I haven't read this book, but I have read the
introduction and the contents. As far as I can tell, the book ignores the security dimension of the situation that "backyard gardeners" will be facing in a collapse situation. If you live in a city and actually had to use this book, the local warlord would take a look at your backyard garden, rub his stomach and think, "Yummy!"
Then what are you going to do?
This is where the Berkeley vegans, Kerry-2004-bumper-sticker-on-the-hybrid drivers and other associated crackpot liberals will try to change the subject.
The people who think that some kind of urban ecotopia is going to spring up out of the ashes of the "capitalistic, patriarchal, hierarchical dominator system" are out of their god damned minds. The people advocating this myth are ignorant of the plain and simple realities of life on the ground in failed states. Have you heard of the term,
failed state? The people pushing the free-love-after-the-collapse world view obviously haven't. And, sadly, lots of people who know what's coming, informed people, would rather believe this myth than upset the apple cart and make substantive changes in their own lives.
My education in International Relations wasn't good for much, but I learned quite a bit about how power works, not in some pothead's dreamworld, but on the ground. You take the state out of the picture for a day or so in an urban environment and someone is going to be pointing a gun at your head, making demands that you will probably find less than appealing. (I breathed the smoke of Los Angeles burning during the 1992 riots. I saw troop carriers and U.S. Marines on the streets. I didn't see any free love ecotopia breaking out.)
Backyard gardening? How the F is a backyard garden going to help you at that point?
If you don't have an answer to that question, you need to seriously re-think your situation. Maybe the warlord will be appeased by the fruits of your labor. Then again, maybe not.
If you're not surrounded by neighbors who already have the mind-set that you have.... good luck trying to sway converts when armed men, taking orders from their stomachs, are roaming the streets. You either need to work on building a collective security plan with your neighbors now, or you need to find new neighbors who already
get it; meaning, you need to move.
The most valuable lesson you could take from this book doesn't have to do with compost, seedlings, companion planting, or any of the other standard gardening topics.
Where does the author live?From the introduction:
These days I feel fortunate to have retired to one of the world's most remote places, Tasmania, a temperate South Pacific island with a climate that is a lot like Oregon's. From here I can enjoy a slight sense of detachment as I watch how the planet is going.
Why not just stay in Oregon? Why move to the other side of the planet to find a similar climate?
Because difficult issues need to be broached in Oregon.
Very VERY difficult issues.
He may not be writing about the security dimension of backyard gardening, but he understands it.
So, having said all of that, if you are planning on staying put, with your idiot, Jesus fish-embellished-SUV driving neighbors and their ADHD kids, sure, why not learn how to grow a backyard garden?
Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times
by Steve Solomon The decline of cheap oil is inspiring increasing numbers of North Americans to achieve some measure of backyard food self-sufficiency. In hard times, the family can be greatly helped by growing a highly productive food garden, requiring little cash outlay or watering.
Currently popular intensive vegetable gardening methods are largely inappropriate to this new circumstance. Crowded raised beds require high inputs of water, fertility and organic matter, and demand large amounts of human time and effort. But, except for labor, these inputs depend on the price of oil. Prior to the 1970s, North American home food growing used more land with less labor, with wider plant spacing, with less or no irrigation, and all done with sharp hand tools. But these sustainable systems have been largely forgotten. Gardening When It Counts helps readers rediscover traditional low-input gardening methods to produce healthy food.
posted by Kevin at 11:34 AM