- Tree and cane food crops.
Eventually, we hope to add tree crops for fuel and
building materials. If you seek more information than is
contained in these detailed charts, refer to the books
listed on the Ecology Action website.
There is a convenient soil improvement succession that
is good to know. Vegetables from one year improve soil
for grains the next year, and this leads to soil that
supports more permanent tree crops the third year. If
you want to study this process more closely, see Ecology
Action’s The Backyard Homestead, Mini-Farm and
Garden Log Book for vegetable, grain, fodder, and tree
crops, and read our One Crop Test Booklet: Soybeans
(Booklet 2).
Note: GROW BIOINTENSIVE techniques can be used to grow important protein
crops. Experiments with wheat, soybeans, grains, beans, and other seeds have
worked well. For information on how to grow your own open-pollinated seeds in the
smallest area while preserving genetic diversity, see Ecology Action’s Self-Teaching
Mini-Series, Booklet 13, Growing to Seed.The importance of the soil is especially apparent with
a permanent crop-growing system. Even biological and
tree cultivation systems can be environmentally unsound
if improperly used. Dr. Hans Jenny, soil scientist
emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley,
pointed to this in Science magazine:
“At the turn of the century, farsighted