I was recently invited by my friend William topost over at The Permaculture Apprentice .
If you ’re not conversant with William , he ’s a severely - working permaculture - minded market gardener in Europe who shares his abundant knowledge freely on his site . We first met thanks to our mutual friend Justin Rhodes and now we liken notes on a regular basis and have decided to collaborate on a few projection .
If you ’re build a newfangled homestead or hoping to make some money off your garden , I urge you hangaround William ’s site andsign up for his newssheet to get his permaculture farm guide . His Wiley Post are very good , very meticulously researched and make for a much more thoughtful place than my cut of gardening anarchy .
Could You Fertilize After a Collapse?
If you ca n’t fertilize your garden , your gardens will finally die .
There ’s only enough fertility in the soil to last through a crop , or a few if you ’re blessed with excellent local conditions – but after a time , your etymon , grain and vegetables will simply reject to eat you .
I once planted a course of corn in some unfertile sand to see what would happen . The resulting stalks were ridiculous miniatures , look as if they were create to complement someone ’s poser caravan assemblage . Worse than that , they failed to bear a exclusive substance . After lifting a few diminutive blooms to the sky to disperse a few anaemic grains of pollen , they cash in one’s chips .
If I had decide to plant a nice big garden in that space , it would have done terribly … unless I had a way to prey it .
Ideally , a gardener would work up up his soil first , then plant later . Sometimes , though , we just want – or postulate – to obtain a output quickly .
If the grid collapsed tomorrow and the market memory board closed , which alternative would you choose ?
Option 1: Take a year to dig beds, observe the land, make compost, sheet mulch and improve the soil… and starve
Option 2: Say heck with the soil, till a huge area, throw down some 10-10-10 and plant a big plot so you can eat
constituent purism often gets confound out the window when we present a crisis or an economical grounds for gardening .
All we really want is food !
Yet the two choices I gave you are n’t really fair . surely , you ca n’t progress the soil into plentiful , high - nutrient loam with a perfect amount of organic matter and a wide range of good microorganisms and fungi in a spry period of time … but you may feed your crop organically and get serious yields with a lot less fabric and time than you might call back …
