How to Grow Food in Wasteland

It is better to be a bit self-sufficient, if the earthly crises will get more deeper. Our collective farm is using several methods of growing food on wasteland, where nothing has been growing before – on the place covered with weeds, and stones and even broken tiles buried on the soil.

The first method which is the most easy, needs only cutting and collecting some grass. One may use even dry hay from bales. Then one needs about 10 litre of soil for planting the seeds. Lets say you want to grow 4 zuchini or pumpkin plants and get about 20-30 kg, then you need a piece of land, about 2 x 2 meters. You may have it on your front, or back yard between trees, or on the cliff area – or may be even in the forest.

Cut and collect first the grass and pile it into 6 mounds like anthill, about 40 cm high, under you may put some leaves also. Tear the top open of each mound and press into bowl form. You may put now a plastic or cartoon edging on the “bowls”, but not on the bottom. Fill the “bowls” each with about 2 liter of good soil. The edging keeps the soil more tight. Put the seeds inside the soil and keep watering regularly in the beginning.

Although you have only little soil, it will be enough for zuchini to grow, because the mound starts to de-compost slowly so the roots can eventually grow deeper. You can plant this way early on as the compost keeps the soil warm and if freezing cold comes, you can cover the seedlings easily with some pot or plastic bag. You may also cover the soil between the mounds with something, so that the possible grass will not grow too high. This way you can grow zuchinis, pumpkins (especially hokkaido), beans, flowers etc. I have not grown others, but you may do some experiments.

Another very productive method is to cover all over the wasteland area with 15-30 cm layer of hay, better to do it in the autumn already. Voles love it and will mess up the soil and hay already during winter, which is good in this case (but they don’t seem to disturb when the actual plants are growing). In the spring time cover the area with black canvass, which the rain can go through (buy from garden shop, you can use it for many years). Make holes on the canvas according the size of the plant.

Pumpkin needs about 10-20 cm diameter hole, like ‘bowl’. The distance between each pumpkin should be about one meter, for zucchinis less and for beans 50 cm, but plant 2-3 beans in the same hole. Make a hole not only to canvas, but also on the hay, so that you can put about 2-3 liter good soil on that ‘bowl’ and the seeds. The top of the soil should be little bit below the hole on the canvas. If there is grass land under the hay ‘bowl’, you may put some piece of cardboard to prevent grass growing.

This way the plants grow even better than with the first method. The canvas keeps the soil warm and damp so the hay becomes composted very fast. Zuchini hardly needs less watering, pumpkin needs more. We have got this way really a lot of zucchinis and pumpkins. Each plant tend to grow many more zucchinis than in normal garden soil. One plant had even about ten zuchinis at the same time. And I never before have got so many huge beans growing from each bush. Cabbages and tomatoes would probably grow as well.

The problem with this system can be, if the garden plot is in direct sunshine, that the plants might not be able to tolerate the heat created by the composting and black canvas, so it would be better if the area is part time in shade, but depends on the weather.

The third method is a hay bale garden, which I found from internet. One may put about 10 hay bales side by side or in lines. The bales are better to be touching each other, so the moist is vaporizing less. Now you dig a hole or two, in the middle of each hay bale, depending what you want to grow. Fill the hole with some good soil, put the seeds and keep on watering the hay bales all over. You can grow this way cabbages, cucumbers, spinach, flowers, tomatoes etc. The hay bales will eventually also de-compose, but it is quite slow process.

One summer when it was raining little, I found this way to grow food more difficult and heavy, as I had to keep on watering every day, while the other methods needed much less water. I don’t know if it would work out to put the hay bales inside a plastic to keep them moist, but it might not look nice. Anyhow this type method is more for show, a hobby for those who want to spend a lot of time on setting up the system and watering. Then you still need to remove also the mess in the autumn.

I have also grown most of my veggies by covering the soil with hay like Ruth Stout’s Garden;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNU8IJzRHZk

but as I have big garden, I only cover it with hay when the plants has started growing, and in the autumn we use tractor to plough the soil. ………………………………………

This way you don’t need much fertilizers for your plants, but you may collect nettles and put in water bucket. Cover and let it stand in a sunny place for couple of weeks. When using take couple liter of the liquid and add into bucket of water and give to your plants. The composted nettle leaves and stems you may put on top of the soil around your plants.

If there is near by a stone factory or stone cutting place, and if you can get some of the left over powdered stone, that is the best fertilizer you can ever get. Homeopathic minerals can also help a lot. Mixed planting, for example beans help other plants to grow nicely. Collect the worms out from different cabbage plants. Notice also, that your plants have feelings. They appreciate a lot of your loving thoughts – sing them, kiss them or play soft music, meditate in your garden.

Now how do you get water for your wasteland garden? If you have some roof to collect rain water and store in buckets. Even if you don’t have roof from where to collect water, in some empty area, dig about 50 cm deep pond, buy some plastic to cover it all over. Here in Poland we can get plastic even 8 m in diameter. Kitchen and bath water can be also collected for gardening.

Keshe foundation explains also how to make rain catcher. I managed to make one kind of by accident, when experimenting with gans and health pens etc. Though it was catching only few milliliters in a couple of days, but could it be made more effective who knows!!!

Other hints for gardening;

I find parsnip easy to grow, you may put the seeds already in the autumn on soil. Most of the people seem to like parsnip juice. In the autumn I take many plants (kale, celery, fennel, swiss chard etc) from garden with roots and soil into buckets and keep over the winter in the wood store, where there is window, so I can eat wintertime and keep some for next year to plant. Zuchini and hokkaido pumpkin will stay just like that in warm place many months.