French Biointensive Farming and Gardening
by Gary Ingram
I have written before about some of the advantages of growing food in raised beds. In most of the world land is cheap but money is short. Using the French biointensive growing methods, a single person can feed themselves a complete vegan diet on 4000 square feet of growing space, which includes space to grow compost crops. Currently it takes about 15,000 square feet in the United States to feed one person a vegan diet and all the nutrients must be brought into the farm. Biointensive methods can reduce that greatly over time as you build the soil. At our farm we have 12 raised beds dedicated to vegetables and flowers and we very seldom need to supplement our diet with other people’s food. Usually, we’ll have an abundance of one or two crops that we pass out to others.
“These growing beds are full of life. I think of it as a living being, made up of trillions of microscopic organisms that give everything my plants need to grow and thrive.”
The typical raised growing bed is five feet wide and 20 feet long (100 square feet of planting area). I like my walking paths between the growing beds just wide enough for me to use our broad fork to loosen the weeds. I use straw or wood chips to cover the paths and every few years, when everything is well rotted, I clean them out by putting this “compost” on the beds.
These growing beds are never walked on. Never. Before planting, I add a couple inches of compost and use the broad fork to aerate the beds. I’m 75 years old and I can aerate a full bed in 10 minutes. No gas needed, no noise pollution made and little if any sweat produced my me.
These growing beds are full of life. I think of it as a living being, made up of trillions of microscopic organisms that give everything my plants need to grow and thrive. I seldom let a bed dry out, so these organisms continue to grow, producing food for the next series of plants. I feed them raw goat manure in the fall and finished compost before planting.
Our planet is drying up and we need to conserve as much water as possible. Using biointensive methods, I plant close together so that neighboring plants touch each other. This shades the soil, which holds down the weeds and conserves water.
Ecology Action of Willits California has been studying the biointensive methods of growing food for over 40 years. They wrote the Peace Corps manuals for growing food in economically developing countries, and they have substantial data.
Take sweet corn for example. We grow a short season variety and I lightly water it once per day, using about 10 gallons of water per day for my 100 square foot bed this time of the year. Each plant takes about one square foot, so there are 50 per bed. The plants grow fast and soon shade out the soil they grow in, allowing even less water as they mature. My watering goal is about five gallons per 100 square feet. According to Ecology Action measures, the amount of water I use is about 90% less than the conventional and row farmers.
I water most plants from overhead, exceptions being squash, tomatoes and cucumbers. I do this daily during warm days using a fine wand that approximates rainfall as much as possible. The fine rain of water absorbs beneficial airborne nutrients helping plants grow. Also, keeping the top inch of soil moist preserves the lower moisture levels. It takes very little water to keep a bed moist. It takes a lot of water and work to hydrate a dry bed. Ecology Action recommends evening watering, which is what I do.
My raised beds are about 24 years old, and I live on the cool side of Greenbank where our summer temperatures run 10 degrees below most of South Whidbey. Some people believe that the biointensive method cannot work in our climate as plants grown close together will mold. However, I have been doing this for 30 years without any issues.
To quote Alan Chadwick, “Just grow one small area and do it well. Then once you have it right, grow more.”
Why French? | Editor’s Note
If, like me, you’re wondering why some people call it French biointensive, here’s a little history.
As long ago at the 1500s, in the neighborhoods in and around Paris, farmers had market gardens that had incredibly high yields. They used horse manure (very abundant back then) to build rich soil, and, because they had very little space, had to plant close together, in other words, intensively. The manure provided fertilizer, but also heat, which they used in cold frames to grow starts and out-of-season vegetables.
With the advent of fossil fuels and high, inner-city property values, the market farmers disappeared. But they left a training manual, which was created for a competition in 1842 for the best book on Parisian market-gardening techniques.