A crash course in changing the world.
The year is 2082. Although I have fought all my life to encourage and inspire people to embrace small-scale,
self-sustaining subsistence gardening as a way of regaining control over the
food they eat, this practice has only gained wide acceptance in the last 20 years.
As with all things, it only happened when there was simply no other
alternative. The swelling population of the Earth has resulted in all
resources, including food, skyrocketing in price, making shopping for all of
one’s food very expensive for many, and impossible for many more. But now, I am
pleased to say that urban homesteading, allotments, and other forms of personal
subsistence gardening is employed on a wide-scale throughout the developed and
developing world.
People are still trying to find the correct balance between pesticides, weedkillers, and more green and eco-friendly
options. Slowly but surely people are starting to understand that the Earth
knows what she’s doing, and crops grow a lot better if we study her and learn. Our
distant ancestors knew this and benefited from it for thousands of years. It is
a piece of this ancient knowledge that I pass on to you all now for the benefit
of future generations.
Throughout North and Central America, from the Anasazi in the Southwest to the Iroquois in the
North East, the indigenous tribes practiced a form of gardening known as the ‘Three
Sisters’. The idea was simple: You started by planting corn/maize. As the
stalks grew, you then planted beans. The beans would climb up the corn stalks
and also provides nitrogen to the soil which benefits the other plants.
Finally, squash is planted around them, which spreads out and covers the ground
giving shade to the ground which reduces weeds and also fends off pests with
its spiny vines. Consequently, three major staple crops are grown in a
comparatively small patch of land, with a reduced need for chemicals to prevent
pests and weeds.
I hope that today’s gardeners and farmers can make use of these ancient insights, passing them on to future generations for all time.
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