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News & ArtsSaturday, June 23, 2012
Chow / Life Intensive (Messy) Gardening
Posted by Goldy on Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 10:38 AM
- Goldy | The Stranger
- Squash, beans, lettuce, dill, and kale growing together in glorious harmony.
There's a story that the first European settlers in North America were appalled by the gardening techniques of the natives who, instead of planting in neat, homogenous rows, would grow corn, squash, and beans all together in a tangled mess.
I do a bit of both.
Given the limited space in my own backyard garden (I could have double or triple the space and it would still feel limited), I've tended to adopt and adapt "intensive gardening" techniques, in which I plant more closely together than traditionally recommended, and in succession, so as to maximize the harvest from each square foot of soil. The bed in the photo above is a great example.
This three-by-six foot raised bed isn't really big enough for the three winter squash hills within it (acorn, spaghetti, and butternut) let alone the rest of the plantings, yet as you can see it's going gangbusters. At the time I put the squash starts in the ground I sowed the perimeter with four different varieties of lettuce, and the space in between with two varieties of bush beans. Kale and dill also generously volunteered throughout the bed (let one or two dill plants go to seed, and you'll be eating baby dill throughout the next season).
As you can see the bed is beginning to get awfully crowded, with the squash leaves starting to shade out everything but the beans. That's fine. Baby lettuce, kale, and dill salad for dinner tonight it is. As my main crop grows, I gradually thin out (you know, eat) the interlopers. In the late summer, when the beans have played out (bush beans ripen all at once) I'll broadcast kale and mustard seed underneath the squash, some of which will surely survive to give me an overwintered early spring crop. Next summer this bed will host tomatoes.
The bed in the background tells a similar story. While my tomato plants are relatively generously spaced, I've temporarily filled in the gaps with arugula, spinach, basil, parsley, and of course, more volunteer kale and dill.
As you can tell, I love to garden. There's little in life I find more gratifying than growing, eating, and sharing my own food. But if you have the space and the inclination, it can also prove incredibly economical, providing a surprising amount of organic produce for very little cost.
3
Man I am jealous of those squash plants! Mine are way smaller, likely due to the appallingly crap weather we've had in Vancouver this June. I even lost my crooknecks, trying to start them again. I think the economical thing only kicks in after you've been doing it a few years and the costs start to amortise out. After putting in our raised beds and buying 4 yards of dirt, Mr. Teamcanada is keenly aware of how much our salad is costing us! Fortunately he is impressed with the flavour. My damn bush beans failed TWO times due to wet soil. The new batch seems to be catching, though. Good thing they give you a lot of seed in those packets.
4
It's not just a "story"; it's called a "milpa" and it is still the standard small-plot farming technique throughout the indigenous areas of southern Mexico and Central America. It has a solid foundation in science, as growing corn, squash and beans together in the same plot maintains soil nutrients in a way that single-crop farming cannot do, and thus cycles of cover crops, fallow seasons, or heavy applications of petrochemical fertilizers are not necessary.
Some milpas have been continuously farmed for thousands of years; and they are the chief repository of the remaining crop diversity, with hundreds of little-known varieties or landraces, attracting the attention not just of foodies and anthropologists but geneticists and people looking to explore the possibilities of the genetic potential of our foods.
There's a tortilleria in Oaxaca I desperately want to visit, which sells at least a dozen different heirloom varieties of local corn at any given time.
http://apps.cimmyt.org/english/docs/ann_…
https://nacla.org/node/5878
http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/3539-…
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/global/g…
Some milpas have been continuously farmed for thousands of years; and they are the chief repository of the remaining crop diversity, with hundreds of little-known varieties or landraces, attracting the attention not just of foodies and anthropologists but geneticists and people looking to explore the possibilities of the genetic potential of our foods.
There's a tortilleria in Oaxaca I desperately want to visit, which sells at least a dozen different heirloom varieties of local corn at any given time.
http://apps.cimmyt.org/english/docs/ann_…
https://nacla.org/node/5878
http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/3539-…
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/global/g…
5
@4: By "story" I mean that the European settlers were appalled. I'm not suggesting that the practice is mythical.
6
Gardening really is the most gratifying thing about our dank weather, so long as you pick the right things to grow. My favorites are strawberries and raspberries, because they're so expensive at the grocery and so cheap and easy to grow at home. They're like weeds! I have small plots of each and bring in at least a pint of the stuff a day. Also: herbs. I hate buying anything but basil and tarragon at the store, because everything else is so abundant in my garden.
I still haven't mastered tomatoes, but I've learned to love favas, kale, chard, spinach and zucchini, all of which grow abundantly and with so little effort. I'm snacking on a big bowl of raw favas right now!
I still haven't mastered tomatoes, but I've learned to love favas, kale, chard, spinach and zucchini, all of which grow abundantly and with so little effort. I'm snacking on a big bowl of raw favas right now!
9
@6, next year try to plant your tomatoes up against the sunniest side of your house, so any sun/heat reflects back at them. We built a skinny box along the south side of our house and our tomato plants were crazy big & abundant last year, even with our short & wet summer. We only planted our 6" about 3-4 weeks ago and they are already 2' tall w/blossoms.
11
I've found that squash plant do *great* planted close together, but run into powdery mildew problems come mid-September. Space them very far apart, imo, with plenty of air flow in the nether-regions.
13
@6 - basil and tarragon are super-easy in containers, as long as you have a sunny spot! French tarragon is a perennial and can live in a pot for years. Basil is a snap to start from seed, and will be nice and bushy if you pinch out the growing tip when it is a few inches tall. You should try them!
14
Instead of caging the squash, why not let them run out of the bed and into the grass? Works for me, but I suppose if your yard is small enough there might not actually be anywhere for them to run.
Anyway, squash want sun above their leaves; they don't care what's below them. If you have the open space, let them go where they like and save your dirt for actual plants.
Anyway, squash want sun above their leaves; they don't care what's below them. If you have the open space, let them go where they like and save your dirt for actual plants.
16
have you considered potato boxes? Great way to get a ton of food out of minimal square footage. Basically you put fence posts in the ground to define a box. Run a soaker hose down one of the posts, and nail wide boards (1x6) around the bottom to make the box. Line it with landscaping cloth, fill with soil and then plant taters. Then you basically just wait for the greens to grow tall enough to hang over the edges of the box. Add another level of boards and bury all but the top few inches of the plants. Repeat. You basically create a vine as long as the box is tall that sprouts out potatoes all along its length.
17
Goldy, your garden is beautiful. I do this sort of intense mixed gardening on a balcony with several large planters and pots.
@14 That's what I do with my cukes. One plant per large pot, then the vines spill all over the pavement and climb the rails. It's very pretty as well.
It's hot here in Northern VA, so about 1/3 of my summer crop is peppers. They love the heat and don't mind growing in the smallest of containers or crowded together. Tomatoes are the most difficult for me, since they get buggy and need a lot of space. Every large planter has a tomato or bean plant combined with chard, kale, basil, burnett or arugula.
Plants that do not work: carrots (too deep), brocolli and cauliflower (too damn BIG). I also have planters of perennial flowers to attract bees and prettify the place.
Oh, and a bucket of watercress. Grows well in a container that doesn't drain, in regular soil kept fairly wet.
It sounds messy and difficult, but it's really pretty easy (except for the watering).
@14 That's what I do with my cukes. One plant per large pot, then the vines spill all over the pavement and climb the rails. It's very pretty as well.
It's hot here in Northern VA, so about 1/3 of my summer crop is peppers. They love the heat and don't mind growing in the smallest of containers or crowded together. Tomatoes are the most difficult for me, since they get buggy and need a lot of space. Every large planter has a tomato or bean plant combined with chard, kale, basil, burnett or arugula.
Plants that do not work: carrots (too deep), brocolli and cauliflower (too damn BIG). I also have planters of perennial flowers to attract bees and prettify the place.
Oh, and a bucket of watercress. Grows well in a container that doesn't drain, in regular soil kept fairly wet.
It sounds messy and difficult, but it's really pretty easy (except for the watering).
18
Be wary about eating fava beans raw or cooked. It can trigger favism in people of Mediterranean origins.
19
How's the quality? In wine grape growing, high-end producers will plant their vines closer together than might seem sensible in the hopes that plant competition will lead to higher quality fruit with more intense flavors. Do you see a similar return?
20
The roots of beans host nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Corn, of course, is nitrogen-hungry, as is squash. It's science.
22
Lima beans & sunflowers & acorn squash are my trifecta this year. I'm experimenting with letting the horsetails grow through the squash leaves to prevent powder mildew..... We'll see.
23
@21 I believe the main difference with close plantings is that you need to water them more and that, as others have pointed out, you will get powdery mildew faster. The latter I wouldn't worry about; the difference between early powdery mildew and later is only a few days, in my experience (once it starts raining in September, they're doomed).
There's also more of a concern with winter squash of getting the flowers pollinated. Close planting should help (more flowers = more attractive to pollinators), as will planting something like a marigold. But you can also hand-pollinate them. http://www.gardenguides.com/126589-polli…
Those instructions are a little too genteel for me. I just pull off the males and rub them on the females, like they're having flower sex. In a pinch, I've even cross-bred squash varieties when there were no males blooming, and it worked out okay. Pollinators are likely to do that for you with 3 varieties growing in the same bed.
There's also more of a concern with winter squash of getting the flowers pollinated. Close planting should help (more flowers = more attractive to pollinators), as will planting something like a marigold. But you can also hand-pollinate them. http://www.gardenguides.com/126589-polli…
Those instructions are a little too genteel for me. I just pull off the males and rub them on the females, like they're having flower sex. In a pinch, I've even cross-bred squash varieties when there were no males blooming, and it worked out okay. Pollinators are likely to do that for you with 3 varieties growing in the same bed.
24
When the growing season ends, I'll happily take those tomatoes that didn't ripen. I've used up all of the green tomato chutney that I canned in recent years.
26
I'm doing something similar, on a smaller scale sounds like. Also, I have a white shepherd which looks a lot like that dog. Mine may be a bit longer in the face, but it could be the angle.
28
@26: She's a lab/shepherd/dingo mix. Well, her mom was a lab/shepherd mix. We like to guess on the dingo part. Google "Carolina Dog" or "American Dingo" and you'll find some strikingly similar characteristics.
29
@9 My garden isn't close to my house, but I'm trying lots of things with my tomatoes this year: trench planting, water walls and lots of fish fertilizer. Fingers crossed...
30
@13 I had no idea tarragon was a perennial! Mine always die so quickly. I do keep basil, tarragon and a bunch of other herbs in containers against the southwest side of my house where they get a great deal of sun. All of the herbs do really well except the basil and tarragon, which need a lot more babying. This year my basil is thriving but the tarragon died after two weeks, so I'm starting from scratch with a new plant this weekend. I'd love to have tarragon all year round—it's my favorite.
33
And how does it compare when you factor in how much time you spend?
If you like gardening, great. It's also good for your health, but, factoring in economies of scale, it's guaranteed that you're losing money (when factoring in the cost of your labor) compared to just buying produce at the store. Ask someone who raises their own chickens. Even not counting the cost of labor in taking care of them, it's guaranteed that they're spending 75 cents to a dollar per egg. That's not economical by any measure.
But if you have the space and the inclination, it can also prove incredibly economical, providing a surprising amount of organic produce for very little cost.
And how does it compare when you factor in how much time you spend?
If you like gardening, great. It's also good for your health, but, factoring in economies of scale, it's guaranteed that you're losing money (when factoring in the cost of your labor) compared to just buying produce at the store. Ask someone who raises their own chickens. Even not counting the cost of labor in taking care of them, it's guaranteed that they're spending 75 cents to a dollar per egg. That's not economical by any measure.
34
@33: It depends on what you grow and what you're buying. I've got a 12-foot row of raspberries that must produce hundreds of dollars of berries a season compared to the $4-5 per half pint price for organic berries. It requires about 20 minutes of pruning a year, and maybe an hour of weeding, mulching, etc. The most labor intensive process is the picking. As for inputs, maybe a buck's worth of organic fertilizer, water during July and August, and the occasional replacement plant (I've spent maybe $75 over the past 15 years buying replacement crowns.)
Arugula is another great example. It grows almost year round, and requires little if any work. It's a fucking weed. Yet it's expensive to buy. As for my Yukon Gold potatoes, which aren't a particularly high value crop, they took almost zero work beyond turning over and amending the soil. And of course in almost every case, the quality of homegrown produce is simply better than what you can buy in a store.
Yes, it can take some time and expense to build a good raised bed. But once your beds are in place, gardening isn't nearly as much work as some people imagine.
Arugula is another great example. It grows almost year round, and requires little if any work. It's a fucking weed. Yet it's expensive to buy. As for my Yukon Gold potatoes, which aren't a particularly high value crop, they took almost zero work beyond turning over and amending the soil. And of course in almost every case, the quality of homegrown produce is simply better than what you can buy in a store.
Yes, it can take some time and expense to build a good raised bed. But once your beds are in place, gardening isn't nearly as much work as some people imagine.
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