Le Potager du Sloth: Gardening without fatigue more than Bio

Agriculture and soil. Pollution control, soil remediation, humus and new agricultural techniques.
phil53
Grand Econologue
Grand Econologue
posts: 1376
Registration: 25/04/08, 10:26
x 202

Re: The Kitchen Garden Sloth: Gardening without fatigue more than Bio




by phil53 » 17/03/22, 08:34

The lazy vegetable garden has a future, I have more and more practitioners around me. Many have a bad bottom and don't put enough hay, some can't help but hoe or pass the tiller, others make a kind of mound. But on the whole, out of 29 gardeners in the shared gardens, around ten do it quite well. A plot made on a communal lawn attracts the curious and this year other plots are being installed.
I always recommend your first book, it's the best way to start.
0 x
User avatar
Did67
Moderator
Moderator
posts: 20362
Registration: 20/01/08, 16:34
Location: Alsace
x 8685

Re: The Kitchen Garden Sloth: Gardening without fatigue more than Bio




by Did67 » 17/03/22, 09:10

Ah!!

Thank you for this "quantified" testimony... I only have the sales of my books as a benchmark. And indeed, 4 years after its release, the first is not faltering. For the second, still lagging behind on Amazon, in fact the sales are not bad either - I think on Amazon there is a bias; Amazon customers take the cheapest; in bookstores, they touch, manipulate and the multitude of photos "speaks" and justifies the price, so they hesitate less. I also believe that not everyone has yet understood that these are two different books - and that the second is not the first just illustrated.

That said, me, when I go to Strasbourg by train, I pass in front of a vast area of ​​allotment gardens. They remain "naked", dug up, etc... I think that the internal regulations which prohibit "negligence" such as adventitious, not keeping clean, have still not been changed. I gave a conference for the gardens of Sélestat - there, I hope that has changed; in any case, more than half of the room rose to applaud while I feared a "bronca" (I had agreed with the president, who had invited me: if bronca, I would be silent and it was he who took control; that is to say if I feared the worst!).
0 x
User avatar
Did67
Moderator
Moderator
posts: 20362
Registration: 20/01/08, 16:34
Location: Alsace
x 8685

Re: The Kitchen Garden Sloth: Gardening without fatigue more than Bio




by Did67 » 17/03/22, 09:12

phil53 wrote:
Many have a bad bottom and don't put enough hay, some can't help but hoe or pass the tiller, others make a kind of mound.



Yes, it's classic! Which shows that working the land is also a kind of addiction...

Sometimes I wonder if some do not purposely miss, putting not enough hay, just to convince themselves that they are right! "I said it, it doesn't work!"...
0 x
User avatar
Did67
Moderator
Moderator
posts: 20362
Registration: 20/01/08, 16:34
Location: Alsace
x 8685

Re: The Kitchen Garden Sloth: Gardening without fatigue more than Bio




by Did67 » 17/03/22, 09:18

phil53 wrote:
A plot made on a communal lawn attracts the curious and this year other plots are being installed.



That is a "back to basics".

The first time the PP was discussed in public was at the Salon BiObernai, where I had installed a "demonstrator" on the trampled lawn... I put the hay in June, sowed in July (beans , radishes, ...) and in mid-September, people could "touch" the vegetables produced "without doing anything other than sowing them". I had also done a "retro-installation": the front lawn, the hay just unrolled, the hay furrowed with simulation of sowing, and then the demonstrator, with panels that specified the dates of the operations...

Guaranteed effect!
0 x
Rajqawee
Grand Econologue
Grand Econologue
posts: 1322
Registration: 27/02/20, 09:21
Location: Occitania
x 577

Re: The Kitchen Garden Sloth: Gardening without fatigue more than Bio




by Rajqawee » 17/03/22, 09:56

I don't know, I think the "clean" vegetable garden remains the benchmark, because....because it's still the majority.

It is often said that in agriculture, changes follow the rhythm of generations: practices change with another generation, farmers only changing the way they operate once they have started. This may be true of vegetable gardeners!

Personally, I practice PP, without duplicating it. It's a tool like any other, I find it relevant...but not always according to my configuration.
In my opinion, the biggest change to be made (as for the management of organic waste that we were talking about before) is pedagogy:

- you are not farmers. If you have to deploy crazy means to obtain watermelons, learn to appreciate strawberries instead! (example)
- "weeds" do not exist. There are weeds, which it can be useful to manage in one way or another in the vegetable garden. You have to find your balance between the extreme "I don't do anything", because by doing nothing at all, the vegetable garden doesn't exist (meadow then wasteland then forest), and the extreme "I hoe/hoe/pass the vacuum cleaner" which is not an absolute necessity. This balance is unique to everyone!
-you have to learn to think about the medium term in the vegetable garden: a few years. Longer (decade), it may be a bit illusory, shorter, it's exhausting (the mound-lasagna! Even if in the first season, depending on the context, it could be defended...)
-it is necessary to understand the living, the system. Without understanding, it will only be a long fight.
0 x
User avatar
Did67
Moderator
Moderator
posts: 20362
Registration: 20/01/08, 16:34
Location: Alsace
x 8685

Re: The Kitchen Garden Sloth: Gardening without fatigue more than Bio




by Did67 » 17/03/22, 10:25

Rajqawee wrote:...

- "weeds" do not exist. There are weeds, which it can be useful to manage in one way or another in the vegetable garden. You have to find your balance between the extreme "I don't do anything", because by doing nothing at all, the vegetable garden doesn't exist (meadow then wasteland then forest), and the extreme "I hoe/hoe/pass the vacuum cleaner" which is not an absolute necessity. This balance is unique to everyone!
-you have to learn to think about the medium term in the vegetable garden: a few years. Longer (decade), it may be a bit illusory, shorter, it's exhausting (the mound-lasagna! Even if in the first season, depending on the context, it could be defended...)
-it is necessary to understand the living, the system. Without understanding, it will only be a long fight.


We agree!

This is in particular why I am trying to correct the situation with regard to the use of hay - which is not a dogma; which is only the easiest way to achieve a whole set of goals, provided you have them...(especially in the second book, I tried to be a little clearer about this ).

I devoted a paragraph to the fact that a "natural" vegetable garden did not exist and that any vegetable garden is necessarily an anthropized space.

I systematically correct (in conference), when I don't forget, the false impression that the pp is "doing nothing"; it's doing the "minimum necessary" otherwise "it becomes a forest", as you say. So I replace with the idea that I am the "conductor of my vegetable garden", the one who gives the "the" so that the symphony is beautiful... Simply, unlike Gérard Manset (for those who know), I don't make all the instruments myself, I let it be...
0 x
User avatar
Adrien (ex-nico239)
Econologue expert
Econologue expert
posts: 9845
Registration: 31/05/17, 15:43
Location: 04
x 2150

Re: The Kitchen Garden Sloth: Gardening without fatigue more than Bio




by Adrien (ex-nico239) » 17/03/22, 11:57

Did67 wrote:
Adrien (ex-nico239) wrote:
... / ...
This no doubt also corresponds to a “clean” state of mind at the time.
Weeds are poo, they're dirty, there are bugs and microbes and maybe even viruses in them, who knows?

Not sure that our lazy tendency doesn't find some resistance on its way
It will be interesting to see the atmosphere in the conferences over the years.
Past the permanent craze, not sure that the "traditional" vegetable garden will not make a comeback in a few years, oddly under the impetus of certain "young people".

Speaking of young I'm having my first visit next week.
Informed by people from the valley, they are young people who come from another valley not very far away but more lenient and who wonder if they will be able to settle (a priori not as professionals) here because the climate there is harsher.

To be continued


1) I think there is an "Amish" side, with a lot of agronomic approximations (if I look between the lines)... But I admit that I don't learn anything from it so I'm not motivated to watching more than the half video I watched...
2)... rather a return to the earth in the "autonomist" but clean and well-meaning vein (come on, I'm betting a kopeck, that makes me think of a right-wing Catholic Versailles trend; I'm perhaps badly influenced by a couple that I received at his request to discuss their project and which came under this vein, quite surprising; interesting on the project, hyper-well studied, but humanly, I had trouble; moreover, a meal was hot enough when I said what I thought about this form of reactionary, backward and fascistic thinking!)

That said :

1) Let's not dream: the lazy way is ultra-minority! There must not be more than one garden in 1!!! And that's not going to change significantly.
2) "Permaculture on mounds" is already an outdated fashion (but I announced it as early as 2017 that it was "stillborn": a lot of work that brings no net benefit (I'm talking about building mounds ) = we inevitably drop, sooner or later; suaf "ecomuseum of permaculture", with paying trainees...
3) Even if he is "ultra-minority", I haven't - not yet ???? - the feeling that the lazy wave is declining: my book, although it is more than 4 years old, is still at the top of the rankings on Amazon, ahead of books by "potagers-youtubers" which have just been released; I still have a lot of requests for visits (but hey, the post-Covid effect is difficult to gauge)
4) I hope I have given lazy gardening more content than just a fad... I said well, I hope...



I don't have the impression that the lazy wave is going to decline because there are still very many people who are unaware of it and who would have the will, even the guts, even the mindset (reading this which follows) to follow this path

But strangely, I have the impression that it comes up against (the majority?) psychology, which finds it difficult to: accept non-work (we had explored the theological bases of this in the past) but also "dirt" ( to use the term of the video) that it generates and which is perverse because it affects not only the gardener but also those around him.

Shared garden when this is the case: in which this type of gardening is not always accepted
Even the spouse of the gardener who does not always see with a good eye this "brothel" far from the images of Épinal or the commonly accepted notions of "order"
Not to mention the neighborhood

The conclusion is therefore both optimistic and pessimistic.
Optimistic because the reservoir of "revolutionaries" is still very large
Pessimistic because doing "good, clean and normal" seems to me to have to remain very largely in the majority whatever we do
Who said the French are "calves"?
0 x
User avatar
Adrien (ex-nico239)
Econologue expert
Econologue expert
posts: 9845
Registration: 31/05/17, 15:43
Location: 04
x 2150

Re: The Kitchen Garden Sloth: Gardening without fatigue more than Bio




by Adrien (ex-nico239) » 17/03/22, 11:59

phil53 wrote:The lazy vegetable garden has a future, I have more and more practitioners around me. Many have a bad bottom and don't put enough hay, some can't help but hoe or pass the tiller, others make a kind of mound. But on the whole, out of 29 gardeners in the shared gardens, around ten do it quite well. A plot made on a communal lawn attracts the curious and this year other plots are being installed.
I always recommend your first book, it's the best way to start.


This contradicts what I said earlier...
So much the better if it develops but from there to reverse the majority use I doubt
0 x
User avatar
Adrien (ex-nico239)
Econologue expert
Econologue expert
posts: 9845
Registration: 31/05/17, 15:43
Location: 04
x 2150

Re: The Kitchen Garden Sloth: Gardening without fatigue more than Bio




by Adrien (ex-nico239) » 17/03/22, 12:11

Did67 wrote:
Rajqawee wrote:...

- "weeds" do not exist. There are weeds, which it can be useful to manage in one way or another in the vegetable garden. You have to find your balance between the extreme "I don't do anything", because by doing nothing at all, the vegetable garden doesn't exist (meadow then wasteland then forest), and the extreme "I hoe/hoe/pass the vacuum cleaner" which is not an absolute necessity. This balance is unique to everyone!
-you have to learn to think about the medium term in the vegetable garden: a few years. Longer (decade), it may be a bit illusory, shorter, it's exhausting (the mound-lasagna! Even if in the first season, depending on the context, it could be defended...)
-it is necessary to understand the living, the system. Without understanding, it will only be a long fight.


We agree!

This is in particular why I am trying to correct the situation with regard to the use of hay - which is not a dogma; which is only the easiest way to achieve a whole set of goals, provided you have them...(especially in the second book, I tried to be a little clearer about this ).

I devoted a paragraph to the fact that a "natural" vegetable garden did not exist and that any vegetable garden is necessarily an anthropized space.

I systematically correct (in conference), when I don't forget, the false impression that the pp is "doing nothing"; it's doing the "minimum necessary" otherwise "it becomes a forest", as you say. So I replace with the idea that I am the "conductor of my vegetable garden", the one who gives the "the" so that the symphony is beautiful... Simply, unlike Gérard Manset (for those who know), I don't make all the instruments myself, I let it be...


I summarize it in the following form
Give the advantage to its cultures compared to nature and maintain the culture in this sense if necessary but without more
So there is no need to destroy or raze all the nature around
0 x
Insomnia
I discovered econologic
I discovered econologic
posts: 7
Registration: 13/11/20, 18:02
x 4

Re: The Kitchen Garden Sloth: Gardening without fatigue more than Bio




by Insomnia » 17/03/22, 12:29

[quote="Did67"]Indeed.

I don't know if I shared here my idea that cities have become "cancers" of our civilizations. They "siphon" all around them. Create medical deserts, empty lands (services, economic activities... which die. And they aggregate all that is harmful: noise, waste, particles... Hence no doubt the reactions of violent rejection of the "body" (the country)...

It looks like a tumor!

As with cancer, the basic mechanism - cells must renew themselves, it's natural - is no longer under control. It is "perverted": they do it too much, anarchically. Cities have functions: religious, intellectual, center of knowledge, administrative... But when they become too important, they are tumors that kill the body (the region, the country)... The arteries get clogged...

It is therefore urgent to "start deconstructing cities"...[/quote]

And that may be an understatement...

Looking at the development of mankind on earth there are many analogies to the natural history of cancer within a human organism. Man is that of the living world (the original mutation being the mastery of fire)..

So I observe my nungara with great indulgence :)
0 x

 


  • Similar topics
    Replies
    views
    Last message

Back to "Agriculture: problems and pollution, new techniques and solutions"

Who is online ?

Users browsing this forum : Google [Bot] and 247 guests