Gardening with Gary and Nancy
July 2022
We were going to write an article on growing food in containers, but that will have to wait. We can’t ignore the crisis forming in global food distribution due to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Not only are farmers there not able to farm, but the food that is grown in Ukraine, “the breadbasket of Europe” is not able to be exported to those who are in desperate need of that food. Which brings us to the central issue of this article – growing and eating locally and in a sustainable manner. Okay, that is the topic for a book, not an article so this is a high-level synopsis.
In a discussion Gary had with a colleague, his colleague argued that there was no need for each country to be food secure. Food should be grown where it grows best and distributed from there. Gary, of course, argued the opposite approach. Not only does each country need to be food secure, but each locality should be to the extent possible. In fact, if a locality cannot be food secure, should it even be inhabited? We now see that relying on food from the Ukraine is tenuous through no fault of the farmers or government of the Ukraine. Would this be much different if crops are too few to export from one province to another? Vancouver Island once produced 95% of the food consumed by islanders. True, the population of the island was lower then too, but not 20 times lower. Today we feed only 5% of the population with island-grown food and much of that gets shipped first to the mainland for processing and storage then shipped back to the island for us to eat. That is a colossal failure of our government to support farming and local food security as well as a needless use of fossil fuels to transport food that was already here. Importing food from away is a further use of fossil fuels that can be avoided by growing and consuming locally.
A recent article by Andrew Nikiforuk in the Tyee summed it up better than we can. “We live in a wasteful civilization that thinks it is entirely acceptable to burn 10 calories of mostly fossil fuels to make one calorie of food, and all by employing fewer than one per cent of the population. Prior to the colonization of farming by fossil fuels, agriculture was local, small, low energy (employing human or animal muscle), inefficient and nutritious. Now it is global, big, high energy, efficient and tasteless.”
You might ask, what has growing food in my backyard, or even on my patio or porch, got to do with food security? A lot. Every bit of food that you grow, island farmers do not need to grow (or can go to others) and it is as local as you can get. So growing our own food, even just a little, is a huge step toward food security. And the food grown by island farmers goes that much further to feeding the rest of us.
But if we are going to grow our own food, let’s do it right. We wince when we drive by plowed and harrowed fields. As neat and tidy as they may look, they are really nearly dead pieces of dirt rather than a living ecosystem. Globally, farming is the leading cause of habitat destruction and is responsible for 80% of the planet’s deforestation. Not only does ploughing and soil disturbance in general destroy the unbelievable complexity and structure of soil, it degrades the ability of both plants and the myriad of organisms in the soil to thrive and work together to produce the very food that we expect to harvest from it. Add to this the artificial, petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides and the soil becomes lifeless dirt.
We can stop this and begin to restore our soils and our food systems. Farmers need to stop ploughing and discing their land on a large scale and there is a growing amount of information on no-till farming systems both for large farms and market gardens. In fact, modern, organic market gardens need not even burn carbon to run machines such as tractors to produce an abundance of food with only a modest increase in labour. And since we mentioned labour, we need a lot more farmers – another area where government has failed to support agriculture and food security. Have you ever noticed all the land, right here on the Saanich Peninsula that is not being farmed? We could quickly change that by heavily taxing agricultural land that is not producing adequate amounts of human food (sorry, but horse food does not count).
And how does all this relate to our small gardens in our backyard? If you want to have a productive organic garden, it all starts with the soil. STOP turning the soil over. STOP rototilling. STOP pulling plants out of the soil whenever possible. Okay, you have to dig things like leeks and parsnips. But you can grow potatoes on top of the soil using layers of mulch alayernd if you plant onions and beets shallow, they hardly disturb the soil at all when you harvest them and then only the surface . Those deep-rooted plants are a wonder for bringing nutrients to the surface and feeding micro-organisms for their entire growing period. Don’t rip them out at the end of the plant’s life – simply cut the plant off at the soil surface and leave the structure formed by the plant roots to remain and slowly decompose, further feeding soil life and providing passageways for air and water to infiltrate the soil.
Since we stopped tilling a number of years ago, we noticed that the soil organic matter has increased by orders of magnitude. That’s because when you don’t fluff up the soil you don’t put so much oxygen into it. What is fire but the oxidation of carbon resulting in CO and CO2? So when we add compost to our tilled soil it simply burns up right away and we are left with little organic matter. That soil compresses easily and forms a hard, packed layer where plants have a hard time growing. Our winter rains do not help, but if you keep your garden growing all winter long, it will be covered with plants to keep the soil protected from the compacting action of winter rainfall. Failing that, cover your garden with a cloche or heavily mulch it to protect the soil. However, growing plants year-round is best. Plants release up to 40% of the sugars they produce into the soil which feeds the micro-organisms. By keeping your garden green through the winter you are feeding the soil all year long. And most soil organisms promote plant growth and are responsible for the soil structure and the movement of minerals and nutrients. It doesn’t happen by accident or in a sterile, lifeless environment.
That is why it is harder to grow plants in containers with no soil structure and fewer microorganisms than in soil. We will tackle that next time.
We have a question we would like to pose for organic vegetable gardeners. Our garden has struggled more than we can remember with insect damage – primarily slugs, wood bugs and cabbage moths. We think that normally our plants can outgrow pests. However, this year, because growth rates are slower due to the protracted cold and cloudy weather, we think that pests have gotten the upper hand. We would love to hear what you are experiencing this year and any solutions that you have to deal with the pest tsunami of 2022.
Gary and Nancy Searing
Honeysuckle Cottage
Editor’s note: The Mayne Island Conservancy has recently published two very interesting reviews of soil biology and plant health in its monthly newsletter “The Oystercatcher”. They write “This series of articles aims to shine a light on the mysterious underground world of plant life beneath our feet”. Part one is linked here, and part two is here, for your interest.