John Jeavons

This is the handbook of the Grow Biointensive® method of food gardening: a combination of the French intensive technique (a method used around Paris in the 1700s and 1800s using copious amounts of horse manure and very close plant spacing) and the 1920s biodynamic technique of Austrian Rudolph Steiner (one of the first the rail against synthetic fertilizers and pesticides).

The system is complicated. Depending on your soil, you may need to begin with one of four double-digging processes (Initial, Ongoing, Complete Texturizing, or U-Bar). Tests are then taken and amendments chosen and incorporated to form a bed that is flat-topped but not contained, so that the edges are rounded shoulders (these are planted into at the same rate as the top). Crops to be planted need to be chosen according to which of three categories they fall into (based on their production of calories and/or carbon), and certain percentages of these categories must be planted. These crops are then planted in triangular or hexagonal patterns at a distance that will allow their leaves to just touch when they reach harvest size (an extraordinarily detailed and complicated chart spanning the better part of chapter 6 details planting spaces and yields for common vegetable, fruit, and cereal crops). Certain watering techniques must be used. Companion planting (both in the “companionship” sense and in the sense of crop rotation) must also be considered. Gardening by the moon is also mentioned, though they do concede that it is controversial.

Complicated though it may be (and I don't think I did it justice), most of the reasoning is quite sound and based on old, proven systems used by terracing farmers and farmers in difficult growing areas worldwide for centuries. The spacing element in particular fascinates me, and I will be experimenting with it.

If you happen by this book at the library I would advise you to check it out. It's not an easy read but you can pick and choose parts of the overall method to incorporate into your own. If nothing else, you'll boggle at the astounding 68 page long bibliography of recommended reading.… (mere)

This should have been right up my street: sustainable, organic gardening being something I'm pretty passionate about. But it was a disappointing read: simultaneously didactic and uninformative. I found it repetitive in places and with the exception of the section on plants to repel certain bugs, was left feeling that I had learnt very little. There were numerous mentions of other booklets published by the Ecology Action group which were rather irritating: if it's important enough to keep referring to, why not just put the booklet's text into the book? The fact that they'd turned the GROW BIOINTENSIVE process into a capitalised brandname was annoying, too. It's not what organic gardening should about, in my opinion.… (mere)