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GARDEN
Growing biointensively, v. 3.0
By Sally Cunningham
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The author at work on a biointensive garden. Photos courtesy of the author.
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“Square foot” gardening, “companion” gardening, “lasagna” gardening—all are derivatives of the biointensive gardening movement. And they all work beautifully for urban or small-yard spaces. If you want to grow more food and flowers in less space, this approach is for you.
The idea isn’t new. Ancient Chinese, Greek, and Mayan people used biointensive farming techniques, as did some early Europeans. In the 1960s, English master horticulturist Alan Chadwick developed the “Biointensive method” (sometimes called “The Method”). He drew upon the ancient cultures, French intensive farming from the 1800s, and Rudolph Steiner’s work in biodynamics, a movement that came to the U.S. in the 1930s.
Based on Chadwick’s writings, John Jeavons founded Ecology Action in California in 1971 to study biointensive techniques, and in 1974 published the benchmark book How to Grow More Vegetables … Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine (Ten Speed Press, 1991). For the last thirty years, every one of us who became an organic gardening teacher, a Rodale Books author, or a raised-bed gardener has climbed on those gardeners’ and farmers’ shoulders. And here we are, in the Buffalo area, with many new gardeners again figuring out how to grow more in less space.
The method
The short version of biointensive principles and philosophy is this: We’re talking about a system. Grow many kinds of plants closely together; keep every bit of soil covered and used to maximum capacity; then constantly replenish and nurture the soil.
This approach is the precursor of sustainability, in both its values and actual gardening steps. We take no nutrients out without replacing them. We leave the soil better than we found it. We revere life forms—from the invisible microorganisms to the birds overhead. We trust nature’s systems. We try to keep it low-input (few or no bought fertilizers, topsoil, etc.), making our own compost if we can.
Here are the practical elements of this sustainable, high-productivity approach, as Jeavons taught them, with some updates to accommodate life in 2010:
Garden beds—high and wide
Chadwick and Jeavons promoted double digging, in which 12-inch trenches are dug hole by hole, and 12 more inches of soil are loosened underneath each hole. The result is highly productive beds that allow roots to penetrate deeply. But it is very labor intensive and probably not realistic in our area’s clayey soil (not to mention busy lives and limited back strength).
Instead, the modern biointensive method usually means raised beds, made by layering organic matter, topsoil, and compost above ground (12 inches to 2 feet deep). The beds can be freestanding or enclosed in boards, rocks, cement blocks, or planters. Raised beds keep feet and equipment off the soil, preventing compaction.
Wide rows are a given for multiple reasons: They use garden space efficiently, compared to the single-row style (with compacted foot paths between every row). They allow for blocks of crops (often in combinations) with overlapping foliage, so the soil is covered. Usually beds that are 3 to 4 feet wide work best for ease of access.
Replacing soil—cover crops and compost
The small-farm model for biointensive production originally called for sixty percent of the land to be used for “carbon” or “compost” crops (cover crops, also called “green manure”). Cereal crops (like oats and rye) and legumes (alfalfa, clover), some with deep roots into the subsoil, put back the nutrients that the food crops use up. Plant and animal waste are also composted (preferably in the slow, “cool compost” method) to reuse all organic matter and to protect and enhance the microbial life of the soil. In many cultures, human waste is a necessary part of the production system (for now, not in your backyard).
In a Buffalo-area yard, without giving the lawn over to alfalfa, what can we do? For starters, we can compost all garden scraps, grass clippings, shredded paper, and leaves. Or we can go all the way with a composter that includes organic kitchen waste (not meat or dairy). We can plant some buckwheat, annual rye, or peas and beans any time a bed is going to be left bare (and later turn them into the soil).
Any of these steps creates our own soil fertility and improves it for the long term. It’s the exact opposite of quick-fix high-nitrogen and -phosphorus fertilizers, with their cost, negative effects on soil life, and potential run-off and environmental downsides. At the very least, we can buy and get compost into our gardens—always a good thing.
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A diverse biointensive garden.
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Interplanting—close, diverse, and companionable
Traditional biointensive approaches have used companion planting, referring to grouping plants that benefit each other. Reasons could be efficient use of space below ground (deep-rooted plants with shallow-rooting ones), space above ground (slow-growing plants sown next to fast ones), plants that shade others or provide climbing support, and so on. The diversity component is also key to pest management, since diverse plantings encourage diverse insect, bird, and amphibian life, keeping herbivores (plant-eating insects) from consuming all our crops. In the larger sense, the whole intensive approach means leaving more space for uncultivated land in order to keep natural habitat and protect genetic diversity. In a smaller garden or farm, the systems translate perfectly. Grow a companion garden, or square-foot garden—whatever you call it, as long as it’s diverse, including herbs and flowers. Then leave some of your space, even if it’s a 10-foot strip, for wildflowers, groundcovers, native shrubs, and trees. Or plant a front yard full of flowers. That, too, counts as diversity.
Full circle
It is thrilling to meet so many new community gardeners, urban farmers, and home gardeners who are committed to organic and sustainable practices. We should all do all we can to help them achieve their goals of productivity and success, including buying from them. Let’s also save our collective energy and not reinvent what decades of sweat equity discovered, but learn from food growers past. The biointensive method is a time-tested growing system that produces maximum yields from minimum space, while simultaneously improving soil. That’s what we want. It is in use in demonstration projects and farms from Kenya to India to the City Farm in Providence, Rhode Island, and—we dare to say—increasingly in Buffalo, New York.
Sally Cunningham is an organic gardener, horticulture consultant, and author of Great Garden Companions (Rodale Books, 1998), a book that teaches a biointensive and organic method of growing food and flowers.
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