[compost_tea] Re: How Healthy and Self-Sufficient Can a Garden Get?

From: Steve Diver <steved_at_ncatark.uark.edu>
Date: Sat, 03 Jan 2004 20:43:44 -0000

Bob -

In a nutshell, Bob, I don't think most Westerners
who work for a living have time to be
close looped sustainable a la Jeavons
and Fukuoka. These are very labor and time
intensive systems to implement fully blown.

On the other, if you travel to villages
where most of the world's inhabitants
live, you can find all kinds of situations
where people live very close to the land
and make a living from subsistence farms.

They live year to year, based on what they
grow and the animals they husband.

Which comfortable American can relate to that?

It's a lot of hard work, Bob. But it can
be done.... all relative to a long conversation
relative to your notions of sustainability.

You have not indicated where you are from
(geography, locale, soils, climate, water,
infrastructure) and what you do as far as
gardening (to provide a perspective where you
are coming from and where you want to go).

CT's and FPE's are being used on subsistence
organic farms in villages. It makes sense.
Use local biomass sources and through recipes,
transform these materials into fertility and
pest control.

It is abundantly clear that soil health
is improved through organic management practices.

CT's are a supplemental tool for both
soil and leaf biology. There are many pests
that can be controlled and plant physiological
functions that can be improved with use of CT's.
But they are tool, to be used by choice....

Theory is met with reality by hopping on a
jet plane and traveling to Central and South
America, Africa, India, and Asia. Juxtapose
your life in the 1/3rd World with village
life and urban life in the 2/3rds World.

Steve Diver


--- In compost_tea_at_yahoogroups.com, Robert Monie <bobm20001_at_y...> wrote:

stuff deleted
>
> I'm not sure any followers of Jeavons or Fukuoka have achieved the
self-sufficiency these authors proposed, but the ideal remains an
interesting one, and a fit subject for both back-yard tinkerers and
serious scientific experimentors.
>
> My bottom-line questions are 1) could a natural garden be acheived
in which the balance of microbial life and plant health were so good
that compost tea would not be necessary except rarely and briefy in
extraordinary circumstances, and 2) how sustainable and
self-sufficient can a growing system be? Were the hopes of Jeavons and
Fukuoka unrealistic or are they theoretically attainable.
>



 

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Received on Sat Jan 03 2004 - 16:19:36 EST

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