A question for gardeners in Devon

[HorseGuy]

I recently watched an interesting interview with biochemist Dr. Shane Simonson talking about zero input agriculture. He claims his food garden requires no watering, no fertilizers, no pesticides and only minimal weeding and maintenance yet it would be able to feed his family if required.

He has achieved this by selecting the correct specific strains of crops which are best suited to the unique conditions in his own garden. This took several years of trial and error. He started by planting hundreds of different strains of food plants and then just left them alone to die. No water, no weeding, no pesticides, nothing. This of course resulted in a very high, almost 99% failure rate with hardly anything growing during in the first year. This he claims was his biggest success because he now knows which 1% of plants he tried will naturally grow in his soil, can compete with the local the weeds, are suitable to the local climate and are resistant to all the local bugs, diseases and other wildlife. These are the specific strains which he bought 1000’s more seeds of and now grows those en masse requiring only minimal input from himself.

So my question to all the local (Devon) gardeners on here is: Has anyone has found any kind of food crops which are easily grown and will naturally survive in our environment down here in Devon while requiring only minimal input from yourself?

 

[TeeDee]

Is he selling a course?

 

[slowworm]

I didn't realise you lived in Devon. My first though though is Devon is a very big place with all sorts of different growing conditions. Where I am in the north west we have quite poor acidic soil due to the rain and free draining nature of it.

If you want specific recommendations you might he better off giving an over view of your conditions, soil type, rain, wind etc.

Curious to know more from the Dr if you have any useful links. I could offer some general ramblings and observations when I get time although still very much experimenting.

 

[HorseGuy]

I didn't realise you lived in Devon.

Without wanting to give out too specific a location on a public forum, I'm near the East coast of Devon.

If you want specific recommendations you might he better off giving an over view of your conditions, soil type, rain, wind etc.

Heavy clay soil with lots of rocks. I'm not sure about acidity etc but our land has had many years of being covered in horse manure and loads of rabbit droppings if that helps. It often get quite windy where we are too.

Curious to know more from the Dr if you have any useful links.

 

[TeeDee]

I recently watched an interesting interview with biochemist Dr. Shane Simonson talking about zero input agriculture. He claims his food garden requires no watering, no fertilizers, no pesticides and only minimal weeding and maintenance yet it would be able to feed his family if required.

This- This right here is what needs investigation and confirmation because there is a whole ocean between claim and purport.

 

[HorseGuy]

Is he selling a course?

I don't know. This is his web link though.

https://recombinationnation.substack.com/

 

[Toddy]

You cannot constantly take out without putting anything in.

@HorseGuy, I think you're fortunate in that you have horse manure/bedding to add, but constant cropping removes more than the fertilisers, it removes minerals too, and it changes the soil structure.
Some sites, riverine ones with seasonal inundation can be a different matter entirely

.....One of several archaeologists on the forum who dug for a living and knows fine that we can see the soils that were used even thousands of years later.......

 

[slowworm]

Without wanting to give out too specific a location on a public forum, I'm near the East coast of Devon

Of course, I just wanted a rough idea. You've probably got more in common with Dorset and the south coast.

I couldn't get a quick overview of the Drs ideas. It sounds a bit like a form of permaculture and some of Martin Crawfords books would be worth a look at as he was based down your way.

I'm sure there's some other permaculture people around Dorset that open their gardens, which would be interesting.

 

[stonepark]

Permaculture Designers Manual by Bill Mollison is still the gold standard.

 

[hughtrimble]

I don't see how he can be so sure of the contributors to the survival of what remains and the demise of what doesn't. Sounds like he's putting all his eggs in one basket, and saying that X crops can perform in this environment, when they were in the context of the Y which didn't, doesn't mean X can survive without Y being there.
Seems pretty risky to have what sounds like very little variation in what he's growing? Just because the previous fauna left the survivors alone previously, doesn't mean they'll do so in future, or that other fauna won't come in and go for it.
Unless I've misunderstood?

 

[Falstaff]

You have to put something back in. In the wild this happens because other stuff falls and/or rots down in situ over the course of the year (s). Follow on plants have to make do with that.
Otherwise the same mono-crop will fail, either immediately or over time with decreasing yields. Leaving a plot for a fallow year is an attempt to recreate mother nature.

 

[HorseGuy]

You cannot constantly take out without putting anything in.

He did also say he does his own composting. I can't remember the details as I was listening to the interview while doing another job at the time but he mentioned something about low input composting. He's been doing it for years and I think he basically just leaves old plants and any chopped branches and stuff on the ground to compost in a permanent ongoing naturally cycle. Or something like that.

 

[Falstaff]

The title says Canadian but he is located somewhere in the US States. Climatic zones there vary hugely and have a major effect on everything agricultural, including rough mulching as he does. Even in Devon a lot of what he does is probably not reproducible here.
He may claim (i.e. purport) to be able to feed his family but isn't doing it yet, e.g. he's getting through a lot of rice. You can go a long way doing that but I suspect if put to the test it would be a pretty grim and minimal diet.
He also has goats and keeping them fed off the land requires a lot of resources, or you are reliant on manufactured feed.

 

[HorseGuy]

I don't see how he can be so sure of the contributors to the survival of what remains and the demise of what doesn't. Sounds like he's putting all his eggs in one basket, and saying that X crops can perform in this environment, when they were in the context of the Y which didn't, doesn't mean X can survive without Y being there.
Seems pretty risky to have what sounds like very little variation in what he's growing? Just because the previous fauna left the survivors alone previously, doesn't mean they'll do so in future, or that other fauna won't come in and go for it.
Unless I've misunderstood?

You haven't misunderstood. Rather my initial explanation was too limited. It's a long interview which runs for over an hour and he goes into much more detail than what I wrote.

Every year he tries new strains and different types of crops to find other new ones which are naturally suited to his garden and are able to grow on their own without needing any help. He also mentioned something else about genetically combining two strains of existing crop which already work well in his garden to create a totally new strain which is even better suited and more resilient than the original strains were. This part sounded a bit complicated though and I didn't fully understand how it works but it’s explained in the interview.

He also argues that this style of growing food not new either. Rather it was the way farming had previously naturally evolved for thousands of years before the relatively recent introduction of modern farming machinery with its high energy, high nutrient and high pesticide input mono culture style of farming which is common place now. He also argues that many of the old highly localized resistant plant strains and the accompanying knowledge were also lost at the same time when modern powered farming equipment and techniques were introduced.

He does admit that there can be issues with some of the crops which may previously have been able to grow well on their own if something external changes in the local environment to make conditions different. He gives an example where a type of corn he had successfully been growing for several years with only minimal input from himself suddenly started getting eaten by the local birds when they realized that the corn was edible and they promptly ate it all. He is no longer able to grow that particular strain of corn anymore but he does have other types of crops which he also grows and they were all fine.

 

[slowworm]

It's hard to comment without knowing more about his ideas, but...

There's certainly plenty of ways to reduce required inputs. Even intensive agriculture these days does plenty of things that could be copied. A look through some of the commercial seed mixes shows plenty of very long rooted plants to help improve the soil structure and bring up nutrients. Others are used to stop nutrients washing away and there's quite a range of various nitrogen fixing plants.

The idea of composting and not leaving the soil bare isn't new, and it's getting common to see suggestions you leave plants and trimmings in situ, not just for nutrients but also for wild life.

 

[HorseGuy]

The title says Canadian but he is located somewhere in the US States. Climatic zones there vary hugely and have a major effect on everything agricultural, including rough mulching as he does. Even in Devon a lot of what he does is probably not reproducible here.
He may claim (i.e. purport) to be able to feed his family but isn't doing it yet, e.g. he's getting through a lot of rice. You can go a long way doing that but I suspect if put to the test it would be a pretty grim and minimal diet.
He also has goats and keeping them fed off the land requires a lot of resources, or you are reliant on manufactured feed.

I'm a complete amateur when it comes to gardening and have not particularly successful at it so far. I bow down to the people on here with their extensive experience, knowledge and growing successes.

His method of gardening does interest me though and I wonder if it might be worth some further investigation. Might it be worth buying dozens of packets of different seeds and mass planting them next year to see if maybe just one or two of the strains can survive on their own in my field without any extra input from me after planting? I do have a spare patch of land which could be easily plowed and used as a test bed for such an experiment. Do you think it would be worth a try or would it be just a waste of time and energy?

 

[HorseGuy]

Is he selling a course?

I had a very quick glance at his substack page and he does have seeds for sale. I didn't see anything about there being a course or anything else there for sale though.

 

[slowworm]

I had a very quick glance at his substack page and he does have seeds for sale. I didn't see anything about there being a course or anything else there for sale though.

The list is for Aus isn't it? You may not get such good results in the UK or you may end up with something doing well you don't like.

I would like to do something similar though. I've grown some perennial kales and would like to try and grow a patch of cover crops that would provide something edible for us as well as wildlife.

If you google there are edible cover crop mixes that may be a good starting point then you could add some of your own seeds like a hardy broad bean, perennial kale, a robust edible squash and even a short sunflower. With all the forage maize grown around us this year I'd like to track down a hardy sweetcorn that would grow readily without much care.

 

[TeeDee]

I had a very quick glance at his substack page and he does have seeds for sale. I didn't see anything about there being a course or anything else there for sale though.

Sorry - my post was somewhat sceptical and tongue in cheek - Gardening ( although I don not claim I am an expert , equally I am default sceptical to those that claim an expert status or having discovered a new improved way in most things ) I do not think is a free lunch / zero sum game - one must replace nutrients into the soil or provide it enough fallow time to naturally replace those nutrients - It maybe possible to carefully crop rotate and use a clever selection of crops for the short/interim time but longer term?? I have my doubts.

However I would be convinced other wise if I could see actual proof.

Like this interesting post sharing actual harvest ( as opposed to "potential" ) yield - data

Graph of month by month harvests

If you're growing food in a small space, you may be wondering how much you can harvest at different times of year. Below I've drawn a graph showin...

verticalveg.com

 

[HorseGuy]

The list is for Aus isn't it? You may not get such good results in the UK or you may end up with something doing well you don't like.

I wouldn't buy any seeds or anything else from him. Any seeds I buy will be from a localish UK company.

Sorry - my post was somewhat sceptical and tongue in cheek

Yeah I took his claims with a hefty pinch of salt and a good dose of skepticism when I heard them too. While at the same time I'm not going to immediately discredit them out of hand without some further investigation either. Hence this thread.