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Exactly what is a biointensive garden? According to the encylopedia it is a method of an organic agricultual system which focuses on maximum yields from the minimum area of land while simultaneously improving the soil. The ultimate goal of this method is long term sustainability on a closed system basis and a closed system is a totally isolated system. Though it rarely works on a large farm it has been used successfully on small commercial farms.

A biointensive garden allows you to grow organic food thus allowing you to eat well, get healthy, reduce global warming and change the world right in your own backyard!

Sustainable mini farming basically will conserve the soil, give you high yields, conserve resources and can be applied by anyone to their own garden plot.

A biointensive gardener uses heirloom seeds that are untreated and open-pollinated.

Using raised beds is a must and they must have about 2 feet of soil in them in order to use the "double dug" method. This organic biointensive garden must be a closed system which means no outside or off-farm fertilizers, manures or other additives should be brought into this garden or mini-farm.

These types of gardens are usually half planted with carbon crops such as millet, wheat and corn which are important food sources for humans, but also produce plenty of high carbon scraps for your compost pile.

High calorie root crops such as parsnips, potatoes and turnips will usually constitute another third of a biointensive garden simply because they are good winter keepers when stored properly and will give you a large amount of calories in a relatively small space.

The remainder of this biointensive garden will usually consist of several small beds of your ordinary garden vegetables such as tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, lettuce, squash and broccoli which when planted closely spaced in compost-enriched, double dug beds will produce enough vitamins and minerals to sustain a person for a year.

Biointensive gardeners ignore the spacing instructions on the seed packets because they know that seedling that are planted close to each other will keep the soil moist and prevent weeds from sprouting as they mature and their leaves touch.

Composting is the key to replenishing the soil so you must maintain a healthy compost pile which will take a lot of your millet, corn and wheat high carbon leavings.

Biointensive gardeners practice companion planting which means that tall corn shades cucumbers and green beans aid strawberries and that fast growing radishes do very well when planted next to slow growing carrots.

A biointensive gardener "counts" calories, not the kind to reduce weight, but the kind needed for human consumption to stay alive and that means the gardener will grow a year's supply of food for each person focusing on high-calorie, space efficient vegetables such as potatoes and parsnips.

This same gardener will only use open pollinated seeds because he or she knows that special hybrid seeds are not needed in healthy soil. Also this type of seed preserves genetic diversity.

This whole program works, giving you the highest yields in the smallest space, only if you use the whole method.

As the world grows larger, budgets become smaller, fuel becomes scarcer, droughts become more prevalent, then creating a biointensive garden is the smart thing to do.

Learn more about this author, Arlene Wright-Correll.
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