Essential Guide to Radical, Self-Reliant Gardening by Will Bonsall (vegan), Part 1 of 2

Will Bonsall (vegan) is an American author and expert in seed saving and veganic farming based in Maine, USA. In 2015, he authored “Will Bonsall’s Essential Guide to Radical, Self-reliant Gardening: Innovative Techniques for Growing Vegetables, Grains, and Perennial Food Crops with Minimal Fossil Fuel and Animal Inputs.” “One of the things that I’ve always been into very much was being self-reliant, self-sufficiency, including fertility. I realized I could do it so much better by directly eating plants and getting my fertility from plants. That’s my next step beyond most vegan gardeners that I know, it is to produce my own fertility from the land directly.”

“Since the initial decision to go veganic, not using livestock manure, I’ve gotten into a version of intensive gardening with beds, but not raised beds, but things are close together, companion planting. So far, I’m working on several methods of minimal tillage and to disturb the soil as little as possible.” “I was growing my own, as much as I could anyway, much of my own wheat, barley, oats, corn, buckwheat, all those things, and sunflowers, and pumpkins, and other things to press oil from, to make vegetable oil.” Mr. Bonsall’s book emphasizes veganic agriculture. “The biggest advantage: it requires less inputs, less water, much less land – a fraction of the land – to produce the same amount of feed. You’re actually building the soil. Do things which enable the land to do it itself, to have better drainage, lower pH, or rather raised pH. All of those things keep the nutrients, the things that are there, keep them going round and round and round.”