Growing More Vegetables and Fruit In Less Space: An Interview with John Jeavons

On March 12, 2010, The Palo Alto Library hosted a lecture by sustainable farming expert, John Jeavons.  After the lecture, John was kind enough to speak with me about ways to grow more food in our backyard gardens. 

Special thanks to the Palo Alto Library for bringing programs like this to the community.

Planter Tomato (PT): Today, we're here in Palo Alto, California with John Jeavons.  John is an agricultural researcher, lecturer, and author of several books on gardening including How To Grow More Vegetables, Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains and Other Crops Than You Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine.  Thank you for joining us at Planter Tomato.

John Jeavons (JJ): Thank you for having me.

PT: John, the title of your book is quite a mouthful to say, but more importantly it makes a bold claim about how much food you can grow in a small garden.  Can you tell us why your method of gardening is so successful and so productive?

JJ: The reason Biointensive Mini Farming is so productive is because it depends on the biological life forces that are in the soil.  For almost a century, the world has been going in the opposite direction which does not rely on these forces.  But if you go back 5,000 years to Ethiopia, 4,000 to China, 2,000 to Greece or 1,000 to the Maya, they all worked with the soil in a living way. 

When you do this, you get yields that are two to six times that obtained commercially today with a fraction of the water, purchased nutrients and organic fertilizers, and energy.

PT: Tell us more about the underlying principles that make Biointensive farming productive?

JJ: There are eight elements to BIointensive farming:

1. Deep Soil Preparation -- to get good soil structure you need to till the soil to a depth of 24 inches. The goal is to get air into the soil so that microbes can use this air to feed your plants.  The more air, the more microbes, which will then grow more plants that produce more food.
2. Use of Compost -- compost drought-proofs the soil and provides food for microbes which are important to your plants.  Compost holds six times its weight in water, so you end up using three to eight times less water than other practices.  The microbes I mentioned a moment ago live off the compost and produce nitrogen for your plants for free.  They also develop antibiotics around the root systems so the plants don't get sick.
3. Close Plant Spacing -- If you have done deep soil preparation and built up microbes through composting, you can plant approximately four times as many plants in a given area.  Close plant spacing also shades the ground and preserves moisture.  Additionally, close plant spacing creates a canopy over the ground which captures carbon dioxide that's breathed out by the microbes.  The plants can then use this carbon dioxide and their yields go up.
4. Companion Planting -- Green beans and strawberries grow better when they are grown in small sections next to each other than when they are grown separately.  You can inter-plant beans and corn and get 20% more yield. These are just a few examples.
5. Plant Compost Crops -- These are crops like amaranth and corn in the summer and wheat and oats in the winter. These crops produce a large amount of edible calories in the seeds, but they also provide a tremendous amount of compost materials which you can use to maintain sustainable fertility.
   
6. Plant Root Crops -- I recommend planting about 30% of your garden with root crops such as potatoes, leeks and garlic.  These plants produce up to twenty times the amount of calories per unit of area, per unit of time, than other crops.  You then dedicate 60% of your garden area to compost crops and 10% of your area to vegetables, particularly salad vegetables since these provide vitamins and minerals that aren't in the other crops.
7. Use Open Pollinated Seeds -- Using open pollinated varieties means you can save your own seeds.  These acclimatize themselves to your soil so they grow better and experience fewer disease and pest problems.
8. It's A Holistic System -- You can't just put plants close together and not have deep soil structure etc. and expect to get good results, you need to put all of the elements of Biointensive mini farming into practice to be effective.

PT: If I am a suburban gardener with a 10' x 10' plot, and let's say I'm living in a moderate climate like Northern California (Zone 9), what sort of plant varieties would you recommend that I grow?

JJ: Well what's amazing about this 100 square foot area that you mentioned is that you'll be able to grow half the vegetable and soft fruits for one person for one year and that's assuming only intermediate level yields.  The most popular vegetables and soft fruits are sweet corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, watermelon, peppers, there's virtually nothing that you can't grow there.

In zone 9, the limiting factor is really how many hours of sunlight you have for your garden site.  If you have only 4 hours of sunlight, you may be able to grow lettuces and brassicas, (kale, cabbage, broccoli etc) but it will really depend on your soil and skill. If you have 7 hours of sunlight, you will be able to grow cool and warm weather crops. If you have 11 hours of direct sunlight, you'll be able to grow, cool, warm and hot weather crops.

PT: What if I'm in a colder climate such as zone 5? Could I use the same principles and have a bountiful harvest?

JJ: Absolutely, we have people living in Canada and Alaska using Biointensive farming successfully.  But if you're living in a place like Maine with a 3 month growing season, in order to be fully effective, you'll need to double the size of your garden.  So the 100 square foot garden you mentioned before, needs to be 200 square square feet because you need to grow your compost crops in one 100 square foot area in order to maintain your sustainable soil fertility, and in the other 100 square foot area you'll grow the other crops you plan to eat that season.  Then the next year you rotate the plots.  Fundamentally, you can grow all of the same types of vegetables as in warmer climates, but you need to use more area to do it. 

The good news is that if you're only gardening for 3 months, you get a 9 month vacation but you need more growing area.  Whereas in Palo Alto [zone 9] you'll have a 6 to 9 month growing season and you get a 3 month vacation, but you need less area.  However, the amount of work  you need to do to maintain both gardens is the same.

If you're in a area with a 5 month growing season with cold nights like I do in Wilits, California, I use double walled miniature greenhouses and by using these we triple  our yield of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash and melons.  So you need some sort of season extender under these growing conditions.

If you have a 6 month growing season with warm nights, you can grow the same things that I mentioned when you asked about zone 9.

One last thing I want to mention, in the bibliography of my book, there is a listing for a book on high altitude farming which outlines techniques that will help gardeners in cold climates.   

PT: Many readers of this blog live in apartments where they may only have a small balcony and room for just a few containers. If they wanted to grow some of their own food, what could they do?

JJ: It's really pretty exciting what you can do in these small spaces.  One book that I would recommend is The Apartment Farmer, The Hassle Free Way To Grow Vegetables Indoors, On Balconies, Patios and Roofs, and Small Yards by Duane Newcomb.  There's also a book called Bountiful Container by Rose Marie Nichols McGee and Maggie Stuckey which has many good ideas in it and some beautiful color photos.

By the way there are special seed varieties for many vegetables that are specifically designed for pots that container gardeners can use.  There's even a sweet corn that grows to only eight inches high.  The spectrum of possibilities is endless.

PT: What advice would you give me as a first time Biointensive farmer?

JJ: Start small.  Create one bed and get it right and then expand.  I think most of us want to immediately plant as big an area as possible.  However, the yields will be less good. If you put all your tender loving care into a 100 square feet it almost bound to do well. Then expand over time to whatever amount of space your property and time will allow.

PT:  If I want to learn more about Biointensive farming, where can I go for information?

JJ: You can start at our international mail order and seed company that has all of our publications.  It's called BountifulGardens.org, a non-profit business. 

For more about the method, you can also go to GrowBiointensive.org where you'll find all sorts of information and examples of successful gardens that use biointensive methods. 

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you can go to CommonGroundInPaloAlto.org, our non-profit organic gardening store and educational center with hundreds of seed varieties and high quality tools.  Almost every Saturday, there are classed on urban homesteading and sustainable ways of living.

PT: John, this has been really terrific.  Thank you for sharing this information with PlanterTomato readers.

JJ: My pleasure.

For more information on John Jeavons and to learn about his Biointensive workshops, see John's personal information site www.johnjeavons.info

Comments

[Gretchen]

This is very similar to what Jonathan White has to say, the only difference being instead of tilling down that far he is a proponent of raising gardens up in beds. It's amazing what mother nature does if we leave her alone. Human beings make everything so muh more difficult than it needs to be.

[H. Mark Delman]

Hi Gretchen. Thanks for your comments.
I did a quick internet search and turned up a video produced by
Jonathan White. For those interested in checking it out the link is
below:

http://www.organicfoodforless.info/

[Ra]

raised beds do very well when using the intensive gardening method. the less you walk on the soil yhe aerated the soil stay providing oxygen to the roots of the plants also check this link:

http://www.thehiphopgardener.info

[H. Mark Delman]

Hi Ra: Thanks very much for the comment. Right now, Im debating whether to put in raised beds in one area or do the traditional double digging that John Jeavons outlines in his book. Its kind of a balancing act -- I think the initial cost of raised beds can be high -- cedar for building the beds is about $1.90 a foot and soil out here is about $10 per cubic foot. The advantage is that you have soil thats in great shape from day 1 and the raised beds are easier on the back from a maintenance perspective. Double digging takes a number of years to get the soil in shape but requires less cash to get started. I sending a soil sample for the area I want to convert into a biointensive area to a professional testing service. I want to see what my starting
point is with regard to soil health. That will help me make a final decision.

[chocken farmer]

I make my beds a little different. I dig out a trench around the bed two shovel loads deep, throwing the dirt on top of bed, then fill the trench with wood chips. I do not dig my beds. If I had a broad FORK, I might use that sometimes. Every year or so, I dig out all the rotted wood chips and use as compost or mulch. I try to keep all beds covered with a thick layer of straw mulch. I let the earth worms do most tilling and deeply burying fertility in the soil. The top of the bed is four feet wide and the bottom of bed is five feet wide.

[H. Mark Delman]

Thanks for the tip. I did a double dig this year because it was the first time I was breaking ground in this area of my yard. Its an incredible amount of work.
Thank goodness this is a one-time process. Next year, its just add compost and mulch.

[rubyoxy]

I've just planted a couple of different melons last week. Can't wait for them to be ripe. Last year they were wonderful. Great post!