Morgoth in the UK published a post recently about dogma and gardening. He is relatively new to gardening I think, doing a deep dive into theory.
Slowly but surely, I went down the gardening rabbit hole. Never before had I seen such ingenious uses of plastic bottles nor considered the magic of compost in such detail. Gradually, incrementally, I became conscious of two differing camps; orthodox gardening had been questioned, critiqued, and found wanting. It was old hat, stuffy, and stuck in the past. The future of gardening belonged to the “No-dig” technique. The activity formerly known as “gardening”. would have to include the epithet “Traditional” or “Orthodox” to designate its technique and to distinguish it from the newer “No-dig” innovation. The first principle of gardening is to cultivate a patch of soil to make plant life flourish; on this, there is universal agreement. The question is how.
In short, traditional gardening, turning the soil each season to loosen it so plant roots can easily spread, was supplanted by no-dig, it’s chief advocate Charles Dowding becoming somewhat famous; but then no-dig was supplanted by no-guilt gardening.
At last, somebody [Huw Richards] took a stand against the purity-spiralling spergs, shoving their doctrines down everyone’s throats and shit-testing the acolytes for ideological compliance! A new dawn has broken, and no guilt gardening is here.
I haven’t really followed gardening “innovations” since permaculture, first discussed by Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton, in the 70 and 80’s. That was not really an innovation, but rather a modern take on indigenous techniques changing the ecosystem to facilitate the growth of favored plants they used for food, infrastructure and tools, going back to the neolithic. The only other innovation that matters, to my mind, which again was not an innovation but merely a modern, scientific proof that sustainable, subsistence agriculture is only truly effective in conjunction with animal waste, composted, as proven in An Agricultural Testament, by Albert Howard, working in India in the the early 20th century. 1 Howard argued quite effectively that organic agriculture, combined with animal husbandry for soil fertility is superior to Industrial agriculture - but we know how that ended up.
By 2000 there were permaculture design courses proliferating like fungi, get certified in permaculture and teach or make a living designing food forests and garden landscapes for clients. Permaculture became tied to the Peak Oil movement, taking on something of a messianic energy, permaculture was going to save humanity from resource decline.
The clients never really materialized though, not very many people cared to be taught, least of all paying to be taught, such that I don’t really hear people talking much about permaculture anymore, even though I agree it will play an important role as fossil fuels decline and industrial agriculture becomes more expensive.
I never liked the permaculture name, because nothing is permanent. Change is the constant.
I was back in the garden May 05, after first planting some seed on May Day, prepping garden beds and planting some vegetables I started under lights.
Building these garden beds last year I turned the soil, but once established I don’t really till them. The soil gets disturbed as I weed out the big three, creeping Charlie, rhizomatous smoothe brome grass, and dutchman white clover.
My garden is a dogma free zone because I don’t garden to prove how much I know, or tell you how to garden. This is what I am doing this year, I covered the beds last fall with wood chips, I am using them to help prevent intrusion of rhizomes, to keep grasses down around the edge, which is not a long term solution but we will see how it goes. I did this in my city garden. It can lessen intrusion but not prevent it, it still depends on weeding regularly.
Mostly I garden because it is the foundation of my health, staying healthy and keeping my elderly parents healthy. I garden because I love the vigor of it, in the spring especially after a long winter indoors. I treat it like physical training, maintaining a vigorous and steady pace for long periods of time. I regained much of the weight I lost last spring, this winter, I intend on losing it this spring. The foundation of human health is whole foods (and fresh water and dry shelter.) I prepped these beds, removing most of the weeds, in about 2hrs.
I left this corner, thinking I might weed it some other day, but I cleared it later in the afternoon. This was the pepper patch last year, full of grasses because I packed the peppers so tight together, and with the trellis system I built to hold them up, it was hard to weed.
This bed was mostly radishes last year, though also some peppers and a few onions.
This will be the first round of fresh greens. I planted lettuce and spinach seed in the beds around the pond, May 01. I will plant more lettuce and spinach seed the 15th-21st.
Two patches of garlic I planted last fall, garlic I purchased from a local farmer and at the farmer’s market.
This was a potato bed last year. The bed next to it was the cabbage bed. I am flipping it. If you look closely there are 12 summer cabbage planted. The remaining 21-24 I will plant (as seed) will be storage cabbages.
White onions I started under lights, three rows, in one of the beds I cleared in the morning. There are a lot more onions to plant. I like to put plants and seed in the soil shortly after prepping the bed because disturbing the soil weeding introduces oxygen, which greatly increases biological activity.
Welcome to my dogma free garden, for those who are new here, welcome back to those who were here last year.
Morgoth’s piece reminded me too of my mother’s Christianity when she was younger, how it became increasingly dogmatic, a purity spiral such that she had to leave several churches, until I remember thinking if her system of belief were the only way to get into heaven, there would be about six people in heaven. Thankfully she is a good deal less dogmatic these days.
Perhaps the ubiquity of the cycle reveals its true nature by the repeated use of the word “dogma”. We live in an age of Woke dogma, trans dogma, politically correct dogma, climate change dogma, mass migration dogma, economic dogma, and a multitude of narrative dogmas.
There’s dogma everywhere, but no religion or God.
Instead, we have a plethora of supposedly earth-shattering truths that we may not question. We have grandiose theories to solve problems, yet they always result in worse outcomes precisely because of the unquestioning dogmatism with which they’re pursued. Yet, what I took from the No-dig story was that the search for theories and truths transcends the political realm and the machinations of the elites and emerges naturally in us all. Millions of individuals all vainly stumble around in search of the perfect theorem that can deliver the perfect outcome. Tragically, the more rigidly one adheres to the model, the more likely it is that perfection slips out of reach.
The search for perfection can also suck the joy out of a thing. Perfection is an impossibility, if one is going to strive after it, one might keep in mind it can never be achieved. Perfection is the last thing I am after in the garden. It is enough to be good at gardening, getting better, merely being in the garden, everything about it being healthy. I have no use for dogma in the garden, or life generally.
Three other “innovations” come to mind, square foot gardening for compact urban gardens, biochar and biodynamic gardening as invented by Rudolf Steiner. I don’t have any experience with these, though it might be said I practice gardening something very like what is described as biodynamic gardening.
I can't see how one can survive gardening and be dogmatic. Nature has laws, and one of them seems to be "adapt and survive " . My tiny gardening is where I do my best meditation. Quite often bare handed and bare footed. I sometimes pay for that when fire ants find me. Then meditation guys set aside for furious rounds of cussing and then chewing and poultice of plantain.
I'm trying biochar. And David the Good's Fetid Swamp Water in a limited fashion this year. . Lol
Jerusalem artichokes, a survival crop, came up. It's my first year with those and I figure this patch will be what I use to plant others out away from the regular spots.
I'm looking at my peaches- third year of a volunteer producing and up to what looks like 50, from the previous 1 and 3. Now I'm looking at them thinking " why are mine not fuzzy looking like everyone's vids?" The 4 peaches that " produced " last year never made it to fruition...failing from rot or ants. Perhaps , despite their golden innards, they're something else.
Creeping Charlie took over my shady lawn a couple years ago, out of nowhere! I've seen that it's edible, so there's that...but it tastes aweful, and is truly a pest. If you find a good way to keep it at bay? Let us know. Woodchips didn't help for me.
Ants have invaded my one expiramental hugel bed. Uuuuuuugh.
Ok- I was apparently talkative this morning. Off to go Do.
Stay safe today,everyone. It's going to be a rough weather day in Tornado Alley. 😔
I've definitely had cycles of being dogmatic and then loosening from my dogma. It is usually when I realize that something I've been doing or thinking doesn't work, or is harmful, and then I get dogmatic about doing the opposite, or the way that I think will make it pure and perfect...but then I realize that that doesn't actually work and that life is more complex and nuanced than that, and none of the dogma can really cover it. I think the cycle itself is not inherently a problem, as long as we actually go through the whole cycle and don't try to force our dogma on others when we are at the most dogmatic...but obviously those two things are the least common to do.
I've always felt that, if done correctly, permaculture is anti-dogmatic. I always understood it to be a set of principles to apply to determine what is right for any time, place, and set of conditions. We can't be dogmatic if we truly take into account all the specific variables of one particular situation and determine how to deal with that situation on its on merits. But of course that sort of ideal in general is not well understood and practiced nowadays; we want to make everything the same and treat everything the same, or, "equal", I suppose some people would say.