The Do Nothing Garden

Doing nothing is a future goal of mine.  I have not begun to get close to doing nothing at this point in my life-but I see it up the road a bit.  Keri's Tuesday entry inspired me to talk about my garden here, and my hopes for it, and how the philosophy spills over into the rest of my life. 

We live on 2 1/2 acres of washed out desert dirt in the south central

California valley.  It's where I grew up.  My parents live 2 parcels down on their 2 1/2 acre piece.  The chunk we live on belongs to them, and my dad built this house we live in.  The soil is pretty barren; a test I did showed that there is literally nothing in terms of nutrients in the soil and that it is highly alkaline.  In short, it needs major ammendments to become really fertile.

There are some pretty bright minds out there, tackling the issue of where the world will be in 10-50 years, but the ones intriguing me the most at this time in my life are those who emphasize learning to feed ourselves.  Psychologically and collectively speaking, we are a very dependent culture.  Many of us do not know the difference between food grown at home and food grown far away-what is in it, at what point it was harvested and by whom, whether the farmer and his workers were paid enough for it for them to live on, whether it was irradiated or not... 

With that in mind, I wanted to explore growing some food around here.  I started a compost pile to cut down on landfill contributions, though it's gone a bit crazy at the moment.  I read some books.  I've considered adding chickens to fertilize, weed and eat my leftovers, but haven't gotten to that yet.  What we have done is begun some little experiments called "guilds". 

I'm so excited about guilds because they are a model that could effectively do all of the work I would normally have to do: fertilize, water, feed, kill bugs, draw pollinators, create habitat for beneficial sorts, crack open hardpan, and mulch.

I've created four guilds and will begin another three in the next month or so.  I have no idea if they will really work, but here is what I did for one of them:  All guilds begin with a simple tree, preferably one that has a few functions such as fruit, nuts, shade, or flowers.  Then around it I planted these guys:

*Nasturtiums-this flowering, fast grower is a soil fumigant-she keeps scores of destructive, plentiful-in-my-bad-soil organisms off of my tree's roots.  I planted scads of these from seed packets.

*Root vegetables-also from seed packets-radishes, rutabaga, carrots, mainly.  These break up the hard soil.  In fact, what we don't want to pull and eat, I can snap off the greens and eat them or toss back into bed for instant mulch and let the root rot in the ground, feeding the soil and providing food for worms. 

*Beans and snow peas-these fun vining varieties feed my lacking soil with much needed nitrogen.  From just a few plants, we munch on sweet, raw beans while we're out inspecting plants and removing weeds.  We haven't had enough to cook yet, but we will.  You can just poke a dry bean into the soil and have a plant in a few days. 

*Artichokes-these plants totally rule.  I bought some tiny cheapies at the nursery and they are going nuts.  Their big, spiky leaves fall off on the underside of the plant and create lots of mulch for the tree and the guild. 

*Strawberries-for groundcover-to shade the spots where the sun beats down on the earth and sucks away the nutrients.  Clover is also great for this and is a nitrogen fixer, too.

Though I putter around out there, nurturing the newer plants and asking them what I can do to help, soon, most of my work will be done.  These little communities have been created to take care of themselves so that I won't have to, except to eat them, smell them, or enjoy them visually. 

If the guilds flourish and become jungle-like, this will be the best thing I have ever learned and executed in my life.  I say this because it seems to come much easier to me to make my life more busy, difficult and overwhelming than to do things that make it run smoothly.

Comments

[wendy]

holy guacamole! so freakin' cool!

[Julie]

I always learn so much for you! Hopefully when you come, the weather will be nice and I can bend your ears for some recommendations for our backyard.

[changapeluda]

and here i thought artichokes were hard to grow, that they turn into "weeds"....

you must be sprinkling pixie dust on 'em
:0]

[Gemma]

I'm really intrigued! This sounds similar to Forest Gardening (see this for a definition: http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1256.html) and other types of permaculture. I may have to try it, modified for my Virginia woods! Thanks!!!!