The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | Guerilla Gardening: Eating The Suburbs

66 comments on Guerilla Gardening: Eating The Suburbs

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Egregius on December 27, 2008 - 12:49pm

Excellent that someone should draw attention to this on here. I do believe a lot of 'crash-mitigation' can be done through growing food everywhere (although I realise the caloric difference between an acre of wheat and a fruiting bush next to the road are huge).

Two corrections to the article: the earliest known guerilla gardener (not counting horticulturalism throughout the ages), was Gerrard Winstanley, who is commemorated right outside the Kremlin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrard_Winstanley

And most guerilla gardeners do NOT concern themselves with planting fruit and vegetables! Most are in it for the beautification aspect, though a significant portion, like me, genuinely love the idea of growing food in the city.
For a representative sample of what guerilla gardeners are up to, check out http://guerillagardening.org
They have pictures, and their forums are full of enthousiasts.

Guerilla gardening, like starting to grow crops for the first time, can be very rewarding or unrewarding, depending on your attitude, knowledge, experience and luck (but mostly attitude!). For example, I've grown lettuces alongside a busy intersection nearby. Several neat rows grows in the grass. But I've also planted several types of seed in various places, that didn't do much of anything. I've sown flowering bulbs along trees in front of my house, that each year come up, but get cut under by the greenery maintenance men, who weed around the trees with hoes.

But it's very rewarding in the sense of being a learning experience. I've found out there's lots of open space around my area, including barren industrial plots. I've learned most good land is either well maintained, or has tall weeds growing on it, and that the open spaces usually mean crappy sandy soil. Making a piece of land ready to be built on usually involves dumping a layer of sand on it here in Rotterdam, which makes a great many open spaces very marginal. I've also learned that buried but unprotected nuts and avocado seeds will be dug up and eaten by rats, and that raising seedlings instead takes a lot of space and effort, and is no guarantee for succes.

But I persevere, because with every failure I learn something, preparing me for potential agricultural work despite not having any land to cultivate of my own.

This summer I'm going to try and grow more vegetables along the roadside, and some date-palms next to the parking lot behind the trainstation. It's sandy and dry there, and they should be hardy to the dutch climate in those conditions. Even if there's no hope of them growing any dates, it's going to be fun to try.

Sidenote: not sure eating leafy vegetables grown next to the road is a safe proposition. Anyone know what is safe to eat and what not, when grown in a polluted environment?

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Eliyahu on December 29, 2008 - 11:33pm

The goal is to build organic matter. Since time is on your side, think in terms of feeding the soil. Sourcing some carbon like sawdust is your biggest bang for the buck for carbon at some 300:1 The goal is to create a 30:1 carbon to nitrogen ratio. I think that a sheet composting approach would be the least amount of work. Since you probably don't have access to horse cow or sheep manure. Think of offering the carbon to the bacteria in the soil which would then require a year or so to try to digest the carbon.

The 300 is a weight not mass reference.So a high number for sawdust at 300 versus hay/straw at 12 goes further. Physically ground compaction can be remedied with a tine that you could push down into the soil. This is also achieved with legumes. Sweet clover, and alfalfa can fix large amounts of nitrogen and help to punch holes through compacted soils with their roots.

One of the biggest problems facing agribusiness is compaction.
Because of their size (many acres) they routinely work the land when it's wet (or by the calender). In sandy soils this is less of a problem but in clay or clay loams this is big mistake. Think about trying to grow in concrete. This is why we don't see 4,000 h.p. tractors because in order to take advantage of the horsepower in order to get enough traction you would create even greater issues of compaction. This is why you will see double wheeled rear tires on many tractors.

There was a very interesting (imo) organic farmer in the 40's named Freind Sykes (Authored several books one titled: 'Humus and the Farmer')and he along with Sir Albert Howard were very aware of the effect of spreading slag (tailings from iron ore production) on the land. The calcium was a great improvementto the grasses. Later they realized that plow pans (which are created by moldboard plowing) created an impenetrable layer that restricted nutrients and moisture flow. With the increased use of chemical fertilizers this killed the earth worms and shut down the area from where plants could draw nutrients from.

Getting earthworms to live is a huge indicator of heavy metal toxicity. A farmer in my neck of the woods applied sewage sludge from the city on his fields some 17 years later he still couldn't get earth worms to live in it. We can use plants to cleanse soils that have become toxic.

Another good indicator crop is apparently beets. I have have heard that they are very sensitive to toxicity, but that needs to be confirmed some plants even some honeys can be toxic depending on what's in the soil.

Earthworm castings greatly improve the bio-availability of nutrients to plants and help aerate and improve the tilth of the soil.

Other thoughts that maybe somebody else has raised and I missed is contemplating succession and ecotones or edges. These are vectors in nature where different mixes and combinations of forest water and field come together. The mix of the 3 provides the greatest opportunity for wild life. Buffers and hedges along fields can provide great benefit for wildlife.

Putting plants where they can help, is a wonderful soul-filling act. And if enough people do it, it will no doubt attract inspector types to try to regulate you out of existence.
Go gardeners go!

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Big Gav on December 30, 2008 - 6:59am

Thanks for the note about Winstanley starting this idea - I didn't know anything about him (or why the Diggers were named that way) until I read your link.

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