HIGH YIELDS AND HIGHER HOPES

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ENORMOUS YIELDS POSSIBLE

According to our experience, a simple 24-inch-deep soil preparation allows four times as many plants as usual to be sown in a given space, because the roots have sufficient room to develop downward. That factor alone, combined with the growth-promoting effects of compost treatments and companion planting, allows anyone adhering to the techniques to quadruple his or her vegetable production! Such harvests can be (and have been) obtained even in the first year of planting.

Furthermore, research performed at the University of California at Berkeley indicates that the overall root health level of produce grown in agricultural soil has declined : . . and that even a 2% to 4% increase in such health could result in a two-to four-fold increase in field crop harvests. The method we've been experimenting with makes such an improvement possible by texturizing, aerating, fertilizing, and watering the soil as a matter of standard practice.

So . . . if you combine the arithmetic spacing and root health factors, it's easy to see that biodynamic/French intensive techniques can, ideally, produce sixteen times more food than is produced by currently accepted farming and gardening methods here in the United States. Other factors, of course—such as climate, soil condition, and type of vegetable, grain or fruit, and the degree of skill of the farmer or gardener—can (and do) reduce that optimal figure.

OUR YIELDS THUS FAR

When we began experimenting with b/F intensive techniques in 1972, our soil was in relatively poor condition (would you believe a pH of 8.0? ) . . . and our own skills, of course, required considerable enrichment also. Since that time, however, both factors have been improved and our annual harvests—measured under reasonably controlled test conditions—have shown a corresponding increase. They have, in fact, varied between two and sixteen times the national, California, or Santa Clara County averages.

The table below will give you some idea of how we fared as compared to the U.S. averages for each year and crop cited:

As you can see, some harvests have actually doubled from year to year as the soil in our test area has improved . . . which indicates still another major advantage of the b/F intensive method: Yields are apparently sustainable in an environmentally balanced way.

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