“Gardening When it Counts – Growing Food in Hard Times”

Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times
by Steve Solomon

We’re going to do something a little different here at PrudentHome, as regards more traditional book reviews; we’re going to do a running book review and commentary. Each mid-week post over about a two month period of time (we plan on building in a couple of “open’ weeks within this time frame in order to allow for information that may be of urgent interest) we’ll present our continuing review with commentary.

Here’s why, because Mr. Solomon’s gardening book is one that deserves our special attention as it’s written especially for our times (and beyond?): hard times.

Here’s the beginning: Introduction -

“These days I feel fortunate to have retired to one of the world’s most remote places, Tasmania, a temperate south pacific island with a climate that is a lot like Oregon’s. From here I can enjoy a slight sense of detachment as I watch how the planet is going. But Tasmania is not self sufficient, so I am not nearly as detached as I wish I could be  about the hard times I foresee coming. I have the feeling that I should share some gardening knowledge I’ve accumulated with those who are probably soon going to need it, which is why I wrote this book.”

Here’s some of Mr. Solomon’s history, perspective and viewpoint:

• “I had a five-acre (two-hectare) homestead …”
• “In 1979 I created Territorial Seed company, …
• “During the 1980’s, when intensive (gardening) had become the standard practice, several things came together to teach me it was not the best way. Because I was running a seed company, I had to do a variety of trials. … Trials require that you grow plants far enough apart that each can develop to its full potential. One thing I noticed from doing this was that my trial plots didn’t need nearly as much irrigation as my intensive veggie garden. Another was that these well-separated plants got much larger; they tasted better than crowded vegetables did when they weren’t harvested promptly; and many vegetable species grown that way yielded more in relation to the space occupied, not less as I had read in books by intensive gurus.”
• “… I researched the nearly lost art of vegetable gardening without irrigating at all, which is mainly done by putting plants extremely far apart.”
• “These days I no longer raise my vegetables using the extreme intensive method that is still advocated by Everybody Else. And I irrigate much less than most people. If I did not have irrigation, I could still grow my garden. I believe I’ve worked out methods that best suit the coming hard times.”

PH Commentary: Please note here that Mr. Solomon has five acres of land on which to  plant his garden, he speaks very much from the viewpoint of a professional seedsman who has become disenchanted with the method (intensive gardening) used by “Everybody Else”  for some specific reasons: irrigation, harvesting-timing concerns and eventual yields, to name three..

High water use in intensive gardening is a very controversial conclusion as we understand it.

Until next time, keep your eyes on the horizon as the weather’s changing fast.