posted 9 years ago
For 2016, we are delighted to be offering an educational experience with a difference. At Balkan Ecology Project we are committed to developing models for wildlife friendly gardens and farms that produce a diverse range of seasonal fruits and vegetables, are low cost to establish and run and can be replicated easily in temperate climate. The last few years, we have been conducting studies in our gardens to gauge how productive our models are (read more here). Its the 2nd yr of our study and we are looking for a crew of enthusiastic and passionate people to join us next year. Sound interesting ?
What are we doing ?
We'll be continuing the development of a 1/2 acre (2000m2) market garden consisting of herbs, vegetables and perennial fruit and nut polycultures on a piece of abandoned agricultural land just outside our town. We will be producing food from this garden for our team, local market and city buyer groups and we'll be recording all aspects of the project including the time taken to rear the crops from seed, maintaining and managing the gardens, picking and packing the harvest and advertising and marketing of the produce. The costs associated and the returns in produce weight and income derived from the sale of the produce are also recorded and published.
We are taking a unique approach to market gardening that we feel goes way beyond "organic", developing biological systems that rely on the native ecology to function as opposed to external manufactured inputs. As a result our gardens service not only our needs but the needs of many other organisms too.
Visit our webpage for more info
http://www.balkep.org/the-polyculture-study.html
