Thank you for that post, it resonates deeply with me! We have always worked toward that goal and so far (about 10 years in) I can say it's working OK - a mixed vegetable/fruit backyard garden with no imported fertility and 0 synthetic chemicals.
But in order to do that, we set a realistic expectation from the get go. We don't expect to get truckloads of produce, but everything we get is a fully fruit of our land.
That picture of that tractor spreading muck says it all. Every year I grow 50,000 pounds of watermelons cantaloupes and other melons, squash, corn, cucumbers and a little bit of most other vegetables, and I harvest fruit and nuts from 1000 big trees I planted of almost every type of food tree that will grow in a temperate ecosystem. I'm trying to start a tropical one in Hawaii but it's hard to make the time to go there- at least Ive planted many hundreds of trees over there and they're growing with just little tiny 2 foot tall 3 rebar and chicken wire fences around them to keep the wild pigs off them. And those trees are growing 8 years now, some already big. Anyway look at the ground under that tractor. Very flat and compacted. Having shoveled mountains of manure myself, I prefer to use faba bean cover crops and I have some growing very thick right now covering about 10 or 15 acres. I throw them out by hand because the seeder just wastes too much overseeding and it's expensive seed. I've also got an acre of English broadbean Windsor fava beans growing a foot tall now and I need to plant another patch of those real soon to eat and sell more of them later... The soil should be nice and fluffy not all compacted, and choked full of green manure biomass. The ancient forest floor here where I'm at in norcal was 4 feet thick. It's good to try to build that up again. Now the salmon here are decimated from logging, but imagine how much better the fertility used to be with birds and bears pulling salmon out and spreading them across the landscape. Organic or bust
Thank you for that post, it resonates deeply with me! We have always worked toward that goal and so far (about 10 years in) I can say it's working OK - a mixed vegetable/fruit backyard garden with no imported fertility and 0 synthetic chemicals.
But in order to do that, we set a realistic expectation from the get go. We don't expect to get truckloads of produce, but everything we get is a fully fruit of our land.
So interested to hear about Swidden agroforestry - would love to weave that kind of process oriented approach into community gardening
That picture of that tractor spreading muck says it all. Every year I grow 50,000 pounds of watermelons cantaloupes and other melons, squash, corn, cucumbers and a little bit of most other vegetables, and I harvest fruit and nuts from 1000 big trees I planted of almost every type of food tree that will grow in a temperate ecosystem. I'm trying to start a tropical one in Hawaii but it's hard to make the time to go there- at least Ive planted many hundreds of trees over there and they're growing with just little tiny 2 foot tall 3 rebar and chicken wire fences around them to keep the wild pigs off them. And those trees are growing 8 years now, some already big. Anyway look at the ground under that tractor. Very flat and compacted. Having shoveled mountains of manure myself, I prefer to use faba bean cover crops and I have some growing very thick right now covering about 10 or 15 acres. I throw them out by hand because the seeder just wastes too much overseeding and it's expensive seed. I've also got an acre of English broadbean Windsor fava beans growing a foot tall now and I need to plant another patch of those real soon to eat and sell more of them later... The soil should be nice and fluffy not all compacted, and choked full of green manure biomass. The ancient forest floor here where I'm at in norcal was 4 feet thick. It's good to try to build that up again. Now the salmon here are decimated from logging, but imagine how much better the fertility used to be with birds and bears pulling salmon out and spreading them across the landscape. Organic or bust