AMERICAN INTENSIVE SOLAR GARDENING

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The smaller you make each open bed area within your garden, the greater the percentage of space that will be devoted to access pathways and the smaller the area that will be available for growing. For example, an existing 60-by-60-foot garden would divide most space-efficiently into four 28-square-foot open beds, with a four-foot access pathway crisscrossing the garden. A smaller existing garden measuring, say, 20 by 50 feet would most easily be divided in half by one four-foot-wide pathway, creating two 20-by-23-foot open beds.

If you are already producing the amount of food you desire or need in an existing garden, you can downsize the garden when you convert to the American intensive system. Figure on producing the same yield as from a conventional row garden on roughly one quarter of the area. A raised-bed garden's yield can be produced in an open bed of roughly half the size. By freeing up existing garden space, you can plant green manure crops to increase soil fertility on the portion of the garden not raising vegetables, you can rotate growing areas from year to year, or you can plant new crops such as small fruits or grains in the found garden space.

The materials for the Solar Cone amount to about $25, the Pod's approximately double that. The cost of a drop frame can be anything from nothing if you have some scrap lumber to $25. Properly constructed and maintained, each solar appliance has an estimated life of 25 years or more. Our older Solar Cones, which we have left in the garden through frigid winters and blazing hot summers, are still as useful as they were some 15 years ago when we first constructed them.

We use American intensive gardening techniques to grow food year around, even in our relatively cold New Hampshire climate. Our system works well on a small, personal scale, but market gardeners can also use it to grow fresh produce for local markets. Our system guarantees high returns for any labor invested in it, because it simplifies cultural care of plants by growing them in ideal conditions and in concentrated groupings, and because it spreads out garden work over the entire year, rather than cramming work into a "normal" growing season. The system requires smaller and easier outputs of labor, making gardening more of an enjoyment than a chore.

RESOURCES:

Solar Gardening by Leandre Poisson and Gretchen Vogel Poisson, from which the above was adapted, is an all-in-one guide to American intensive gardening. The comprehensive guidebook is published by Chelsea Green Publishing Co., P.O. Box 428, White River Junction, VT 05001, 1-800-639-4099.

Kits for Solar Pods, Solar Cones, and other appliances are available from Solar Survival, P.O. Box 250, Harrisville, NH 03450, 1-603-827-3811.

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