merefaith: discipleship in the ruins of empire

Given the comments friends have made to recent posts, I thought I would share from my own experience of getting started in gardening. Living into a biblical agrarian practice doesn't require 40 acres and a mule. It might not require leaving a developed area at all. In fact, from the theological end of things, Ellen Davis intends in her final chapter, "The Faithful City," to tease out an Old Testament view of city-country mutuality. From the practical end of things, one may consider perusing Path to Freedom, the online account of one urban household (in Pasadena, of all places), that produces up to 6,000 pounds of food each year from a 1/5 acre lot. That certainly got me wondering about my comparatively extensive .42 acre property!

I account this coming spring as Garden 4.0. My first attempt, in Spring 2007, sprang out of a zeal not according to knowledge. Having read hardly anything about gardening, I simply worked in some Miracle Grow into a patch of soil in a fenced-off area of the back yard (to protect it from my roommates' dogs) and planted herbs. Several sprang up...but then the dogs made their way into that space and trampled pretty much everything. What was left died a slow, hot death under drought conditions while I worked at Koinonia Farm. In Spring 2008, the dogs were gone, and I used cinder blocks for miniature raised beds in which I planted lettuce. Again, I used a soil-Miracle Grow mix. Some of the lettuce endured my neglect as I turned to finishing school and getting married, and even lasted into the summer. Very little was harvested, however.

Finally, with space and relatively free weekends, I established my first bed in the summer and planted onion, parsley, chives, okra, corn, pepper, mint, and a tomato plant. The garden started strong but several varieties succumbed to disease or pests. I got the strongest showing from the herbs and green onion tops. I currently have some lettuce that I have a faint hope will overwinter, but otherwise the garden is bare.

Both I and Craig, my generally silent partner on this blog (grin), garden according to the very easy, perfect-for-beginners "Square Foot" method. You don't have to know much anything about gardening and you don't need a lot of tools to get started this way. I can tell you that SFG is one form of a family of intensive-raised bed gardening methods, but you don't even need to know that, either! You do want to know its advantages:

• You can locate the bed pretty much wherever you want as long as it gets enough sun.
• No digging or tilling of soil required (in the updated version).
• You get about the same yield for 1/5 the space, which conserves a lot of water.
• Weeding is much reduced and nearly nonexistent.
• The book helps you figure out how to plant for a relatively continuous harvest of food.
  

SFG was started by a retired civil engineer, Mel Bartholomew, a few decades ago. The basic premise: build a frame of whatever size suits you and your needs, measured out by square feet (Mel prefers 4x4 boxes). Tack weed cloth on the underside. Create "Mel's Mix" for your soil (1/3 mixed compost, 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, all available at Lowe's or Home Depot) and fill the box. Plant your seeds and off you go. After you harvest a plant, just spade in a little compost in its place before planting again.


And there are variations on this. You can go to the GardenWeb forum and learn about how different people modify the method and the mix. If you have pretty good soil at your house already, you might just dig it up and mix it with Miracle Grow or compost instead of buying bags of peat moss and vermiculite that will end up being more expensive.

There are two disadvantages I can see to starting with SFG. They don't outweigh its ease of use that can welcome anyone into gardening, but they should be kept in mind for the future. First, Mel's book doesn't have any real insight about organic responses to pests and disease. You'll need to get your hand on other resources for that. Second, giving your bed a "floor" such as weed cloth (or even wood for portable beds that Mel mentions) prevents your garden's full participation in the ecology of its place. SFG is organic and environmentally-friendly...with the one great exception that your garden will not contribute to the building up of a rich, healthy soil structure. Consider learning about other raised bed methods (see here and here) and applying that information in the future. Also, invest in a couple of other gardening books. Here are the ones I currently own and read:

Four Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from your Home Garden All Year Long

Gardening When it Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners

My plan this spring is to continue SFG essentially as is with perhaps four 4x4 beds in the yard, to be supplemented with some trellis crops along the south-facing wall of the house and some shade-friendly plants in a small, soil-bound bed along the north wall.

Oh, and you can teach yourself some of the broad context for sustainable food production with the Internet program Agroinnovations. No digging required for this one, either.

Labels: Agrariana, Discipleship, The Pleasures of Life

Posted by Chris Schelin on Thursday, January 29, 2009 at Thursday, January 29, 2009 | Permalink