chromiated copper arsenate …very bad… very residual in tissue
They just plant in rows, with everything really spaced apart, and to me, this doesn’t seem to utilize the space/mimic nature in anyway… I want to use raised beds because that way the plants’ roots will not get compacted when you walk in the garden, allowing healthier roots and plants to grow, less disturbed…
They also do not utilize companion planting to the extent I want to, which I think is very important for organic gardens and a self-supporting system… and they have no water concerns addressed (this last summer there was a drought and the garden did not do very well because they don’t water it) like water retention in the soil/compost/mulch that I want to experiment with…
Thanks for the book recomendations, I think that they will be on my christmas list!
-emily
regarding water: you’ll find that addressed in “Gaia’s Garden”, but i’ll share the best suggestions: swales, dead-wood swales, and hugelkulture. these are all on my list of things to try (i’ll say upfront, that i haven’t really put these to the test yet as i only found out about them mid/late summer)
swales are when you dig a trench with a berm on the down slope side. the bottom of the trench is kept completely level and runs along the contour of the land. this helps to retain water longer, allowing the soil to absorb more of it. generally the berms are planted. the size of the swale is dependent on both the slope involved and the amount of rain/snow that gets dropped at any one time (so if you get heavy downpours during one part of the year, you want wide and deep swales to hold all that water). here’s a link (not the best, but it should get you started).
deadwood swales are similar, but the trenches are at least partially filled with dead, dry wood (or other high carbon material, like straw). the dry wood, being in contact with soil, will slowly rot, and while it does that, it also helps to retain additional water.
hugelkulture is somewhat similar but smaller scale. you take dead wood (twigs, small limbs, etc), lay them out on the ground, then cover with soil/mulch. again, the wood helps to absorb and retain moisture. this method is supposed to be particularly good for things like melons, squash, potatoes (“hill” crops, I suppose), but i would think the applicability would be much larger than just those.
also, i’ve been doing research on positive impacts people can have on the earth, i’ve come across “terra preta”, which appears to be a soil made by including charred wood (charcoal) along w/ organic fertilizers into garden soils.
as for the row plantings, have you looked into John Jeavons’s Grow Biointensive? i won’t lie, it’s labor intensive, but it stresses efficient spacing. you may be interested in reading about their spacing methods. his group (Bountiful Gardens) has a website here and you can probably find the main book at your library (or borrow it via intralibrary).
ooh, one last thing, it’s still a good time of year to grab those bags of leaves…
I’ve always considered permaculture and gardening, Agriculture.
a lot of people consider them the same, but a lot of people also see a big difference between gardening & farming
for my part, i see too many differences to lump them together
I think it depends on how you garden. If you’re using nasty chemicals and in other ways screwing up the ecosystem, then it’s still agriculture (or you might as well call it that). 
right, I view permaculture as a way to learn about how different plants and ecosystems work together, it’s kind of a mini-self-supporting ecosystem that you are creating, with the added benefit that you will gather food and sustenance from it… but it will exist and thrive on it’s own…
agriculture is the large scale “farming” of a land, stripping it of all the valuable nutrients and replacing them with temporary nutrients made available solely for the crop, not the earth or organisms living in it… at least that is how conventional agriculture works… I believe even that “sustainable” agriculture cannot be sustainable, it takes to much land and energy to produce mass crops.
agriculture depends largely on mono-cropping (growing one type of vegetable or crop per plot of land) while permaculture and gardening rely on several different varieties of plants working together (companion planting, organic gardening) to support each other, and other things like composting, mulching, etc to give back to the earth the nutrients which are used by the plants… also, depending on what type of plants you include, will determine which nutrients are used and given back…
Agreed. Or, as I’ve phrased it elsewhere: even with organic agriculture, you’re still altering an ecosystem to serve solely human needs. I think the only advantage to eating organic would be personal health benefits; there is no substantial advantage from an ecological point of view.
I respect the dictionary like definitions and calculations, I just don’t necessarily agree 100% with them. They reminds me of “Old minds, Takers†whom which I’ve observed knowing of only one agriculture, “Agriculture â„¢.â€Â
Anyway, I also count “full-time agriculture (totalitarian agriculture)†and “part-time agriculture (semi-agriculture)” as agriculture nowadays; before reading, Ishmael, I viewed it as one thing, just agriculture.
But, anyways, “not agriculture,” ha ha.
I noticed that, Minor’s lettuce (Montia perfoiata), from the, Purslane, family has small sprouts on the ground some places around this neighborhood I live in during this time of the year. I’ve never watched their growing season completely before. In fact, it excites me to have an interest in it and the opportunity to observe them fully this year. I walk pass some like everyday, watching for signs of the sprouts dying back during this late fall and upcoming winter chill, but they haven’t, they still taste delicious and hold a succulentness about them all over their light green bodies with aboveground parts reaching about an inch into the sky.
mmmmmm, miner’s lettuce, me too, neighbor! I just munched some new growth the other day–it likes to grow under a couple of trees I know. i felt happily surprised to see it back already, too.
We’re getting a basketful of green beans from the garden every few days now. We wash them, cut them, blanch them and freeze them. We used to can our beans but since we have a freezer we have been freezing them. I do like the taste of the frozen beans much better than the canned ones. Closer to a fresh bean.
I have strung them up and dried them in the past too which worked out really well. That would be my next choice after freezing I think.
I like beans, they are pretty easy to grow, they don’t require a lot of special preparation to eat. They are easy to preserve for winter.
That’s funny! I came home last night (after working 7 days in the city) to my mother and step-dad blanching and freezing some very large bowls of freshly picked green beans from the garden!
Cool, we’re in rapport
The other item that we’re enjoying right now is corn on the cob! We don’t grow it, but fortunately some of the folks down in the valley do. We had some of the first ones yesterday.
There’s also “how to grow a forest garden” by Patrick Whitefield
Good stuff.