Biointensive mini-farming: grow more food in less space
With just one-tenth of an acre of space, it's possible to grow your entire diet, claims a Northern California gardening research group. Back in the 1970s, Ecology Action and group founder John Jeavons outlined a system called Grow Biointensive. Biointensive agriculture isn't a new way to garden, but instead it relies on principles used by ancient Greek, Roman and Chinese. It focuses on teaching individuals- not large-scale farmers- to enrich their soil so that they can grow their own food close to population centers. Outlined in Jeavon's book "How to Grow More Vegetables: Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine", Grow Biointensive uses 8 principles: compost application, deep soil preparation, intensive plant spacing, companion planting, carbon farming, calorie farming, open-pollinated seeds, and farming as a whole system. Biointensive mini-farming techniques, according to those at Ecology Action, make it possible to "produce 2 to 6 times more food, build the soil up to 60 times faster than in nature, if properly used reduce by half or more the amount of land needed." In this video, we visited the a Grow Biointensive demonstration garden in Palo Alto (run by the organic garden center Common Ground) where Robin Mankey shows us strategies for calorie farming like double digging and planting 60% carbon, or compost, crops to maintain soil fertility and talks about how if we want to grow our own, we'll likely have to change our palate (think amaranth, quinoa, buckwheat and sorghum). More info in original story: http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/biointensive-mini-farming-grow-more-food-in-less-space/
Comments
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Looks like a crap system.
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Are those starting flats store bought or home made?
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another method but a little more labor intensive is to actually dig out that second level rather than fork it and put in manure and mulch. then when the two layers are added back I have reversed them and turned the sod level upside down then added the the second dig on top of that then you have a raised row. with horse manure i managed to get 14 feet tall cannas.
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double digging actually works quite well. i dont understand what is meant by "destroying the soil. no till has a place but i dare someone to show me no till methods that are as productive as double dug, all else being equal.
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Typical liberal. Thinking she knows best for everyone. I doubt she's still growing after California's water restrictions. Thank your senators/governor for your failures out there... They are directly responsible.
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Very true
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Double digging actually destroys the soil. So many errors in this video. GMO misinformation... sad
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This person has no idea what she is talking about when she speaks about GMOs.You can grow them with no additional chemicals at all, you just cannot take advantage of the genetic trait of herbicide tollerant GMOs without the herbicide. Her claim that there is lost knowledge about how to harvest amaranth makes no sense. There are probably hundreds of thousands of people with that knowledge, there are probably more people now who know about how to grow amaranth to maturity than have ever existed on the planet before. This knowledge is all becoming more accessible and more wide spread and we are learning new things that no one ever knew before. It might be romantic to say that it's lost knowledge, but that claim does not reflect reality.
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the leaves of the Quinoa are edible and you can eat it while it is growing, then stop when it forms seed pods and the other grain leaves are edible too.
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dont want to be an ass, but from the title i thought the video would be about about actually using less space than usually to grow food, but as it turns out its just a normal home garden with different kinds of foods. I didnt know its a special thing int he US. Where i come from it would be special not to know about these things.
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they are called voulcher capitalist
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+mdssdp Ever heard of Jean Pain compost method that produces biogas, hot water, and free humus fertilizer? It uses forest wastes and wood wastes and woody plants which is pulverized and moistened with water and used to produce all 3 products but it is the humus which is critical. Once produced and used with firewood crops the use of humus will synthetized water and produce giant crops, no watering needed. Collected rainwater will be sufficient but as time passes the water synthetizing humus will become thicker and richer until using living mulch with a hand powered mulching mower will provide the moisture trapping mulch which eventually decomposes into water synethetizing humus while at the same time the humus will produce more living mulch biomass. A self-regenerating cycle which, once in place and established can become moisture self-sustaining.The use of saxual desert trees for alley cropping might be of help to you Amerikanskies.
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What location are you in?
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Hi Kirsten, As a gardener who has the same values as you when it comes to nurturing the soil, i really recommend you watch the documentary "back to eden". digging (especially double digging) does not nurture the soil. it disrupts the microbial activity, kills worms and releases the nitrogen. please watch back to eden.
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Either aquaponics or back to eden gardening. I haven't seen anything else that impressed me quite as much as these.
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This was (is) a great book illustrating a proven method of gardening. From lunar phase seed planting to rotation to calorie information. Good book.
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Couple questions: 1-why is there tinsel hanging on those posts? 2-why no mulch/ground cover?
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No offence but in my experience manipulating the soil in any way makes growing your food far more labor intensive. tilling and digging is like a drug, once you stars it is hard to stop so why start in the first place. It forces you to use large amounts of water. if you simply mulch and keep a ground cover to slow evaporation you can save yourself a lot of work. But than again if you are farming for exercise it would be very beneficial.
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If organic seeds are becoming harder to get then you should sell some to apread their use so they dont die out!
Organically minded people/omps should make their own seed bank for the sake of nature and the planet! -
This is a very useful and informative video. Id love to know which grains you end up choosing and their nutritional value!
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