Back(yard) to the land family grows its meals on tiny urban lot

[jpak]

http://www.energybulletin.net/18645.html

For most people, eating organic means a trip to the local whole- foods store and, often, a hit to their wallets. For the Dervaes family, eating organic requires only a trip to the garden. The family of four raises 3 tons of food each year -- enough to supply three-quarters of their diet and maintain a thriving organic produce business to boot.

Jules Dervaes, along with his three grown children, lives on 1/5 of an acre in suburban Pasadena and cultivates about half the property, or 1/10 of an acre. Given that the average American's diet requires 1.2 acres of farmland per person, the Dervaeses are eating quite well off one-fiftieth of the land the rest of us require.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture reports that most California corn or rice farms produce an annual yield of less than a 1/2-ton per acre and the average bean farm 1/5-ton per acre. The Dervaeses' operation is about 60 to 150 times as efficient as their industrial competitors, without relying on chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

"Everybody wants more land," Dervaes says. "We decided to find out how much we could accomplish on this piece of land."

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[bunny planet]

1. I've got a family like this living in my town.

They raised four teenage boys on whatever they could harvest from their organic garden in their modest backyard and have been doing it for over 20 years. They are an inspiration to me. I hope to consult with them when I expand upon and plant my organic kitchen garden this year.

[Warpy]

2. I had an intensively gardened 10 X 10 plot back east

and was always astonished by how much food I could get out of it. I used companion planting and successive harvests. I used organic fertilizer only (the cats were funny when it was fish emulsion week). I hand picked things like tomato hornworms and used a water spray to encourage aphids and other small pests to live elsewhere.

There is nothing that can beat backyard English peas, broccoli and sweet corn.

[shireen]

3. can you provide more details? It's very interesting .... n/t

[phantom power]

4. Cool. Maybe I can take a break from my Joni Mitchel CDs.

[kestrel91316]

5. I have tried to do this, but there are very few crops that can take our

summer heat (up to 119 as of this year), and winter crops that will grow with shorter days can't take our frequent HOT WINTER spells and occasional biblical flooding.

I have a small tomato crop this year. And looks like I got over a dozen nice big butternut squash. But everything else died in the early June blast furnace. And it will probably stay too hot to plant a fall garden until at least Halloween.

15 years ago it was not like this. I used to have much better success. I can't grow corn or beans anymore - the corn won't pollinate in the extreme heat, and the bean plants burn up from the fierce sun.