A mid-summer night's post

It has been a while since my last post. Much has happened in the meantime. I moved into a major city and started some indoor miniature gardening efforts there. I came back to the suburbs today to check on my organic garden beds. It appears that much has transpired in the last 3 weeks. The garden is at last beginning to resemble a miniature jungle, complete with a multi-tiered vegetation canopy. There has also been a degree of pest damage in some areas, but nothing too severe.


Garden Bed 1 has developed into a robust crop "trinity" system. The corn stalks have grown up very well. The pole beans are sending intricate tendrils up and around the cornstalks, using them as a living support structure. The eggplants have grown much larger as well, spreading out to cover most of the exposed surface area between the beans and corn plants. The entire "design" is incredibly efficient. The corn supports the beans by providing a super-structure, the beans support eggplants and corn by fixing nitrogen into the soil, and the eggplants serve both corn and beans by providing ground cover which conserves soil moisture. What is more amazing is that corn, beans, and eggplants, provide carbohydrates, protein, and vitamins respectively: the necessary components of a complete nutritional diet. The corn and the beans are remarkably free from disease. However, upon closer examination one can see that the eggplants have suffered a degree of damage from black flea beetles. All of the eggplant leaves were perforated with small holes made by the beetles. The significance of the damage seems to have been mitigated by some dragon flies. These young dragon-flies were hovering like attack helicopters over the eggplant leaves, every once in a while one of them would swoop down and capture a flea beetle for lunch.


Garden Bed 2 is developing along similar lines. The tomatoes have grown to be twice as tall as they were during my last post. The Lettuce heads have developed into huge(basketball-sized) plants, they should be ready for harvest within several weeks. The pole beans have grown up and around the bamboo and metal scaffolds, as well as around the tomato plants themselves. The onion chives have grown to be over a foot tall. The tomatoes, pole beans, and onion chives seem to be flowering at the same time. As such, large numbers of bumble and honey bees were flying around Garden Bed 2. Overall, there does not appear to be any significant pest damage in Garden Bed 2.

Garden Beds 3 and 4 have turned into complete jungles. The Potato plants in those beds have grown to be over 4 feet high. Pole beans have managed to climb up every single bamboo support pole, and several of the potato plants themselves. Large portions of the ground layer of both beds seem to be carpeted by lush green onion chives blades. Both of these beds have become edible jungles of sorts. The potato/bean/onion combination seemed to have warded off a great deal of pest damage. I'm seeing the usual assortment of pest insect characters, but their effects have so far been quite minimal upon these two beds.

As I'm writing this entry, I can't help but marvel at the incredible level of bio-diversity that has developed in this "perma-culture" garden . Last year, I was impressed that there seemed to be several times more insect species in the one garden bed than generally found on the lawn. This year, there seems to be an order of magnitude increase in the variety of insect species found in my garden. It is particularly contrasting as this side-by-side picture demonstrates between the jungle-like organic garden and the savanna-like lawn.

I looked at every tier of the canopy system, and took careful notes of the species seen there. And here is what I found:

Ground Surface Tier
Centipedes, Pill Bugs, Mole Cricket, Snails

Ground Cover Tier (onion chives, green onions, herbs)
Caterpillars, Grasshoppers, Ants, Praying Mantis, Weevils, Fireflies

Intermediate Canopy Tier( Cabbages, Potato/Tomato stems, Bean tendrils)
Potato Bugs, Japanese Beetles, Fruit Worms, Moths, Army Worms, Spiders, Soldier Bugs, Lady Bugs, Orius Bugs, Cucumber Beetles, June Beetles

Leaf-top Canopy Tier( Tomato/Potato/Eggplant/Pole Bean leaves)
Aphids, Flea Beetles, Gnats, Green Lacewings, Flies, Leaf Beetles, Dragon-Flies, Honey Bees, Bumble-Bees, Wasps, Fruit-Flies, Leaf Hoppers, Leaf Worms, Midge-Flies

A total of 37 insect species were easily identified in a Garden whose total surface area is barely 6 Square Meters. Conversely, I did a similar examination of the mowed lawn just a few feet away, and came up with a total of 3 insect species(ants, grasshoppers, fireflies). Such a disparity was quite shocking to me. The lawn, in ecological terms, is akin to a barren desert compared to the Garden.

Imagine this, we spend precious fossil fuels in the forms of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and lawn-mowers to create a nearly life-less desert in our backyards. The lawn produces nothing, but takes constant and massive amounts of energy to maintain. We should all be trying to turn our backyards into garden ecosystems, free food and an abundance of wild-life beats wasting gas and money any day of the week!