Biointensive gardening
What is Biointensive?
Biointensive growing refers to various systems of producing lots of food from small areas, or "intensive" growing. This page will describe the practices generally used for biointensive growing. Biointensive methods can be used by very small garden boxes to small market farms, and can increase yields tremendously with minimal inputs.
How Does Biointensive Work?
One secret for biointensive's ability to increase yield is that space is optimized by deeply dug beds and closely spaced plants. Success will also depend on a careful rotation of crops for harvest and crops for carbon & compost. Replenishing the beds this way enables the fertility to grow next season's vegetables. Emphasis is also placed on performing garden tasks efficiently, using correct tools and aids.
Similar methods have been used throughout agricultural history, but France is perhaps where biointensive achieved world notice and most stretched the limits of what is possible. Small, intensively cultivation farm plots in urban areas fed the French people amazing harvests of fresh vegetables. Because horse were used for all freight & transport, abundant horse manure was available to provide nutrients and the heat for extended seasons as it rotted.
Today, the most organized and ambitious example of biointensive growing was developed by Alan Chadwick and John Jeavons, the author of several publications on this method. Classes, publications and educator programs are now offered at the Ecology Action Headquarters. For more information, visit http://www.growbiointensive.org/
Potential to Feed the World?
By enabling larger harvests in smaller plots, biointensive agriculture has the potential to provide significant amounts of food compared to gardens and farms following less intensive methods. Considering that everything harvested from a garden is nutrient dense and fresh, a community with many biointensive gardeners has a buffer against food system disruption. World-wide, Grow Biointensive projects have provided increased health, nutrition and income for communities suffering from poverty and poor food access.