What is the best method of growing food?
This was the question that originally prompted the development of a substantial portion of
the RED Garden Project that I have been working on for the last few years.
It consists of a series of six individual gardens, individual vegetable gardens, each
one about 100 square meters, and each one growing the full compliment of vegetables
that is appropriate for this climate.
Each garden follows a particular integrated methodology, a different way of gardening,
usually characterised and detailed by a particular author who’s written a couple of books about the topic
I’ve given each garden a nickname, a handle to help identify them.
I call them the Extensive, Intensive, No-Dig, Polycrop, Perennial, and Polytunnel.
The main focus of the Extensive garden is to produce really good quality vegetables,
with the highest nutritional density.
But this is balanced with using techniques that save time, are easier,
and increase the resilience of the plants.
This method was developed by Steve Solomon, who wrote about it in a couple of books including
Gardening When it Counts and the Intelligent Gardener.
To achieve this Steve Solomon recommends a careful mineral balancing of the soil, using soil tests
Then providing enough compost to feed the soil.
But in order to feed the plants, he recommends using a Complete Organic Fertiliser,
or what he calls a COF.
This is a mix of imported materials that is easy to use, easy to mix, and generally consists of
seed meals, limes, rock dusts and other imported materials to provide that complete diet for the plants.
This garden looks a lot like a traditional allotment, with straight, long, easy to manage rows of vegetables.
There’s quite a bit of space between each plant, allowing them to become larger and
reduces the risk of moisture and nutrient stress, by allowing each plant to colonise
a larger portion of the soil with its roots.
Wherever possible, the seeds are sown directly into the garden, avoiding the use of transplants,
and enabling the plants to establish a strong root system very quickly, which would not
be possible through the use of transplants.
Prioritising quality over quantity is an interesting approach, but essentially I think this garden
would be more appropriate for people who have lots of space and perhaps less time.
The Intensive Garden, on the other hand, focusses on increasing yield, using a lot of work,
effort and resources to maximise the amount of food that can be produced in the smallest
space, thereby leaving more space for others.
This bio-intensive method of growing was developed by John Jeavons in his book How to Grow More Vegetables,
and has become quite popular throughout the world.
This method involves the double digging of fixed beds, and incorporating huge amounts
of compost, to create loose, deep, highly nutritious soil.
A lot of compost is needed, which requires importing manure or other forms of fertility
from outside, or having a much larger garden and growing a substantial amount of biomass
crops specifically for composting.
In order to maximise yield, the plants in this garden are spaced quite close together,
but this has the added advantage of reducing the amount of weed pressure, and the amount
of water that is lost from the soil.
This garden focusses on the use of transplants in order to get multiple crops
in a given space in each year.
All of this double-digging, incorporating lots of fertility, managing transplants, is
a lot of work, but the extra yield is seen to be worth it, especially if you have a smaller garden.
The main focus of the No-Dig Garden is to improve soil biology by mimicking certain
aspects of natural ecosystems and reducing the damage caused by cultivation.
It partially follows the advice of Toby Hemenway in his book Gaia’s Garden, which uses a
deep mulch of organic matter.
This is quite common in the Permaculture movement, but I wonder how appropriate it is in Ireland.
The other option is to follow the advice of Charles Dowding in his book No-Dig Gardening,
which uses a deep mulch of manure or compost,
but this is a lot of resource that is not always available.
I’m working at trying to find a balance between these two approaches that is appropriate
for this context.
This method feeds the soil from above, allowing the decomposition of organic matter to take
place directly on the garden, potentially reducing or eliminating the need for a compost pile.
Whatever method is used, the soil remains largely undisturbed, allowing the worms and
other soil biology, and the roots of the plants to do all the work of cultivating.
Selecting a particular no-dig method is largely dependent on resources available, but factors
of soil temperature and slugs are also issues.
The main aspect of the Polycrop Garden is growing multiple crops in the same space,
mimicking certain aspects of natural ecosystems and avoiding mono cropping.
It is designed to increase the potential beneficial interactions between plants
while reducing excessive competition.
This is the least developed of the six methods that I’m using, and there are not a lot
of examples of how to use this method within this climate.
The best example I have come across is the polycultures developed by Ianto Evans, although
the Permaculture movement has a lot of possibilities, as does companion planting, but the specifics
of being able to use these approaches within an annual vegetable garden are fairly rare.
The key task is selecting a range of vegetables that work well together.
This can involve the use of broadcast sowing, carefully thinning, and harvesting plants
to create spaces where other crops can be planted.
It’s going to take a bit of work to really refine this method, particularly on how to
manage weeds, and how to reduce the amount of work that is needed in this garden.
I’ve only just started the work of developing the Perennial Garden, which has a permanent
planting of fruit and vegetables, with annual vegetables being sown into the mix.
It has a fair amount in common with the Polycrop Garden, and although there’s a lot of knowledge
about how to grow the individual species, integrated examples of using this method
in this climate are relatively rare.
One interesting aspect of this garden is that I am using hugelkultur, which is essentially the
burying of large pieces of wood in the soil in order to establish a more fungal based soil ecosystem.
Unfortunately there are not a lot of perennial vegetables that are appropriate for this climate,
and this garden is going to take a longer time to become really productive, and it’s
going to take a while to really be able to evolve and modify this methodology.
The main aspect of the Polytunnel Garden is to
cover the entire space with a piece of plastic.
This creates a more beneficial microclimate, increasing the amount of heat, and reducing the wind
Many people have been using polytunnels, but I have been following the work of Elliot Coleman
in his book the Four-Season Harvest, which focusses on getting a substantial harvest
out of the garden all year round.
This is an intensive approach, and by far the most productive garden,
with 3 and sometimes 4 crops in any given space in a year.
This requires a lot of inputs, a lot of compost, additional fertility amendments, and a lot of watering.
This garden requires a lot of management, and there are issues of maintaining adequate
ventilation, dealing with some of the pests and diseases that can dominate in a polytunnel,
but the amount of food that can be produced is really worth it.
Beyond the work that it takes to establish and maintain these gardens, the main task
really involves me skilling-up, to develop the knowledge and abilities to properly and
adequately manage each of these gardens, each of these different methodologies,
and to adapt them to this context, to this environment.
To get them to the point that they can be adequately compared, so that I can begin to answer the question
‘What is the best method of growing food?'
In a few seasons from now, when the gardens are fully developed, and I’ve evolved the
skills necessary to properly manage each of them, I look forward to being able to plant
the same carrot seeds in all six gardens and to harvest them at the same time.
And to be able to compare the yield, the appearance, the health, but also the taste and potentially
mineral content of those carrots from each of the different gardens, and provide some
answers to the question of what is the best way to grow food.
Because, perhaps, one garden will consistently produce better carrots.
I look forward to figuring out a lot of a lot of answers,
but no doubt I will come up with a lot of questions too.
I think it’s going to be a really interesting journey over the next couple of years.
I do hope you continue to follow the progress on YouTube.
But for now, thanks for watching.