The regenerative urban garden I: No-till gardening
makegathergrow.com
makegathergrow.com
The bonus is that you start to go down a regenerative rabbit hole that’ll turn you into a mycorrhizal fungi maximalist.
With regards to the article: It's inconsistencies like these shown in the article, where there's a detailed list of sciency arguements about why no tilling makes sense but then the same Harvard PhD continues to cover her whole garden with toxic old newspapers which loses me.
Could be that I'm biased since I inherited a garden from similar lassez-fair style "gardeners" and had 20 year old trees collapsing without any storm due to their pest-infestation...
https://www.alliumfields.org/2015/05/is-newspaper-in-compost... has data for you and I believe there is a soil health group at Cornell that published alot of studies.
Here’s an article by a PhD in Horticulture: https://gardenprofessors.com/cardboard-does-not-belong-on-yo...
I think the best way to handle foods is to let it ferment Bokashi style, and then dump everything into the compost. It speeds up the decomposition without attracting rats. I also like to make weed tea with some EM, molasses, and water and dump that into the compost after a couple weeks.
It’s not beautiful, but it’s how the heap loves it.
My god, it’s all so satisfying. I once started a pile on top of a 3 ft stash of brush that was being an eyesore for three years, seeded with a heap of ugly smelly weeds and some earthworms. I only composted over a third of the brush to A/B test the results and within 8 months you could see a bald spot where the brush dissolved under the compost.
I live in a duplex with a backyard and have 100s of gallons of worm bin that don’t bother anyone’s noses.
I've now just started a pile in the spot next to the tumbler where I emptied it. The pile is amazing. I just turn it with a shovel and you can see the progress. I stopped using the tumbler all together. I only use the trimming from yard work and add plant based leftovers from the kitchen, and it breaks things down much faster than I was expecting. It doesn't have a rodent problem. It doesn't stink. In fact, quite the opposite. I enjoy the smell of fresh turned up soil instead the expected rotting smell.
https://www.amazon.com/Tumbleweed-Aerator-Spiral-composting-...
Gardens need infrastructure and they need time to evolve into a system that works and is productive.
Start by building compost bins. Use your mower (if you have a rotary one that bags) to mince up clippings from woodie plants (not actual bits of wood as that will kill the mower) and obviously to collect grass clippings. Start composting this down. Obtain a bag of good live compost or muck full of worms (you can see them) and use that to dope and infect your heap, loads of worm eggs will be in the muck and as the compost gets going the worm population will get going too.
Start your veg patch small and simple. If you have the space eight 3m * 1.2 m beds will be a big challenge to look after at first, but will provide more opportunities to grow things than you will be able to take advantage of (effectively). Remember, growing veg isn't just about preparing the soil, throwing seed on and waiting.
You will need to fence and net against pests. Pigeons will eat all brassicas in short order. Rabbits will eat most stuff, mice and rats as well. Good plants to get going with in the UK are: courgettes and other squashes (pumpkins need lots of room but can be a fun hobby plant), beans (broad, french and runners), peas, potatoes (blight is... a blight), celeriac and cellery, lettuce, broccoli (Calabrese), kale, beetroot, chard, carrots, corn, cabbage. You must net cabbage, broccoli and kale. You will also need to feed - organic seaweed feeds are good for this. Most importantly remember plants grow because of light and water and constant protection and pest management.
Once you are going and learn about the plants then get a green house and expand. The green house and cold frames are essential to get seedlings going - this is when you can move from paying more to grow than it costs to buy to saving money. You can also grow veg that only thrives under glass in a cooler climate. But, be warned.. commercial farmers are very clever and very efficient. You will always struggle to compete with them on a value basis. But it is very satisfying and the food often tastes better than shop bought.
Grass clippings are great but you will need to weed like crazy. Homemade compost is really hard
This has not been my experience at all. Yes to get optimal compost at an optimal speed you have to carefully manage the ratios of browns to greens, moisture content, turning it, etc.
But if you don't care about speed, you can just throw stuff in a bin (or a pile) and it will eventually compost. I never do anything to mine except turn it as I'm taking the finished compist out once or twice a year and I make great compost. I use the geobin compost bin. $30 and it has lasted my mom for over two decades now.
Another trick to increase the volume is to go around and pick up all your neighbor's leaf bags and throw them in your compost bin.
I spent almost as little time on it as possible. Every now and then, if I felt like it, I'd give it a bit of a toss with a shovel or a pitchfork. If it had been very hot and dry, I'd water it a bit. It wasn't fast, but by the time I wanted compost for the garden in the spring there was always plenty of it for me to use.
As I understand it, this method is called cold composting. The idea is to provide an environment that worms and insects like to hang out and do their stuff in, which is easy enough to imagine and simple to accomplish satisfactorily with minimum effort. They just want a place that is damp, full of food, and not too hot (they leave if it gets too hot).
This is in contrast to hot composting, which is a more intense method -- both in the effort that goes into it, and the speed of production.
Hot composting has huge advantages in speed and the materials that can be composted (PLA plastic can disappear in a hot compost pile that is working), but I don't feel like I want to spend that much effort on it and the lazy method gets results that I like.
There is crap sprouting up everywhere because my pile did not get hot enough to kill the seeds. Tomato plants are sprouting up in every single place I've put down the compost.
Last year, it was pumpkins - I left some compost on a tarp to dry out, and forgot all about it, and when I came back, mystery plants sprouted up - so I replanted them in the front yard, and was rewarded by pumpkin plants that completely took over. And I do mean rewarded - it looked great, passers-by would comment on our pumpkin patch, and we got something like a dozen pumpkins out of the deal for halloween.
I'm basically just throwing crap at the wall and seeing what sticks; the money investment is basically zero, aside from occasionally watering the pile. And the time I spend on it is time spent outside, in mostly pleasant weather, working with my hands.
But, yeah - farmers are very clever people.
Regarding carbon sequestration, I think it is worth pointing out that Freeman Dyson, in one of his conferences, mentioned no-till farming as one land management methods that could be used to absorb the carbon emitted in the atmosphere by human activities.
"The point of this calculation is the very favorable rate of exchange between carbon in the atmosphere and carbon in the soil. To stop the carbon in the atmosphere from increasing, we only need to grow the biomass in the soil by a hundredth of an inch per year. Good topsoil contains about ten percent biomass, [Schlesinger, 1977], so a hundredth of an inch of biomass growth means about a tenth of an inch of topsoil. Changes in farming practices such as no-till farming, avoiding the use of the plow, cause biomass to grow at least as fast as this. If we plant crops without plowing the soil, more of the biomass goes into roots which stay in the soil, and less returns to the atmosphere. If we use genetic engineering to put more biomass into roots, we can probably achieve much more rapid growth of topsoil. I conclude from this calculation that the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management, not a problem of meteorology. No computer model of atmosphere and ocean can hope to predict the way we shall manage our land."
https://www.edge.org/conversation/freeman_dyson-heretical-th...
I have no idea why massive factory growing operations for produce aren't everywhere. Every city should have one by now, growing produce locally and shaving down the price of transport and waste to almost nothing.
Given the right nutrients population explosions happen. Environmentalists usually treat these as bad things but they certainly could be good ways to sink carbon. They could be triggered by fertilizing some of the more barren sections of ocean selected to minimize ecological effect. Quite a lot of the biomass simply falls to the ocean floor and gets buried, it could also be harvested and sequestered another way or used as a biomass fuel.
On freshwater lakes you could grow and harvest duckweed.
"Vertical" or indoor farming is one of those silicon valley tropes. VC lost billions during the last decade and I don't know of a single success story that is still going / profitable. I'm sure after enough time passes people forget and will try again.
That said, I'm completely opposed to urban food gardening (including chickens) because the land you're growing in is likely poisoned by years of urban pollution. Whatever you grow in those areas is going to bring that bad stuff along with it, which means your backyard tomatoes probably wouldn't pass FDA approval.
Chickens are even worse, because they'll eat whatever's on the ground and that stuff gets into the eggs. So while it looks great on Instagram, your backyard eggs are probably full of rubber, asphalt, gasoline, plastics, and all the other stuff that's wafted into your property over the years.
So anyway, by all means garden and have fun doing it, but if you haven't had your urban soil tested and verified as safe, don't eat anything that comes out of it.
One group out in New Jersey that has a community garden in heavily polluted land uses clean straw bales as the grow medium. Those only last for two or three years. But you can grow stuff.
Regenerative and permaculture methods includes soil remediation techniques for rebuilding soil. For heavily polluted land, Dr John Todd has some remarkable methods that can remediate even places such as superfund sites, though that might not be something to DIY. Dr Todd also has a quick method for testing that doesn’t involve a lab; not comprehensive, but will get you the observation you need.
Finally, as you see from other articles including the current front page of HN — leafy veggies have been found to have tire additives. Micro plastics are found in rain amd in animals in the wild. Our planet has been so broadly polluted, and our industrial agriculture will not necessarily be safer. For those with an interest in stewardship, you have to start somewhere.
This claims it's not intolerable: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/stop-freaking-out-...
Eggs from the supermarket don’t have the same problem
"According to RIVM, the total PFAS intake of Dutch consumers is too high. This excessive exposure is therefore irrespective from eating home produced eggs."
This is the question that was being asked.
Very much this. Those who live in very rainy areas like the PNW know all too well about all the rain gardens and other suburban filtration needed to keep the water from turning disgusting from surface oil and particulates coming off roads, shingles, etc.
Ok, bad joke. But I am reminded of the fellow who was cited for dumping his used motor oil along his fence line a week before the DOT did a chip and seal on the road next to the fence.
the amount of land and effort required to grow meaningful amount of calories is far beyond anything you can do in a city. if you own a parcel anywhere near any city in the western hemisphere, just selling it outright would yield more money than all the produce you could grow in ten lifetimes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-dig_gardening
People were practicing it from years ago.
E.g.:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Stout
Both Masanobu and Ruth are mentioned in the first link above, too.
Till a new yard. It probably has chunks of concrete and other garbage from previous owners. It’s worth taking the garbage out of the ground.
Then smother the whole yard with cardboard. Then layer wood chips on that.
Dig out individual holes for plants and absolutely murder the rest of the ground with mulch.
In those holes, add compost, then plants.
With good layering, cardboard can even smother the bermuda grass menace.
Sheet mulching is amazing for eliminating ivy and other invasive species as well.
I'm less nervous about things like pizza boxes (if not too greasy). Even if there are contaminants, they are already in my food.
I didn't rate it good or incredible. I was surprised how well it kept growing back. I didn't bother doing a cost analysis, either.
If your goal is economics, it's dubious. If your goal is pleasure, it's subjective. If your goal is lifestyle, it's incredible at facilitating a particular lifestyle. Give it a small try and decide for yourself. Start as small as one square meter as an experiment. You have very little to lose.
crap crap, or good crap. cow manure and rabbit droppings are amazing crap to add to. your soils.
“previously painted wood, chunks of metal, etc” crap.
hmmm
I read it, missed this too, hmmm'd at your comment, but went back because usually these amateur communities are nerds enough that there's usually a reason behind this kind of thing. :)
"Hmmm" is a great reaction. It made me dig deeper and learn something.
Aeration is not by the same mechanical process as the tool known as a cultivator, if that's what you were thinking of, but that specific tool is not what tiling/cultivation refers to specifically.
Aeration with a broad fork doesn't lift the soil out of the ground and definitely doesn't break it up and redistribute it. It just creates a few pockets of stretched space by inserting a fork and wiggling a bit. Yes, small pockets are disturbed by the fork but mostly the soil stays as it was.
I expect you mean that lifting spadefuls of soil up and out of the ground is usually referred to as tiling, rather than the other way around. Which stands to reason as that is perfectly consistent with the dictionary defection.
> Aeration with a broad fork doesn't lift the soil out of the ground and definitely doesn't break it up
Aeration does not lift the soil, but it absolutely breaks it. That is why one would consider practicing aeration – to break up soil compaction that may be present. Cultivation, and therefore tiling, says nothing about lifting or redistribution, only breaking. Aeration is also tiling if done for the sake of ground preparation.
If you are here only to argue semantic and prescriptivist use of language, you can stop responding. I'm not interested. You might be right according to some dictionary definition of these terms. In practical use by gardeners, however, these two techniques have different names and achieve different goals and only one is called tilling.
Yes. E.g.:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Martin_Fortier
Ha, no. I have heavy equipment, including a no-till drill for my no-till application needs.
I assume this means you have, though. Why have you used it if not for tillage?
Aeration is not conventional tillage. Conventional tillage sees soil lifted and mixed as described earlier. A lazy speaker may leave out "conventional" in casual conversation about the mechanical practice where it is understood by context. Such context was not found here, but is that, perhaps, the source of your confusion?
I understand your semantic argument, there is no confusion, I simply believe language is not prescriptivist. If people use the words in a certain way, then that is an acceptable way to use the words. No argument from a position of "well actually, the dictionary/professional jargon says..." will sway me because I just don't care.
Of course, and luckily for us the original link explicitly states that no-till is being used in the farming sense, so we know exactly what certain way the words are being used. No-till in farming comes with a precise definition.
Even if you are right that there is some alternative reality in gardening where tillage commonly means something completely different, that clearly doesn't apply here. In farming, aeration before seeding/planting would not be considered a no-till practice. Such an act would normally fall under what is known as minimum tillage.
> I simply believe language is not prescriptivist.
Ironically, the thread went off the rails only because you tried to prescribe an alternative, incompatible, definition onto the communication that had already taken place. Credit to you for at least recognizing the error of your ways, even if you do seem to want to sweep the initial confusion under the rug for some reason.
Any other pedantry you want me to pass along while doing so?
I could tell them that "actually, tomatoes are a fruit" if it would make you feel better while I was there.
Huh? Clearly you won – you got to learn something. I am the one who lost. Respectfully, thinking things through isn't your strong suit, is it?
> I'll go tell all my gardening buds that the no till practices are "um actually, that's tilling".
Whatever floats your boat, but let me warn you: Unless your gardening buds are high on the "gardened bud", they are not going to buy into your idea that no-till means "to perform tillage" any more than we have, even if you are perfectly free and able to hold that view. No-till is literally the abbreviation of "no tillage".
> Tilling and plowing are almost synonymous with land cultivation, aren't they? Yet they actually destroy soil structure, create compaction, and kill the very soil biology that's the basis of fertility, like fungal networks and all those earthworms that make the soil nice and squishy.
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/tillage_practices_have_a_direc...
> According to the Michigan State University Extension, compaction is also a common side effect of tillage – at the soil surface, the plow layer and the subsoil.
Maximizing the ecosystem health of what's underneath the surface is the point.