Vegan organic gardening
Encyclopedia
Vegan organic gardening and farming is the organic cultivation and production of food crops
and other crops with a minimal amount of exploitation or harm to any animal. Vegan and vegan-organic farmers use no animal product
s or by-products, such as blood
meal, fish
products, bone meal
, feces
, or other animal-origin matter, because they view the production of these materials as either harming animals directly, or as being associated with the exploitation and consequent suffering of animals. Some of these materials are by-product
s of animal husbandry
, created during the process of cultivating animals for the production of meat
, milk
, skins, fur
s, entertainment, labor, or companionship; the sale of by-products decreases expenses and increases profit for those engaged in animal husbandry, and therefore helps support the animal husbandry industry, an outcome most vegans find unacceptable.
Forest gardening
is a fully plant-based organic food production system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables. Making use of companion planting
, these can be intermixed
to grow in a succession of layers, to replicate a woodland habitat. The three main products from a forest garden are fruit, nuts and green leafy vegetables
.
Robert Hart adapted forest gardening for temperate zones during the early 1960s. Robert Hart began with a conventional smallholding
at Wenlock Edge
in Shropshire
. However, following his adoption of a raw vegan diet
for health and personal reasons, Hart replaced his farm animals with plants. He created a model forest garden from a small orchard on his farm and intended naming his gardening method ecological horticulture or ecocultivation. Hart later dropped these terms once he became aware that agroforestry
and forest gardens were already being used to describe similar systems in other parts of the world.
is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems modeled on the relationships found in nature. It is based on three core values; Earth care, people care and fair share. Animals are used as a common design element in permaculture. For example, chickens can be used as a method of weed control and for the production of eggs, meat and fertilizer. Bill Mollison
, who coined the term permaculture, stated that "animals represent a valid method of storing inedible vegetation as food."
Vegan permaculture (also known as veganic permaculture, veganiculture or vegaculture) avoids the use of domesticated animals. It is essentially the same as permaculture except for the addition of a fourth core value; Animal care. Zalan Glen, a raw vegan, proposes that vegaculture should emerge out of permaculture in the same way veganism split from vegetarianism in the 1940s.
The system employs very specific techniques including the addition of straw and other vegetable wastes to the soil in order to maintain soil fertility. Gardeners following the system use soil-covering mulch
es, and employ non-compacting
surface cultivation techniques using any short-handled, wide-bladed, hand hoe
. They kneel when surface cultivating, placing a board under their knees to spread out the pressure, and prevent soil compaction. Kenneth Dalziel O'Brien published a description of his system in Veganic Gardening, the Alternative System for Healthier Crops:
Also part of the O'Brien method is minimal disturbance of the soil by tilling, use of compost, mulch, cover crops, and green manures, use of permanent raised beds and permanent hard-packed paths between them, laying out beds from north to south, putting plants in double rows or more so that not every row has a path on both sides.
s and compost
ed vegetable matter and mineral
s. Vegan gardeners may supplement this with human urine
(which provides nitrogen
) and 'humanure' produced from compost toilets.
Veganic gardeners may prepare soil for cultivation using the same time-honored method used by conventional and organic gardeners of breaking up the soil with hand tools and power tools and allowing the weeds to decompose. Shallow cultivation is also becoming popular among such gardeners: shallowly turning the soil's surface using one of numerous surface cultivating tools that are now available in the market place, including the popular Coleman surface-hoes developed by Eliot Coleman
. Shallow tilling disturbs the soil less than deep turning and, combined with avoidance of soil compaction as described by O'Brien, helps the soil maintain ecological balance. This minimizes the opportunities for soil diseases, plant diseases, and insect pests to become abundant.
Organic food
Organic foods are foods that are produced using methods that do not involve modern synthetic inputs such as synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers, do not contain genetically modified organisms, and are not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or chemical food additives.For the...
and other crops with a minimal amount of exploitation or harm to any animal. Vegan and vegan-organic farmers use no animal product
Animal product
Animal product, or animal by-product, is a term used to describe material taken from the body of a non-human animal. Examples are fat, flesh, blood, milk, eggs, and lesser known products such as isinglass and rennet....
s or by-products, such as blood
Blood
Blood is a specialized bodily fluid in animals that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells....
meal, fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
products, bone meal
Bone meal
Bone meal is a mixture of crushed and coarsely ground bones that is used as an organic fertilizer for plants and formerly in animal feed. As a slow-release fertilizer, bone meal is primarily used as a source of phosphorus....
, feces
Feces
Feces, faeces, or fæces is a waste product from an animal's digestive tract expelled through the anus or cloaca during defecation.-Etymology:...
, or other animal-origin matter, because they view the production of these materials as either harming animals directly, or as being associated with the exploitation and consequent suffering of animals. Some of these materials are by-product
By-product
A by-product is a secondary product derived from a manufacturing process or chemical reaction. It is not the primary product or service being produced.A by-product can be useful and marketable or it can be considered waste....
s of animal husbandry
Animal husbandry
Animal husbandry is the agricultural practice of breeding and raising livestock.- History :Animal husbandry has been practiced for thousands of years, since the first domestication of animals....
, created during the process of cultivating animals for the production of meat
Meat
Meat is animal flesh that is used as food. Most often, this means the skeletal muscle and associated fat and other tissues, but it may also describe other edible tissues such as organs and offal...
, milk
Milk
Milk is a white liquid produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals before they are able to digest other types of food. Early-lactation milk contains colostrum, which carries the mother's antibodies to the baby and can reduce the risk of many...
, skins, fur
Fur
Fur is a synonym for hair, used more in reference to non-human animals, usually mammals; particularly those with extensives body hair coverage. The term is sometimes used to refer to the body hair of an animal as a complete coat, also known as the "pelage". Fur is also used to refer to animal...
s, entertainment, labor, or companionship; the sale of by-products decreases expenses and increases profit for those engaged in animal husbandry, and therefore helps support the animal husbandry industry, an outcome most vegans find unacceptable.
Forest gardening
Forest gardening
Forest gardening is a food production and agroforestry system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans...
is a fully plant-based organic food production system based on woodland ecosystems, incorporating fruit and nut trees, shrubs, herbs, vines and perennial vegetables. Making use of companion planting
Companion planting
Companion planting is the planting of different crops in proximity , on the theory that they assist each other in nutrient uptake, pest control, pollination, and other factors necessary to increasing crop productivity...
, these can be intermixed
Intercropping
Intercropping is the practice of growing two or more crops in proximity. The most common goal of intercropping is to produce a greater yield on a given piece of land by making use of resources that would otherwise not be utilized by a single crop. Careful planning is required, taking into account...
to grow in a succession of layers, to replicate a woodland habitat. The three main products from a forest garden are fruit, nuts and green leafy vegetables
Leaf vegetable
Leaf vegetables, also called potherbs, green vegetables, greens, leafy greens or salad greens, are plant leaves eaten as a vegetable, sometimes accompanied by tender petioles and shoots...
.
Robert Hart adapted forest gardening for temperate zones during the early 1960s. Robert Hart began with a conventional smallholding
Smallholding
A smallholding is a farm of small size.In third world countries, smallholdings are usually farms supporting a single family with a mixture of cash crops and subsistence farming. As a country becomes more affluent and farming practices become more efficient, smallholdings may persist as a legacy of...
at Wenlock Edge
Wenlock Edge
Wenlock Edge is a limestone escarpment near Much Wenlock, Shropshire, England. It is long and runs from South West to North East between Craven Arms and Much Wenlock. It is roughly 330 metres high...
in Shropshire
Shropshire
Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...
. However, following his adoption of a raw vegan diet
Raw veganism
Raw veganism is a diet that combines veganism and raw foodism. It excludes all food of animal origin, and all food cooked above 48 degrees Celsius . A raw vegan diet includes raw vegetables and fruits, nuts and nut pastes, grain and legume sprouts, seeds, plant oils, sea vegetables, herbs, and...
for health and personal reasons, Hart replaced his farm animals with plants. He created a model forest garden from a small orchard on his farm and intended naming his gardening method ecological horticulture or ecocultivation. Hart later dropped these terms once he became aware that agroforestry
Agroforestry
Agroforestry is an integrated approach of using the interactive benefits from combining trees and shrubs with crops and/or livestock.It combines agricultural and forestry technologies to create more diverse, productive, profitable, healthy and sustainable land-use systems.-Definitions:According to...
and forest gardens were already being used to describe similar systems in other parts of the world.
Vegan permaculture
PermaculturePermaculture
Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that is modeled on the relationships found in nature. It is based on the ecology of how things interrelate rather than on the strictly biological concerns that form the foundation of modern agriculture...
is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems modeled on the relationships found in nature. It is based on three core values; Earth care, people care and fair share. Animals are used as a common design element in permaculture. For example, chickens can be used as a method of weed control and for the production of eggs, meat and fertilizer. Bill Mollison
Bill Mollison
Bruce Charles 'Bill' Mollison is a researcher, author, scientist, teacher and naturalist. He is considered to be the 'father of permaculture', an integrated system of design, co-developed with David Holmgren, that encompasses not only agriculture, horticulture, architecture and ecology, but also...
, who coined the term permaculture, stated that "animals represent a valid method of storing inedible vegetation as food."
Vegan permaculture (also known as veganic permaculture, veganiculture or vegaculture) avoids the use of domesticated animals. It is essentially the same as permaculture except for the addition of a fourth core value; Animal care. Zalan Glen, a raw vegan, proposes that vegaculture should emerge out of permaculture in the same way veganism split from vegetarianism in the 1940s.
Veganic gardening
The veganic gardening method is a distinct system developed by Rosa Dalziell O'Brien, Kenneth Dalziel O'Brien and May E. Bruce. Although the term was originally coined by Geoffrey Rudd as a contraction of vegetable organic in order to "denote a clear distinction between conventional chemical based systems and organic ones based on animal manures". The O'Brien system's principal argument is that animal manures are harmful to soil health rather than that their use involves exploitation of and cruelty to animals.The system employs very specific techniques including the addition of straw and other vegetable wastes to the soil in order to maintain soil fertility. Gardeners following the system use soil-covering mulch
Mulch
In agriculture and gardening, is a protective cover placed over the soil to retain moisture, reduce erosion, provide nutrients, and suppress weed growth and seed germination. Mulching in gardens and landscaping mimics the leaf cover that is found on forest floors....
es, and employ non-compacting
Soil compaction
In Geotechnical engineering, soil compaction is the process in which a stress applied to a soil causes densification as air is displaced from the pores between the soil grains. When stress is applied that causes densification due to water being displaced from between the soil grains then...
surface cultivation techniques using any short-handled, wide-bladed, hand hoe
Hoe (tool)
A hoe is an ancient and versatile agricultural tool used to move small amounts of soil. Common goals include weed control by agitating the surface of the soil around plants, piling soil around the base of plants , creating narrow furrows and shallow trenches for planting seeds and bulbs, to chop...
. They kneel when surface cultivating, placing a board under their knees to spread out the pressure, and prevent soil compaction. Kenneth Dalziel O'Brien published a description of his system in Veganic Gardening, the Alternative System for Healthier Crops:
Also part of the O'Brien method is minimal disturbance of the soil by tilling, use of compost, mulch, cover crops, and green manures, use of permanent raised beds and permanent hard-packed paths between them, laying out beds from north to south, putting plants in double rows or more so that not every row has a path on both sides.
Practices
Soil fertility is maintained by the use of green manureGreen manure
In agriculture, a green manure is a type of cover crop grown primarily to add nutrients and organic matter to the soil. Typically, a green manure crop is grown for a specific period of time , and then plowed under and incorporated into the soil while green or shortly after flowering...
s and compost
Compost
Compost is organic matter that has been decomposed and recycled as a fertilizer and soil amendment. Compost is a key ingredient in organic farming. At its most essential, the process of composting requires simply piling up waste outdoors and waiting for the materials to break down from anywhere...
ed vegetable matter and mineral
Mineral
A mineral is a naturally occurring solid chemical substance formed through biogeochemical processes, having characteristic chemical composition, highly ordered atomic structure, and specific physical properties. By comparison, a rock is an aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids and does not...
s. Vegan gardeners may supplement this with human urine
Urine
Urine is a typically sterile liquid by-product of the body that is secreted by the kidneys through a process called urination and excreted through the urethra. Cellular metabolism generates numerous by-products, many rich in nitrogen, that require elimination from the bloodstream...
(which provides nitrogen
Nitrogen
Nitrogen is a chemical element that has the symbol N, atomic number of 7 and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78.08% by volume of Earth's atmosphere...
) and 'humanure' produced from compost toilets.
Veganic gardeners may prepare soil for cultivation using the same time-honored method used by conventional and organic gardeners of breaking up the soil with hand tools and power tools and allowing the weeds to decompose. Shallow cultivation is also becoming popular among such gardeners: shallowly turning the soil's surface using one of numerous surface cultivating tools that are now available in the market place, including the popular Coleman surface-hoes developed by Eliot Coleman
Eliot Coleman
Eliot Coleman is an American farmer, author, agricultural researcher and educator, and proponent of organic farming. His 1989 book, The New Organic Grower, is important reading for organic farmers and market gardeners. He served for two years as Executive Director of the International Federation...
. Shallow tilling disturbs the soil less than deep turning and, combined with avoidance of soil compaction as described by O'Brien, helps the soil maintain ecological balance. This minimizes the opportunities for soil diseases, plant diseases, and insect pests to become abundant.
Further reading/references
- Growing Green: Organic Techniques for a Sustainable Future by Jenny Hall and Iain Tolhurst. Vegan Organic Network publishing, 2006, ISBN 0-9552225-0-8. Available in the US from Chelsea Green Publishing, ISBN 978-1-933392-49-3.
- Growing Our Own: A Guide to Vegan Gardening by Kathleen Jannaway. Movement for Compassionate LivingMovement for Compassionate LivingThe Movement for Compassionate Living is a UK based organisation promoting veganism and sustainable living. Membership is informal, based on subscription to the group's journal New Leaves, with subscribers in many countries....
publishing, 1987. ISBN B001OQ7G8S. - Plants for a Future: Edible and Useful Plants for a Healthier World by Ken Fern. Hampshire: Permanent Publications, 1997. ISBN 1856230112.
- Veganic Gardening- The Alternative System for Healthier Crops by Kenneth Dalziel O'Brien. Thorsons Publishing, 1986, ISBN 0-7225-1208-2.