saw James Kunstler last night speak on his new book

[maxsolomon]

"the long emergency". everyone in the audience already knew about Peak Oil.

summary: we're fucked. our democrat leadership cant'/won't save us (the congress for new urbanism briefed gore 3x/year before the 2000 election, he never mentioned it once). biodiesel won't save us (we'll need the farmland for food as yields will decline after industrial farming dies), the hydrogen economy is a joke, the kyoto accords are unenforceable; no one will adhere to it after peak oil, and will start burning coal at industrial revolution rates, but globally. our drive-in utopia will die sooner or later, and our military adventures in the ME will leave us broke, demoralized, exhausted, and permanently weakened. we will most likely turn to a "cornpone fascist" to lead us (think dick armey).

i am a pessimist, and it was so bleak that i didn't buy the book (i knew it all already, frankly).

one bright note: seattle does not need AC to be inhabitable, and i can bike to work, and walk to a water source. now, i need chickens, several firearms, and a lifetime supply of water filters.

and tarps. lots of tarps.

[Delphinus]

1. I would love to be in a group of people who get it!

I would love to hear him in person. I'm on the waiting list at the local library for his latest book.

Here, NE Indiana, I tried to join a Peak Oil Meetup group - ha!!!

[CottonBear]

4. I met him here in Athens, GA.

He's great!

[Warpy]

2. Filters won't do it

Stock up on Clorox.

However, since the "emergency" is going to take another 50 years to occur a little at the time, why the panic?

Those popguns won't save you. Knowing your neighbors and forming a cooperative with them will.

[phantom power]

7. It's likely to not be nice and gradual.

Our current rate of oil production is being maintained with water-forcing, and it causes an oil field to produce at high levels, and then collapse.

If OPEC has enough vision and self-control, they could soften the blow by reducing their rate of oil production immediately, but I have to agree with Kunstler. Nobody is displaying much vision. Nobody is making the decisions needed to avoid a catastrophe. Even the people in a position to know what's going on, appear to be choosing denial.

[funflower]

3. But how many people can live in Seattle....?

There's going to be a lot of competition for a plot of earth in Ecotopia....

[Warpy]

5. Dunno about that one.

Here in NM, we got much of the winter that Seattle usually experiences, with half the average yearly rainfall in February, alone. The climate may be changing, and the NM desert may be getting wetter.

I hope not. There was a reason I left the steam bath air of the east coast for the high desert.

One thing we can say for sure about the climate change that is now starting to follow the more pessimistic computer models is that wherever you are, that "normal" weather is not going to be normal any more.

[maxsolomon]

6. the guns are to keep them off my plot in seattle

at least till they shoot me dead & take my awesome stereo & CD collection.

and, of course, to hunt up some 'coons & 'possums fer supper! the joy of cooking tells you how to skin squirrels, people. read up.

[phantom power]

10. You may have to defend them...

from all of us in the Phoenix metro area. I think it's around 4-5 million of us. And probably LA and Las Vegas.

I'd recommend some gattling guns, and a nice, deep mine-field as a buffer, and 50 million rounds of ammo.

Say, how's your CD collection, anyway?

[funflower]

8. Kunstler question: I know he hates suburbia. But why would I want to

give up a large garden space to be closer to the central city under the doomsday peak oil scenario? Seems to me there will be a lot of telecommuting for the info workers who have traditionally commuted downtown, and manufacturing is already outside of the downtown areas, so moving close-in doesn't help manufacturing workers, either.

Can someone explain to me why peak oil = the end of suburbia?

[phantom power]

9. because suburbs require lots of transportation.

And transportation will become so expensive that nobody will be able to afford it.

In suburbia, nothing is within walking distance. You have to drive to work, to school, to the grocery store. Often, fairly significant distances.

Also, suburbs spread out to such a degree that meeting everybody's needs with public transportation becomes impractical. The phoenix valley (where I live) is a good example. The metro area (including suburbs) is something like 600 square miles, and it's growing fast. Driving from one side to the other takes anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, and that's on the freeways, assuming good traffic. A typical commute is at least 1/2 hour, each way.

(on edit) I would add that it's not really a matter of "hating" suburbs (although maybe he does), it's that they simply aren't sustainable in a world where transporation becomes much more expensive.

[funflower]

11. Guess our 'burbs aren't that bad in my part of the country. I can easily

bike to the store (which would make it easier to get the groceries home).

Wouldn't want to live in Phoenix during a massive energy crisis.

[phantom power]

14. Phoenix would also be clobbered by a lack of air conditioning.

But yes, not all suburbs are created equal. Arguably, I live in suburbs, but there are several shopping areas within a mile of our house. Our suburbs are 30 years old. The newer developments are spread out more, and much farther from any established urban centers.

[funflower]

15. Quite true. My burb house is 40 years old (I know by all of the repairs

it needs!).

[NNadir]

23. I think running air conditioners off solar in Phoenix is a good idea.

One of the sources of peak load demand in summer is, of course, air conditioning, which fortuitously happens to be in the highest demand on hot (usually sunny) days.

Although I am often dismissive of solar power as a comprehensive solution to our existing climate and energy crisis, I happen to think that there are niches to which it is ideally suited, and clearly this is one. Solar power is very expensive, ($5/watt at peak performance) of course, but it is not prohibitive, especially when compared to the alternative for peak loads, natural gas. (Although people pretend that natural gas is safe and clean, it is anything but safe and clean.)

I note that the cheaper cleaner solution, more nuclear power plants, for the most part is not particularly well suited for meeting peak loads. Nuclear power plants are almost ideal constant load machines, but they can be sluggish powering up and down. (Poor management of power changes accounts for the only catastrophic commercial nuclear power plant failure in history, that at Chernobyl.)

One hopes that the recent repuke effort in Arizona (designed, one imagines, to provide fashionable solar power window dressing to their energy/global warming inaction) will actually have some effect. I'm skeptical, but we must all hope it works.

I believe that most Repuke supported solar energy schemes involve complex tax breaks and/or legislative fiat that becomes applicable only after the Repuke legislators themselves will presumably be dead. A better way to encourage the use of solar power for air conditioning related demand surges would be load based flex pricing. Very clearly power should be much more expensive at peak times than it is, say, in the dead of night. This would have the effect, I think, of encouraging conservation (and thus leveling load somewhat) and making solar power competitive with its alternatives. This also would have the psychological impact of making the cost alternatives immediately clear. I think that many people really don't get it when their solar savings are buried in their already mysterious tax returns.

[thegreatwildebeest]

25. Only problem...

A better way to encourage the use of solar power for air conditioning related demand surges would be load based flex pricing. Very clearly power should be much more expensive at peak times than it is, say, in the dead of night. This would have the effect, I think, of encouraging conservation (and thus leveling load somewhat) and making solar power competitive with its alternatives. This also would have the psychological impact of making the cost alternatives immediately clear. I think that many people really don't get it when their solar savings are buried in their already mysterious tax returns.

The problem with this is the people who would get screwed are the ones who have the least money to invest in expensive solar panels on their house or have expensive energy conservation modifications done to their home (and what of apartment dwellers?). The type of plan your describing would basically damn people for turning on the heat when its cold, leading the possibility of people putting themselves through the chills in order to avoid having to pay an exorbitant rate. I think if such a plan was implemented there would have to be exceptions made for low income families etc. I think the people who should be most hit are those in large single family homes. They require far more energy in order to cool their homes, as well as heat them, and should bear the consequences of living in such wasteful setups. I'm not sure what the square footage cut off would be, but I would presume something rather large (3000 sq feet and up?).

[Coastie for Truth]

29. Detroit Edison offers that kind of plan

"Smart Meter" that gives a much lower rate from 11PM to 5AM (clothes drying, swimming pool heating, also electric car battery charging :) ).

"Interruptible Line" for air conditioners and other elective uses - this is voluntary but carries a deep discount - triggered by a "high frequency signal" over the power line - or by a radio activated switch. We had it and there was a little antenna sticking out of our a/c meter.

Since moving to California - we have the PG&E rates where each additional 100 KWHR costs more then the preceding 100 KWHR. There is a "plan" for low income people. If you can adjust for individual cases (Section VIII, people on fixed incomes) - this works. I cut my usage about 20%.

[thegreatwildebeest]

34. That sounds...

That sounds like a good idea. I was just pointing out the problem of raising the costs of consumption because inevitably it ALWAYS hits the poorest people who can't afford the outlays for expensive modifications and other things. If it can be done and targetted at those who are the most egregious energy wasters, I would be all for it.

[NNadir]

32. Well, presumably poorer people have smaller dwellings.

Presumably they require less air conditioning than rich people, and therefore are proportionately affected at about the same level.

This is not about cold either. I grew up in a house without air conditioning, in an attic room, no less, with tiny windows. I survived. I might not have survived so well if the house were not heated, but I lived without air conditioning. Some nights I woke up drenched in sweat, but I can't recall every being sick from it.

Now, the situation may be different in Phoenix than it was on Long Island, where I grew up, but I am not asking people, rich or poor, not to use air conditioning at all, simply to adjust their thermostats. (Do all poor people even have air conditioning? Was Phoenix uninhabited before its invention?)

I lived in apartments and houses for many years, and during times of brown outs (when by the way, there was always a risk of losing power all together and being deprived of air conditioning completely) I adjusted my thermostat. I did so not because of money, but because it was the right thing to do. Still, it would have been nice to have had a little reward from the power company for my attempt at good citizenship.

Not all solutions are appropriate for all places. One needs to be flexible. I have a wonderful passive solar system at my current house. It is comprised of things called trees. In winter, some of them lose their leaves and let the sun in, warming my house, and in summer, they get big fat leaves which block the sun and generally keep my house nice and cool. I run the air conditioning fairly infrequently. The system, which was installed by the previous owners, has the added benefit of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which is a nice thing.

It is true that I have been able to afford a house with this system and many people cannot. I've been on both sides though, and I don't think that demand scaled power pricing would have been particularly fatal to me at any point in my life.

A few people have suggested that everyone on earth needs to have solar cells on their roofs. For me to comply with that directive, I would of course, be required to destroy my wonderful passive solar system. I'm rather reluctant to do it.

[phantom power]

35. We do have voluntary off-peak plans

"off-peak" plans are not mandatory, but they should be. And even if they aren't mandatory, they're still a big win for most people. We save hundreds of dollars a year, and I work at home, so my AC actually runs quite a bit more on-peak than a family where people are gone during the afternoon, and they could let the house warm up.

[dcfirefighter]

38. Another option for demand 'smoothing'

is to encourage not just high R-values in insulation, but also high thermal mass in buildings.

BTW I watched a video on Chernobyl last week, and am amazed the soviets ever got it to work in the first place. I'm a big fan of Murphy's law, but have much much more faith in engineered systems run by free-thinking and open societies. Does that rule us out yet?

[Coastie for Truth]

28. As to the survival of the 'burbs

Here in the SF Bay Area - from San Francisco down the Peninsula to San Jose (and Morgan Hill and Gilroy) and back around the Bay to well past Berkeley -- ideal for rapid transit--

1. The "habitable area" - from the variously named 'foot hills" to the variously named "shorelines" is actually quite narrow.
2. The "habitable area" is about 270 degrees of arc around the Bay

and while the dot.com bust has hit the Bay Area pretty hard -- people do ride transit.

Particularly the CalTrain "Baby Bullet Express" from San Jose to San Francisco (standing room only from Palo Alto up to San Francisco).

My take home - when commuting along 101 or 880 gets horrendous enough - people will take transit.

(I live in a high rise condo in a planned community "transit village" in the North First Street/Light Rail "Transit Corridor" - walk to VTA Light Rail and a decent connection to CalTrain - and a decent connection to BART when it is finally built - Love it - cut auto driving in half)

[brokensymmetry]

12. Great book.

I read it, and those who haven't ought to.

For those who think it will be a slow decline. Maybe. But what happens when lots of people who can't afford it (say, in Central and South America) start starving to death because mechanized agriculture can't function anymore? What happens when prices go up so much that we have massive unemployment - and the present non-existent safety net?

Will these people quietly expire, while the more affluent continue to survive? Or will the affluent decide to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the masses? Neither is likely, is it?

It is, in my opinion, going to be a bumpy ride.

Oh, yeah - buy ammo. Lots of ammo.

[maxsolomon]

13. i think latin america is better prepared than we are

their agriculture, exports aside, is more local, isn't it?

the threat from native displaced low-skill workers (and their guns) is greater.

[brokensymmetry]

17. Possibly.

They use a lot less energy than we do. They are, as you say, more local. Brazil is way ahead of the U.S. on biofuels.

Who knows, Mexico may have a problem with U.S. citizens trying to go south... :shrug:

[Coastie for Truth]

30. I have heard Kunstler

And I also have heard Lovins and Ovshinsky (two egos on the same program)

First heard Stan and Iris Ovshinsky in 1983. First heard about "Peak Oil" from my P.Chem professor - in the 1960's (not too long after Hubbert began to get traction in academia); he ran the Fischer-Tropsch project on campus.

I'll go with Ovshinsky and Lovins.

And I think the transition will be gradual -- with "barely enough" Fischer-Tropsch methane from coal, and "barely enough" hydrocarbons from anaerobic digestion of sewage sludge, and "barely enough" heavier hydrocarbons from biomass -- and a reduced passenger car "fleet" of Mini-Minor size hybrids and diesel hybrids (the heavier hydrocarbons from biomass are "diesel") with engine/transmission computer controls that would put a Pentium to shame - "drive by wire" with real time "adaptive, on-line" control of every variable. (85+ mpg mini-cars -- or you can walk or take transit)

I also see a return to "high density" pedestrian friendly, transit friendly communities - where "everything is within walking distance" - just like the world before the "two cars in every garage" and "ribbons of highways" world that the Post-WW2 house building spree gave us.

[Dogmudgeon]

16. Right from Air Conditioners to Guns?

I don't think so.

The same propensity to forget about what's between the two extremes -- keeping us dependent on our lifestyles -- also blinds us to the ability we have to cope with bad situations.

Nearly everywhere Peak Oil is talked about, people assume that on Monday we'll have cheap gas and air conditioning, and by Friday we'll be shooting at looters. And, of course, everybody will be looting except us, because we're blessed with superior foresight. Right? Well, everybody thinks they have superior foresight. Most people will stay calm and bite their nails, drink, weep, or whatever they do when they're scared.

First, the idea that it will be looters 24/7 is just wrong. Looting is likely to be widespread but sporadic -- rare. Even in an area with looting going on, just keeping your head down and staying inside will give you a near 100% chance of survival.

Right-wingers like to get creative with their looter scenarios. They are unanimous in the idea that the looters will be inner-city Blacks who go nuts the first time their Welfare check is late. I believe that the black folks will probably organize on a community level long before their white counterparts do.

If you're afraid there'll be looting for food, keep a little in the house and keep your main cache someplace safe where they can't find it. If you try to hold off a dozen armed desperados with a single gun, your life expectancy will be reckonable in minutes.

Food is not likely to be scarce for a while, anyway. It will take a couple of failed harvests to cause a famine in the USA, and by that time, gardening will probably be a huge hobby. Hunger being common will be a late-stage disaster for us.

Second, in a social disaster, most people just plain don't loot. They become depressed, not enraged and not panicked. The Nazis depended on this reaction to be able to kill not just a huge number of Jews, but millions of non-Jews they found inconvenient to have around. Recently, in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sudan, genocides have been taking place in part because the victims can't believe what is happening. This crisis-depression reaction isn't limited to genocide, and it has also hit hard in Indonesia.

(In a genocide situation, grab your gun and take as many of the bastards as you can with you -- the survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto did just that and killed a lot of Nazis before they were finally overcome.)

I suspect when the first Stark Fist of Removal pounds the USA, there will be shock, disbelief, and paralysis. Looting will be scattered and easily put down by the police. The various levels of government will initiate emergency measures that ease the problem and allow people to rally to the cause of muddling through. This need not be fascism, and probably won't be. Only when the government loses faith in the future will the corn-pone fascists emerge, providing they haven't already shot their considerable wad.

The Long Emergency will not be a one-two punch like a nuclear war or an asteroid strike might be, it will be a 10-to-25-year-long period of crises, breakdowns, re-alignments, quick fixes and power plays. The only attitude that will get us through it in one piece and with some sense of sanity is to believe that we, and we alone, can make our lives what we want. Even if we fail, we fought for ourselves on our own terms. It is the attitude of depression and defeat that will bring us to our ruin, whether as individuals or as nations.

Energy (and climate, and plague, and whatever) is not the biggest problem -- that lies within every survivor's soul. Guns, tarps, duct tape, plastic sheeting, sodium hypochlorite, and caches of food and silver won't help you there. You'll just have that much more to worry about keeping safe -- and feeling threatened.

What Ghandi spoke of as "Soul-Force" is the real answer. If we had discovered this "soul-force" as we discovered technology, we would not be in the jam we are now in. But it's never too late to correct a mistake.

Before you think of what you need to be able to live through it, think of what you need to be able to live now. It's probably the same thing. Otherwise, you'll just be one of the millions of people struggling to survive instead of learning to live.

--p!

[phantom power]

18. Longer than a week, but maybe faster than 10 years.

And really, 10 years isn't such a long time, for hundreds of millions of people to re-adjust to such vast changes.

There are likely to be mass migrations, out of the southwest deserts. Maybe they can occurr slowly enough to be peaceful, but then again maybe not. If you're somebody living in the desert, who's going to buy your house? And if nobody buys your house, how are you going to afford to move somewhere? Assuming there are places for all those millions of people to move to.

Being serious, I'm not predicting some kind of massive horde, descending on Seattle, but I consider massive homelessness to be a plausible scenario. Maybe reminiscent of the great depression days. But it isn't the same world as it was back in the 30s. I'm not sure if being a Hobo, or living in a Hooverville, is as feasible now as it was then. Maybe we're going to find out.

[NickB79]

20. One point on food production

"Food is not likely to be scarce for a while, anyway. It will take a couple of failed harvests to cause a famine in the USA, and by that time, gardening will probably be a huge hobby. Hunger being common will be a late-stage disaster for us."

I disagree with the assumption that food will not become scarce in a relatively short period of time simply for the fact that almost any major US city, on average, has only 3 days worth of food supplies on hand in its grocery stores. If we really are heading for a hard crash (and that seems more and more likely based on the water-forcing of oil wells that Phantom Power has mentioned here several times) food costs and availability become significantly more problematic as there is less fuel to run the tractors and semi-trailers to plant, cultivate, harvest and transport the food. We will probably not see complete failures of grain harvests, just rapidly declining returns from our fields due to lack of sufficient cultivation, fertilizers and pesticides/herbicides.

[Dogmudgeon]

24. I generally agree ... BUT ...

... not all of our food production is tied to petroleum. There is also a much larger supply (than three days) in warehouses around the country -- the primary modern inventory method used in just about all industries is the "Just-In-Time" system. I have no exact idea of how much more food is stored in warehouses, but from keeping track of due-dates and talking to supermarket workers, I would guess it's about two months of packaged goods. But fresh goods, like breads and meat and farm and dairy products, are also not stocked more than a week.

In a serious crisis, the government and large charities (like the American Red Cross) would step in and help with large-scale food distribution. This provides a buffer against quickly-developing disasters.

Additionally, as I've said, a food crisis would turn millions of people immediately towards gardening and small-scale (subsistence to small-commercial) farming. Old-fashioned food production is labor-intensive and does not require large farm equipment. The kinds of machines that are useful for small holdings are things like motorized tillers about the size of snow-blowers, and they can be shared among several gardeners or small farmers.

The oil crisis would be a major long-term, "infrastructural" problem. Currently, to produce one calorie of food requires 2-7 calories of oil energy (I've heard different figures for this -- the actual number may be in doubt even by the USDA). Vegetarians also quote figures that 2000 gallons of water are required per pound of meat (probably beef; also probably a high estimate). All of these inefficiencies, however, are connected with an industrial model of food production. Returning to a lower-tech system would reduce the resource drain considerably. Most people, for instance, are unaware that legumes (beans) can quite efficiently "fix" nitrogen from the atmosphere, and would make an excellent source of agricultural nitrogen directly, as compost, or as a companion crop -- not to mention as a foodstuff for humans.

Not every advance in agricultural science has been in genetic engineering -- over fifty years of botanical R&D has gone unused because of the availability of cheap nitrogen fertilizer and the allure of genetic engineering and, more insidiously, plant patenting. But a large number of lower-tech discoveries and techniques can be used by family farms and be developed and marketed by small agricultural firms. Most of these advances could be available immediately -- and many have now passed into the public domain.

However, even with these positive developments, there will be a lot of problems with getting food sooner or later. But I think they will develop the same way the rest of the economic slide does -- a little at a time, almost always downward. And, as you've pointed out, some areas are just not suited for agriculture. Phoenix AZ will either become a solar energy hub, or it will die. Southern California could be "saved" by solar, tidal, and wind energy if it can develop them fast enough -- there are also a lot of ports in S.Cal, allowing produce from the central valley to be sold around the world. North America is more "blessed" than we know in terms of food production capability.

The famines that will leave the survivors dazed and hungry for revenge will be happening in Africa and Asia. This is a real danger, too, since famine areas will be politically unstable. These countries would become havens for terrorists as well as willing proxies for the better-off countries. If you can imagine the Sudanese Janjaweed as a "discreet" client of an ambitious leader, hiding WMD fabrication and storage, you'll have some idea of the danger. The other nightmare scenario, a militant "Islamist" take-over of the government of Pakistan and its dozen or so nuclear weapons, has already been discussed a few times. "We need food -- and we'll give you nukes. One way or another."

I personally think that the real transition from Affluence to Penury will come when businesses are destroyed by energy costs and unemployment jumps. When the currency stops flowing, the just-in-time scheduling practices of the financial world will collapse the various edifices of capital in a hurry.

At that point, hunger in the USA will be easier to alleviate than poverty. The transition period from inconveniently expensive food to dangerous food shortages could be as short as two years, or as long as ten. But the decline -- in North America -- will be the outcome of far more factors than just the loss of abundant oil.

--p!

[dcfirefighter]

26. biointensive

sustainable gardening offers a years worth of food from 1/6th an acre over a 4 month growing season & 10 inches of rain. At 5" of rain, it requires 1/3d an acre. Phoenix probably gets 3-4", requiring 1/2 an acre per person. Nothing more than hand tools is required, no fertilizers or pesticides. My guess is that we could grow all of our food in the space taken up by the lawns of suburban america.

[Dogmudgeon]

27. I've heard of that

I do doubt the claim that gardening wouldn't require fertilizer, but if the technique involves co-planting nitrogen-fixing plants, it just might be possible.

If you have any links, please post them!

There are a lot of unexplored methods out there, and we will need to use all of them. But "our" (Americans and Canadians) survival isn't too difficult to conceive of; it's the third world that will suffer. They have very poor soils, many of the poor countries are run by violent thugs, and many of the people are illiterate and afraid to try new things.

It takes a lot of work to turn a people "backward", and that work may pay off soon for Hitler wannabes. Sometimes I think that the Powers That Be are angling to produce a mass die-off in the poorer areas of the world.

--p!

[phantom power]

33. How much practice/skill does it take?

I think about the things I try to grow now, and my complete ignorance disturbs me. We plant something, and when it starts to die, it's often a complete mystery. Do I need to water it more? Less? Is it a bug eating the roots? How do I figure it out? Usually, I don't, and my plants die.

I imagine dealing with these problems, where if I get it wrong, I don't have any food. Then I imagine 300 million *other* people like me. Or, actually many of them will be even worse off than me. I did grow up helping my family tend a garden. I have a basic clue about how to grow things. Lots of people have never, ever grown anything.

I'm sure that one mitigating factor is that I would be spending much more time thinking about my garden, and working on it. But I wonder about aquiring these skills. Trial and error is a pretty scary process, when your food supply is dependent on getting it right.

[GumboYaYa]

36. Start now with a home garden.

It's not just learning how to do it. It takes several years to get the soil right. That is half the battle. Each year you learn a little more.

Also, community gardening is a great way to learn. We have one with twenty separate plots. If I encounter a new problem, there is almost always someone in our group who knows what to do.

This summer my gardens are doing far better than ever in the past. I expect a substantial amount of our food to come from the garden this year.

[dcfirefighter]

37. The soil is key

In fact, the 'biointensive' method is all about 'growing' soil, more so than growing crops in soil. Get the soil right, and everything else comes (fairly) easy. You can cheat and build your own soil for a small plot, but basically you must grow crops for compost, which is then mixed in the soil.

The keys are:
1) lots of organic humus mixed in a double dug & raised bed. (dig a spadeful of dirt out, fork underneath, and replace - loose friable dirt + amendmends makes bed higher than surrounding, packed earth)
2) ~5' wide bed, minimizing amount of land between 'rows' and thus increasing growing area per total area of garden/field.
3) close packed hexagonal plant spacing. If lettuce would be grown 4" from next plant in a row, you can plant 7 in an area 12" across.
4) maximising bed use over time by starting plants in flats, where germinating seeds on 1" centers might take up a square foot, but when transplanted to bed might take up 100 square feet. In other words don't waste bed space with 4 weeks of tiny plants.
5) high energy per unit growing area crops, like potatos, and garlic.
6) compost (carbon) crops, like grains & corn
7) crop rotation: heavy giver, light feeder, heavy feeder
8) companion crops, attracting beneficial insects, repelling harmful organisms.

A good book to start, if you've never gardened, is http://www.squarefootgardening.com/ which is easy to read, and encourages vertical growing.

A second book would be _the sustainable vegetable garden_ by jeavons. He recommends starting with a single 5'x20' growing bed, which should be enought to get you started. I personally would also recommend a trellis at least 5' wide, to grow some vine plants like sugar snap peas, indeterminate tomatos, winter squash, watermelon, muskmelon, and pole beans. If you grow melons up, rather than out, they take up much less room.

[GumboYaYa]

39. "Growing melons up..."

Does this work with larger melons like watermelons and canteloupe? I'm growing both this year took a good bit of space to do it. It's not to late for me to add a trellis and save some space.

Another thing we have started doing is mixing vegetables in our flower beds. I have ruhbarb growing in my front yard and it looks great. We put sweet potatoes as ground cover in our rose beds this year. I'm anxious to see how that works. We also have grapes, raspberries and blue berries mixed into our flower beds, but those have been there for a few years and are starting to have signifcant amounts of fruit.

[dcfirefighter]

40. I have watermelons and cantaloupe

Sugar baby watermelons, some kind of cantaloupe, butternut squash, and acorn squash. I took an old vollyball net and cut it into strips, and 'weave' the vine as it grows. The watermelon and cantaloupe are maybe 18" up now. I had been gone for a week, so they had sprawled a bit, are fine now. The stems get thicker where they support suspended fruit. I've never tried it with a full size watermelon, but it works for sugar baby. Total for a 2' x8' bed with a trellis is 2 acorn squash, 6 cucumber, 4 tomato, 1 tomatillo (not vining), 1 pepper (not vining), 16 sugar snap peas, 2 watermelon, 1 butternut squash, 1 cantaloupe. Theres a couple of onions & garlic, as well as borage tucked in wherever spaced allowed. Peas are 6', tomatoes are 5' now. Winter squash might be 1'.

I've a similar size bed planted as the native americans did: earthen mounds with corn, beans, and squash. This bed is growing like gangbusters, corn's about 4', beans vined up the stalks, and various squash covering the rest. I expect that the squash will eventually grow out of the bed.

I'd love to plant some perennial fruit bushes, and maybe some dwarf trees, as well as strawberries, but since I rent, and have limited yard space, I haven't committed to that yet. Maybe after the bubble bursts.

[GumboYaYa]

42. Wow that is a lot for that space.

This is the first year I planted tomatillo. It is awesome. We are just starting to get mature fruit.

Our fruit bushes and vines are great. You invest in them once and they give you more fruit every year. I haven't bought jelly or jam in several years. We are adding fruit trees next. We planted dwarf plums and pears at our commuitty garden two years ago and we have fruit this year. I'm probably going to add peaches and apples at my house. My neighbor has figs, so we can trade.

This weekend I applied nematodes to our gardens. It is the first time I have dome that. I'm interested to see if it has an impact on our insects this year.

[dcfirefighter]

43. everything grows straight up

i did have to trim the tomatillo after I came back from being away for a week, it had sprawled over my slow-growing winter squash. My first year with it as well, but if the blooms are any indication, it should produce more tomatillo than I eat in a year.

I read something about nematodes - but forget the details. What are you trying to do with them. (I vaguely remember something about marigolds in relation to them as well)

Sounds like you might check out agroforestry: basically increasing your yield per area at the expense of yield per plant: but grow food in layers: overstory, understory, shrubs, low plants, ground cover, vines, and roots; using fruit & nut trees vines, etc. An easier start might be a dwarf fruit tree, some kind of vine like hardy kiwi, blueberry bush, asparagus, and strawberry ground cover.

[GumboYaYa]

44. Nematodes are microscopic predators that attack the eggs of

bugs in the soil. Apparently an application in spring/early summer and again in fall will drastically reduce the pests who attack gardens.

Last night for dinner we had new potatoes and sugar snap beans (cooked with garlic, onions and parsley) and a salad made with lettuce, zuchinni, edible flowers and green onions. All of it came from the garden. The oil and gas required to get it to the table was nil.

Produce fresh from the garden straight to the dinner table is just the best you can get. The flavor of the fresh veggies is out of this world.

I don't have room for many trees. There are two giant old trees in my backyard that shade the house so well we hardly ever use AC. There is no way those guys are coming down.

Fortunately, I have a big park down the street from my house where the city and school work with the neighbors to keep a garden. They let us start permaculture planting that area a few years ago. We have the afore-mentioned trees already going. This fall we are going to plant some nut bearing trees, but haven't decided on the types yet.

[Coastie for Truth]

31. Mass subsidization of agriculture

as "frankenfoods" (or old fashion Luther Burbank hybroids bred for the new post-peak world) take over.

Also, don't be surprised by new modes of food preservation.

[dcfirefighter]

41. or how about old modes of food preservation

canning, pickling, drying, salting, smoking, curing, jams, jellies, spring houses, root cellars, winter crops, storing in ground plus modern variations on vacuum packing, flash freezing, retort packing, etc. You can make sauerkraut by packing cabbage in salt, and have vitamin C all winter long.

Potted meat anyone?

[pstans]

19. I am reading The Long Emergency right now

It is very good. This is the third book of Kunstler's that I have read. Check out his website for more rants...www.kunstler.com

[TheCentepedeShoes]

21. Have you read his fiction work

"An Embarassment of Riches?" Picked it up at a used bookshop a few days ago. Looks like fun.

[pstans]

22. No

I read "The Geography of Nowhere" in a college Urban Planning class. After reading that I have been a frequent visitor to his website (www.kunstler.com). Then I picked up "Home from Nowhere" a few years later. Kunstler got me in tune to Peak Oil and I branched out from there.