As the total global population continues to rise and economic growth drives a transition towards more resource-intensive diets, a growing number of consumers are concerned with how to reduce the environmental impact of their dietary choices. Consumers often see organic food as an effective way to reduce their impact: surveys reveal that regardless of geographic location, the primary motivations for organic food purchases are health1 and environmental concerns.2 Furthermore, consumers are often willing to pay more for organic products – some studies indicate a willingness-to-pay of up to 100 percent above standard prices.3 But is this a wise choice? Is going organic really the best way to reduce the environmental impact of our diets?
Before we explore the relative impacts of organic vs. conventional agriculture, it is worth clarifying their definitions. Organic agriculture refers to the farming of crops or livestock without the use of synthetic inputs, including synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, plant growth regulators, nanomaterials and genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).4 Note that organic does not necessitate ‘chemical-free’ or ‘pesticide-free’; chemicals are often used in organic farming, however these cannot be synthetically manufactured, with the exception of a small number which have been approved by the National Organic Standards Board.5 Conventional (sometimes termed ‘industrial’) farming is therefore any agricultural system which uses one or more of the above synthetic inputs.
The methods applied for weed and pest control in conventional and organic systems can also impact on choices of planting and tillage techniques. Conventional farming often utilises synthetic herbicides for the control of weeds; this approach is typically more conducive to low- or no-till management techniques.6 Since herbicide applications cannot be widely adopted in organic farming (with some approved exceptions), options for no-till farming can be more limited and places greater emphasis on approaches such as mechanical controls and/or mulching.
In arable farming (which concerns the production of crops), nutrients can be added to the soil in the form of organic matter, such as green compost, animal manure (human sewage sludge is typically prohibited), or bone meal. For livestock, organic methods mean animals must be fed organically-certified feed (or graze on land with no synthetic chemical inputs), and antibiotics cannot be used throughout their lifetime (except in emergency cases such as disease or infection outbreak). In conventional livestock production, there are no constraints on feed certification and antibiotics or growth hormones are often used. Animal welfare standards for organic certification can vary by country, however for many, livestock must be raised with access to the outdoors (i.e. caged hens are not permitted). Conventional livestock farming covers a range of production methods: they can be produced in either ‘free range’ or ‘caged’ conditions. These are typically monitored and labelled as such on product packaging.
In this post, we present the empirical evidence comparing organic to conventional agriculture in terms of environmental impact. Despite strong public perception of organic agriculture producing better environmental outcomes, we show that conventional agriculture often performs better on environmental measures including land use, greenhouse gas emissions, and pollution of water bodies. There are, however, some contexts where organic agriculture may be considered appropriate.
Organic vs. conventional: what are the relative impacts?
When aiming to provide a comparison of the relative impacts of organic and conventional agriculture, it can often be misleading and misrepresentative to rely on the results of a single comparative study: there will always be single, localised examples where the environmental impacts of a conventional farm are lower than that of a proximate organic farm, and vice versa.7 In order to provide a global and cross-cutting overview of this comparison, Clark and Tilman (2017) published a meta-analysis of results of published organic-conventional comparisons across 742 agricultural systems over 90 unique foods.8
Their analysis reviewed relative impacts across the range of food types – cereals, pulses and oilcrops, fruits, vegetables, dairy and eggs, and meat – and across a range of environmental impact categories – greenhouse gas emissions, land use, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, and energy use. ‘Eutrophication’ refers to the over-enrichment or pollution of surface waters with nutrients such as nitrogen & phosphorous. Although eutrophication can also occur naturally, the runoff of fertilizer and manure from agricultural land is a dominant source of nutrients.9 This disaggregation of food types and environmental impacts is important: there is no reason to suggest that the optimal agricultural system for cereal production is the same as for fruits; and there are often trade-offs in terms of environmental impact – one system can prove better in terms of greenhouse gas emissions but higher in land use, for example.
Food systems are made up of many phases – ranging from pre-farm activities, crop production, animal feed production, and harvesting, to transportation, distribution, and cooking. To fully and consistently account for the various stages of production, a process called life-cycle analysis (LCA) is used. LCAs attempt to quantify the combined impacts across several stages of production by considering all inputs and outputs in the complete process. The key in comparing LCAs between products is ensuring that the same number of stages of the supply chain are included in all analyses. For this meta-analysis, Clark & Tilman (2017) compared 164 LCAs which account for inputs pre-farm and on-farm (up until the food leaves the farm).
The aggregated results of Clark & Tilman’s study is shown in the chart below. This comparison measures the relative impact ratio of organic to conventional agriculture, whereby a value of 1.0 means the impact of both systems are the same; values greater than 1.0 mean the impacts of organic systems are higher (worse) (for example, a value of 2.0 would mean organic impacts were twice as high as conventional); and values less than 1.0 mean conventional systems are worse (a value of 0.5 means conventional impacts are twice as high). We see these relative impacts measured by food type across our range of environmental impacts with averages and standard error ranges shown.
We see large differences in impact patterns across environmental categories and food types. For some impacts, one system is consistently better than the alternative; whilst for others, results are mixed depending on crop type and the local agricultural context. The clearest results are for land and energy use. Organic systems consistently perform worse in terms of land use, regardless of food type. As we explore in detail in our entry on Yield and Land Use in Agriculture, the world has achieved large gains in productivity and gains in yield over the past half-century in particular, largely as a result of the availability and intensification of inputs such as fertilizer and pesticides. As a result, the majority of conventional systems achieve a significantly higher yield as compared to organic systems. Therefore, to produce the same quantity of food, organic systems require a larger land area.
This produces the inverse result for energy use. The industrial production of chemical inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides is an energy-intensive process. The absence of synthetic chemical inputs in organic systems therefore means that their energy use is predominantly lower than in intensive conventional agriculture. The exception to this result is vegetables, for which energy use in organic systems tends to be higher. Some of this additional energy use is explained by the use of alternative methods of weed and pest control in organic vegetable farming; a technique widely applied as an alternative to synthetic pesticide application is the use of ‘propane-fueled flame weeding’.10 The process of propane production and machinery used in its application can add energy costs – especially for vegetable crops.
Acidification and eutrophication potential are more mixed, but tend to be higher in organic systems; average values across all food types are higher for organic, although there are likely to be some exceptions in particular contexts. Why are organic systems typically worse in these measures? The supply of nutrients in conventional and organic systems are very different; nitrogen supply in conventional agriculture is supplied with the application of synthetic fertilizers, whereas organic farms source their nitrogen from manure application. The timing of nutrient release in these systems is different: fertilizers release nutrients in response to crop demands, meaning nitrogen is released when required by the crops, whereas nitrogen released from manure is more dependent on environmental conditions, such as weather conditions, soil moisture and temperature.
Nutrient-release from manure is therefore not always matched with crop requirements – excess nutrients which are released but not taken up by crops can run off farmland into waterways such as rivers and lakes. As a consequence, the pollution of ecosystems with nutrients from organic farms are often higher than conventional farms, leading to higher eutrophication and acidification potential.
Across all food types, there is no clear winner when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. Results vary strongly depending on food type, although most lie close to a ratio of one (where differences in impact between the systems are relatively small). Based on average values, we might conclude that to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we should buy organic pulses and fruits, and conventional cereals, vegetables, and animal products. In general, the greenhouse gas emission sources of organic and conventional systems tend to cancel each other out. Conventional systems produce greenhouse gases through synthetic fertilizer production and application, which is largely balanced by the higher emissions of nitrous oxide (a strong greenhouse gas) from manure application.11
Should we treat environmental impacts equally?
Organic agriculture proves better for some environmental impacts, and conventional agriculture for others. These trade-offs can make it difficult to decide which we should be choosing. But should we be considering all environmental impacts equally? Should some have higher importance than others?
To evaluate these trade-offs we have to consider a key question: how important is agriculture’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions, land use, acidification and eutrophication potential, and energy use? Agriculture’s role in land use, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy use is summarised in the three charts below:
The first chart shows that agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) is the dominant land user, consuming half of the world’s habitable land;
The second chart shows that it accounts for approximately one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions;
The third chart shows that it accounts for only two percent of energy use;
The contribution of AFOLU to acidification and eutrophication is more difficult to quantify, however it is widely considered to be the dominant source of nutrient input to aquatic ecosystems.
We might therefore conclude that energy use – the only category in which organic agriculture has a clear advantage – is comparatively substantially less important than other impacts.
Greenhouse gas emissions by sector, World
Breakdown of total greenhouse gas emissions by sector, measured in tonnes of carbon-dioxide
equivalents (CO₂e). Carbon dioxide equivalents measures the total greenhouse gas potential of the full
combination of gases, weighted by their relative warming impacts.
If we are most concerned with areas of environmental change for which agriculture has the largest impact – namely land use, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions – for which conventional agriculture tends to be advantaged, is the answer to make global farming as intensive as possible? Not necessarily. There are several reasons why this view is too simplistic.
The impacts quantified here fail to capture another important ecological pressure: biodiversity. Conclusive comparisons of the relative impacts of agricultural systems on biodiversity are still lacking. Biodiversity is affected by a number of agricultural impacts, including pesticide application (which can be toxic to some species), soil erosion, and disruption from land tillage methods, and either habitat destruction or fragmentation.12 Intensive agriculture undoubtedly has severe impacts on local biodiversity.13 A recent study by Hallmann et al. (2017) reports a greater than 75 percent decline in insect populations over the last 27 years; although unclear as to the primary cause of this decline, it’s suggested that pesticide use may be a key contributing factor.14 Organic farming systems also impact biodiversity, but perhaps less dramatically per unit area, due to lower fertilizer and pesticide use. However, as our land-use metrics show: organic agriculture requires far more land than conventional agriculture. This creates a divide in opinion of how best to preserve biodiversity: should we farm intensively over a smaller area (with understanding that biodiversity will be severely affected over this area), or should we farm organically, impacting biodiversity (perhaps less severely) over a much larger area.15 There is no clear consensus on how best to approach this issue.
Another point to consider is that conventional agriculture is not necessarily better across all food types. Context, both in terms of the food commodity and the local environment, can be important. For example, if greenhouse gas reduction is our main focus, we might be best off eating organic pulses and fruits, and conventional cereals, vegetables, and animal products, based on the results presented above.
This leads us to three key conclusions in the organic-conventional farming debate:
The common perception that organic food is by default better, or is an ideal way to reduce environmental impact is a clear misconception. Across several metrics, organic agriculture actually proves to be more harmful for the world’s environment than conventional agriculture.
The debate between organic and intensive agriculture advocates is often needlessly polarized. There are scenarios where one system proves better than the other, and vice versa. If I were to advise on where and when to choose one or the other, I’d advise trying to choose organic pulses and fruits, but sticking with non-organic for all other food products (cereals, vegetables, dairy and eggs, and meat).
The organic-conventional debate often detracts from other aspects of dietary choices which have greater impact. If looking to reduce the environmental impact of your diet, what you eat can be much more influential than how it is produced. The relative difference in land use and greenhouse gas impacts between organic and conventional systems is typically less than a multiple of two. Compare this to the relative differences in impacts between food types where, as shown in the charts below, the difference in land use and greenhouse gas emissions per unit protein between high-impact meats and low-impact crop types can be more than 100-fold. If your primary concern is whether the potato accompanying your steak is conventionally or organically produced, then your focus is arguably misplaced from the decisions which could have the greatest impact.
Land use per 100 grams of protein
Land use is measured in meters squared (m²) per 100 grams of protein across various food products.
Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents (kgCO₂eq) per 100
grams of protein. This means non-CO₂ greenhouse gases are included and weighted by their relative
warming impact.
Today we will discuss a fundamental question in gardening. Previously I was posed this question: “I hear that chemicals are poisoning our waterways, and that organic growing is much healthier than using chemicals. What’s the truth, and how do I grow a healthy, productive, and sustainable garden without hurting the environment?”
This important question deserves an accurate answer. Therefore let’s learn about plant nutrition. First, plants receive nutrition only as water-soluble mineral compounds through their roots. When we put plants, compost or manure into the soil, the organic material must first decompose, and the nutrient compounds must revert to water-soluble minerals before the next generation of plants can use them. This takes time, and sometimes as much as half of the nutrients are lost in the decomposition process. Nitrogen is particularly susceptible to loss because it is volatile and returns to the air very easily.
Second, there is no real difference between organic, and mineral or chemical nutrients. Everything in this world is chemical! To the chemist the elements in the soil are called chemicals, to a geologist they are called minerals, and to an organic enthusiast they are called organics, but they are the same substances. To quote J. I. Rodale, the publisher of Organic Gardening magazine, “we organic gardeners have let our enthusiasm run away with us. We have said that the nitrogen which is in organic matter is different (and thus somehow better) from nitrogen in a commercial fertilizer. But this is not so.” And “actually there is no difference between the nitrogen in a chemical fertilizer and the nitrogen in a leaf.”
Third, there is no difference between soil and rocks except for the size of the particles, and 12 of the 13 mineral nutrients plants require are essentially ground-up rocks! They are natural, and there’s really nothing “synthetic” about them.
So you see, there is no difference between “organic nitrogen” and mineral or chemical nitrogen, except two primary things. 1) the nitrogen that is part of an organic substance must decompose and revert to the water-soluble mineral state before being available to plants, and 2) mineral-source nitrogen is much higher in nutritional content, so much less is required to feed your plants.
As further evidence that mineral nutrients are not bad per se, I’ve researched which fertilizers meet the requirements for qualification as a Certified Organic garden, and 12 of the 13 nutrients we use in a Mittleider garden are approved. And the 13th – nitrogen – is the one that’s most often used by organic gardeners, both in the garden and to aid in composting! Go figure.
This being the case, what should you do to assure you have the best garden and the healthiest plants possible? Give your plants accurate dosages of the best combination of nutrition you possibly can. The Mittleider natural mineral nutrient formulas are available in The Mittleider Gardening Course book at www.growfood.com/shop. You can mix your own “from scratch”, or get the micro-nutrients from the Foundation website, also in the Shop section. And never over-use any kind of fertilizer. Both manure and mineral compounds will harm our water supply if allowed to leach into the water table.
Meanwhile, remember that 99% of us depend on 1% to feed us, and commercial growers feed their crops! They use formulas like ours and call them “The preferred horticultural mix.” Just check out Scott’s Peter’s Professional Pete Lite as an example.
This is not to say that organic materials don’t have a place in the garden. You can improve soil texture and tilth by adding materials that have desirable characteristics, and even add some nutrient value. However, improving the soil in that way is not necessary to having a good garden, and people often introduce weeds, rodents, bugs, and diseases into their gardens, or provide a haven for them with their organic mulching practices. It is for this reason that we do not emphasize or encourage composting and manure.
Mittleider gardens qualify as “organic” because we don’t use pesticides or herbicides. However, I suggest they are even better than organic, because the plants receive just what they need, they grow fast, and we rarely have debilitating insect or disease problems because there are no weeds to provide a home, and the plants aren’t in the ground long enough for the pests to get established.
Dr. Jacob Mittleider’s gardening books, CDs, and Software, as well as natural mineral nutrients, are available at the Foundation website -www.growfood.com/shop
Many people arrive at the end of the gardening season and wish they had planned their vegetable garden better. Often there is wasted space, and sometimes we have grown things that were not used, and perhaps couldn’t even be given away.
Now is a good time to begin planning for next year’s vegetable garden – to make sure you realize the greatest benefit from your valuable time and available space, and that you make the most of those precious 6 months of growing which nature provides us.
First you should decide what your garden is used for. Is it for casual use, with just a few things grown for fun, or do you depend on it as a major source of your family’s food? Next, decide what kinds of things are best to grow – juicy tomatoes, or that new triple-sweet corn. And then plan for how much of each thing you will grow.
How your garden is used depends on 1) whether or not you’re able or willing to devote serious effort to your garden, 2) whether you expect to feed your family just during the growing season or for the entire year, 3) what things your family likes to eat, 4) will there be supplementation from other sources, or will you be depending on your garden completely, and 5) do you want or expect to earn money from the sale of your produce.
An excellent and comprehensive database of commonly grown vegetables, with when, where, and how they can be grown, as well as how much they will produce (14 total categories of important information), is contained in The Mittleider Gardening Course book, on page 262. This document is a wonderful resource for the serious family gardener, and can be found at https://growfood.com/shop
I recommend growing high-value and ever-bearing crops, such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, pole beans, zucchini, etc., to maximize your yield in the minimum space, for the least cost and effort.
Let’s assume you have a large family you want to feed from your garden, but that you only have 1/16th of an acre that can be used for this purpose. I’ll give examples of what can be grown in 30′-long soil-beds.
On 1/16th of an acre you should be able to grow sixteen 30′-long soil-beds that are 18″ wide, with 3 ½’ interior aisles and 5′ end aisles.
In the early spring you should start growing many frost-tolerant extremely healthy greens, such as Swiss chard, kale, collards, celery, broccoli, leaf lettuce, cauliflower, and radishes. Virtually the entire plant is edible on each one of these, and for the best health benefits as well as the most production, you will want to learn to prune the outer leaves of all of these – every week – and eat them. Doing this can change celery from a “one and done” crop to something you can eat for 9 months! And most of the others are the same. And they don’t take up a lot of space! Plan on having these 8 crops in just 2 beds. Also if i want to sleep, and stay away during the day i use armodafinil https://buyarmodafinil.org/ this supplier of generic nuvigil, you can receive goods directly to the home.
Using vertical growing with the Mittleider Method (which includes “the best of organic” gardening, container gardening, “the poor man’s hydroponic” gardening, and soil gardening), your garden should produce the following amounts of fresh, healthy and tasty vegetables:
2 beds of indeterminate tomatoes – 1,500-2,000# of tomatoes from July through October.
1 bed of sweet peppers – 250-500 peppers.
1 bed of eggplant – 250-500 eggplant.
1 bed of cucumbers – 400-800 cucumbers.
1 bed of pole beans – 200-400# of beans.
1 bed of summer squash – 250-500# of summer squash.
So far we’ve only used 9/16ths of the garden, and you have more than enough vegetables to feed the family during the growing season, with excess to sell or give away. Doubling the space of these 6 crops could provide income to buy other food staples, and/or provide sufficient to dry or bottle food for the winter months.
Growing easily-stored food in the other 7 beds in your garden, such as potatoes, cabbage, beets, onions, garlic, turnips and carrots, most of which can produce two crops in a growing season, can provide the family fresh food during the growing season AND through the winter. You should be able to produce the following amounts, and if you will provide proper cold storage these can be usable for up to 6 months.
1 bed of carrots – 200-400# of carrots.
1 bed of cabbage – 200-400# of cabbage.
1 bed of beets – 100-200# of beets.
1 bed of onions – 200-300# of onions.
2 beds of potatoes – 400-600# of potatoes.
In this scenario you have one bed left to plant. Crops like corn, large squash, and watermelon should only be grown if you have ample EXTRA space, because they take much space for the yield they produce. For example one bed of corn should produce about 90-100 ears of corn – all within about 2 weeks, whereas a bed of tomatoes should produce 750-1,000 POUNDS of tomatoes, spaced over 4 months.
Take the time now for this important planning exercise. Have your family decide what they want to eat, calculate the amounts of each vegetable needed, and then plan your space so you can grow at least that much in your garden.
Folks, this one’s a keeper, so turn on your printer and save it in your vegetable gardening library.
With cold weather soon upon us, everyone should be working to save your harvest, either by storing or preserving. Canning, drying, and freezing are good ways of preserving your crops such as beans, corn, peas, peppers, summer squash, and tomatoes. They need to be done immediately after picking, while crops are fresh and tasty. Whether you cold-store or preserve your produce depends on the type of food you’ve grown, your facilities, and your family’s eating preferences.
Cold storage of vegetables such as cabbage, beets, carrots, potatoes, squash, and turnips can give you the best tasting and healthiest food of the four methods (with the possible exception of freeze-drying, if that is an option for you), and may even be the least expensive in the long run. And you can eat every one of these garden-fresh even 4 to 6 months after they’ve been harvested! However it requires some careful preparation, so let’s discuss how best to prepare for and store your fall harvest.
The details of harvesting and properly storing your crops are covered in several of the Mittleider gardening books, including Food For Everyone. All are available at https://growfood.com/shop
Since tomatoes are many peoples’ favorite garden produce, let’s discuss them first. Before the first killing frost, pick all your tomatoes, including the green ones. Handle them gently, because cuts or bruises will cause them to spoil quickly. Fruit that’s close to ripe can be placed on a kitchen counter, out of direct sunlight, and it will ripen in a few days. Green fruit should be placed on a shelf in a cool, dry place, such as your basement or garage. As they begin to ripen you can bring them into the kitchen. Always remove any fruit that is beginning to spoil. We eat tomatoes into January this way.
Most of your other vegetables need more help to keep them fresh. If your garden is very small and you don’t have much to store, you may be able to use an old refrigerator, or a barrel buried in the back yard. However, for those who are serious about providing fresh food for your families, I recommend a root cellar, either under the house or buried outside. A good size is 8′ wide and at least 10′ long. This gives you 2′ for an aisle and 3′ on each side for storage. A shelf on each side is good for things like onions and garlic, which need to be kept dry.
You can set it into the side of a hill or dig a hole 4′ to 5′ deep in a corner of the yard, build the cellar, and cover it with the excess dirt. This will help insulate it and maintain the low, but not freezing temperatures you need. Provide yourself a small door and insulate it well.
Harvest your crops at peak maturity and store only those which are free of disease or damage. Don’t harvest for storage until late fall, since more starches are converted to sugars by the cool weather. Root crops should be picked fresh and stored immediately. Potatoes and squash, on the other hand, first need to be cured at 60-75 degrees for 7 to 14 days. Most produce should be stored at just above freezing temperatures, except winter squash, which does better at or above 50 degrees.
Your root crops will stay fresh and sweet for months if you harvest them with roots intact and pack them in wet sawdust. Cabbage and other brassicas also need their roots. Remove outer leaves, then pack the roots in wet sawdust, leaving the cabbage exposed. Provide separation between crops to avoid mixing flavors, and to keep squash dry.
Potatoes should not be as wet as the root crops. They will do well in temperatures below 40 degrees, but pack them in slightly moist, rather than wet sawdust. Peat moss and sand, or combinations of all three, can be substituted for straight sawdust, but are not as ideal. I recommend you work with your neighbors to find a sawmill, pallet manufacturer, or cabinet shop that uses hardwoods (not walnut!), and obtain a truckload.
Onions and garlic also store well. They can handle cold temperatures but, like winter squash, they do better with humidity only 60 to 70 percent. Therefore these should be up off the damp floor, on shelves or hung from the ceiling. A cold basement can also work, but be sure to provide separation from living areas to avoid the strong smell.
Remember, cold temperatures are essential for good long-term storage of vegetables, but do not let them freeze! Insulate your root cellar well. Good healthy eating to you! More details are at http://www.growfood.com in the FAQ section.
What does “Natural” mean, and what does “Synthetic” mean? And exactly what makes synthetically produced fertilizers, if there is such a thing in the first place, any worse for your garden than naturally produced ones? This is one area in which a lot of balony gets thrown around – and regrettably believed by many good people.
The simplest and most natural of the commercial fertilizers is probably lime. It’s also almost universally recognized as important, and used by every kind of gardener who knows what he’s doing and has access to it. The world has an inexhaustible supply of limestone (calcium carbonate), and it’s simply ground to powder in powerful rock crushers, bagged, and sold to the public. We even receive much of our magnesium from the same process, when the raw material is dolomitic limestone (labeled as dolomite lime).
All twelve of the other nutrients man can control are also mined from the earth. However, we have learned over time how to remove impurities, such as heavy metals, and increase the concentration of the individual nutrients, by running them through a simple concentration process. This is often just a sulfuric acid bath, which leaves us with a much higher concentration of the original nutrient, plus sulphur, which is itself a very important nutrient. This is one reason most of the nutrients come as a combination with sulfate (zinc sulfate, copper sulfate, etc.).
So, we benefit by getting a much higher concentration of the nutrient we want, plus sulphur, with no heavy metals, and it costs MUCH less to ship to our locations, because it weighs only a fraction of the original raw material.
Are those fertilizers synthetically produced? I don’t think so, but perhaps they are by some peoples’ definition.
Did you know that even nitrogen is mined out of the ground? This may surprise many people, but it actually is – in Chile, South America – where huge mines of sodium nitrate exist. But can you imagine the cost to get it to the USA, though? And what would we do with the sodium salts??
Thank goodness we have found a better, more efficient, and therefore far less costly way to produce nitrogen fertilizers.
About 105 years ago two German scientists, Fritz Haber and Karl Bosch, discovered and commercialized the process by which nitrogen could be separated from other elements in different compounds and made available as fertilizer. This discovery arguably served as the single most important component leading to exponential global agricultural growth, and the Haber-Bosch process is still the benchmark process used today.
I believe the world owes much of what we have agriculturally today to the use of nitrogen that has been produced by the Haber-Bosch process, and whether or not it’s synthetic is, to me at least, irrelevant.
I do believe there is a valid and important argument against the uncontrolled “synthetic” production of chemicals having to do with the garden, but I believe it should be limited to pesticides and herbicides. This is a more complex issue that will take more time to discuss, and we won’t go there at this time.
I do hope that readers of this article are able to understand and appreciate the value and importance of mineral nutrients in helping us grow strong, healthy plants, and that you will not spend your time worrying about “natural” or “synthetic” fertilizers.
Let’s talk about preparing your lawn, trees, shrubs, and vegetable or flower garden for winter, and how best to improve your soil during this time of year.
Much of this Country seems to be clay soil, so first let’s find out how to improve problem clay soils. These procedures also apply to other types of soil, but may not be so important if you have loamy or sandy soil.
I don’t often dwell on amending your soil, because it is not essential for growing a good garden if you feed and water properly. However, it can be a good idea, so long as you use clean, weed, seed, bug, and disease-free materials.
Weed-free grass clippings are good soil amendments when they’re available IF the homeowner has not used “Weed & Feed” on the lawn, as are finely ground-up pine needles. And this time of the year you can also use your leaves. Mulch pine needles and leaves as fine as possible with a chipper/shredder or mulching mower, and then turn 3 or 4 inches of them into your soil-beds. Just don’t use walnut leaves, as the sap is toxic to your vegetables, especially tomatoes. This procedure will improve your soil tilth, and doing it in the fall gives the organic material plenty of time to de-compose before spring planting.
What else should you be doing now to get your yard ready for winter and give growing things a head start for spring? The Mittleider Method – as taught in his gardening books available at www.growfood.com – teaches the importance of and the best methods of weeding and feeding your garden. A final weeding is a very good idea for starters. Left alone, some weeds will over-winter and come back strong as soon as the snow leaves your ground and before you can get into the garden. That’s why farmers plant winter wheat, and gardeners plant things like garlic – so they have a head start in the spring. Don’t give your weeds that advantage!
The next thing to do is to clean up and remove all organic materials from the garden area! Clean, disease-free plant residue should be turned into the soil along with your leaves, and you should remove everything else, so as not to provide a place for bugs to winter-over.
If you can find a “slow-release” 16-16-16 or similar NPK mix, use that to make a batch of Weekly Feed, and use that to put on perennials in the fall. This way it is available to lawn, plants, and trees as they first stir in late winter and early spring. This is also a good time to apply calcium, which is “the foundation of a good feeding program,” and an essential nutrient almost as important as nitrogen. How is this best done? Calcium does not move very far in the soil, so it’s best to work it into the plants’ root zone in the soil. However, what about the majority of your yard, that doesn’t get turned over every fall?
With lawn, trees, shrubs, vines, and perennials such as raspberries and asparagus, it is usually impractical to dig things up every year like a vegetable garden. Therefore, sometimes the question is asked “Would it be advantageous to aerate first, or use a root feeder or something similar to get Pre-Plant minerals more into the root zone?”
Many people feel this is important, and there may be some advantage to aerating your lawn or around your shrubs and trees before applying your fall slow-release fertilizer and calcium. However Dr. Mittleider says it is not necessary and he doesn’t do it, and we have never aerated our yard and get along just fine. Therefore, I recommend you spread the materials evenly on the soil surface, scratch them in with a rake or hoe, and either water them in thoroughly or, if you have already turned off your outside water for the winter, let the melting snow take them down into the root zone of your plants.
Do these things now and your garden can be a thing of beauty even in the winter!
While you endure the cold winter months why not plan for a really great vegetable garden next spring. Maybe even one that could provide some income in addition to the food you eat yourselves! Does anyone have children who need responsibility – and spending money?
To illustrate the potential, I’ll describe the yields achievable by growing one crop in a quarter-acre garden. I realize that most of you may only want or be able to grow a garden of 10 or 20% this size, with multiple crops, however let’s tickle your imaginations! I’m aware of many Mittleider gardeners who are growing commercially – some with multi-acre gardens.
The Method is often called “the best of organic gardening” and “the poor man’s hydroponic method”, and with good reason. The best elements of many gardening disciplines have been blended and adapted for the home vegetable gardener, to maximize your yields in a truly sustainable garden.
Consider this: Just a quarter-acre of tomatoes grown properly using Dr. Mittleider’s instructions, and selling for only $.50 per pound, would yield $25,000 per year! Have I got your attention? Let’s see how it’s done.
A quarter-acre, or 10,390 square feet, will accommodate 78 30-foot rows of plants, grown in 4′ X 30′ Grow-Boxes, with 3 1/2′ side aisles, and 5′ end aisles. Planting 9″ apart gives you 41 plants per bed or 3,198 total.
By growing a tomato that averages 8 ounces (some varieties are even much bigger), and growing vertically, each plant should produce 16# of fruit from July through October. How? Good varieties produce a cluster of 3-7 tomatoes every 5-7″ up a 7′ stem in 4 months of production. Using 4 per cluster and 12 clusters gives 48 tomatoes, and at 8 ounces each, your yield would be 24# per plant. Let’s reduce that by one third, to be conservative.
This amounts to 51,168 pounds of tomatoes (16# X 41 X 78) – or $25,584 at $.50 per pound. Who says you couldn’t live out of your garden! And similar results can be achieved growing right in the soil.
Now there certainly are costs, including labor, as there are in any serious endeavor. Start-up costs include 1) making and filling the boxes, 2) making T-Frames, 3) wires or pipes, and baling-twine strings, and 4) automating the watering. However these are one-time capital expenditures and will be more than recovered in the first year.
Next, suppose you’d like to increase your yield even more. After all, commercial hydroponic growers can produce 660,000 pounds of “plastic,” tasteless tomatoes per year on one acre. Of course, they have multi-million dollar investments in year-round greenhouses, automated systems, etc. By simply putting an inexpensive “in-the-garden greenhouse” or arched PVC roof over your Grow-Boxes or soil-beds, (see Appendix C of The Mittleider Gardening Course book, pages 276-282) and covering them with 6-mil greenhouse plastic, and then adding a little heat on cold nights, you can lengthen your growing season by another two months (1 in spring and 1 in fall), or 50%!
Now you’re looking at 75,000# of tomatoes per quarter-acre, or almost half the yield of the expensive hydroponic growers! But you’re growing “in the dirt”, because your boxes are open at the bottom, so your plants get all the natural nutrients available from the soil (producing better flavor). And you only use the plastic covering on cold nights during two or three months, so your plants benefit from direct sunlight as well, further improving their flavor.
Do you think these numbers are hard to believe? Just visit a greenhouse tomato operation and see tomato plants that are 20′ and 30′ long – still producing after more than a year!
Now let’s see what your family can do. And let me help guide you through the process – read the website FAQ’s at www.growfood.com or email me at jim@growfood.com.
It’s not too early to begin preparing for early spring planting (it works for fall planting also)! By covering your containers, which we call Grow-Boxes, or Soil-Beds with “Mini-Greenhouses” using PVC arches and greenhouse plastic, you can be in your vegetable garden with cool-weather plants by the end of February or the first of March, and continue growing into November. They will warm the soil and protect your plants from light frosts. And with a little supplemental heat (small space heater) even hard frosts will not kill your plants. This is often enough to extend your growing season by several weeks in both spring and fall.
This process works great with organic gardens, container gardens, raised-bed gardens, or in plain old soil-beds.
Pictures can be seen in the Photos section of the free MittleiderMethodGardening Group on Yahoo Groups, or the Mittleider Gardening Group on Facebook. Invitations to join are on every page of the Food For Everyone Foundation website at http://www.foodforeveryone.org. The pictures show arches over Grow-Boxes, or containers. Following are instructions for building a jig and then making PVC arches for 18″-wide boxes or soil-beds.
Materials needed:
11 – 5′ lengths of 1/2″ Schedule 40 PVC pipe – to be placed 3′ apart in each bed or box to be covered.
6-mil greenhouse plastic – 5′ wide and 33′ long – one for each bed or box to be covered.
For Grow-Boxes only – 3 10′ lengths of 3/4″ Schedule 200 PVC pipe, cut into 24 15″ pieces for each box to be covered. Plus 22 2″ nails and a small 2″ X 4″ block.
One 30″ X 30″ sheet of plywood, plus 6 – 2 1/2″ nails.
One heat gun (to heat and bend pipe).
With a pen, make 3 marks at the top of the plywood sheet – one in the center, and one each, 9″ to the left and right of the center. Go down 9″ on the plywood and make 3 marks exactly corresponding to the first 3. Draw lines from the outside lower marks to the top center mark. Place marks on both lines 10″ up from the bottom. Go down 27″ from the top of the plywood and make 3 marks corresponding to the others. Draw lines between the 9″ and 27″ marks. Make marks 2″ up from the bottom of both 18″ lines. Drive nails into the 4 upper marks, leaving 2″ of nail exposed. Drive nails into the marks 2″ up from the bottom of the 18″ lines, then drive nails 1″ to the outside of these nails. This is the jig for bending the PVC pipe.
Cut 5′ lengths of 1/2″ schedule 40 PVC pipe. Mark them at 18″ and 28″ from each end. Place one end of PVC pipe between nails on one side, with the end at the 18″ mark (2″ below the first 2 nails). With heat gun, heat PVC pipe at each spot where PVC pipe encounters a nail, and carefully bend the pipe to fit the jig. Allow to cool before removing pipe from jig.
For Grow-Boxes, place 15″ pieces of 3/4″ PVC adjacent to the Grow-Box at each end and at 3′ intervals on both sides. With a hammer, and using the small 2″ X 4″ block of wood, hammer the PVC into the ground until the top is level with the Grow-Box. Drill a hole through the PVC pipe 2″ up from the dirt, and hammer the 2″ nail through both pipe and Grow-Box. Slip the 1/2″ PVC arches into the 3/4″ PVC holding pipes until they encounter the nails – about 6″ deep.
For Soil-Beds, just push the 1/2″ PVC arches into the ground at the peak of the ridge on each side of the Soil-Bed – again about 6″ deep.
Lay the 6-mil plastic over the entire box or bed, centered, with 18″ overhang on each end. Fold excess plastic to avoid a messy appearance. Place dirt on both sides and the ends of the plastic to hold it in place.
Whenever the weather is above 50 degrees, open the ends, and when it is above 65 degrees, lift the plastic from one side and lay it in the aisle.
You must watch carefully to ensure that it doesn’t get too hot in your mini-greenhouses. A thermometer in at least one bed is a good idea, in order to measure the temperature and make necessary adjustments. Note also that brassica’s (cabbage, cauliflower, etc.) can grow in cooler weather than the warm-weather plants. Tomatoes, corn, peppers, etc. must be near 70 degrees or above to do well.
Welcome to Mittleider Gardening Magic advice and tips! I’m excited to be sharing the wisdom of “the world’s greatest vegetable gardener.”
I’ve been a Mittleider gardener ever since the mid 70’s when Jacob Mittleider moved about a mile from my home, and I became his student – patterning my own garden after his prolific backyard masterpiece.
We became friends as I worked with him over the years, and after assisting him on a major teaching project in Russia in 1993, I continued working with him on several other projects. And finally in 1998, after 20 years of study and work under Jacob’s tutelage, I was given the responsibility and privilege of carrying on his work. I accepted this full-time non-paying job with the proviso that he would continue to stay involved and answer any and all questions, to which he readily agreed, since gardening was his life’s greatest love (just ask his wife, Mildred). Sadly, Jacob died just one month after his 88th birthday, on May 23, 2006. Therefore anything you need to know that Jacob hasn’t already taught me, I will research from his prolific writings.
So, just who is Jacob Mittleider, and what’s his Method all about? You may have seen a neighbor’s beautiful and highly productive Mittleider vegetable garden, and wished yours looked and produced like that. Or perhaps you’ve heard of the great work he’s done around the world. Maybe you even have one of his books and have experimented with growing your own vegetable garden this way. If so, then you may know Jacob’s history, but for those who don’t know him let me tell you very briefly why he’s so famous, and why he promises you a “great garden in any soil and in any climate.”.
For the last 43 years of his life Dr. Jacob Mittleider quietly and without fanfare dramatically improved the lives of multiplied thousands of people, and even changed the economies of countries, by teaching people how to better feed their families by growing healthy and highly productive vegetable crops – both personally and commercially. He created 75 teaching and demonstration projects in 27 countries – and documented his experiences and the great lessons he learned in 10 books, 9 manuals, and 86 video lectures.
So much for introductions! Let’s get down to learning about growing better vegetable gardens, shall we?
What problems or questions do you have? I will teach you the principles of successful gardening, but I also want to resolve any concerns you may have. There are many conflicting ideas, methods, and procedures out there, and we will do our best to give you factual “works every time” advice and counsel. A few topics we’ll discuss, about which you might have some concern, include:
1. “My soil is terrible, and nothing will grow. What must I do with my soil so that it will grow a good garden?”
2. “I hear that chemicals are poisoning our waterways, and that organic growing is much healthier, how do I grow a healthy, productive garden without hurting the environment?”
3. “It seems like so much labor-intensive work, with little reward. Is there a way to have a garden that makes financial sense?”
4. “Weeds just take over our garden, and the vegetables don’t really have a chance. What’s the answer?”
5. “Bugs, diseases, and critters get most of our produce! It’s hardly worth growing for the little bit we manage to save – what can we do to minimize our losses?”
6. “We want to be self-sufficient in food, but we’ve heard it would take 2 ½ acres in order to be truly self/sufficient. We live on a 1/3-acre lot – what practical chance do we have to accomplish that?”
7. “I hear using hybrid plants will only make us dependent on the big seed companies, and I want to use heirlooms, so I can save the seed and be assured I’ll always be able to have good plants, is this something I can do, and how do I do it?”
Exciting stuff, don’t you agree? Join me for real, practical advice and answers to the hard gardening questions. You may also pose your own questions, and you’ll find many answers by going to http://www.foodforeveryone.org and looking in the Posts or FAQ pages. Until next time – Great Gardening!
