Subject: Greenhouse vs. garden?

From: [email-masked] (John T. Zoltai)
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 95 01:30:50 GMT

Well, I've been lurking here for about four months now, so I hope I've got
the right picture. This topic could be referenced in agricultural groups,
but I haven't been able to find any usegroup that discusses this stuff from
the self-sufficiency angle, so here I am.

My concern is food. I have a good amount of basic foods (rice, beans, corn,
wheat, honey, etc.) in storage, but I realize the importance of fresh food,
both for nutritional content as well as morale. I've grabbed the Seeds of
Change catalog and am now facing a quandry. I can either start a garden, or
start a pseudo-hydroponics operation by converting a rear patio to a small
greenhouse.

It strikes me that, when food supplies are tight, protecting a garden is
going to be a problem. It's enough managing the four, six, and eight-footed
creatures of nature, but when that two-legged predator starts browsing, the
stakes get very high very fast. So, it makes sense that a greenhouse would
offer somewhat greater protection, from the lesser creatures almost
completely, and from humans to a greater extent than leaving the plants
sticking out of the ground somewhere.

Which brings me to another problem. To compensate for the smaller amount of
space in a greenhouse, intensive gardening techniques, even to the extent of
hydroponics, would be a requirement. However, hydroponics requires chemical
nutrients, which implies a dependence on an oil-based economy and intact
supply lines, which is not the model I wish to support. So, I'm looking at a
situation where I would use compost pits and worm pits to break down plant
and animal waste into something that can serve as a growing medium. Use this
rich medium in the greenhouse, with watering via a drip irrigation system.

With rabbits in cages along the floor to provide a CO2 source as well as a
standby protien source, it seems possible, at least in theory, to develop a
nearly closed-loop system that is efficient and maintainable under primitive
conditions.

My problem is, I'm working from some truly ancient texts on hydroponics from
the local library, and I have no practical skill in this regard. I intend to
be well along the learning curve by this fall, however.

Does anyone here have direct experience that can show me the weak spots in
what I've described above? How about some recent titles on home hydroponics,
especially in the self-sufficiency area?

- John T. Zoltai - Architectural services for business information systems.

  "Who was arrested in the 'gold' wave [of 1929]? All those who, at one
   time or another, fifteen years before, had a private 'business,' had
   been involved in retail trade, had earned wages at a craft, and
   _could_have_, according to the GPU's deductions, hoarded gold."
                       -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago.

---

From: [email-masked] (Jeff Cook)
Date: 13 Mar 1995 19:13:51 GMT

>sticking out of the ground somewhere.

I suppose there might be some advantage to building a greenhouse or
hydroponic farm, but it may not be necessary to go to all that trouble
and expense.  I'm trying Square-Foot Gardening this year.  It's my first
time to give it a try, so I can't personally vouch for it, but I've heard
lots of good things about it.

With Square-Foot Gardening, you start new seeds every week, so your harvest
is spread out over the entire summer.  By staggering the planting and
harvesting of your crop, you can lessen the impact caused by the two-legged
varmints.  If someone sneaks into your garden, he can can only pick what's
ripe at that particular moment.  He wouldn't be able to steal much of your
crop, because you're constantly harvesting the good stuff as soon as it's
ripe; everything that's worth eating would already be out of your garden
and sitting in your kitchen.  If the guy makes off with a few tomatoes or
carrots, that's okay, because there'll be more ready for harvest within a
few days, perhaps a week or so.  Plus, you'll be harvesting and storing
_more_ than you can eat, so you probably won't even feel the loss.

This method should also help protect you from hail storms and other
disasters.  If there's a hail storm this summer that kills some of my
crop, I'll salvage what I can, compost the rest, and re-plant with the
seedlings I'm raising indoors.

Again, I can't _personally_ vouch for Square-Foot Gardening, but that's
the way it's supposed to work, and I intend to have first-hand knowledge
of how well it actually works in practice by the end of the season.  You
might want to give it a try before paying out the big bucks for high-tech
equipment, when all you really need is a shovel.

(You can read all about it in the book, _Square Foot Gardening_ by Mel
Bartholomew, in your local library)
--

Jeff Cook                                 [email-masked]