A couple book reviews

Okay...I know I promised pictures and an update a few days ago, but work got crazy and here I am a few days later. I'll try to be dilligent about my posts.

So I STILL don't have pictures for you yet, but soon, probably tomorrow. I'll tell you what I've done so far though: I got a half whiskey barrel which fit surprisingly well into my VW Beetle with the back seat down. It was a bit dirty, but all-in-all sturdy and just the right size. It only cost about $25 and I got it from Lowe's of all places. I put some "grower's mix" in it (I didn't have time to hunt for organic compost and what not. Eventually I'll start doing my own composting, but right now I don't have any place for a heap.

I planted a tomato seed (Brandywine, OTV from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, more about them later) in the center of the barrel and marigolds around the perimeter. I saw the first marigold sprouting yesterday (about 5 days after I planted it). The tomato I haven't seen yet. It's late in the season, obviously...but I am in San Diego afterall and we don't exactly have seasons here, so I think I'll be okay. I planted the seeds at night and watered them with about a 1/4 gallon of water. I've been reading about how to water tomato plants and most people seem to recommend a night of heavy water and then night to dry and repeating like that.

I also got the two books that I ordered from Amazon: "A Guide To Digging Your Own Well" and "All New Squsre Foot Gardening." As I search for the answers to all of my "how the heck am I going to do that" questions about living off-grid, building, gardening, etc. I'll be reading a bunch of books and I'll try to give you all a summary of them and whether they're worth buying. I've already bought and skimmed through two other books. I'll review those in a later post.

Book #1: "A Guide To Digging Your Own Well"
Amazon link

This book is a mere 63 pages but $12 at Amazon. I've read about halfway through the book and I can definitely say that it won't do me much good. It's great if you live on flood plains or other low-lying land where you don't need to dig more than say 35 feet to get to the bottom of your water table (the water table is the place where wells magically get water from). If you do live in such a spot, this book makes child's play out of the task of drilling a well, casing it and sanitizing it. It has great pictures in all the places where you're having a little trouble visualizing a tool the author is describing or a technique he's trying to explain.

Unfortunately for me, I'm at about 3000 ft. above sea level, halfway up Mt. Spokane. I got a bid from a local well drilling company and they quotes me about $12k for the drilling and $5k for the pump and installation. All-in-all, that's not bad considering they estimate (and quote) that the well will need to be a whopping 258 feet! Nevertheless I was hoping this was another thing I could do myself and not have the expense of enormous hydraulic drilling rigs do it for me. I do have a nice little stream running through the property, but I have no idea how reliable that is...nor do I know what would be needed to make the water fit for human consumption. One idea that I've been toying with was to have two cisterns: one for shower/gardening/dishwashing water and one for drinking water. I'd even be okay with filling up several 5-gallon tanks of water at a grocery store just to be used for drinking water if I had to. The bulk of our water consumption will not need to be fit for drinking.

Book #2: "All New Square Foot Gardening"
Amazon link

SFG = Square Foot Gardening

I am in love with this book. I've read a lot about it and now I see why. First, it's only $13.59 from Amazon (it's about $18 from the author's site - http://squarefootgardening.com - but all the profits go to the non-profit group dedicated to spreading the SFG concept...for what that's worth). It's 223 pages (before the appendices) of really beautifully formatted and published work. As the name suggests, this is an update to a previous book called Square Foot Gardening. The former was released in 1981 and apparently made a huge splash in the US and then spread to many other countries. The non-profit org around the concept is founded and run by the author of the book and they focus a lot on training humanitarian groups on the SFG method so that they can then go to third-world countries to teach them how to grow more crops with less resources.

There's so much good in this book/concept that it's hard to know where to start or how to sum it all up. I've only read the first 2 chapters and I'm already excited about the method. Basically it evaluates all the inefficeincies of standard row-gardening and fixes nearly all of them. It makes a great point about how standard row gardening requires 3-ft wide paths between all the rows and how the entire garden bed is watered and tilled and fertilized but only 20% of the bed (the rows) is used for growing crops. The other 80% (the 3-ft-wide walking paths) make great growing spaces, but mostly are reserved for weeds. Why spend 80% of your time/energy/money on making a place for weeds (that you'll have to hoe up) to grow?

The concept is similar to intensive gardening, and I don't think that this concept is so new, but rather a rediscovering of the original/simple way gardens were meant to be grown. I'd have to do my homework, but I bet that in Mideavil European times, gardens (not farms, but gardens) were grown with much narrower spacing. It just makes sense. The standard row gardening (as the SFG author, Mel suggests) is just a hand-me-down from large-scale farming. Rows make sense for farming where you want a neat order to your crops that will allow you to easily harvest your crops in bulk via machinery or what have you. However, in our garden, we're going to be picking things by hand, so we can discard the need for that much order.

The first chapter dives right in to describe the fundamentals of what makes SFG superior to row gardening. Even though it's entitled "Introduction," it really throws you into the mix, which I love. Too many of these books to take too many words to hype up all the great stuff you're about to read. This one has a little of that, but it's tolerable. What I could have done without was the mini-autobiography about the rise in popularity of SFG that took 6 full pages. It came across a bit arrogant at times. If there's anything to dislike about this book, it's the author's arrogance. He comes across as the self-professed savior of gardening, enlightening the masses about the inefficeincies of row gardening. He even describes the mixture of soil he suggests using as "Mel's Mix." There's even a part of the SFG website titled Mel's Humor, that has this intro:

"Whenever I see a picture of a famous person, I have fun imagining what they might be saying if they were talking about Square Foot Gardening."

...wow. Anyway, his book is amazing, but I could have done without some of the ego. I haven't gotten far into the book yet, but by the first chapter, he really should have made reference to Alan Chadwick which popularized the French Intensive Gardening method. He should have atleast mentioned that SFG is a type of Intensive Gardening.

But the book is so great, that I will look past the ego and the sporadic condescention to the guts of the book and his method. There's plenty of guts to be enjoyed.

One thing I'm surprised that he didn't explore (and maybe he will later in the book) is the fact that all plants grow roughly in a circle...not a square. As he was reorganizing the layout of the garden from scratch, to follow a more natural pattern of plant growth, I would have thought that he would have incorporated the concept of a circle. I'm not just saying this because I'm big on geodesic domes either ;^) But circles are rather well fit for plants. Mel suggest having a 4' by 4' box that you divide up into 4 rows and columns to make a lovely little grid. 4' max because you have to reach the center of the box...without falling over (stepping in the box is a big no-no as it will compact the dirt). Each 1' by 1' plot is supposed to contain a different plant. The type and number of each plant is based on standard spacing rules (so as not to crowd the root structure) and companion planting. However, rather than have a grid, I would have liked to see a system of concentric circles to pay homage to the fact that plants grow in circles. Sure, the math gets slightly more complicated, but it could be worth it. I'll be exploring this possible configuration myself if Mel doesn't cover it later in the book.

Okay, that was a pretty wordy "summary" of the book so far, but this is a pretty profound book so I think it merits the verbosity of this review ;^)

That's all for now. Next post, hopefully pictures of my planter and the marigold sprouts, and my hopes of putting a SFG in the front of our condo.