9 replies to this topic

[LaBellaVita]

I would love to discuss gardening methods with you all. Namely which ones would truly be best in a TSHTF scenario.


Option A: How to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons
I've heard great things about this double-dig method, its mentioned in several gardening books I have like The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live it by John Seymour and The Self-Sufficient Suburban Garden by Jeff Ball (learned about that book here!).

Plants here are planted very close together to get you more harvest for your space.

I loved this idea because its focus is on building up the soil, also due to the dense plantings you have high yields per foot and it seems there would be much less of a weed problem, but when I read about watering daily and I became concerned. Watering daily doesn't seem like an easy thing to do in potential TSHTF situation, even with water barrels. How much water can you store?



Option B: Gardening When it Counts by Steve Solomon

This book recommends you give your plants plenty of space so they don't have to compete for resources like water. He actually directly conflicts w/ what Jeavons said about being able to save like 70%-80% water by dense plantings! Help!



Option C: then there is the Back to Eden film which showcases this gentleman's extensive use of wood chips composted. LOTS of compost. And then more compost on top of compost. Sounds like that is all he uses. I know it takes time to make this kind of mulch, but I'm really looking at this...

Back to Eden

He discusses how well the mulch retains moisture and cuts down on weeds. And when I look at his garden, he has plants spread pretty far apart.



OK everybody, I would LOVE to discuss these gardening ideas! Do any of you have practical experience in any of these three areas? I'm all for the building up the soil aspect of the extensive composting/mulching in Back to Eden, sounds like its really low maintenance which I'm totally for finding the best way to utilize my time and still get really good results. And the tree companies around here will give free mulch. I like the dense plantings and building up the soil in Jeavon's method because I don't have a lot of land, denser plantings really are what I'd need, and well, Solomon's method on the surface makes sense but I really haven't read the whole book, so I can't say too much yet.

What gardening method do you REALLY think makes more sense in preparing for a TSHTF scenario? No store-bought amendments, no this, no that... only what is handy and can be composted. And that water question, how do you think water figures in... the more I think about this the more I think about Back to Eden.



Thanks!

Edited by LaBellaVita, 28 November 2011 - 06:28 PM.

[Amishway Homesteaders]

OK, here we go-
I plant mostly like the first one -Packing a lot in small raised beds to get the most vegetables in the smallest space.
BUT IF you do it that way more then one year you have to add a lot of compost or other things as the good soil will be used up very fast this way. It is also harder to rotate your crops (sun /shade) so some years I rotate the dirt! I just dig out one bed and then put the soil from another one into that and do the same thing with the next bed, and so on. This is also a great way to break up the soil and a good time to add things as you are mixing it all up.

[kappydell]

I use a modified technique based on Jeavon's raised beds, but I do not make beds. I plant wide rows, plants in the rows are spaced as per Jeavons' recommendations. Bush beans, peas, leafy greens, carrots, beets and onions seem to like the wide beds. For tall crops (pole beans, indeterminate tomatoes, peppers) I stake or cage them and plant in rows. Wide beds again for vine crops, with the edges planted with quickie catch crops like leaf lettuce, radishes, green onions or greens that will be out by the time the vines need the space. Potatoes do better for me in single rows, it is hard to hill them up in a close planting. I have also had good luck planting a ring of 4 bush bean seeds and 3 pole bean seeds around each pole bean pole. The bush beans bear earlier, and the pole beans still climb up for the season-long bearing.

The wide rows are tilled up in the spring, with walkways between remaining untilled. I find the alternating of loose fluffy rows with harder walkways acts like mini-terraces to catch the rain better in my sloping garden, and avoids the erosion that occurs when the whole area is tilled. I only need to weed the first 2 months in the wide rows, after that the plants do indeed crowd out the unofficial competition. Wide rows are easier to cover with plastic to warm them up for earlier plantings, easier to cover with floating row covers if I want, easier to treat for pests if needed, and cover with sheets for those early frosts in the fall. I sheet compost in the walkways (be sure to have the top layer be a 'brown' layer, a it is easier to walk on!) then the next year the walkways are tilled as rows, as I shift the rows down the hill to rotate the crops.

I only water once a week if there has not been a good rain. The wide beds produce enough for me without daily watering, even during the usual august drought. I water with barrels of rain water that are uphill from the garden. Gravity fed, leaky hoses are laid out on the uphill sides of the rows for a soaking. The rows help hold rain.

Vine crops are planted in very wide rows (6 feet) so they can spread, with early fast-harvested crops around the edges of the rows, picked before they need the space. I also mulch the vine crops with newspapers or wide leaves of mullein or butter-burr, or even dock. If the vines do not touch the dirt, I get no vine borers. I read that the eggs are laid in the soil and the larvae crawl up into the vines to eat and mature. That would explain its success,so if you have borers, mulch. You don't need more than a sheet or two of paper or a couple leaves in a layer. I also plant vines on the edges of corn and tomato areas. They can sprawl around the upright crops, shade out weeds, and (again, I read it somewhere) raccoons do not like to walk on those prickly vines. It bothers their tender tootsies, supposedly. You might try it if you have raccoons. Group your corn rows together for pollination, as it is wind pollinated. 4 to 6 rows planted 1 foot apart makes a wide bed, but helps pollination. I divide my admittedly long (40 feet) wide rows into smaller sections for early and late corn, early and late cabbages, etc. so when the early crops are done, I can remove them and put in autumn crops. Leafy greens, brassica, bush beans and brassica will all grow in the cooler autumn months. Bok Choy is a cool weather crop only. Kale will grow nicely until it is very cold and will hold in the garden even in snow! I have picked fresh kale in Wisconsin in mid December and it was delicious. Brussels sprouts kept in the garden through Thanksgiving!

Hopefully this will help, sorry for the long post.

Edited by kappydell, 29 November 2011 - 02:13 AM.

[Leanna1017]

I was a die hard raised bed gardener until I saw my yard on Google Earth. Thanks to satellite views you can pick out everyone in the neighborhood with a vegetable garden. Probably not a good thing unless you don't mind everyone descending on you when the SHTF. Now I am mixing things up. I am planting in irregular beds, in 5 gallon buckets for portability, and we put a few asparagus plants in among the weeds. We also have lettuce and radishes mixed in the the weeds. The front yard landscape has veggies too.

I am always adding compost to my nasty desert clay that passes for soil around here. Having hens is a huge benefit. Their water pans gets dumped into the gardens for fertilizer and we compost the straw and bedding from the coops. All egg shells are dried, ground up and added back to the soil since we lack calcium.

If (or probably *when*) the SHTF, we are screwed when it comes to water since we live in the desert. Right now we have lots of sturdy buckets that we use to collect rainwater and condensation from the a/c (about 4 gallons a day off the a/c in the summer). If things get bad we'll be hauing the buckets down the street to the canal to get water for the plants.

FYI - I get 4 and 5 gallon buckets from a friend who manages a restaurant. Begs me to tell people to come and get them since they just get thrown out. So - if you need buckets for food storage, water hauling or growing plants - please call your local restaurant, sandwich shop, caterer etc. They'll probably be thrilled to have you take them off their hands.

[Amishway Homesteaders]

I was a die hard raised bed gardener until I saw my yard on Google Earth. Thanks to satellite views you can pick out everyone in the neighborhood with a vegetable garden. Probably not a good thing unless you don't mind everyone descending on you when the SHTF.

Well now that I think about it you can see ours too.
So yes, you are right, might not to be best way to have something everyone will be wanting sitting right out there?

[Leanna1017]

I was a die hard raised bed gardener until I saw my yard on Google Earth. Thanks to satellite views you can pick out everyone in the neighborhood with a vegetable garden. Probably not a good thing unless you don't mind everyone descending on you when the SHTF.

Well now that I think about it you can see ours too.
So yes, you are right, might not to be best way to have something everyone will be wanting sitting right out there?

I was quite shocked when I saw the latest photo of my house of Google Earth. Not only can you pick out my gardens in the yard - you can see my DH standing next to our biggest raised bed. Big Brother is watching! LOL!

[mommato3boys]

We have done square foot gardens and homemade earth boxes the past few years. This year we didn't plant a garden but the years that I put some effort into it we usually get a fairly good return. We use a lot of compost in the beds during the winter to build them back up for spring planting. We also use lots of compost when we plant to help retain moist soil. The best year we ever had was the year we used wheat straw no weeds and it let the water through to the roots but shaded the soil and kept the sun from drying it out.

[Christy]

Due to intense rain here in summer hardly anything grew. But the cardboard I've put down helped suppress the weeds and allowed for less watering.
Also planting closer because the hoe didn't need to pass through it.
The cardboard will rot to compost over winter and add nutrients.

[themartianchick]

My main garden is probably kinda small compared to most of the rural folks here. Like Michael & Laurie, we live in an area that doesn't have really big yards. Our yard is about 3/4 of an acre, but I tend to not plant a lot of stuff in areas of the yard that are easily visible (except on Google Earth!)

I have a small raspberry patch and most of my neighbors are the type that would probably tell their chldren NOT to eat them because they are likely poisonous! (Raspberries are only recognized if they are in those little plastic boxes at the grocery store.) The patch is in the worst soil on the property and I am constantly adding ammendments to it. Compost, eggshells, you name it! The soil is bad because it is near a tarvia driveway to allow them to get plenty of sun and keep them from taking over.

My visible gardens more closely resemble weed patches but they contain my asparagus plants, a few herbs and tomatoes. In the spring, the peas are planted there. They started out as raised beds but somehow the weeds took over when hubby kept mowing the grass and shooting the cuttings directly in the beds....

My main garden in the back yard includes beans that trellis on the fencing and more tomatoes, peppers, groundcherries, volunteer potatoes, callaloo, collards, peas, cukes, New Zealand spinach, turnips, etc. Whenever a plant comes out of this area, a new plant goes in to replace it. I grow lettuces, arugula, garlic, green onions, herbs, rainbow chard, a round variety of carrots, more tomatoes, flowers and a few other things that I cannot seem to remember in pots. The lettuces and garlic are grown in windowboxes that reside on my potting table. My potting table also supports a small quail cage (and more herb pots) and then there is another quail cage in the backyard next to the garden. On top of that cage are many pots of herbs, flowers, etc... (I always include flowers to encourage the pollinators. This was the first year that we saw a resurgence of honey bees. IN prior years, we only saw one or two all season!))

This main garden isn't pretty to look at either, but it appears to be more "managed". The beans trellis on the fence and on sturdy callaloo plants. Cucumber and melon plants trellis on the fence or on tomato cages. Peas don't do as well in this garden but I do trellis them on the garden fence, as well. I also use yarn remnants to tie plants up and keep them out of the aisles. The planting areas are wide and densely planted. Things that trellis on the fence are harvested from OUTSIDE of the garden. The rest is reached via the two long aisles/paths.

At the end of the gardening season, I rake a lot of fallen leaves into the garden so that they can be tilled in during the spring. I have a compost pile and always throw old potatoes in there. I swear that I have no intention of growing potatoes and haven't planted any in years, however, they volunteer in my main garden and in my front yard flowerbed! So, I figure that anything that grows in the compost pile is free food in a situation. I keep nettle seeds on hand that can be sown if and we also cultivate a patch of lambs quarters. Most of what I grow in the garden will not be recognized as a food plant by most of my neighbors, but will grow fairly when intensely planted.

My gardening technique overall, borrows from many techniques...stealth gardening, a bit of lasagna gardening, some raised bed and container gardening and a bit of traditional gardening....Whew! Now this post was about as clear as mud...

[Annarchy]

We have "nasty desert clay" that grows Bermuda grass fairly well. I put my raised beds under the trees for natural shading due to our intense heat. I have another one in full sun, in a tree well after the tree fell over and had to be removed. I can not say that my garden would sustain us, due to it grow miniature plants for the past 10 years. We got dusted by a crop duster one year and it killed all my rose bushes, several trees and all my garden. Since then, I have spent countless hours trying to re-establish the soil. This year's winter garden has really impressed me. The plants are looking wonderful and we have gotten some nice radishes so far.