John McEnroe

Casie Becker wrote:A lot of these things depend on where you are.  If you are local to central Texas, there is a wonderful planting calendar produced by a local organic nursery that covers pretty much everything, but someone in Iowa or Nebraska wouldn't find it very helpful.  Do you know in general where you will eventually be gardening?

Hi Casie, thanks for your reply!

I roughly know the area, it is going to be somewhere in Spain, possibly a mild area for Spain's standards, not in the South, and not close to the sea, so some sort of Mediterranean/Continental type of weather.

Hi all!

I am a newbie, in fact, I don't even have access to a small plot as I live in a big city.... but! I plan to move to the country side end of next summer, and hopefully get a small piece of land where I can start growing and gardening stuff. I have been reading a lot about permaculture and biointensive gardening, and I think this is possibly what I am going to use in the future in combination, at least in the beginning. Now, as a newbie, there are many general concepts that I am learning and that make a lot of sense, for example companion planting, and like that many more things... but when it comes to more concrete stuff, I lack the knowledge, the example again of companion planting, knowing what it is and what is good for, but not having the knowledge of what specific plants work well with others , etc. The previous one was just an example, but there are many more areas where specific knowledge is required, for instance: what is the right time for planting whatever plant, water requirements of different plants, etc.

So I was wondering, do you guys know of a wesbsite/book/whatever that has handy cheatsheets or something similar that newbies can use as a reference as we go through the learning process?

Cheers

Hi Tyler,

Thanks for your response.

The chapter about composting is quite an interesting one, as they mention how lately (I am reading the 9th edition) they have been experimenting with a more of a 40ish to 1 ratio of carbon/nitrogen, which in theory makes the composting a bit slower, but they say the benefits and the product is worth it. This is fine, but what surprises me is the large amounts of water anyway, although according to their numbers they save a lot compared to other gardening approaches.

In terms of the digging damaging the soil, from what I can see in the book, Jeavons says that the idea is to create a good quality soil with double digging, and once that is achieved, then move on to no-digging techniques and building soil on top, but I am not sure how long that process takes!

I have not done any biointensive gardening myself, I am planning to move to the country side next year after summer and then get a smallish parcel where hopefully I can start. I am a total newbie, but the idea is to combine permaculture - which I expect to use as a guidance when designing the whole parcel - with biointensive - which I was thinking of using for the crops area, to maximise the space that I will have and be able to use more for the permaculture/perennial side than to growing annual veggie crops -.

Cheers

Hi all,

I am assuming that a few of you use the Grow Biointensive method from Jeavons. I am reading his famous Grow more veggies book, and when it comes to composting, he advises to water the pile of compost every single day! I had a look at some Youtube videos where some of his colleagues goes over the composting process, and he reiterates the importance of watering the piles every single day.

Now, I am no expert, but isn't that A LOT of water?! It is especially surprising to me knowing he's done a lot of work in for example areas of Africa, where one would assume water is sort of scarce.

Any thoughts, opinions, etc. are welcomed!

Cheers