Bring on the Flowers!
Part 2 of a visit with enlightened south Austin gardener Ethan Guion, who today shares six guidelines for people new to the practice of regenerative gardening.
1. No-till gardening: How can a gardener layer up the soil, and make as little disturbance as possible to allow the organic cycles to occur? The answer is simple enough: keep soil covered, and allow the micro and macro-biology to do the work for you.
Consider the myriad of soil life that’s disrupted every time we dig, from bacteria to earthworms, ground beetles to fungi. Tearing at the soil disrupts this intricate web of life, setting back the natural processes that lead to healthy soil. Leave soil undug and soil organisms can thrive undisturbed, which is good news for plants. And it also allows for a more natural balance between soil pests and their predators.
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2. Diversity of crops: Having diverse crops means more diverse compost in the future, and allows cohabitation strategies to increase biodynamic systems. This does not have to be all at once, and allows a natural relationship with the natural habitat that won't go after your crops as often.
Diversity is important for all fields, nutrients, crops, and soil structures. The more diversity in your fields, the more diversity in the living soil food web too. Plants take nutrients, water, and organism waste in the ground up into the structure of their body in organic plant form, and place nutrients, gasses, and liquids back into the ground again too.
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3. Companion Planting: this practice has meant the difference between success and failure in my gardens. Agrarian societies throughout the ages have been aware of these special unions and employed them in the art of farming.
Perhaps the best historical example of companion planting is the “Three Sisters” in which corn, beans, and squash are planted together on a hill. Native Americans developed this system to provide food for a balanced diet from a single plot of land. Each of the crops is compatible with the others in some way.
The tall corn stalks provide a support structure for the climbing beans. The beans do not compete with the corn for nutrients since, like legumes, they can supply their nitrogen. Squash provides a dense ground cover that shades out many weeds which otherwise would compete with the corn and beans. This is true teamwork in the garden.
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4. Composting: this is one of the most important strategies you can use to grow anything. There is vermicomposting (with worms), bokashi composting (with fermentation), and in-ground and above-ground composting options.
By doing this, you turn nutrients back into their organic or most broken down form that can then be put back into the loop. Compost also increases your micro life and soil management. Think of your it as the natural digestive tract for your garden.
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5. Cover crops: these slow the velocity of runoff from rainfall and snowmelt, reducing soil loss due to sheet and rill erosion (when water from rainfall fails to soak into the soil, running across it instead).
Over time, a cover crop regimen will increase the soil’s organic matter, leading to improvements in structure, stability, and increased moisture and nutrient holding capacity for plant growth. Many cover crops put nutrients into the soil, remove toxins, or assist with mycelium network growth.
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6. Flowers: the benefits of flowers in the garden are somewhat similar to the benefits of cover crops. In Chernobyl, for example, sunflowers are being used to slowly transform nuclear waste into organic waste. Pollinators are important too. They are another natural cycle that we don't have to do the work for. So, in my opinion, bring on the flowers in my garden any time, to continue balancing the system that Mother Nature has already had for billions of years. ❦
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Further resources:
Physician’s Desk Reference for Herbal Medicines.
Gerard’s Herbal: John Gerard (1597)
Teaming with Microbes: Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis
The One Straw Revolution: Masanobu Fukuoka
Books by Matt Powers, John Kempf and John Lui
Elaine Ingham’s Soil Food Web School
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