Occasionally I will encounter a gardening book that will present completely new or detailed information that is not found in many other places. But for the most part, when I pick up a gardening book, I often find the book catalogues the ideas presented by others in various books and publications rather than introduce a new concept. Although Gardening for Geeks by Christy Wilhelmi fits much more into the second category than the first, it is still worth a read. Much of what I read in this book, although compiled from other works, included some good summaries of already existing reading material.
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| It was definitely worth looking through this book. |
Even though many of the gardening
methods presented in this book, including square-foot gardening, are really
good sometimes I wonder how much they get what happens in my region, such as
the high potential for insects and disease to completely wipe out a bed of
lettuce or tomato plants. It is not that writers of gardening publications are purposefully
misguiding readers, but when you live in an extreme climate it can be easy to feel
that garden book authors just don’t get it. That being said, some of the biointensive methods, such as the French Intensive, hexigonal planting and the 60:30:10 method really interested me. Even without knowing much about the French intensive method before digging my 24 inch deep mostly compost beds, it seems as if I am doing many of the same things that the French intensive method promotes.
The
most helpful bit of information I learned about was from a book called How
to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons. According to Jeavons (as cited by
Wilhelmi) a gardener can make their garden much more sustainable if they grow
utilizing a 60:30:10 formula for sustainability. The premise of this
sustainability formula is to have the land produce food for both the gardener
and the garden. Apparently it should be able to produce enough food for one person
by utilizing only 4,000 square feet of garden space. The way this formula works
is to commit 60% of garden space to crops that return large amounts of carbon
and nitrogen back into the soil such as grains, fava beans and cover crops to
create mostly biomass to be composted and some food. At the same time, 30% of
the garden should be designated for high-calorie crops, such as potatoes, sweet
potatoes, parsnips and Jerusalem Artichokes. Lastly, Jeavons says that 10% of
the garden space/time can be devoted to tomatoes, peppers, squash, lettuce,
carrots, etc.
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| My high-calorie sweet potato crop knows no bounds as it grows into the alley. (= |
While
I have slowly moved towards a method like John Jeavons’ biointensive method I
never thought that it could be related to biomass. Many of the 60 and 30% crops
deserve more time and room in the garden because they are much less work for the
organic gardener in relation to pests and disease than because they “environmentally
friendly”. Though most intensive gardeners may scoff at the idea of dedicating
so much of their plots to corn and potatoes, perhaps they will decide to raise more grain
and high-calorie crops when times get tough and they require a garden that is
more self-sufficient.
