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Bio-Intensive Mini-Gardens–Recipe for Survival
John Jeavons, Organic Consumers Association
“They’re making people every day,
but they ain’t makin’ any more dirt.”
– Will Rogers
A sustainable community involves a dynamic inter-dependent relationship between each of us and the resources that sustain our lives. Rather than shirking human labor, trying to reduce the amount of it used or to increase its productivity in unsustainable ways, we need to exalt in its proper use and the maintenance of the very muscles involved in an effective human life. Properly performed, labor is not tedious or enervating, but strengthening and rewarding.
Using resources more efficiently – doing more with less – allows us to use our personal energy more effectively. The field of electronics was recently miniaturized on this basis. In fact, the world is on the verge of a major new discovery – that there are major economies of small scale, such as the miniaturization of agriculture. The sophisticated low-technology techniques and the approaches involved in this kind of food-raising will make possible truly sustainable agricultural practices globally.
(Fall 1995)
A short introduction to the biointensive methods -AF
Wealth and Health from Waste and Worms: Sustainable Waste Management
Scott A. Meister, Permaculture Reflections
Every household, every cafe, every restaurant, every place where humans are active, produces raw, organic waste.
What happens to this waste, and what does it do when it leaves our front door?
We pay taxes, to have municipal or privately owned trucks drive through our cities and streets every week or more to pick it up and have it sent to either a landfill, or an incinerator.
…We are currently paying money to destroy our environment and make ourselves sick, only to have to spend more money to “clean up” our environment later, and to pay hospitals, doctors and pharmacies in an attempt to make us well.
This is a negative use of our time, money and resources. It’s a never ending negative cycle.
I wish to show you a positive way to use our raw organic waste, to have a positive effect on our environment, our health, and our wallets. We can make our waste work for us instead of against us. We can profit from it, instead of paying to have it hurt us.
(14 Jan 2007)
Great introduction to keeping worms, something which can be done in the smallest of backyards, even a balcony. -AF
How to Build a Cold Frame
Aaron Newton, Groovy Green
Are you looking to get a jump on your spring lettuce crop? Having trouble getting your eggplants seeds to sprout on the window sill? Perhaps your spouse doesn’t appreciate soil, seeds and peat containers all over the house for 2 months during late winter? Sounds as if you need a mini greenhouse or cold frame to solve your problems. Here are easy directions for how to build your own.
(15 Jan 2007)
