Transition Culture

Best Books on… Growing Food in Small Spaces (1998)

The Walnut Books Reviews Page By Rob Hopkins (this was one of a series of articles that rounded up the books on a certain subject and gave an overview on them, all of which appeared in Earthwatch magazine).

In this issues Walnut Books page, Rob Hopkins reviews some of the books available from Walnut Books on the subject of growing food in small spaces). The books reviewed are; ‘How to Grow More Vegetables than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine’ by John Jeavons, ‘Salads from Small Gardens - a unique guide to salad growing’ by Joy Larkcom, ‘Square Foot Gardening’ by Mel Bartholemew.

One of the major challenges we face as we enter this new century is how to feed ourselves sustainably. A consensus is emerging that the best strategy for providing food for local communities is to grow as much of that food as close to that community as possible. This resonates with Abraham Lincoln’s prophetic words quoted in John Jeavon’s book, “ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil�. Growing food locally reduces the problems associated with long distance food transport, with nutrient loss from lengthy periods of storage as well as avoiding many of the well-documented problems associated with intensive agriculture. It is also a relaxing, healthy pastime and increases the biodiversity and beauty of a place.

John Jeavon’s excellent book “How to grow more vegetables than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine� is based on the work of Ecology Action, a research charity in the USA. The work of Ecology Action has been leading the way in terms of researching how to maximise yields from the smallest pieces of ground. Their work is inspirational and its implications vast. The system they have evolved they call biointensive, and it is modelled on traditional intensive gardening systems such as the French Intensive system and some of the systems used traditionally in China. They talk of ‘biointensive mini-farming’ and their case is persuasive. Their research shows that all the food for one person in one year can be grown on 3,402 square feet, whereas conventional agriculture requires between 22,000 and 42,000 square feet. The biointensive approach uses 99% less energy and between 66 and 88% less water. This reduction of the amount of land required to produce the nation’s food has huge implications. Firstly, Ecology Action estimate that all of the food required to feed the USA could be grown on the amount of land currently dedicated to lawns, thus allowing cities to become self-reliant abundant places. Secondly, between ½ and ¾s of the remaining land could be returned to wilderness.

So what is the biointensive approach? Basically it has 4 elements. Firstly it uses deep double dug beds. Secondly it advocates the making of large amounts of compost and thirdly it uses a system of very close plantings on triangular spacings (like the dots of a five on a dice). Lastly it promotes the idea of moon plantings. I can claim a bit of personal experience here. I got my copy of “How to Grow…� and set about creating a food garden based on its principles (apart from the moon planting which requires someone much more organised than I am!). All I can say is - it works. In a vegetable garden the size of most people’s living room, we grew all our own fruit and vegetables from April to December, and it was very easy. I had very little weeding to do, very little work to do (apart from the initial double digging!) and, we were awash with vegetables.

Another person who has had a go at the ‘huge yields from small spaces’ challenge is Mel Bartholemew. His book, ‘Square Foot Gardening’ claims to allow you to grow ‘twice as much in half the space using his technique which he describes as ‘simple, easy, attractive and rewarding’. The garden is built up on a series of squares, each 12� by 12�. Each square is planted with a different herb, flower or vegetable, and the number of each plant in a square is set out in the book. So, for example, one square could contain 1 pepper plant, 9 spinach plants or 16 carrots. Simple? Certainly. Easy? Definitely. Rewarding? The square foot method certainly is productive, with yields appearing to be comparable with biointensive techniques, and his section on using the Square Foot approach for rooftop gardens and paved yards are excellent. But attractive? It’s all a matter of taste I suppose, but for me the only problem with this otherwise excellent approach is one of aesthetics. Its all so regular, all these little squares, like a chess board. Something in me reacts against that, I like a garden to be irregular, to be curvy and interesting. There’s something exciting about a garden which is abundantly productive yet which is also verging on the wild. Bartholomew’s garden is far too regular and ordered for me. Puts me in mind me of the garden of Mr Fussy from the Mr Men books. That said, his sections on how to grow things are excellent, and you could easily take this book, make more interestingly shaped beds and you’d be flying.

Joy Larkcom is the undisputed Queen of Salad Growing - if it has leaves and is edible she has probably been growing and eating it for years. She almost single-handedly pioneered the resurgence in salad growing and popularised a wide range of unusual salad varieties. ‘Salads for Small Gardens’ unapologetically focuses just on salads and contains everything you need to know to be able to live out the rest of your days in salad filled bliss. The sections on protected cropping and salad techniques are excellent, as is the comprehensive list of all the different varieties of salad and their individual growing requirements. You’ll not find this information put together so comprehensively anywhere else. Larkcom doesn’t claim to have discovered a ‘new way of gardening’ (why is it mostly men who feel the need to do this?), she just loves growing salads and wants to enthuse you into doing likewise. She doesn’t overcomplicate things but also doesn’t make it appear to be a case of just throwing seeds at a vegetable bed, this is a realistic and practical book and is very much recommended.

I get the feeling that in a perfect universe, Bill Mollison (the co-originator of Permaculture, the topic of next issue’s reviews page), would design the garden, John Jeavons would fill them with delicious and unusual salads planted on John’s biointensive spacings, while Mel Bartholemew would be kept safely distracted up on the flat roof or balcony building productive Square Foot gardens.

Mahatma Gandhi observed that “to forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves�. Jeavons, Bartholemew and Larkcom are all doing vital work in reconnecting us with food growing and with the soil. In these days when the system that puts the food on our plates is so manifestly absurd, the one very positive course of action available to us is to grab one or two of these books, a few packets of seeds and set about creating a small productive garden to provide ourselves with the freshest, the tastiest and the greenest (in both senses) food possible.