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Real Food Does Not Come From Supermarkets: 6 Steps From Bare Ground to Homegrown Cauliflowers
REAL FOOD DOES NOT COME FROM SUPERMARKETS: 6 STEPS FROM BARE GROUND TO HOMEGROWN CAULIFLOWERS
I imagine that when our grandchildren and great grandchildren read in history books about the supermarkets we relied upon for food, they’ll wonder what we were thinking.
My goal is to get to where our family can live without the supermarket entirely. There are many things we have yet to learn, but we’re well on our way.
We already raise all of our own meat and eggs, and most of our dairy foods. Some fruit trees are in, although not producing yet.
The number one food growing focus for us right now is learning to grow more of our own vegies. In this article I share the steps we recently took to get from bare ground to our first ever homegrown cauliflower.
By the end of the article you’ll appreciate that if we can do it, anyone can.
Step 1: Marking it out and setting up the framework
In early March, Alain and I finished clearing the space for our new covered vegie garden and erected our new vegie net, to see how it fitted.
Once we were sure we had it all in the right place, we took the netting off again to work on the beds.
12th March – Posts in, marquee frame in place, vegie net lying in foreground.
The 6 large white outside posts consist of a steel picket driven into the ground, with a piece of white pipe placed over them. The frame in the middle is an old marquee frame that we got second hand.
The area is approximately 6m by 5m.
Step 2: Digging trenches for the mounded garden beds
For this garden we wanted to raise the beds (our climate can be very wet), but we didn’t have materials to create the sides of raised beds, and we didn’t want to spend money on such materials.
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Ornamental Plants That are Edible and/or Edible Plants That are Ornamental
ORNAMENTAL PLANTS THAT ARE EDIBLE AND/OR EDIBLE PLANTS THAT ARE ORNAMENTAL
When I first began growing food and working with ideas of permaculture, I lived in the tropics where many edible plants leaf out large and are exceptionally stunning. Moreover, the places I found myself building gardens tended to be free-for-alls, where anything goes and HOAs didn’t interfere with what people planted on their property.
Last year however, after twelve years abroad, I moved back to the US. Where often people aren’t allowed to grow food at home. Because I’m more into rural areas, I don’t foresee much issue in this regard to me personally. However, I’m often asked for advice and eventually, I may do some consulting work.
Suddenly, the idea of having to gett around these committees and associations seems an important avenue for getting people into home food production. I already knew that it was possible to create an “ornamental” garden entirely with plants that are edible. However, now in the temperate climate, it was time to learn some of the plants with which to work.
(Please follow links, if necessary, for Latin names and more information.)
Perennials
Sticking with the principle that perennial plants are always a plus, I would want to recommend several to go into the garden. The selling points – there are many. Perennial plants put fixed roots into the soil, which take nutrients less intensively than annuals. In terms of appearance, they often appear earlier and provide earlier blooms as well, and in many cases, they hang on a bit longer. Ultimately, they are lower maintenance, often spreading out on their own, which makes for easy gardening.
Hosta
Perennial Edible Ornamentals
There are several ornamental plants that grow perennially, some of which are noted for being delicious as well as attractive.
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The Best Perennial Vegetables
THE BEST PERENNIAL VEGETABLES
One of the tasks that I most dislike about the farming life is preparing the raised beds each time I want to plant out a crop of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, or onion. While I do enjoy eating a fresh tomato from my garden, the tedious, repetitive tasks of preparing the garden bed, weeding, and then planting out a winter cover crop does take up more time than I would like. Pasturing chickens over the beds in the fall time once the crops have stopped producing, does save some human labor, but with our orchards, pastures, and forests to take care of, I often find myself without adequate time to dedicate to beds of annual vegetables.
AN EXPERIMENT WITH ASPARAGUS
About three years ago, I purchased a bag of about 5,000 Mary Washington Asparagus Seeds. The seedlings germinated well in our cold, wet, mountain climate, and my family and I decided to dedicate about half of our on contour garden terraces (about ¼ of an acre) to the Asparagus crop. After a day or two of weeding and preparing the soil, we planted out the crop, mulched them heavily, and then eventually forgot about the Asparagus for several months as other farm jobs took over our attention.
About six months later, and two days of heavy weeding, we found the asparagus crop to be thriving despite our neglect. While we weren´t able to harvest the crop for the next two years, the Asparagus grew to cover the entire three terraces, essentially shading out most of the weeds. During the spring of the third year, we were gifted with bountiful amounts of asparagus that not only would be harvested this year, but for decades to come.
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Perennial Polycultures-The Biomass Belt: Fertility Without Manure
PERENNIAL POLYCULTURES – THE BIOMASS BELT: FERTILITY WITHOUT MANURE
We’ve been looking into fencing our plots, and how to meet fertility demands of the establishing perennial crops such as fruits, nuts, herbs and perennial vegetables without relying on animal manures and imported compost, and have come up with a polyculture that may meet both of these needs that we call the biomass belt.
WHAT IS THE BIOMASS BELT?
The biomass belt is a perennial polyculture dedicated to growing mulch and fertilizer fodder that can apply to annual and perennial crops. It’s a very simple closed system that can quickly provide a supply of nutrient dense liquid fertiliser or nutrient dense mulch material as well as valuable habitat.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
The polyculture is composed of mineral accumulating comfrey in raised beds, Nitrogen fixing ground cover sown into the pathways and a Nitrogen fixing hedgerow. Local native herbaceous annuals and perennials are also encouraged to grow within the hedgerow.
The comfrey is grown in raised beds for biomass and can be cut from 4 – 7 times each year with the material being used to make liquid fertiliser or used directly as mulch. The deeply rooted comfrey mines nutrients deep in the subsoil that would otherwise wash away with the underground soil water or remain inaccessible to other plants. Some of these nutrients are relocated within the comfrey leaf biomass. As the biomass is cut and applied as the mulch or converted into liquid fertiliser, the nutrients are delivered back to the top soil and again accessible to crops and other plants.
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Perennial Vegetables and the Other Reasons You Should Consider Them For Your Garden
PERENNIAL VEGETABLES AND THE OTHER REASONS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER THEM FOR YOUR GARDEN
However, what I’ve noticed in my experience with introducing other people to the practice and perennials is that the change isn’t always so welcomed. At the last farm I was on, building a demonstration garden, the owner was only very interested in prototypical annuals despite a wealth of the perennial possibilities we were planting. Working with NGOs, I’ve realized that, while people are excited about growing more food, the idea of introducing something new to their diets isn’t nearly as inspired. Instead, the expectation seems to be that we will be growing the same old corn and bean staples, making the need for nutritional and culinary education an equally important aspect for a permaculture project to succeed.
WHY PERENNIALS ARE SOMETIMES A HARD SELL
In theory, planting perennials would be something that people would latch onto. They are less work. They require less resources. They are better for the stability of the soil, helping to prevent erosion while maintaining a network of soil life beneath the surface. They extend harvests, often producing crops earlier and later than annuals can do. They make great, productive, living fences, trellises, shade and animal habitats.
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