august in the pgp

"enthusiasm for the green revolution was a merely a special case of this cult of great technological breakthroughs. it believed that the crucial breakthrough had already been achieved ( by the development of high-yield strains of wheat and rice ) , and that now vigorous missionary effort throughout the hungry nations would convince their peoples to raise these superior crop varieties...believers in this "breakthrough" were unable to see that further extension of the human irruption was going to be a problem aggravated, not a problem solved. they could not even see that the high-yield grains would hasten the exhaustion of the soils on which they were grown or would intensify agriculture's precarious dependence on a chemical fertilizer industry." from "overshoot: the ecological basis of revolutionary change" by william r. catton_____________________________________________________not only were the "high-yield" grains of the green revolution heavy feeders that depleted the soils quickly, enmeshing traditional farmers in a spiral of increased fertilizer use and indebtedness ( have a look at the agricultural loans on kiva's website sometime...virtually every one of the descriptions includes a sentence concerning the need to buy fertilizers ), they were also dwarf varieties ( i am assuming so the plant focused more energy into producing grain rather than plant ) which meant they were shorter than most of the native "weeds" ( we have been having this debate recently and it will continue...we need to rethink "weed" )so they could easily be shaded out if the farmer did not apply herbicides as well as fertilizer...double indebtedness...and imf interventions...there are no chemical fertilizers in the perennial garden project and i have been intercropping annuals with the permanent perennials to both diversify the produce and to provide something of a comparison ( apples and oranges though it may be ) of levels of productivity...this doesn't mean the plants in the pgp don't have to be fed...i'm just doing it in a non-industrial fashion by using compost and green manures..that has succeeded and the perennials continue to equal or surpass the annuals in production by weight per unit of area...the garden has fared much better this season than last...a second stand of the perennial teosinte strain zea diplopernnis ( top photo ) has taken root and is flourishing....providing some insight into the climate here as a sub-tropical grass has successfully overwintered ( albeit with heavy mulching )and a morphological comparison of ancestor/domesticate with the zea mays in the garden that is in the form of hopi blue maize this year ( second and third photos )...all five hopi blue plants are doing fine and all are in various stages of their seasons...the less developed plants are replants that i did after some of the original seeds failed to germinate...the original chinese yams were destroyed by rodents last fall and never emerged but there are robust vines ( somewhat obscured, but still in the fourth photo behind the hopi blue and the wheat grass ) from new plantings and the vines have produced many aerial bulbs ( fifth photo ) so the yam population is safe...the stand of gama grass has , once again. exploded in a reproductive frenzy...a mass of terminal spears with seeds in various stages of development are shattering and spreading the seed all around the perimeter of the stand...classified as invasive ( which is what most perennial are...need to rethink "invasive' as well...look at the strawberry bed in the community garden...those plants are aggressive colonizers as well...so are jerusalem artichokes...it seems to be a perennial habit defined by humans )they do not move with the speed of chinese yams or sunchokes, but they are relentless once established...the "other" garden is doing well and it is still functioning as a data resource on perennial food production and any other ideas i run across that are workable inside its limited area...my backyard and the community garden may benefit from the green manure experiments i started in 2010, refined to use somewhat less invasive manures...who knows what else may come out of it...if i could only find a source for illinois bundleflower seeds that idea could really take off.