Seed My Revolution

Blog

I have Fantastic Gardening Aspirations, but I move so often that a truly amazing garden seldom takes off. That doesn't keep me from learning tons of things about bio-dynamic peracultural strategies and the like. In this blog, I branch out into ideas, areas, and philosophies in which my ideal garden can grow.

Plant Map

2013-03-09 00:33

I created an awesome site for finding food and other plants called Geo Flora or Plant Map (geoflora.org/plantmap.org). Both are the same website. The uses of the site are boundless, though I have been using it to map out all the different fruit trees and berry bushes in areas where I live or once lived. Please add to the site! The more the merrier! Maybe you'll find what you're looking for…

Intuitive Techniques

2013-03-05 23:25

Tonight I attended a Community Garden Planning meeting and while I got some good ideas for planting and whatnot, I realized that, in my opinion, this garden would be lacking some key elements I admire about fantastic dynamic and healthy garden spaces. The follwoing are a few techniques which may be applied in my future gardening endeavours no matter where they are or what types of gardening is being performed. The root of these techniques include 'winter cover cropping','dry farming', 'no till farming', and 'wandering beds'.

wandering beds

When you're out in the wilderness, you may notice how plant's aren't all in row. They do have some sort of order, but it's more of a random order than anything else. This a plant's need for root spacing, sunlight, symbiotic relationships with it's surroundings, and paths for animals to wander through the brush. For this reason, I feel that it is important to build your beds in somewhat of a random pattern thus giving your plants the ability to choose where they want to grow rather than forcing them to grow in a single place. This provides a tighter and more resiliant atmosphere and can help regulate temperature and reduce wind speed when compared to traditional row-based gardening.
When I was in college, I always appreciated the attached community garden for it's unique style. It utilized this style of 'wandering beds' and I loved how organic and natural they felt. I realized that this method made the place feel like a food forest rather than a simple rowe by row garden. In this fashion, the garden felt like a community of plants all working together to provide a lush and litterally fruitful atmosphere, conserving their own water and reducing the things which may otherwise destroy their cool humid environment.

no till farming

I love this idea. I did some tilling last spring and I felt as if I destroyed so much of the natural life growing underneath the ground that I was hurting it more than helping it. How many of the benefical bugs and worms were threatened and killed by that invasive disruption of their habitat? How could I have aerated the soil in other ways? While it's true that tilling does aerate the soil, tilling has drastic effects on the land and it's variety and growth potential. THankfully there are quite a few simple ways to ensure that the plants, the roots, and their soil are getting what they really need.

worms do it for you

All those worms, bugs and microbes thirve on a well aerorated soil. So, they naturally do their best to keep it that way, or so one would hope. Healthy soil is like a healthy body: both are very good at maintaining the right amounts of nutrients, energy, water, and pH levels necessary for proper functioning.

no erosion

The soil stays healthy and can remain sustainable for all future gardens without tons of unnecessary fertilizers and additives.

diverse biota

By maintaining instead of destroying the habitat, a greater range of animals and other criters will stay close by promoting the diversity of external nutrients and natural fertilizers.

dry farming

Dry farming methods depend on allowing the plants to live off of the moisture that is already in the soil during the stint of a dry spell where there is no rain for weeks at a time. Good ground cover, mulching, clay, and drought tolerant plant varieties can assure you a crop that won't dry out after a week with no rain or help from an irrigation system.

winter cover cropping

By planting a winter crop of something like oats, annual rye grass, field peas, or buckweat, you can give your garden an additional amount of mulch the following spring and detour certain weeds from taking over the spot.