The One-Straw Revolution - Multiworld India

Growing Vegetables Like Wild PlantsNext let us talk about growing vegetables. One can either use abackyard garden to supply kitchen vegetables for the household or elsegrow vegetables on open, unused land.For the backyard garden it is enough to say that you should grow theright vegetables at the right time in soil prepared by organic compost andmanure. The method of growing vegetables for the kitchen table in oldJapan blended well with the natural pattern of life. Children play underfruit trees in the backyard. Pigs eat scraps from the kitchen and rootaround in the soil. Dogs bark and play and the farmer sows seeds in therich earth. Worms and insects grow up with the vegetables, chickenspeck at the worms and lay eggs for the children to eat.The typical rural family in Japan grew vegetables in this way untilnot more than twenty years ago.Plant disease was prevented by growing the traditional crops at theright time, keeping the soil healthy by returning all organic residues tothe soil, and rotating crops. Harmful insects were picked off by hand, andalso pecked by chickens. In southern Shikoku there was a kind ofchicken that would eat worms and insects on the vegetables withoutscratching the roots or damaging the plants.Some people may be skeptical at first about using65