START WHERE YOU ARE: Building Climate Resilience…Through Home Gardens
Guest post by CSV Member Doug-Earth
How can we live climate safer and more sustainable lives starting today, right where we are? Many of us are asking and answering that question. Whether you plan to move to a new Climate Safe Village, stay exactly where you are, or are thinking of moving to a new home in a climate safer community, you can start here and now. Improvements to your home and garden, learning new knowledge and skills, and building cooperative networks can help us all lead climate safer and more sustainable lives. We can build now, and adapt or move later.
HOME GARDENS
While the topic of growing food for climate resilience and sustainability is huge, I am going to START WHERE WE ARE with a brief description of our home gardening practices. We began organic gardening 50 years ago, but only in the last few have we ramped it up to be more intensive, regenerative and sustainable. Here is a high level overview of what we currently do.
BUILD SOIL QUALITY
Gather tons of leaves to make compost and mulch. Haul most with a bike trailer. We have numerous giant fenced piles by winter, plus a hundred gallons or so of shredded leaves.
Grow red worms indoors year round for excellent fertilizer, fed on kitchen scraps. We have many hundreds.
Make compost from all available organic materials. We have three bins, one rotating for faster production.
Use chicken manure from the chickens we raise, mixing with leaves, compost and worm manure.
Add externally sourced fertilizer and compost as needed. We have to supplement our home grown fertilizer with about 100 pounds of fertilizer each year and a few cubic yards of compost every year or two, even with all the home made fertilizers.
Use a broadfork to loosen before adding amendments during non-growing times. Avoid any tilling.
RAISE CHICKENS
Maintain a small group of chickens for eggs and manure.
Gather and store chicken feed from various organic sources.
GROW VEGGIES and FRUITS
Grow sprouts in the kitchen and microgreens indoors under lights during low light winter months.
Start seedlings and other root-grown plants indoors in the winter and then in cold frames and the semi-greenhouse shed in spring.
Grow a wide variety of annual veggies and fruits outdoors very intensively, that is, planted closer together and with more organic fertilizer, water and organic matter than generally recommended. Use all areas of the yard that get enough sun, including the front. We have about 500-600 square feet devoted to annual food crops.
Grow perennials like berries, fruit trees, asparagus, and some herbs, about 100 square feet.
Arrange plantings so vines grow up other structures like bushes and shed.
Use succession planting to avoid soil depletion and pests.
Continually solve problems with infestations, pests, watering issues, soil quality, plant supports and coverings, and so on.
Build fences, gates, trellises, row covers, and other structures to help keep healthy plants.
Grow mushrooms on logs and wood chips in shady areas.
In winter, grow indoors with a soil-based, worm-fed tower planter with high intensity LED lights and one set of shelves with LED grow lights for small plants.
HARVEST, CLEAN, SHARE, PRESERVE AND STORE FOOD
Harvest, sometimes a bit before the peak of ripeness to avoid predation.
Clean and dry food, then share with our neighbors and preserve if needed.
Use solar and wind dehydration on racks outdoors, and in a semi-greenhouse shed.
Use electric refrigeration, dehydration, freezing, and canning. Plus pickling.
Use our unheated garage as “cold storage” for root crops, winter squashes, etc
Collect, dry and store seeds for next year, e.g. squash, peppers, tomatoes, beans..
We also shop at the farmers’ market, especially for late season crops for winter storage.
Doing these things, we, a couple of old and active folks, are able to grow, harvest and store about half of our food (by volume, not calories) in about 600 square feet of outdoor soil, 300 feet of chicken coop and run, one indoor tower garden, jars of sprouts and one set of shelves for seedlings and microgreens. In summer we have a hard time keeping up with the garden and chickens, spending 6-8 person-hours per day. It’s hard work for us. We could never have done this with our full time careers and families and are grateful to have the freedom in retirement not to need incomes and not to have health issues that stop us.
If you are imagining growing a lot of your own food for climate resilience, consider STARTING WHERE YOU ARE and gradually take up some of these or related practices. If nothing else, grow jars of sprouts on your kitchen counter or a small patio garden in pots. You will learn a lot and so greatly appreciate organically grown food!
May we all have organically grown food to nourish and sustain us.
Doug-Earth
Four Lakes Watershed
Great Lakes Basin
