Biointensive gardening, a method of growing food crops that can be traced back to ancient civilizations and, more recently, to European market farmers, was brought to the US by English master horticulturist Alan Chadwick. It has been popularized in the US by John Jeavons, author of How to Grow More Vegetables, Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains and Other Crops Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine, and Lazy Bed Gardening. Jeavons practices biointensive farming on steep, tough terrain in Mendocino County California.

The Right Way
To do biointensive gardening, you have to double dig a bed by hand. Here are instructions on how to do it:

1. Mark the area where you want the bed.
2. Remove sod if necessary.
3. Loosen the soil.
4. Using a shovel, dig a trench one foot deep and one foot wide at one side of the bed. Put the soil in a bucket or wheelbarrow. Then, with a spading fork, loosen the underneath layer another foot down.
5. Moving backwards, repeat this process, but put the top 12 inches of soil in the trench you dug just before.
6. Work your way in this fashion to the end of the bed. Place the soil you removed from the first trench in the last trench.
7. Work compost and organic fertilizer into the top six inches of soil.

Tags: biointensive farming, biointensive gardening, Grow More Vegetables Fruits Nuts Berries Grains

Posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 7:37 am filed under Gardening.