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Markael Luterra's avatar

Wild gardening! For the past ten years I have worked for and with Wild Garden Seed - which has long had a philosophy of growing with diversity, allowing winter weeds to be cover crops, not always in straight rows.

For me, I would say that I feel like there is a spectrum of ways to approach growing food. On one end is the industrial chemical monoculture that is so dominant. On the other end is wildcrafting, permaculture, no tillage, working to build self-sustaining ecosystems that also give us food. But it's difficult to grow cabbage that way, or lettuce, or potatoes, or corn or beans or squash, or most of the annual food crops that our ancestors have created in collaboration with wild plants.

In between, there is a way of gardening that feels in a sense like creating an extension of self - a boundary within which I work more intensively with the land so that it is not wild per se, but it is still effectively in harmony rather than in a state of battle. I explored this somewhat in my most recent regular post: https://dendroica.substack.com/p/the-pandora-possibility

In terms of fertility in food-growing lands, the biggest challenge we face in our modern society, it would seem, is getting the nutrients from our own excretions back to the plants. It is both taboo and physically challenging when they are flushed down pipes and mixed with all manner of toxins from which they are not easily separated. It's tough to get away from the need to add fertility until we can close our nutrient loops.

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Sam Corrie's avatar

Wild gardening! I do love that term. To caretake the land as you speak encourages so much more... thank you for sharing your wisdom here. I live in an apartment and we have more pots on the balcony than there is space to move, yet the birds, the bees, the butterflies, the possums and I'm sure the mice all come and nibble. I wonder, in your lush garden what do you do when the wildlife nibble more than you can harvest yourself? Or when the teeny tiny shoots are there one day and gone the next?

Thank you for this lovely post... I feel expanded in reading it. 🪴🍁🌱

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