I had a conversation in this thread that makes me think I should go into my ethics and what I want from JustGrowIt! If you have been following me for the past 2 days you pretty much know why I began this sub - to get people gardening and become more eco-conscious. I will say that some people have different ideas as to what that means and before I get into it - I'm not perfect. My baby is in disposable diapers, some of my food comes wrapped in plastic, I don't recycle or compost every single thing in my house, etc. But I am making an effort, and when it comes to caring for the soil I am a stickler. To be frank I would rather have 5 subscribers who share my ethics than 5,000 who are half in half out.
I follow a method of gardening called "permaculture". I could go into the history and ethics of it, but that's going to turn this into a block of text you probably don't care to read, if you do care I recommend a simple google search. Permaculture is a method of agriculture that cares for the environment and seeks to return farming and gardening to a practice that builds soil, good food, healthy plants, and eliminates waste. That's all I want from you. So let's break it down:
Build soil - modern plant growers will suggest using granulated or liquid synthetic fertilizer to make plants grow big and strong. These do work really well, but destroy soil as they feed the plant and not the matter holding it in place. Building soil can be done with any organic matter and when it breaks down into compost/humus it feeds the life in the soil which feed the plants. You should also seek to keep soil protected via mulch, or constantly planted regardless of season. Direct sun and wind are harmful to soil microbes.
Care for the soil - Unless you are starting a new garden bed please avoid tilling or over-digging the soil. This action destroys the aggregates (colonies of microbes) in the soil and exposes them to oxygen, sun, and wind (all deadly to the microbes). It may make a soft aerated bed at first, but over time this will destroy the soil structure and create a terrible quality soil. Always add plenty of organic matter to the soil if you do plan on digging and try to practice 'no-dig' methods. Over time the worms will do all the aerating for you and you will get great tilth for less work.
Caring for plants - Simply care for the soil and good things will follow. Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia's Garden, said it best "if you buy the first round, nature will buy the second and pick up the tab for dinner". You need to create a good condition for plants to grow and all the little microbes and plants will do the rest of the work for you. Please, and I cannot say this enough I condemn you for using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, if you do this please do not advocate it to other users of this sub.
Eliminate waste - find a way to never put plants, sticks, leaves, and other 'yard waste' in the garbage. The exception here is really bad weeds that spread like thistle or Bermuda grass. Yard waste that is herbaceous belongs in the compost, and sticks can be used for a nice bonfire, trellises, placed in a pile around a tree to rot (great food for mycellium), or buried to create a "hugelkulture".
GMOs - You may notice I do not talk about these much and there is a reason - for the home gardener they aren't widely available. They simply don't sell genetically modified on a mass scale to gardeners because that's not the target market - most of what you buy, even at big box stores is non-GMO. I may go into GMOs further one day, and I do not condone their use in the least, but for now it does not seem pertinent to the sub.
Thank you all for reading this and let me know if you have any questions or feedback. Have a great day!
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[–] Womb_Raider 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Permaculture is the best way of life! People should let their farm land lay fallow like the good old days.
[–] dingomeat 1 point 0 points 1 point (+1|-1) ago
You don't need to buy GMO seeds. If you want to grow GMO, take the seeds from your grocery store food and grow them.
[–] middle_path [S] 1 point -1 points 0 points (+0|-1) ago
This doesn't nessesarily apply to everything in the grocery store. I actually think very little of the vegetables in the store are GMOs.
[–] Dumb_Comment_Bot ago
Hey I just saw this, I think it would be nice thing to get a discussion going. I guess there are two ways to look at growing food and one is "grow it for yourself" and "grow it for others". When you grow it for yourself I think all these ethics are perfectly reasonable but once you have to start to grow food for others, break even, compete economically... imo things start to fall apart a little bit.
Soil care is obviously important, but I feel that your take on chemical fertilizer is a little weird. There are three types of "fertilizers" that we use. First is organic waste which is what you would expect it to be: rotting food, compost, plant material. There simply is not enough organic waste produced to make up for nutrients displaced in every application if you consider the fact that we export thousands of kilos of organic material off of it every week. Second is that organic waste requires burying if you want to use the land right away, which unnecessarily disturbs the soil (obviously to be avoided). If you can, you let it rot on top, but you can't always do that or you lose money on the implicit cost of the land. Lastly is disease transfer. Organic waste is full of molds and such (because these are the types of things to get thrown away). If you are dumping rotten onions you can't do it anywhere near where you plan on planting something susceptible to what rotted them in the first place.
Next we may use manure. There are two major drawbacks to manure. First is that you have to buy it and its not cheap (nutrient to price value), especially factoring in the cost of spreading it. The second drawback is the contamination. You can't sell food with a lot of shit in it (literally). In order to work around this, you have to let manure sit on your fields, usually over the fall and winter. While this is reasonable for spring crops its not reasonable to crops that are harvested very late like potatoes.
Third, we use your everyday ordinary N K P fertilizers. While you still have to buy this and its not cheap, it has its benefits too. It doesn't disturb the soil, its doesn't affect the food like manure as long as you don't "burn" your crops. You can fertilize over planted crops.
I could get into to pesticides and GMOS too.
[–] middle_path [S] ago
You don't have to agree with everything I say, but those are my ethics. If the world demands crops that "require" chemical intervention, than perhaps we should look at different crops.
We have done this for thousands of years without chemical fertilizers, so obviously there are methods that don't involve them. I'm out to prove that for the home gardener you don't need these things.
Also, manure can be free from the right person - I don't pay a dime since I know someone with horses who has a shit ton of manure. A lot of it is already aged as well. A home gardener could also have chickens or rabbits to provide manure at very little cost if managed properly.
And let's not get into pesticides or GMOs. If you want to have a whole debate, go over to v/gardening. I don't approve of their use and I have guests coming over tonight, so I would rather not get into all this now.
There may be times when -cides and fertilizers may be the only option, but marketing is making the home gardener and commercial farmer use way more than nessesary.
The point is, this shit is going to run out. It may be a while off, but why wait? We are not starving and we have time to expirament with organic methods, ancient man managed and I think with all our research and technology we can do it too. I have read a lot of books from a lot of authors who do not use chemicals or GMOs. Yet the produce an abundance of food. I know this is possible.