Gardening methods - My first Gardening post

For those who have been around me lately, you would be well informed about my new passion (obsession) with growing food.  I will use the term food growing as that is the part that is particularly exciting to me.

Again, with my desire to eat only food and ingredients that I know, this involves eating fruit and vegetables that have not been spray or treated with chemicals.  After much searching, buying organically grown, locally grown fruit and veg is surprisingly tricky to find.  The solution is to grow my own that way I know that there are no pesticides or herbicides in them.

So, I have been doing my research into various methods.

  

This is the photo of my newly prepared beds at the beginning of Autumn/Winter.  I had really done no research particularly into gardening methods, instead just went for it with the knowledge I had.  I diligently dug over the beds, forming raised rows which are only about 30cm wide. It was actually very rewarding work but there were a few things I needed to change.

1.  The narrow rows slowly started to fall away, with the plants in the middle running out of soil and being really difficult to water.
2. There were weeds growing absolutely everywhere there was bare soil, which was everywhere.

I started doing more research into other gardening methods and came cross this video called Back to Eden.  This promotes the use of tree or forest much in the garden to suppress weeds, fertilise and reduce water use. Sounds good to me.

I continued to do research, just because it is fun and the lazy person in me discovered the Ruth Stout gardening method.  Her book is called "gardening without work" which seemed to fit nicely with my style.  This talks about the "no dig" method and the application of straw as mulch to suppress weeds.

The next style that I have found was the 

The Biodynamic French Intensive System

This was founded by Alan Chadwick and is another method, certainly not what I would call lazy but looks like a highly productive system that seems to sit well with my ideas.

The parts that seem to resonate are, growing cover crops close together to avoid water loss and add nutrients to the soil, double digging, which in my soils that are very compact is really needed, and growing seedlings (some) in trays first then transplanting.

I'm going to stop writing now because I am going on too long but I plan to use a combination of these methods, mainly double digging, adding fertiliser (Alan), using tree mulch on paths (Back to Eden) and adding straw to cover spaces (Ruth Stout).  I will take some photos with some more updates soon.

For now I'm out.