If you are here you are interested in gardening and maybe using and reusing as many of the resources that you have in your plot already. This really does not depend on the area that you play with. It may be just a few metres or it maybe quite a large area.

This is just by way of an introduction and a little of where we will focus in the future. There are many advantages being a ‘gardener’ however you qualify yourself. One of the most important is that you get to taste the ‘fruits’ of your labour. How elegant and tasty is something that you have toiled with your own hands to produce and then allowed it to ripen in the sun or mature in the ground to just the right degree? How different is the store bought item. I would say ‘alternative’ but that is a poor choice of word I think.

I began my working life as a farmer doing the usual thing of using the soil as a mechanical device to hold up the plants while applying the ‘nutrients’ out of bags of material that had once been the exudate of birds. I went on like this for some time and over a period of years the penny began to drop.

The earth is short on many resources. The best option is to grow food as close as possible to where people live. The first person to begin with is you. The buck begins with you and me and what we can do for ourselves for starters and others after that. Sounds selfish and if you do not look after yourself then how can you look after anyone else. Even the sprouting of seeds in a jar to give you some fresh greens is a great beginning.

Parallel with the above is the great health benefit of just being around plants. They do not talk back and take kindly to nurturing. Gardening can be done as a singular occupation or in a delightful group way. It is written that the Pythagoreans spent much time in their gardens and it was deemed as part of the overall balance of learning.

This site is not about being purist this or that. It is about doing what you can with what you have. If you can minimize the use of fertilizers, herbicides and insecticide then this is a great start. If on the other hand you have the willingness to look at a whole system and liken it to the natural balance found in a forest then all the better. I do really believe that there is no absolute ‘best’ way of doing anything. However if we consciously choose to do our best in keeping an open mind then this will pay great dividends at many levels.

Go Gardeners, Go!

Author: Peter Boyd Peter spent around 20 years working in a world class soils research facility in Australia. He learned many things within that environment and many more outside in the environmentally aware area. Some of these things are stated at his site:

http://www.choicesforwealth.net/sustainable-gardening

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