Growing Vegetables in a True Ecological Manner
Growing Vegetables in a True Ecological Manner
Ecological gardening is becoming increasingly popular, but what does it really mean? In most cases, even so-called ecological practices will still be a source of problems for your garden. For instance, most organic gardening books praise the hoe as your best friend. Sure, it is better to use a hoe than to use herbicides, but even by using a hoe you are still trying to solve a problem (weed) rather than eliminating it.
Moreover, using a hoe will usually exacerbate the problem. First, turning the soil will excite the weed seeds which are always present, and as a result create an explosion of new weeds. You will also mix the dry, structureless top layer of the soil with the deeper structured soil. Over time, the thickness of the structureless layer will increase. This structureless layer has less water retention capacity, and also less microbiological life in it. It will need more water to keep the plants alive, as well as some kind of fertilization, because the lack of microorganisms limits the transformation of organic matter into usable elements for the plants. And... I could go on like this for long, but you catch the point.
The truth is that environmental sciences, which are basically the scientific examination of natural ecosystems, teach us all we need to know to grow vegetables and food. Natural ecosystems display a wide range of diversity, and there are many complicated relationships between all their components, living and non-living. These relationships are the result of a process of natural evolution, giving birth to an equilibrium in which each component is dependent on its interaction with other components. They fuel up on one another, making the system completely self-sustainable. If one piece breaks down or is perturbed, the whole system can be affected.
In such natural ecosystems, we can observe that there are many living species which co-exist in a single area. The place occupied by each component is called a niche space. Each time a component is destroyed (for instance an animal eating a plant), there remains an empty niche, which will necessarily be filled by another component. This is the way nature works, and everytime a niche becomes available, it creates an opportunity for another living form to occupy it. Some living forms can sometimes stay dormant and wait for years before starting to occupy a suddendly available niche, as is the case for instance with weed seeds. Yes, the same weeds you desperately try to get rid of!
As you can see, this universal law also applies to your garden, because all traditional gardens are full of empty niche spaces, usually created by the gardener himself. It is somewhat ironic that so much effort can be put in trying to maintain empty spaces, which are actually the source of the problems. Since nature does not allow empty niches for long, weeds will try to colonize the place, because they are among the most vigorous plants. We can see here that a vegetable garden is no different from any natural ecosystem.
True ecological gardening should therefore focus on making nature work with us, instead of trying to perpetually counteract its behavior. For instance, getting rid of weeds is actually easy once you understand this principle. Eliminate the cause, not the consequence. In other words, you should eliminate empty niche spaces, and instead have something desirable ready to occupy the niche, should it become available. The same principle can be applied for pest management, as well as many other "problems", which actually disappear instead of being taken care of.
If you would like to know more about the possibilites of ecological gardening, some specialized gardening books are available. You will learn that this type of gardening requires much less work and attention than traditional gardening, and produces far more. This is done just by applying what environmental sciences have teached us about natural ecosystems.
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