SEATTLE, WA © 2008 Barbara Berst Adams www.BarbaraBerstAdams.com Market gardens are but one of many possible micro eco-farming ventures. Whether you grow for a CSA, U-pick, farmers' markets or other. As the Bioneers and others point out, many of the solutions, restorative growing techniques, etc. that help regenerate the plant and agriculture are already in existence. We just now need to apply and adapt them as conscious business. Many techniques come in the form of local workshops or on-farm classes. But here's a review of the cream of crop of the techniques we've tried or witnessed that are described in book format.

These are great starting points that can often be customized and experimented even further by networking with other local sustainable growers in your area, and applying your own experimentation. Some of these authors concentrate more on the spacing and garden layout above the soil, relying on purchased soil mixes, so see also the article on this site entitled "Nurturing the Soil" for deeper information on making authentic fertile soil beneath from native ground your feet. Other authors get right into the ways they compost and make fertile soil. In addition to what many of them say, I always encourage adding seaweed, full-spectrum rock dusts, or "soil accumulators" to your soil or compost even if instructions in any of these books don't mention it (again, see Nurturing the Soil for more explanation). And for those seeking an alternative to peat moss when it's advised in these books, coconut fiber appears to be a remarkable replacement. Also called palm peat, coco pear, cocos, kokos, and coir (pronounced "core") fiber. It has powerful water sponging properties and is sustainably produced.

The main quality of the techniques reviewed here is that they all produce far more per unit of growing space than any other form of garden farming discovered so far, with less human labor than ever before, and with the exception of one of them which uses mostly purchased soil mixes, they not only sustain, but regenerate the soil and earth's water supply. While they depend often on hand-tending (which makes your farmed products so much more valuable), they condense the work load to a minute amount compared to the conventional 20th century backyard garden and conventional farm. No tilling is needed unless it's a one-time once-over (and often not even that). They don't call for hard labor in the form of large amounts of deep forking or shoveling (some call for no digging at all) and there's very little, if any, weeding.

Keep in mind also that those techniques which call for creating soils with micro-organisms in the raised bed planted area above the ground will eventually deepen the native soil's fertility below where you've constructed a planting bed. For example, you may construct a planting area on top of hard native clay. Eventually, earthworms and other creatures will enter the raised bed, and bring nutrients and humus down into the deeper layer below, helping the hard clay regenerate into friable fertile topsoil. The soil creatures are much more efficient at loosening, aerating, and otherwise regenerating our soils if we have the time and provide the conditions for them to do the work for us.

Cinder Block Gardens:

By farmer Lynn Gillespie. This method is new since MEF was first published. Lynn has a two-acre micro eco-farm within her husband's larger farm. She uses cinder blocks, a good composting method, and beautifully designed placement of crops to earn a full-time living from this market garden.

The All New Square Foot Gardening:

This method described by its author, Mel Bartholomew, offers ingenious methods for using easy-to-build grids to plant succession crops in wide raised beds. It gets a very efficient amount of crops from a small area, and its methods have been used for backyard micro eco-farming. We sent this method to our friends in South Africa, who have used it to help build food gardens around their new eco-cottages.

How to grow World Record Tomatoes

By Charles Wilber. The main thing I want to point out about this technique is that the individual tomatoes might be large, but what we're talking about here as far as micro eco-farming isn't records for great big tomatoes that win at world's fairs so much as records of pounds a given tomato plant will produce. Some conventional growing methods produce 8 pounds per plant. This man produces in the hundreds of pounds per plant. Though I don't share his religion exactly, I love how he describes the difference between "dominion" and "domination." Dominion of the earth means if we observe and take care of something, it will take care of us. This man grows tomatoes in a southern area that gets plenty of hot sun. So keep that in mind. But still, he shows how he grows tomato plants taller than some trees (harvests them with a ladder) and even how you can get record amounts of tomatoes from a large pot if you don't have traditional garden space. Great if you want to develop an heirloom tomato value-added product, such as pasta sauce or salsa, and must grow from an extremely small area.

Lasagna Gardening

By Patricia Lanza. Two of her books, one on gardening in general, and one concentrating on herbs, are full of fun ideas. But also, like Lynn and Mel above, and sometimes Charles, she doesn't bother rototilling even once. Further, she doesn't compost in the usual sense, but layers compostable materials such as grass clippings and wood ashes (hence the name "lasagna") and then plants right on top of them in a way that the garden is growing abundantly while the new soil is being created without a separate compost pile (of course, a separate pile could also be part of this system).

McGee & Stuckey's Bountiful Container.

Now we're veering away from the typical backyard or small acreage market garden and heading towards the micro eco-farms who farm on rooftops, porches and balconies. But market gardeners sometimes want to fill every nook and cranny they can with crops for sale. This one is especially good because it concentrates on food crops rather than ornamentals.

Cinder Block Gardens E-book
As described in the April 2008 issue of AcresUSA