Post by Jennibella on Jun 5, 2007 19:57:34 GMT -5
The Organic Gardener
Gardening for Survival
by Ann Cleary
Nature herself introduces enough difficulties for us to cope with. We should not therefore handicap ourselves further by sowing seeds that have been genetically engineered, whose long-term risks are unknown. Perhaps worse still, sterile seed, meaning dependency on a few companies that have managed to control the market and make enormous profits for themselves.
Seed saving has been the backbone of horticulture since humans first turned from hunting and gathering to cultivating crops in one area. The best seeds were selected each year for sowing the next season. By a slow process, productivity and climatic adaptability were achieved. The slowness of the system made it safe. Today new technologies are legislated before the public has any real understanding of what is happening and before contraindications emerge. It took 50 years before we fully realized what nuclear power, agricultural chemical fertilizers and pesticides have done to the planet and human health.
Originally, as their resources diminished, nomadic tribes moved to fresh territory. Their mobility created a sort of natural, rotational system attuned to ecology. With the coming of cultivation, however, populations increased, and this had to be matched by productivity. Settled cultivation led to other problems, such as diminishing soil fertility, an increase in bugs as plant diversity was lessened, population concentrations in cities, trade and competition, religious and territorial powers and wars—all affecting agriculture.
Defensive gardening
Defensive gardening has to deal with two problems: one induced by natural climate variation and the other resulting from human actions.
1. Natural weather extremes include drought, too much rain or snow, floods, late frost in spring and early fall frosts, wind storms, and hail. Hail is probably the most devastating to the home gardener. I have seen rows of cabbages and squash chopped to ribbons by hail in a few moments, but rarely is a garden totally damaged. Even severe hail will leave root crops to be salvaged. Biodiversity is a natural defence against adversity, and humans have devised strategies to combat most problems.
2. The problems that humans have induced or compounded are more difficult to deal with. However strictly you grow plants without using chemicals and pesticides, you cannot control the residues that your plants will receive from air pollution. Canada has a high percentage of air pollutants which come from pesticide sprays (your neighbour perhaps has chemical lawn care, or a nearby golf course is sprayed with weedkillers and insecticides regularly). Your only defence is not to add to the problem by using sprays yourself.
Rain is now falling that contains pesticides, and groundwater is contaminated. In many areas water can only be considered "safe" after treatment. Run-off from farm chemicals and animals, as well as industrial sites, is leaching into our rivers on their way to the sea, disturbing the ecology of the oceans, which normally are carbon "sinks" and suppliers of oxygen to the air.
We can garden to preserve moisture as much as we can, and save rain water for emergencies. It is probably better than treated water from mains. Treated water should sit 24 hours before being put on plants. Individual wells and springs on country properties provide the nearest to pure water, but streams and ponds near farm lands are often contaminated.
Soil fertility is something that home gardeners can improve. The addition of compost, composted manure, organic matter and appropriate minerals from reliable sources, plus patience and TLC, can improve poor soil tremendously. Plant rotations can maintain a balanced soil. Plants which encourage beneficial insects will help combat bad bugs, which only get stronger every year with the use of pesticides.
Quick maturing vegetables
The best way of getting the most out of your garden is to grow a good portion of it in quick maturing vegetables. Most of these are also cool, hardy plants which means you can get crops from them at both ends of the season. Mesclun is a mixture of salad greens, can be grown in batches throughout the year, and with the addition of quick maturing radishes, spring onions, chives and parsley can give you salads from spring to fall frosts. Spinach, if you sow seed in the late fall, will often come up early in spring before anything else, and successive plantings can be made. You can make your own mesclun mix by adding to the quick maturing lettuces such things as cresses, sorrel, endive and arugula. All the items can be grown separately if preferred. You can eat the flowers of chives and arugula.
White turnips and kohlrabi are also quick maturing and help fill a gap between the earliest greens and your main crop. There are quick maturing versions of carrots, beets, broccoli and cabbage. Your garden should yield perennial asparagus, rhubarb, Egyptian onions, perpetual spinach and chives before anything else. Winter, stored-in-the-ground vegetables such as leeks and parsnips can remain where they were grown all winter and survive to see spring. Garlic is sown in the fall and the crop is usually ready by early summer. As soon as your perennials are up and doing, you can sow your fast maturing salad greens and other vegetables and keep them growing all season in different garden spots—in shady places as summer approaches. They are accompaniments to your main garden and fillers in spaces that become vacant as crops are removed.
As your food crops mature, leave some plants to flower and seed. For others like peas and some beans and corn, the edible part is the seed, and all you need to do is dry them for next year's crop, provided the seed is open pollinated and not a victim of the Terminator Technology.
Our food dependency
We have to ensure that nationally there is enough food in storage in every region to see us through a major disaster. A country such as ours with a short growing season and dependency on others for food is vulnerable. The consequences of global warming could play havoc with our produce supplies from other countries in winter, and could seriously affect our own country in summer. Computer breakdown in Y2K may well result in acute disruptions in the agribusiness and transportation world.
In our own best interests, we must:
1. grow food organically for the health of the planet and ourselves;
2. save our own seeds and keep an eye on what the seed banks are doing nationally; and
3. see that this well-populated region has ample food in storage to see us through a major disaster.
All this, and garden too?? Yes—but is there anything more important than food? We depend on it for our health and well being.
SOURCE
Gardening for Survival
by Ann Cleary
Nature herself introduces enough difficulties for us to cope with. We should not therefore handicap ourselves further by sowing seeds that have been genetically engineered, whose long-term risks are unknown. Perhaps worse still, sterile seed, meaning dependency on a few companies that have managed to control the market and make enormous profits for themselves.
Seed saving has been the backbone of horticulture since humans first turned from hunting and gathering to cultivating crops in one area. The best seeds were selected each year for sowing the next season. By a slow process, productivity and climatic adaptability were achieved. The slowness of the system made it safe. Today new technologies are legislated before the public has any real understanding of what is happening and before contraindications emerge. It took 50 years before we fully realized what nuclear power, agricultural chemical fertilizers and pesticides have done to the planet and human health.
Originally, as their resources diminished, nomadic tribes moved to fresh territory. Their mobility created a sort of natural, rotational system attuned to ecology. With the coming of cultivation, however, populations increased, and this had to be matched by productivity. Settled cultivation led to other problems, such as diminishing soil fertility, an increase in bugs as plant diversity was lessened, population concentrations in cities, trade and competition, religious and territorial powers and wars—all affecting agriculture.
Defensive gardening
Defensive gardening has to deal with two problems: one induced by natural climate variation and the other resulting from human actions.
1. Natural weather extremes include drought, too much rain or snow, floods, late frost in spring and early fall frosts, wind storms, and hail. Hail is probably the most devastating to the home gardener. I have seen rows of cabbages and squash chopped to ribbons by hail in a few moments, but rarely is a garden totally damaged. Even severe hail will leave root crops to be salvaged. Biodiversity is a natural defence against adversity, and humans have devised strategies to combat most problems.
2. The problems that humans have induced or compounded are more difficult to deal with. However strictly you grow plants without using chemicals and pesticides, you cannot control the residues that your plants will receive from air pollution. Canada has a high percentage of air pollutants which come from pesticide sprays (your neighbour perhaps has chemical lawn care, or a nearby golf course is sprayed with weedkillers and insecticides regularly). Your only defence is not to add to the problem by using sprays yourself.
Rain is now falling that contains pesticides, and groundwater is contaminated. In many areas water can only be considered "safe" after treatment. Run-off from farm chemicals and animals, as well as industrial sites, is leaching into our rivers on their way to the sea, disturbing the ecology of the oceans, which normally are carbon "sinks" and suppliers of oxygen to the air.
We can garden to preserve moisture as much as we can, and save rain water for emergencies. It is probably better than treated water from mains. Treated water should sit 24 hours before being put on plants. Individual wells and springs on country properties provide the nearest to pure water, but streams and ponds near farm lands are often contaminated.
Soil fertility is something that home gardeners can improve. The addition of compost, composted manure, organic matter and appropriate minerals from reliable sources, plus patience and TLC, can improve poor soil tremendously. Plant rotations can maintain a balanced soil. Plants which encourage beneficial insects will help combat bad bugs, which only get stronger every year with the use of pesticides.
Quick maturing vegetables
The best way of getting the most out of your garden is to grow a good portion of it in quick maturing vegetables. Most of these are also cool, hardy plants which means you can get crops from them at both ends of the season. Mesclun is a mixture of salad greens, can be grown in batches throughout the year, and with the addition of quick maturing radishes, spring onions, chives and parsley can give you salads from spring to fall frosts. Spinach, if you sow seed in the late fall, will often come up early in spring before anything else, and successive plantings can be made. You can make your own mesclun mix by adding to the quick maturing lettuces such things as cresses, sorrel, endive and arugula. All the items can be grown separately if preferred. You can eat the flowers of chives and arugula.
White turnips and kohlrabi are also quick maturing and help fill a gap between the earliest greens and your main crop. There are quick maturing versions of carrots, beets, broccoli and cabbage. Your garden should yield perennial asparagus, rhubarb, Egyptian onions, perpetual spinach and chives before anything else. Winter, stored-in-the-ground vegetables such as leeks and parsnips can remain where they were grown all winter and survive to see spring. Garlic is sown in the fall and the crop is usually ready by early summer. As soon as your perennials are up and doing, you can sow your fast maturing salad greens and other vegetables and keep them growing all season in different garden spots—in shady places as summer approaches. They are accompaniments to your main garden and fillers in spaces that become vacant as crops are removed.
As your food crops mature, leave some plants to flower and seed. For others like peas and some beans and corn, the edible part is the seed, and all you need to do is dry them for next year's crop, provided the seed is open pollinated and not a victim of the Terminator Technology.
Our food dependency
We have to ensure that nationally there is enough food in storage in every region to see us through a major disaster. A country such as ours with a short growing season and dependency on others for food is vulnerable. The consequences of global warming could play havoc with our produce supplies from other countries in winter, and could seriously affect our own country in summer. Computer breakdown in Y2K may well result in acute disruptions in the agribusiness and transportation world.
In our own best interests, we must:
1. grow food organically for the health of the planet and ourselves;
2. save our own seeds and keep an eye on what the seed banks are doing nationally; and
3. see that this well-populated region has ample food in storage to see us through a major disaster.
All this, and garden too?? Yes—but is there anything more important than food? We depend on it for our health and well being.
SOURCE