Ecological Vegetable Garden or Traditional Garden - which is best?
When we think of a vegetable garden we tend to conjure up images of large
kitchen gardens or allotment plots that need lots of attention and constant looking after that
leaves little time for anything else.
Frankly, this doesn’t fit in well
with the life-style of the average suburban dweller with a small back garden, a full-time job, kids and a hefty mortgage to
support. So it's little wonder that very few people feel they can make the commitment to growing their own
food.
But what if I was to show you a way of growing vegetables that meant that even
the busiest mum, dad or corporate executive could grow a significant portion of their own food in less time
than it takes to visit the local supermarket once a week.
Ecological vegetable gardening does just that. It’s the ultimate modern-day
convenience vegetable plot. It's like having your local supermarket right outside your back door, only the
food is fresher, tastes better and is better for you.
For many years my vegetable garden was the same as everybody else’s
with vegetables grown in neat rows and crops moved around to different places each year. I hoed, weeded, fed,
watered, added manure just like I had been taught by my dad and grandfather, and in the countless books I
read. It wasn't until I became an organic gardener and read about raised bed gardening that I discovered a
different way of doing things and started to make a few small changes.
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out more about the ecological vegetable garden
The first and probably most significant change was that by using
raised beds and gardening intensively I could grow far more plants in a given area. The second change was to never
dig the soil. And thirdly, I improved my compost making system.
Once these simple changes 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
something just about every day of the year.
The results I was getting were amazing. But it was a while
before I realized that by gardening in this way I had created an ecosystem made up of edible plants, and it behaved
in exactly the same way as a natural habitat. By creating an ecological garden we are creating a living, breathing
ecosystem. We are getting nature working for us, and not against us, and this works in our favour.
When we look at a traditional method of vegetable gardening, with
lots of empty space and things planted in rows, we
see a very unnatural system. There is very little diversity and a lot of
empty niche spaces that Nature quickly fills with unwanted plants
(weeds).
However, in the ecological vegetable
garden a diverse range of plants of differing shapes and
characteristics are grown very
tightly together. Such dense planting
arrangements can yield an unbelievable amount
and 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.
Converting an existing vegetable garden
Any existing vegetable garden can be converted into an ecological
garden. Firstly, get your pathways laid out so that you never have to walk on your garden beds again. After that,
get a good composting system going and apply it to the soil surface. Then plant densely and diversely.
If you don’t have a vegetable garden, my suggestion would be to
create a classic ‘no dig’ garden to get you started. Then simply follow the ecological vegetable gardening
method.
If you live in a flat or home with no proper garden or soft ground you could
create a mini-ecological garden using a series of containers. Polystyrafoam boxes with drainage holes are
ideal. Fill them with good potting mixture and arrange them side by side using as many as you can fit into the
space you have available. Rather than developing a large composting system, you could purchase a worm farm and
add the worm casts to the soil surface as fertilizer. Once the boxes are set up, simply adopt the ecological
gardening method.
The Ecological Vegetable Gardening Method – the key
principles.
- Plant densely
- Plant a diversity of plants within a given area
- Get a good composting system set up and use the compost as a surface
mulch on bare patches
- Allow some plants to go to seed
- Only interfere with the system when a single species of plant
over-dominates and simply scratch out excess plants when they are small.
Growing vegetables this way is not hard work. A small area can provide
you with a great deal of food, saving you a lot of money every year. Most of us don’t have much time to spend in
the garden, including me. I spend much less time on my vegetable garden
compared to when I was growing traditionally.
I only use a space of around 6m x 6m. That’s an area that could fit easily into
many suburban back gardens. The best thing about this method is that I know I can ignore my vegetable garden
for weeks and it will keep on supplying me with wonderful food.
So, if you believe growing food is hard work, takes a lot of time and needs lots
of land and time, think again. Ecological gardening could be just the thing for you.
Click here to find
out more about the ecological vegetable garden
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