How to Grow Food Easily on Wasteland

It is better to be a bit self-sufficient, if the earthly crises will get more deeper. Our collective farm is using several methods of growing food on wasteland, where nothing has been growing before – on the place covered with weeds, and stones and broken tiles buried on the soil.                 

The first method which is the most easy, needs only cutting or collecting some grass. One may use even leaves of trees probably. Then one needs about 10 litre of soil for planting the seeds. Lets say you want to grow 4 zuchini plants and get about 20-30 kg zuchinis, then you need a piece of land, about 1,5 x 1,5 meters. You may have it on your front, or back yard between trees, or on the cliff area – or may be even in the forest.

Cut and collect first the fresh weeds or grass and pile it into 6 mounds like anthill, about 30-40 cm high, (or use leaves and a bit soft grass on top). Tear the top open of each mound and press into bowl form. You may put now a plastic or cartoon edging on the “bowls”, but not on the bottom. Fill the “bowls” each with 1-2 litre of soil. The edging keeps the soil more tight, but you can make it even without it. Put the seeds inside the soil and keep watering regularly in the beginning.

Although you have only little soil, it will be enough for zuchini to grow, because the mound starts to de-compost slowly so the roots can eventually grow deeper. You can plant this way early on as the compost keeps the soil warm and if freezing cold comes, you can cover the seedlings easily with some pot or plastic bag. You may also cover the empty soil around the mounds with something, so that the possible grass will not grow too high. This way you can grow zuchinis, pumpkins (especially hokkaido), beans, flowers etc. I have not grown others, but you may do some experiments.

Another very productive method is to cover all over the wasteland area with 15-30 cm layer of hay, leaves etc, better to do it in the autumn already. Voles love it and will mess up the soil and hay already during winter, which is good in this case (but they don’t seem to disturb when the actual plants are growing). In the spring time you cover the area with black canvass (buy from garden shop, you can use it for many years), which the rain can go through. Make holes on the canvas according the size of the plant.

Pumpkin needs about 25 cm diameter hole. The distance between each pumpkin should be about 1,3 metre, for zuchinis less and for beans 50 cm, but plant 2-3 beans in the same hole. Make a hole also on the hay, so that you can put about 2-3 litre soil on it and the seeds. The soil top should be little bit below the hole on the canvas.

This way the plants grow even better than with the first method. The canvas keeps the soil more warm and the hay becomes composted very fast. Zuchini hardly needs any watering, pumpkin needs more. We have got this way really a lot of zuchinis and pumpkins. Each plant tend to grow many more zuchinis than in any other place, one plant had even about ten zuchinis at the same time. And I never before have got so many huge beans growing from each bush. Cabbages and tomatoes would probably grow as well.

The problem with this system can be, if the garden plot is in direct sunshine, that the plants might not be able to tolerate the heat created by the composting and black canvas in the beginning state, so it would be better if the area is part time in shade, but depends on the weather. Last summer it was very hot and dry here, so those plants in the area of constant sunshine were struggling to survive. Hokkaido pumpkins from our other collective farm in Poland, I didn’t manage to attach our own pumpkin photo, but our zuchinis are next. This was our first very succesful effort to grow zukinis on top of weeds and canvas;

The third method is a hay bale garden, which I found from internet. One may put about 10 hay bales side by side or in lines. The bales are better to be touching each other, so the moist is vaporizing less. Now you dig a hole or two, in the middle of each hay bale, depending what you want to grow. Fill the hole with some good soil, put the seeds and keep on watering the hay bales all over. You can grow this way cabbages, cucumbers, spinach, flowers, tomatoes etc. The hay bales will eventually also de-compose, but it is quite slow process and needs rainy summer to keep the bales moist.

Last summer when it was raining so little, I found this way to grow food more difficult and heavy, as I had to keep on watering every day, while the other methods needed much less water. I don’t know if it would work out to put the hay bales inside a plastic to keep them moist, but it might not look nice. Anyhow this type method is more for show, a hobby for those who want to spend a lot of time on setting up the system and watering. Then you still need to remove also the mess in the autumn.    

I have also grown most of my veggies by covering the soil with hay like Ruth Stout’s Garden; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNU8IJzRHZk, but as I have big garden, I only cover it with hay when the plants has started growing, and in the autumn we use tractor to blough the soil. ………………………………………

You don’t need any fertilihzers for your plants, but if you want to experiment you can collect nettles and put into a water bucket. Cover and let it stand in a sunny place for couple of weeks. When using take couple litre of the liquid and add into another bucket of water and give to your plants. The composted nettle leaves and stems you may put on top of the soil around your plants.

If there is near by a stone factory or stone cutting place, and if you can get some of the left over powdered stone, that is the best fertilizer you can ever get. Homeopathic minerals can also help a lot. Mixed planting, for example beans help other plants to grow nicely. Collect the worms out from different cabbage plants. Notice also, that your plants have feelings. They appreciate a lot of your loving thoughts – sing them, kiss them or play soft music, meditate in your garden.

Now how do you get water for your wasteland garden? If you have some roof to collect rain water and store into plastic covered bond, which you can make yourself. Even if you don’t have roof from where to collect water, hopefully the rain will fill your bond. In some empty area, dig about 50 cm deep pond, buy some plastic to cover it all over. Here in Poland we can get plastic even 8 m in diameter. Kitchen and bath water can be also collected for gardening.

One possibility is to follow Keshe foundation’s workshops where Keshe explains how to make rain catcher. I managed to make one kind of by accident, when making gans and health pens etc. Though it was catching only few millilitres in a couple of days, but could it be made more effective who knows!!! Keshe is going to teach in February or so how to grow more effectively food with CO2 gans etc.

Other hints for gardening;

I find parsnip easy to grow, you may put the seeds already in the autumn on soil. If you let one plant make flowers, then it will toss seeds around and grow next year by itself. (Although I have heard that letting it grow wild many years, will make it eventually poisonous as it returns to its original variety). Most of the people seem to like parsnip juice.

In the autumn I take many plants (kale, celery, fennel, swiss chard etc) from garden with roots and soil into buckets and keep over the winter in the woodstore, where there is window, for next year to plant. Zuchini and hokkaido pumpkin slices are easy to make dry, or if you let the last ones to grow old enough, they will stay just like that in warm place even for one year.

You may also grow in containers outside; http://www.diyncrafts.com/7137/food/35-easiest-container-pot-friendly-fruits-vegetables-herbs

Or indoors; http://greatist.com/health/best-plants-to-grow-indoors

And easy to grow; http://www.thompson-morgan.com/top-10-easy-to-grow-vegetables

Plotters turn wasteland into a garden; http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jun/21/how-set-up-a-community-garden

Urban farming in Helsinki, Growing food in containers, and hay bales;

Source; http://www.cityfarmer.info/2010/07/16/urban-farming-in-helsinki-finland/

See more instructions about Hay Bale Gardening

Didi Annapurna

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