When gardening, do whatever works!

Caroline comments on my video about not using raised beds:

Thank you for raising contention. As with all lore in the organic growing milieu, any garden idea or principle is relative.

One should never be slavishly devoted to universal ways of doing things…. permies and their obligatory herb spirals being my pet piece of rigidity. Maybe because I never tried building and planting one.

I think the benefits of raised beds fall on a continuum of rainfall and weather. Where it’s really wet raised beds may work by keeping your roots out of the bog… and defrosting early (not my problem). In middle rainfall and temperature zones like Florida, and in sandy soil it could be very counter productive.

Where I live, with 6 months of drought that falls in the cracking heat of summer… planting in the ground kills my veggies even if I water my arms off because the classic veggies come from areas of the world with higher rainfall. I bust my back adding organics and doing cover crops, nothing held water in this deep sand and the compost just oxidized. So in my own conditions growing on deep deep sea sand, (it goes down 3 meters and then I gave up digging) with the summer drought, I eventually found creating an artificial system was the only thing that worked. Did microscopic study of my garden and my contained systems were the only ones with any Ingham style life in them !!!

A friend gave me some old kiddies bunk beds I used as frames. They are lined with used plastic drop sheets so that they are a kind of wicking bed, and they are filled with pure compost, vermicast and clay from building sites on the hill, and drip fed from the kitchen and shower outflow. BINGO… first time I ever could grow maize, broad beans, chard and kale. I also use these beds because they allow me to grow on my concrete driveway, which runs all the way through to the back and was ‘wasted’ space as we’ve only got a small rusty Tjorrie.

Finding more space to grow is unfortunately needed as the rest of my garden is wild… wild… full of a mix of native and meso-American plants which seem to do just fine without having a visible soil food web, and there is no space in the jungle for a carrot.

We’re on the same wavelength. This is the video she commented on:

It is quite amazing to see people slavishly defending various methods of gardening as if one cannot achieve eternal bliss and the Beatific Vision without them.

It’s rather like comfrey, which, though an excellent plant in the right climate, isn’t perfect everywhere. Here, we grow moringa as a replacement – though that doesn’t grow everywhere either!

As Paul comments:

I live in East Africa, on the Nile, on the Equator, and I swear I can not grow Moringa. I have tried everything, and it just will not grow for me. For me, comfrey generates a lot of organic material very quickly. I use it to feed the rabbits, in the compost pile, as mulch, as food for black soldier flies. I can not independently verify what people claim about it having 10 foot tap root or whether or not it is a nutrient accumulator or not, but it does generate organic matter quickly. Love your channel and I am learning a lot. Thanks!

That’s from my video Comfrey is Terrible!

Use what works.

Grow what grows.

Don’t get so completely attached to a system that you become a cultist. There are many ways to grow food, and many plants that will feed us.

Just get food in the ground and learn as you grow.

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Today’s music: