Raised bed vegetable gardening Part 2

If you have been thinking up about raised bed vegetable gardening then you’re not alone. In fact, many people are starting to grow these raised bed vegetable gardens. The popularity has spread, because how many people will benefit in choosing to use a raised bed.

Not only that, but you can build a container in any shape you want & can gardening system no matter where you live. You can make your garden as simple or as complex as you want. Perhaps it’s best brought about raised bed vegetable gardening is that you can choose the soil and location you want.  This allows the vegetables to stay healthy & produce year round. Below are some additional benefits to build a raised bed vegetable garden.

Raised bed vegetable gardening means no worries

With a raised bed vegetable garden keeps everything in place. You don’t have to worry about certain plants & vegetables grow wild in the garden. You will also be able to select & cut the plants grown with much ease. No more bending over to pull weeds out of the ground & fight with deep roots. With your raised bed garden, weeds & plants can be removed easily.

This is a major reason why the raised bed vegetable gardening has become so popular.

Raised bed vegetable gardening and drainage

Another great thing about having the opportunity to have some concerns with drainage. You’ll be able to see the water draining from your plants out of the bottom of your container. To ensure good drainage, however, you must ensure that the container has small holes about an inch from the bottom.  Other great tip is to place stones under the ground to help drain the water.

No longer need to drag a heavy hose around your yard because you can strategically place your raised bed garden near a water source. Are you beginning to see the beauty of this type of raised bed vegetable gardening?

Raised bed vegetable gardening and kids

You don’t have to worry about pets or kids messing your produce. You can build your bed high enough to avoid any interactions with dogs or children that can harm your plants. Another caution is to line the bottom of the bed with the network so that you can stop digging pets.

To summarize raised bed vegetable gardening

If you’re planning some raised bed vegetable gardening, you’ve an exciting road ahead. It takes time & money to work, but the benefits of building a raised bed vegetable gardening beds are too big to overlook.

Ecological Vegetable Gardening A Great Way Forward

When we think of organic gardening and permaculture we tend to conjure up images of leathery-skinned bearded warriors who dedicate their lives to working long days in their vegetable plots.  Whilst this may be a wonderful way to live your life, it doesn’t suit the average suburbanite with a full-time job and a hefty mortgage.

Growing food is typically seen as either an art form or damned hard work.  It’s no wonder very few people do it on a serious level.  But what if a technique came along that was so easy and so prolific that even the busiest corporate executive could grow a significant portion of their family’s food in less time than it takes to drive to the shops.  Ecological vegetable gardening just might be the answer.  In my experience, it’s the ultimate modern-day convenience veggie plot.

I didn’t have a light bulb moment that said, “Ah, so this is ecological vegetable gardening”.  My vegetable garden was no different to anybody else’s for many years until I made a few changes.  The first and probably most significant was squeezing far more plants into a given raised bed garden area.  The second change was to stop digging the soil.  And thirdly, I upgraded my composting system.  Once these simple strategies were in place I noticed the garden taking on a life of its own.  Weeds virtually stopped growing in the beds and plants started living much longer.  The garden could endure longer periods without water, I was yielding far more than I ever had and I could harvest every day of the year.   I wanted to know what was happening at a scientific level and applied my university training as an environmental scientist to understand why I was getting such amazing results.  I had to completely let go of all my preconceived ideas as a gardener and look at the plot through the eyes of an ecologist.  After some time I realized that I had created an ecosystem made up of edible plants, and it behaved in exactly the same way as a natural habitat.  I became more of an observer than a gardener and the role of head gardener was pulled from under my feet as nature took up the reins.

When Doing Vegetable Gardening Employ Nature, she works for free

The wonderful thing about nature is that she works tirelessly, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  Nature follows very simple laws and works in the same way, on any system, anywhere in the world.  When we create an ecological vegetable gardening space we are creating a living, breathing ecosystem.  By doing this we get nature working for us, and not against us, and her great stamina works in our favor.

Niche Spaces and why they are important when vegetable gardening

A pristine ecosystem is made up of thousands of living and non-living components all coexisting in a given area.  Each living component occupies its own niche space and the role of the niche space is very important to understand when creating an ecological garden.  Let’s look at an example.  Imagine a giant rainforest tree crashing to the ground after standing tall for hundreds of years.  Such a large tree would have filled an enormous niche space.  Lying in the soil, hundreds of dormant seeds spring to life, desperately fighting for their opportunity to occupy the best real estate in the forest: the empty niche space.  The niche space is quickly filled and harmony is restored in your vegetable gardening bed.

When we look at a traditional vegetable gardening bed with this type of insight, what we see is a very unnatural system.  There is very little diversity and a lot of empty niche spaces.  Nature enforces her will on vegetable gardens in exactly the same way she does a rainforest, and this means that empty niches spaces will be filled as quickly as possible.  However, in a traditional vegetable gardening bed there are no desirable seeds waiting to fill the niches spaces, so weeds fill them instead.

The solution is to create a vegetable gardening bed that has tightly filled niche spaces so that weeds don’t have any opportunities.  We can do this by planting the garden very tightly with a diverse range of plants of differing shapes and characteristics.  The result is a dense jungle-like planting arrangement that can yield an unbelievable amount.  The denseness also creates a highly protected micro-climate.  This ideal growing environment causes your plants to last much longer.  Greens don’t bolt to seed as soon as a hot spell hits and cold sensitive plants are more protected as well.

How to manage an ecological vegetable gardening bed

With an ecological garden, there is far less to do.  As you become the observer and allow nature to take over as head gardener, you will notice that the garden is in a continual state of gentle change, just like a natural ecosystem.  It can be difficult for the traditional gardener to stand back and observe as we, human beings, like to control things.  This style of gardening calls for a great deal of faith in natural laws. Sure, there will be times when you need to step in and direct the system in a certain way; however that is almost always because a certain plant species is getting too successful and the system is at risk of loosing diversity.

Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening

Firstly raised bed vegetable gardening what does it actually mean? Secondly are there now many gardeners becoming interested in this subject?

Essentially a raised vegetable bed is anything that where the plants  are not placed directly in to the ground. The raised bed can be any type of container in height usually between a foot to four feet above the ground and of any shape you wish to sit the design of your garden landscape. Raised bed vegetable gardening has become very popular in recent years because of the many advantages it offers to gardeners and visitors alike.

Advantages of Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening

1.         When you have a raised bed you will find that you can get access to the vegetables and other plants so much easier.   In my own case my partly disabled wife was the main gardener and the bed was designed around her needs but I have also found that I can tend the plants far easier now as well and make more effort to do so now. Having the raised bed garden I admit to having become much more interested in sharing my wife’s enthusiasm rather than just being the person who did the hard work under her direction. We did, by the way raise one bed another six inches just to improve the accessibility even more.  We are now fully sold on the Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening system and I know a number of senior citizens are catching the fever to have their gardens redesigned with government aid packages available to help them keep more independent.

2.         Raised bed vegetable gardening means increased visibility of the plants.  The soil and the plants are so much nearer you will be able to see potential problems such as infections, garden diseases and or bugs so are far easy to treat as they are caught at a much earlier stage.  It is the same with weeds which can be removed so much easier.  Raised bed vegetable gardens are better taken off and consequently have much more healthy and tastier and almost always far more nutritious plants.

3.         Generally if you are planting directly into the ground you will be using old worn out soil which has been deleted of the nutrients that vegetables need to grow. When you build your own raised beds you can design the type of soil you want to have. Usually you will start with a good high quality loom and add the appropriate fertilizers and composts needed for the plants you what to grow.  The more time spend researching (e.g. talking to local nursery workers) the better mixture you will be able to develop for your plants leading to vegetables and other plants which will be much better developed in size and stronger more able to fight off plant disease. This is one of the most important benefits of switching to raised bed vegetable gardening in my view anyhow.

In summary your Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening is going to give far better results.

Once you have your raised bed garden container filled with the right soil with increased visibility and far easier access to plants in your raised bed vegetable gardening you must see better results with less work and effort.  Yes, you will need to invest some time some physical effort and cash developing the garden but if you are going to get the payback in better more nutritious vegetables with far far less gardening maintenance work you will get that payback far faster for far less effort.

The only drawback I see once properly established is there is a need to water the plants on a more regular basis but this can be overcome by building in a new automatic or semi automatic system from the beginning alleviating that problem before it starts.

Personally I am now fully hooked on using Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening but if you are still wavering on whether you should start doing it I would, from experience, suggest you try one area of your vegetable garden and give it a good trial before going the whole hog.

Ecological Gardening

High yielding, low maintenance vegetable gardening that’s perfect for our modern-day lifestyle

When we think of organic gardening and permaculture we tend to conjure up images of bearded warriors dressed in overalls who dedicate their lives to working long days in their vegetable plots.  Whilst this may be a wonderful way to live your life, it doesn’t suit the average suburbanite with a full-time job and a hefty mortgage.

Growing food is typically seen as either an art form or damned hard work.  It’s no wonder that very few people produce enough food to feed their family.  But what if a technique came along that was so easy and so prolific that even the busiest corporate executive could grow a significant portion of their family’s food in less time than it takes to drive to the shops.  Ecological gardening just might be the answer.  In my experience, it’s the ultimate modern-day convenience vegetable plot.

An ecological garden is an ecosystem made up of edible plants, and it behaves in exactly the same way as a natural habitat.  Over time, you become more of an observer than a gardener as you watch Mother Nature do most of the work.

The wonderful thing about nature is that she works tirelessly, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  Nature follows very simple laws and works in the same way, on any system, anywhere in the world.  To understand ecological gardening, observing natural ecosystems can provide us with the answers we need.  A natural ecosystem is made up of thousands of living and non-living components all coexisting in a given area.  Each living component occupies its own niche space and the role of the niche space is very important to understand when creating an ecological garden.

Let’s look at an example.  Imagine a giant rainforest tree crashing to the ground after standing tall for hundreds of years.  Such a large tree would have filled an enormous niche space.  Lying in the soil, hundreds of dormant seeds spring to life, desperately fighting for their opportunity to occupy the best real estate in the forest – the empty niche space.  The niche space is quickly filled and harmony is restored.

When we look at a traditional vegetable garden with this type of insight, what we see is a very unnatural system.  There is very little diversity and a lot of empty niche spaces.  Nature enforces her will on vegetable gardens in exactly the same way she does a rainforest, and this means that empty niches spaces will be filled as quickly as possible.  However, in a traditional vegetable garden there are no desirable seeds waiting to fill the niches spaces, so weeds fill them instead.

The solution to this problem is to create a garden that has tightly filled niche spaces so that weeds don’t have any opportunities.  We can achieve this by using a planting arrangement that mimics a natural ecosystem.  This type of planting arrangement also creates a range of highly protected micro-climates.  This ideal growing environment causes your plants to last much longer.  Greens don’t bolt to seed as soon as a hot spell hits and cold sensitive plants are more protected as well.  The planting arrangement also creates a natural form of pest management.

Managing an ecological garden is different to managing a traditional vegetable garden.  With an ecological garden, there is far less to do.  As you become the observer and allow nature to take over as head gardener, you will notice that the garden is in a continual state of gentle change, just like a natural ecosystem.  It can be difficult for the traditional gardener to stand back and observe, as many of us instinctively like to control things.  This style of gardening calls for a great deal of faith in natural laws.

Absolutely everyone from farmers to inner-city townhouse dwellers can create an ecological garden.  It may seem strange, but if you have never grown food before then you are, in some ways, at an advantage.  Like all industries, the gardening industry can get stuck in doing things a certain way and most seasoned gardeners will inevitably over-work the garden.  As a species, human beings prospered when we learnt to cultivate food using tilling and other traditional agricultural methods, so it’s difficult to turn back to where we came from – nature.  It might even feel like a step in the wrong direction.  But if we can let go of our need to control every living thing on the planet, and start to work with nature, we actually gain more control by being able to grow food more efficiently than ever before.  It’s a paradox – but it works!

Growing food is not hard work, especially when you have nature helping you 24/7.  A small area can provide you with a bounty of food, saving your family thousands of dollars per year.  Most of us don’t have much time to spend in the garden, including me.  I only invest around eight hours per year to growing my food, and although I live on a small farm, I only use a space of around 6m x 6m.  That’s an area that could fit into many suburban backyards several times over.  The most wonderful thing about this method is that I know I can ignore my vegetable garden for months and it won’t miss a beat.  So, if you believe growing food is only for tough, bearded warriors with a lot of time – think again.  Ecological gardening could be just the thing for you.

How to restore our basic life-supporting systems; water, air and soil

How to restore our basic life-supporting systems; water, air and soil

The breakdown of our food growing systems poses one of the biggest threats to our survival.  Our existence depends upon our agricultural systems, but what do our agricultural systems depend on?  The answer: water, air and soil.  These basic elements support all life-forms and without them, life as we know it cannot be sustained.

In nature, food grows as part of an ecosystem.  An ecosystem is an ecological system that is made up of many biological parts, or components, that all interact with one another.  These components are mostly made up of organisms such as plants and animals.  They feed on each other and depend on each others’ presence to survive.

Just as plant and animal components are dependent on each other, basic life-supporting systems – water, air and soil – are also dependent on each another.  For example, the flow of air affects rainfall and rainfall affects the flow of air.  In addition, life-supporting systems are dependent on the components and vice versa.  For example, soil is created by plants and plants are created by soil.  In summary, components are dependent on life-supporting systems and the life-supporting systems are dependent on components.  However, it gets even more complicated than that.

Within the basic life-supporting systems – water, air and soil – there are sub-systems.  If we take a look at water, it can be broken up into many sub-systems, including: rainfall, surface water, ground water, humidity and transpiration.  It is not necessary (or even possible) to understand everything that’s going on within an ecosystem, however it is very important to understand this:

Each and every component, system and sub-system is important in running the overall ecosystem.  When you disturb one, the others start to fall apart.

Humans once lived as part of ecosystems.  We were just one of many ecological components within an ecosystem.  We were also part of the food chain; sometimes preyed upon, but mostly a predator.  When we discovered cultivation we discovered many advantages, such as being able to grow staple crops in relative density.  By clearing an area of its natural components we have been able to increase the quantity of a single, useful component such as a commercial crop.

A typical farming operation strives to eliminate as many ecological components as possible so that a predetermined yield of a specific crop can be obtained.  For example, a farmer sows 10 acres of wheat and expects to achieve a yield within a certain range.  If it’s a good year he will achieve the upper end of the range and if it’s a bad year he will achieve the lower end of the range.  This offers him a relatively secure livelihood and he can live his life in accordance to the money he makes from his predetermined yield.  It makes perfect sense from an economic point of view.

However, this only works when the basic life-supporting systems are working, hence, adequate water, air and soil.  The problem is that these basic systems are part of an ancient ecosystem that is long gone.  The soils that we now grow crops in were part of a natural ecosystem and the millions of components that once existed were a critical part of keeping the basic life-supporting systems healthy and functioning.

By stripping the land of natural components we start to see the degradation of the basic life-supporting systems – water, soil and air.  When a large number of living components are removed, these natural systems break down because the components and the systems are interrelated.  As a diversity of plants and animals are replaced with a single species of crop, we start to see effects on the way the basic water, air and soil systems operate.  Water moves faster and is not filtered by a variety of plants.  This usually lowers the ground water and leaves the surface hotter and drier.  The hotter surface moves the air in different ways causing rain clouds to travel away from the area causing localized drought conditions.  Overall fertility is lost from soils as water moves out of the system at a greater rate.  The temperatures are hotter in summer and colder in winter as there are fewer plants to thermoregulate the area.  Rainfall becomes more unpredictable as the air current is affected by hotter ground temperatures.  It eventually gets difficult to grow the commercial crop.

Modern-day human intervention can offer short-term solutions, but cannot fix the cause of the problem.  Irrigation from bores cannot provide a sustainable solution to the breakdown of the water system.  Irrigation only lowers the ground water further making the problem even bigger than it was.  The use of groundwater is not a bad practice in all cases, but it doesn’t fix the root problem.  Likewise, inorganic fertilizers will not repair the soil systems.  If a soil is being leached of nutrients due to water passing through it too quickly and hungry hybrid crops feeding on it, it will not be repaired by adding more minerals.  The same forces that are depleting the soils are still happening, so the soils will continue to become depleted.  Inorganic fertilizers cannot restore soil structure and cannot build new soil, like a natural ecosystem can.

Commonsense will tell you that if there are no natural soil-building systems in place and soils are being lost and degraded, then fertilizer dependence must increase.  Year after year more fertilizer will be needed to obtain the same yield.  Remember, the farmer depends on a predetermined yield to fulfill his lifestyle, but now there is a greater cost to maintain that yield, in the form of store-bought fertilizers.  As costs increase, net profits decrease and eventually the whole operation becomes economically nonviable.  When you add market instability and retail competitiveness to the equation, you can see how difficult it would be to survive as a farmer.  The solution, so far, has been to cut the amount of human labor on farms because they are the most expensive part of the operation.  This is done by increasing the size of the operation and the equipment.  Large conglomerate companies can grow crops over thousands of acres, tended by very few humans.  In ecological terms, this means less diversity over a larger area, which means less natural components and less natural systems in operation.  Of course, the result is that the basic life-supporting systems; water, air and soil, will be ruined at a quicker rate.  Surely that means that even these massive operations will eventually become too costly to run.

The only way to keep an ecosystem alive and healthy is to make sure the basic life-supporting systems – water, air and soil – are intact.  This applies to any patch of land, whether it’s a native forest, a farm or an urban garden.  Every ecosystem is just a smaller part of a larger ecosystem.  In fact, the whole planet could be referred to as a single ecosystem.  What we do on a local level may only cause a tiny effect, but if a significant number of local people start doing the same thing, then it will cause an effect on a slightly larger scale.  If this is replicated on a big enough scale, then eventually, our actions can affect an entire planet.

There is no buffer that can protect you from the global breakdown of the basic life-supporting systems – water, air and soil.  However, you can cause an effect on your immediate surroundings.  To restore our basic life-supporting systems – water, air and soil – we need to increase the number and diversity of biological components.  Diversity is the answer.  Remember, an ecosystem has millions of components, systems and sub-systems operating in a given area.  These systems need each other for their survival.  We can add diversity to our backyards and farms in the form of plants and animals.  Once we start to add biological components, they will start to support more biological components.  The addition of biological components, in the form of plants and animals, will start to build soil.  This in turn will slow down the flow of water and keep it in our property.  Trees and other plants will reduce and capture water lost from ground evaporation, mulch soils and create niche spaces for more life-forms.  Your property will be better regulated in terms of temperature and humidity.  It will be cooler in summer and warmer in winter.  This, in turn, helps the plants to yield more, creating more biomass and better soil.  There will be more opportunities for life forms and the basic life-supporting systems; water, air and soil will be more supportive and better able to meet your needs.  As these basic systems become healthier, more sub-systems will appear.  Systems within systems will start to rev up and biological components (plants and animals) will increase in number, diversity and health.

To give you an idea of how this may look in real terms, imagine this; a backyard that had a massive number of edible and non-edible plants of differing size, shape, habit, colour and form.  Also, imagine a diversity of domestic and wild animals, native and introduced, edible and non-edible.  Now, try to imagine a system where these plants and animals coexist in a way that they fed each other and, at the same time, create surplus food for humans.

Using a mixture of edible and non-edible plants is important.  Not everything within the system should be directly consumed by humans.  Non-edible plants create the structure that supports the edible species.  They should be planted in sensitive areas such as hilltops and drainage lines and in strips along contours on slopes.  They act as water filters, native habitats, climate controllers and soil builders.  Edible plants fill in the spaces only after the basic supporting structure is in place.

Ecosystems are in a constant state of change and so are sustainable food growing systems.  This makes it very difficult to predetermine the yield from year to year.  The system needs the freedom to change as the components and systems evolve.  This is the most difficult part for humans to understand.  In our current way of farming we strive to make each year the same so that the yield can be predetermined, even when the conditions are changing.  Sustainable agriculture calls for a massive faith in natural laws and absolute respect for the basic life-supporting systems.

I have seen many agricultural systems, but very few sustainable ones.  I have even seen several organically-certified farms that are practicing agriculture in a way that is depleting the basic life-supporting systems; soil, air and water.  Rather than buying inorganic fertilizers, they simply purchase organic fertilizers.  These organic farmers have little understanding of natural systems and just operate in a similar way to traditional farmers, only their job is more difficult without the use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides.  The food they produce may be free of chemicals, but they are slowly killing the basic life-supporting systems; water, air and soil.

To make the world a healthier place is not difficult.  Even if you don’t get the design as perfect as you possibly could, just the addition of a diversity of plants will create a positive effect on the basic life-supporting systems.  However, if you can get the components arranged in a way that they feed off one another to create a cyclic flow of energy, then you are starting to mimic a natural ecosystem.  As the site matures, the basic life-supporting systems – water, air and soil – will start to be restored.  That is when the system becomes self-sufficient and will provide excess food for humans, with minimal effort.  In fact, at that point, we will have returned to the past and, once again, be just another ecological component within an ecosystem.

ECO-Organic Vegetable Gardening

Is It Magic?

We all know how much hard work there is in growing vegetables – digging, weeding, crop rotation, watering, fertilizing, planting winter crops, resting beds, spraying pests and weeds – the list goes on and on.  So imagine a vegetable garden that didn’t need any of these things.  Imagine a garden that never had pests, never needed digging, didn’t need to be rested in winter, had no need for crop rotation, had virtually no weeds, needed very little water and virtually looked after itself.  But to top all that off, this garden produces many times more than a traditional vegetable garden and regenerates itself year after year, all by itself.

Surely, that would be magic!

How could a vegetable garden like this exist?  Easily!  The answer is in nature.  Natural ecosystems are very healthy and diverse and don’t require any human interference.  If we are able to take the same natural laws that are found in nature and apply them to our garden, we are able to reproduce the same results.  And that’s exactly what the Food4Wealth method has done.

The Food4Wealth method is based on science.  It follows very sound ecological principles.  It’s a way of setting up a natural ecosystem using edible plants, and it uses the types of plants we all like to eat.  The special planting arrangement mimics nature so the same interdependent relationships between the living components exist.  These relationships are mutually beneficial for the various components, so the vegetable garden actually runs all by itself.

The people in the family who own the Food4Wealth plot are actually one of the important living components.  They perform a similar task to a grazing animal in a natural ecosystem.  The Food4Wealth plot actually benefits from regular harvesting, just as a natural ecosystem benefits from regular grazing.  These plots are so prolific, that they need almost daily harvesting.  Regular harvesting maintains the ideal vegetation balance required to run the garden like a natural ecosystem.  It’s the ultimate win win situation.  Harvesting is good for the people, but it’s also good for the garden.

The biggest challenge that faces modern agricultural practices is to incorporate pest ecology, plant ecology, soil ecology and crop management into a method that is reliable and efficient.  And until now, that has never been achieved.  The Food4Wealth method naturally combines all of these factors without any effort.  You see, nature has had these things under control for millions of years.  It’s only humans who have made things more complicated.

But the path is now clear, because Food4Wealth has laid the foundations for a healthier, more efficient and reliable way to grow food.  It’s a simple method that sets things up as nature intended, so that problems simply don’t exist.

So, to answer the question – is it magic?

No, it isn’t magic, but it sure feels like it.

Ecological Gardening- what is it?

by Jonathan White B.App.Sci. Assoc. Dip.App. Sci.

The term Ecological Gardening seems to be gaining popularity.  But what is it?  My experience with Ecological Gardening started many years ago.  You see, I have always been a fence sitter.  As a teenager I could never make my mind up whether I wanted to be a horticulturist or an environmental scientist.  And sometimes I’m still a little unsure!

Fortunately, I have been able to gain qualifications in both.  My specialty is in growing food using ecological principles.  But I’m not talking about some sort of alternative hippie technique.  I’m talking about sound scientific principles.

In my experience, the study of natural ecosystems will reveal everything we need to know about growing food.  Natural ecosystems are generally diverse and there are a number of intricate interdependent relationships occurring between the living and non-living components at any given time.  Put simply, each component relies and benefits from its interaction with other components.  They fuel up on each other, causing the system to be able to sustain itself.  If one part of the system gets ‘out of whack’, the whole system is affected.

When studying a natural ecosystem, such as a diverse pristine rainforest we find that there are many living components co-existing in a given area.  Each of these components occupies a niche space.  If a component, let’s say a plant, is removed by an animal eating it, we are left with an empty niche.  An empty niche provides an opportunity for another life form to fill the space.  In natural ecosystems, nature does not tolerate empty niche spaces.  Once the niche becomes available, there will be a whole host of willing opportunists ready to fill that space.  Dormant seeds, sometimes decades old, will spring to life and quickly try to occupy it.

The same thing happens when we are trying to grow food.  In any agricultural practice, such as a vegetable garden, there are always empty niche spaces.  And remember, nature doesn’t tolerate empty niche spaces.  So weeds will try to fill the empty niche spaces.  Weeds are very good niche space fillers.  They are the ultimate colonizing plants.  So as we can see there is no difference in the way nature works, whether it is in a pristine natural ecosystem or a vegetable garden.

Ecological Gardening aims to create a system where nature works for us, and not against us.  It is actually quite easy to have a weed-free vegetable garden.  You simply do one of two things.  Firstly, you avoid having empty niche spaces.  And secondly, you make sure there is something desirable to fill niche spaces, should they become available.  That’s just one simple example, but Ecological Gardening can easily prevent a number of problems from ever arising.

My experience with Ecological Gardening has been phenomenal.  I have been able to combine natural weed management, soil ecology, pest ecology and crop management into a very simple and easy method.  In fact, I have been able to create a garden that requires very little attention and produces far more than a traditional vegetable garden, simply by applying sound scientific principles.  And from the incredible results that I have achieved, I can say, with absolute certainty, that Ecological Gardening is the way we will be producing food in the future.

Jonathan White is an Environmental Scientist and the founder of the Food4Wealth Method.

The Problem with Traditional Vegetable Gardening?

By Jonathan White, environmental scientist.

Traditional vegetable gardens require an enormous amount of hard work and attention – weeding, feeding and strict planting schedules.  There is also the problem of seasonality, allowing beds to rest during the cooler months producing nothing at all.  Then we are told to plant green manure crops, add inorganic fertilizers and chemicals to adjust imbalanced soils.  It takes a lot of time, dedication and a year-round commitment to grow your own food the traditional way.

But does it really need to be that difficult?

Let me ask you this question.  Does a forest need to think how to grow?  Does its soil need to be turned every season?  Does someone come along every so often and plant seeds or take pH tests?  Does it get weeded or sprayed with toxic chemicals?

Of course not!

Traditional vegetable gardening techniques are focused on problems.  Have you noticed that gardening books are full of ways to fix problems?  I was a traditional gardener for many years and I found that the solution to most problems simply caused a new set of problems. In other words, the problem with problems is that problems create more problems.

Let’s take a look at a common traditional gardening practice and I will show you how a single problem can escalate into a whole host of problems.

Imagine a traditional vegetable garden, planted with rows of various vegetables.  There are fairly large bare patches between the vegetables.  To a traditional gardener, a bare patch is just a bare patch.  But to an ecologist, a bare patch is an empty niche space.  An empty niche space is simply an invitation for new life forms to take up residency.  Nature does not tolerate empty niche spaces and the most successful niche space fillers are weeds.  That’s what a weed is in ecological terms – a niche space filler.  Weeds are very good colonizing plants.  If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be called weeds.

Now back to our story.  Weeds will grow in the empty niche spaces.  Quite often there are too many weeds to pick out individually, so the traditional gardener uses a hoe to turn them into the soil.  I have read in many gardening books, even organic gardening books, that your hoe is your best friend.  So the message we are getting is that using a hoe is the solution to a problem.

However, I would like to show you how using a hoe actually creates a new set of problems.  Firstly, turning soil excites weed seeds, creating a new explosion of weeds.  And secondly, turning soil upsets the soil ecology.  The top layer of soil is generally dry and structureless.  By turning it, you are placing deeper structured soil on the surface and putting the structureless soil underneath.  Over time, the band of structureless soil widens.  Structureless soil has far less moisture holding capacity, so the garden now needs more water to keep the plants alive.

In addition to this problem, structureless soil cannot pass its nutrients onto the plants as effectively.  The garden now also needs the addition of fertilisers.  Many fertilisers kill the soil biology which is very important in building soil structure and plant nutrient availability.  The soil will eventually turn into a dead substance that doesn’t have the correct balance of nutrients to grow fully developed foods.  The foods will actually lack vitamins and minerals.  This problem has already occurred in modern-day agriculture.  Dr Tim Lobstein, Director of the Food Commission said. “… today’s agriculture does not allow the soil to enrich itself, but depends on chemical fertilisers that don’t replace the wide variety of nutrients plants and humans need.”  Over the past 60 years commercially grown foods have experienced a significant reduction in nutrient and mineral content.

Can you see how we started with the problem of weeds, but ended up with the new problems of lower water-holding capacity and infertile soils.  And eventually, we have the potentially serious problem of growing food with low nutrient content.  Traditional gardening techniques only ever strive to fix the symptom and not the cause.

However, there is a solution!  We must use a technique that combines pest ecology, plant ecology, soil ecology and crop management into a method that addresses the causes of these problems.  This technique must be efficient enough to be economically viable.  It also needs to be able to produce enough food, per given area, to compete against traditional techniques.

I have been testing an ecologically-based method of growing food for several years.  This method uses zero tillage, zero chemicals, has minimal weeds and requires a fraction of the physical attention (when compared to traditional vegetable gardening).  It also produces several times more, per given area, and provides food every single day of the year.

My ecologically-based garden mimics nature in such a way that the garden looks and acts like a natural ecosystem.  Succession layering of plants (just as we see in natural ecosystems) offers natural pest management.  It also naturally eliminates the need for crop rotation, resting beds or green manure crops.  Soil management is addressed in a natural way, and the result is that the soil’s structure and fertility get richer and richer, year after year.  Another benefit of this method is automatic regeneration through self-seeding.  This occurs naturally as dormant seeds germinate; filling empty niche spaces with desirable plants, and not weeds.

Unfortunately, the biggest challenge this method faces is convincing traditional gardeners of its benefits.  Like many industries, the gardening industry gets stuck in doing things a certain way.  The ecologically-based method requires such little human intervention that, in my opinion, many people will get frustrated with the lack of needing to control what’s happening.  Naturally people love to take control of their lives, but with this method you are allowing nature to take the reins.  It’s a test of faith in very simple natural laws.  However, in my experience these natural laws are 100% reliable.

Another reason that traditional gardeners may not like this method is that it takes away all the mysticism of being an expert.  You see, this method is so simple that any person, anywhere in the world, under any conditions, can do it.  And for a veteran gardener it can actually be quite threatening when an embarrassingly simple solution comes along.

I have no doubt that this is the way we will be growing food in the future.  It’s just commonsense.  Why wouldn’t we use a method that produces many times more food with a fraction of the effort?  I know it will take a little while to convince people that growing food is actually very instinctual and straightforward, but with persistence and proper explanation, people will embrace this method.

Why?  Because sanity always prevails…

…eventually!

Jonathan White is an Environmental Scientist and the founder of the Food4Wealth Method.  To out more about his system follow this link

Building a Raised Bed Garden

Building a raised bed garden is a great step towards building a great garden. I always think in wonder about the pleasure of seeing a young plant grow from a seed and then develop into a mature plant creating seeds of it’s own.

As you know, all projects need to start with a plan!

How to get started on building a raised garden bed.

Raised bed gardens are done by planting flowers, vegetables or herbs in a raised bed structure. Either you’ll be using a framed structure or pots to plant in. Some knowledge of construction is good to have however you can often buy a kit with all the parts and a good instruction manual included.

Design a Raised Bed Garden

Determine where you want the raised beds to go, if you want to incorporate the raised garden bed into the landscape or have it as a stand alone garden.

Building your Raised Bed Garden.

You should know where the raised bed garden is going to go so mark it off with string pegs to make sure you have it straight and accurate. You should also consider whether you are using a plastic sheet to stop contact with the existing earth soil or not.

Construct your frame according to the kits instructions. Secure all your joints with the proper hardware.

Raised Bed Garden Soil

Normally in a established garden the soil can be drained of some of the appropriate nutrients your plants will need to be healthy and strong. A new raised garden bed means you can start afresh with the correct conditions for your plants (both vegetables and flowers). Start by talking to your local nursery experts about what you are going to need to use. I would also consider buying in bulk depending on size of your container in order to get the best price. The small bags of composting materials will work out very expensive. Look for something that will be loose and light to give good drainage if you want a healthy garden bed.

Plants Suitable For A Raised Bed Garden

Only plant flowers and vegetables your family will love and that you will use up so as to not waste the produce grown. There are so many choices of vegetables and flowers that the skies the limit.

Remember what we said at the beginning about needing to plan! Think it through carefully. Building a new raised bed garden bed is not difficult at all if you work it all out in advance. Take a weekend off and spend some time working out what you want to do, where the bed is going to be located and what plants you can put in it. Then sit back and enjoy the new raised bed garden addition to your  garden landscape and congratulate yourself on your new green thumbs.

Any gardens will thrive best if you build it soundly and ensure your Raised Bed Garden is at a height where you can tend it easily.

Raised Bed Gardening

Raised bed gardening is a very low maintenance form of gardening. Over recent years raised bed gardening has become a popular gardening practice particularly among elderly and young people. I believe that raised bed gardening has become very popular among so many people because of the ease in working with such garden design. Raised bed gardening is a convenient and easy way to produce homegrown vegetables.

Raised bed gardening is a popular technique for growing plants. Raised bed gardening is also great for vegetable or cutting gardens. Raised bed gardening is also called square foot gardening. Raised bed gardening was chosen because it provides easier access for the children. Raised bed gardening has increased in popularity over the last 8 years.

Raised Bed Gardening is growing in popularity.

Raised bed gardening has garnered a lot of attention in the past few years. I have been doing this type of bed gardening for nearly 5 years. Raised beds are versatile, easy to use, simple to construct, and have many advantages over traditional gardening. Raised beds can also extend your gardening season. Raised beds are also an excellent gardening solution for physically impaired individuals such my disabled wife who finds it difficult to bend for long periods.

Raised beds are basically unmovable, bottomless boxes. Raised beds are so good. Yup, been guilty of planting too many tomato plants and of planting too little. Raised beds will have maximum efficiency if plants are spaced equidistant from each other rather than in rows as this will allow good all round access. Raised beds are often a lower cost option to provide plants with well-drained soil. Raised beds are a dandy way to keep compost where it’s needed, as they prevent good soil from sliding away.

Raised beds in gardens can be placed on the ground or built up to any needed height for each individual. In this way raised beds gardens can be built to suit the physical needs of any gardener. Raised beds are one of the best ways to garden for the home gardener. Raised beds may be edged with old lumber, landscape timbers, railroad ties, concrete blocks or whatever is convenient.

Raised Bed Gardening and back pain

Raised beds can definitely make things easier. Raised beds can be formed with either hand tools or a tiller with a hilling attachment. Raised beds can also aid in preventing back pain because they are easier to tend with less bending. In addition they are quite useful and extremely affordable as Raised bed gardens are widely acknowledged as the way to grown the greatest yields of vegetables per allotted space.

As a user of them I can recommend raised bed gardening to virtually everyone.