band of
structureless soil widens. Structureless soil has far less moisture
holding capacity, so the garden now needs more water to keep the plants
alive.
In
addition to this problem, structureless soil cannot pass its nutrients onto the
plants as effectively. The garden now also needs the addition of
fertilisers. Many fertilisers kill the soil biology which is very
important in building soil structure and plant nutrient availability.
The
soil will eventually turn into a dead substance that doesn’t have the correct
balance of nutrients to grow fully developed foods. The foods will
actually lack vitamins and minerals.
This problem has already occurred in
modern-day agriculture. Dr Tim Lobstein, Director of the Food Commission
said. "… today's agriculture does not allow the soil to enrich itself, but
depends on chemical fertilisers that don't replace the wide variety of nutrients
plants and humans need."
Over the past 60 years commercially grown
foods have experienced a significant reduction in nutrient and mineral content.
Can you
see how we started with the problem of weeds, but ended up with the new
problems of lower water-holding capacity and infertile soils. And
eventually, we have the potentially serious problem of growing food with low
nutrient content.
Traditional gardening techniques only ever strive to
fix the symptom and not the cause.
However,
there is a solution! We must use a technique that combines pest ecology,
plant ecology, soil ecology and crop management into a method that addresses
the causes of these problems.
This technique must be efficient enough to
be economically viable. It also needs to be able to produce enough food,
per given area, to compete against traditional techniques.
I have
been testing an ecologically-based method of growing food for several
years. This method uses zero tillage, zero chemicals, has minimal weeds
and requires a fraction of the physical attention (when compared to traditional
vegetable gardening). It also produces several times more, per given
area, and provides food every single day of the year.
My
ecologically-based garden mimics nature in such a way that the garden looks and
acts like a natural ecosystem. Succession layering of plants (just as we
see in natural ecosystems) offers natural pest management.
It also
naturally eliminates the need for crop rotation, resting beds or green manure
crops. Soil management is addressed in a natural way, and the result is
that the soil’s structure and fertility get richer and richer, year after year.
Another benefit of this method is automatic regeneration through
self-seeding. This occurs naturally as dormant seeds germinate; filling
empty niche spaces with desirable plants, and not weeds.
Unfortunately,
the biggest challenge this method faces is convincing traditional gardeners of
its benefits. Like many industries, the gardening industry gets stuck in
doing things a certain way.
The ecologically-based method requires such
little human intervention that, in my opinion, many people will get frustrated
with the lack of needing to control what’s happening.
Naturally people
love to take control of their lives, but with this method you are allowing
nature to take the reins. It’s a test of faith in very simple natural
laws. However, in my experience these natural laws are 100%
reliable.
Another
reason that traditional gardeners may not like this method is that it takes
away all the mysticism of being an expert. You see, this method is so
simple that any person, anywhere in the world, under any conditions, can do
it.
And for a veteran gardener it can actually be quite threatening when
an embarrassingly simple solution comes along.
I have no
doubt that this is the way we will be growing food in the future. It’s
just commonsense.
Why wouldn’t we use a method that produces many times
more food with a fraction of the effort? I know it will take a little
while to convince people that growing food is actually very instinctual and
straightforward, but with persistence and proper explanation, people will
embrace this method.
Why?
Because sanity always prevails…
…eventually!
Jonathan
White is an Environmental Scientist and the founder of the Food4Wealth
Method. Click on this link for more information Food4Wealth .
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Hope you enjoyed this article and it gives you inspiration of growing your own food more like mother nature intended.
We always love to hear from you, so leave your comment and happy gardening!
Allan & Heli Iso-Aho
Hey Johnny Mars, great collection of permaculture videos you have. Well done :-) Will go through those. Cheers, Heli.
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