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Thread: Charles Hugh Smith: It Doesn't Take Much Land to Grow A Lot of Food

  1. #1

    Charles Hugh Smith: It Doesn't Take Much Land to Grow A Lot of Food

    It Doesn't Take Much Land to Grow A Lot of Food

    Perhaps we as a nation need to focus less on manicured lawns and access to corporate supermarkets and focus more on encouraging people of all ages to make the land around them productive. What non-gardeners might not appreciate is how much food can be produced in a small area: a rooftop garden, tomato plants in large pots, hydroponic arrangements that don't even need soil, wall gardens that let climbing plants grow up walls--the possibilities are endless.

    I am a lazy gardener. Perhaps "lazy" isn't quite the right word; given my insanely over-scheduled life of 12+ hour days, I don't really have the time or inclination to create a picture-perfect neat garden.

    What I focus on is the health of the soil and the vegetables, and providing year-round pollination opportunities (i.e. flowers) for pollinators like bees. I don't disrupt the soil and feed it a lot of compost. Birds and other predators help control insect pests and I use non-poisonous methods to control occasional infestations.
    Perhaps time learning in a garden should be considered as important as time spent sitting in a classroom.

    The important national discussions about food security and hunger in America rarely seem to mention a critical fact: it doesn't take much land to grow a lot of food. Discussions of food deserts--neighborhoods or communities with limited access to supermarkets and farmer's markets--rarely if ever ask: how much open land is in these communities that could be converted to gardens in the growing season?

    We hear much about hunger, poor diets and teaching math and science, but not enough about gardens in schools and how gardens are ideal workshops for learning about the biology of nutrition, health, plants, insects and ecological systems. Even math is a natural subject in a garden: measuring the space allotted to each crop and measuring the output...

    Read more:

    http://www.oftwominds.com/blogaug14/garden8-14.html

    Last edited by francisco; 08-18-2014 at 05:26 PM.
    Brawndo's got what plants crave. Its got electrolytes.



    H. L. Mencken said it best:


    “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”


    "As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."



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  3. #2
    Seriously? Did you look at his meals? What was coming out of the garden was the green stuff. He wasn't growing the rice in his 4m x 4m area. He wasn't growing the wheat for the pasta, the peanuts, or the quinoa. He was growing fiber, not calories. I grew a plot of potatoes this year from a fifty pound bag of seed potatoes that I got at the feed store. Me and the wife and kids just got done digging about 1200 pounds of potatoes, a return of 24:1. That sounds like a lot, but it works out to about 7500 calories per square meter for a season's effort or about 1% of a year's calories for a person.

    Average yield on this cultivar is about 15:1, so its been a darn good year with timely rains.

    Yes, you can lots of vegetable matter but its much harder to grow a lot of calories.

    XNN
    "They sell us the president the same way they sell us our clothes and our cars. They sell us every thing from youth to religion the same time they sell us our wars. I want to know who the men in the shadows are. I want to hear somebody asking them why. They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are but theyre never the ones to fight or to die." - Jackson Browne Lives In The Balance

  4. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by XNavyNuke View Post
    Seriously? Did you look at his meals? What was coming out of the garden was the green stuff. He wasn't growing the rice in his 4m x 4m area. He wasn't growing the wheat for the pasta, the peanuts, or the quinoa. He was growing fiber, not calories. I grew a plot of potatoes this year from a fifty pound bag of seed potatoes that I got at the feed store. Me and the wife and kids just got done digging about 1200 pounds of potatoes, a return of 24:1. That sounds like a lot, but it works out to about 7500 calories per square meter for a season's effort or about 1% of a year's calories for a person.

    Average yield on this cultivar is about 15:1, so its been a darn good year with timely rains.

    Yes, you can lots of vegetable matter but its much harder to grow a lot of calories.

    XNN
    truth
    "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it."
    James Madison

    "It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." - Samuel Adams



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  5. #4
    The mother earth news had a trick for growing potatoes. Take a trash can and cut maybe 1" holes here and there. and drainage holes at the bottom. Put in a inch or so of rocks. cover with a layer of soil, then a layer of potato's, then soil then potato's. etc. the plants find the holes you cut and grow out there. It ends up looking like a bush. Then to harvest, you just tip it over. No digging.

    -t

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by tangent4ronpaul View Post
    The mother earth news had a trick for growing potatoes. Take a trash can and cut maybe 1" holes here and there. and drainage holes at the bottom. Put in a inch or so of rocks. cover with a layer of soil, then a layer of potato's, then soil then potato's. etc. the plants find the holes you cut and grow out there. It ends up looking like a bush. Then to harvest, you just tip it over. No digging.

    -t
    nice......must look into
    "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it."
    James Madison

    "It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." - Samuel Adams



    Μολὼν λάβε
    Dum Spiro, Pugno
    Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by tangent4ronpaul View Post
    The mother earth news had a trick for growing potatoes. Take a trash can and cut maybe 1" holes here and there. and drainage holes at the bottom. Put in a inch or so of rocks. cover with a layer of soil, then a layer of potato's, then soil then potato's. etc. the plants find the holes you cut and grow out there. It ends up looking like a bush. Then to harvest, you just tip it over. No digging.

    -t
    Grow 100 lbs. Of Potatoes In 4 Square Feet: {How To}

    Click image for larger version. 

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    Read article here:
    http://tipnut.com/grow-potatoes/

  8. #7
    Potato towers are very cultivar and climate dependent production method. I've tried, but the in the central Midwest the nights get too warm, too quickly. It might work in a northern maritime climate.

    http://extension.oregonstate.edu/lan...wers_cwise.pdf

    Growing potatoes in “towers” or structures designed to accommodate layers of growth, is a popular Internet and garden site recommendation. The allure of getting pounds of potatoes in a small space leads people to try this technique.

    The process as described is simple: build a structure (wood, wire, a pot, etc) plant potatoes in the bottom, keep watered and fertilized, add soil as the plant grows
    and voila! Potato bounty!

    The reality is often disappointing.
    Other varieties grow over a longer season and can set potatoes further up the stem by producing new rhizomes typically up to a foot above the first rhizomes that form. These tend to produce relatively large potatoes and quitea few smaller ones.

    Potatoes are a cool season vegetable but are sensitive to hard frosts. Cool, moist conditions favor the periodwhen tubers are forming. The optimal range for shoot emergence is daytime temperatures of 68F-72F. The optimal range for tuber formation is mid 50F at night. Above 68F night temperatures tuber set is reduced and
    above 84F it is inhibited.
    The Great Potato Tower Mystery

    One problem with the continuous bearing of tubers is that the oldest tubers tend to be less favorable for consumption than the newest tubers. I suppose one could eat the newer tubers and immediately replant the old tubers for the next production as the dormancy is near broken. It is easy to see the difference of the tubers...the bright ones are new and the duller skin toned ones may be months old. Additionally, some varieties lack good keeping qualities in the soil..pink rot, scab, rhizoc, growth cracks, etc. Lines that produce 10/20 stems per hill would be better than just a few. I would have to look up the cultivars that have the high stem counts. Of course, high stem counts would mean many small potatoes but I like that anyway.
    XNN
    "They sell us the president the same way they sell us our clothes and our cars. They sell us every thing from youth to religion the same time they sell us our wars. I want to know who the men in the shadows are. I want to hear somebody asking them why. They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are but theyre never the ones to fight or to die." - Jackson Browne Lives In The Balance



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