Did you know that by growing your own vegetables, you could save up to $5,000 a year on your grocery bills?
And that’s just an added bonus. The real benefit is that you will be eating quality food that significantly improves your health.
Yet, many people still don’t grow their own food.
Gardening is typically seen as either an art form or darn hard work that requires spending long days weeding in your vegetable plot.
Well, it doesn’t have to be that way…
Because there is an extremely easy and efficient way to grow your own food, which even the busiest corporate executive can do — and it’s called ecological gardening.
In my experience, it’s the ultimate way to grow your own food.
Insights Into an Ecological Garden
An ecological garden is an ecosystem made up of edible plants, and it behaves in exactly the same way as a natural habitat.
Over time, you become more of an observer than a gardener as you watch Mother Nature do most of the work.
The wonderful thing about nature is that she works tirelessly, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Nature follows very simple laws and works in the same way, on any system, anywhere in the world.
To understand ecological gardening, observing natural ecosystems can provide us with the answers we need.
A natural ecosystem is made up of thousands of living and non-living components all co-existing in a given area. Each living component occupies its own niche space.
Understanding the role of the niche space is very important when creating an ecological garden.
Let’s look at an example. Imagine a giant rainforest tree crashing to the ground after standing tall for hundreds of years. Such a large tree would have filled an enormous niche space.
Lying in the soil, hundreds of dormant seeds spring to life, desperately fighting for their opportunity to occupy the best real estate in the forest — the empty niche space.
The niche space is quickly filled and harmony is restored.
Low-Maintenance, High-Yielding Vegetable Garden
When we look at a traditional vegetable garden with the “niche space” insight, what we see is a very unnatural system. There is very little diversity and a lot of empty niche spaces.
Nature enforces her will on vegetable gardens in exactly the same way she does a rainforest…
And this means that empty niches spaces will be filled as quickly as possible with weeds.
The solution to this problem is to create a garden that has tightly filled niche spaces so that weeds don’t have any opportunities to grow.
We can achieve this by using a planting arrangement that mimics a natural ecosystem. This type of planting arrangement also creates a range of highly protected micro-climates.
With a well-planned ecosystem planting arrangement, you will have created an ideal growing environment for longer lasting plants.
The planting arrangement also creates a natural form of pest management.
Managing an Ecological Garden that’s Perfect for a Modern-Day Lifestyle
Managing an ecological garden is different than managing a traditional vegetable garden.
With an ecological garden, there is far less to do.
You will notice that the garden is in a continual state of gentle change, just like a natural ecosystem.
It can be difficult for the traditional gardener to stand back and observe this, as many of us instinctively like to control things. This style of gardening calls for a great deal of faith in natural laws.
Absolutely everyone from farmers to inner-city townhouse dwellers can create an ecological garden. It may seem strange… but if you’ve never grown food before, then you are — in some ways — at an advantage.
Like all industries, the gardening industry can get stuck in doing things a certain way and most seasoned gardeners will inevitably over-work the garden.
But if we start to work with nature, we actually gain more control by being able to grow food more efficiently than ever before. It’s a paradox — but it works!
Sowing the First Seeds
Growing food is not hard work, especially when you have nature helping you 24/7.
A small area can provide you with a bounty of food, saving your family thousands of dollars per year while providing you a fresh supply of quality food that improves health.
The most wonderful part is that you can easily enjoy an ecological garden even in a tight space on a tight schedule.
I only invest around eight hours per year to growing my food, and I only use a space of around 20 square feet (6m x 6m). That’s an area that could fit into many suburban backyards several times over.
So, if you believe growing food is only for tough, bearded warriors with a lot of time — think again. Check out how ecological gardening could be the low-maintenance, high-yielding and pesticide-free gardening choice for you.
About the Author:
Jonathan White started growing vegetables in his parent’s backyard at the age of seven, and growing his own food has been a lifetime passion.
He is an absolute nature lover and after finishing school, he moved down the path of becoming an Ecological Gardener by completing a Bachelor of Applied Science and gaining qualifications in Horticulture and Landscape Design.
Jonathan is the creator of the Food4Wealth eBook and video package that shows anyone how to set up and maintain an ecological garden.
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