Japanese agriculture is exceptionally productive on a per-square-meter basis. The image above is from a region of Japan where two-crops per year are the norm. Each square is a farm. Yup, the whole farm.
The squares are 100m on a side or approximately the same area as two, American football fields. If you figure three people per household, that works out to about 700 people to the square mile.
Japan's caloric self-sufficiency rate is estimated to be in the range of 35%-to-40% and the number of people in agriculture is estimated to be 5%. Pushing the numbers around, (700 * (1/0.05) *0.37) you get a carrying capacity of 5000 humans per square mile if you dense-pack most of the consumers in cities and leave the land free to produce food.
A typical mid-Western city like Lansing has a population density of 2800 people per square mile. Indy has 2450/square-mile. Columbus has 4100/square-mile.
Climate
Japan's climate is very hospitable to crops even though the percentage of land area that is suitable for agriculture is small. That means they have a wide range of crops that can be mixed-and-matched to squeeze two crops per year out of each patch of land.
Michigan's climate is more challenging. For example, what can be combined with potatoes without depressing the potato's productivity?
The crop must either be planted very, very early or planted late. That limits the field to crops that can tolerate cold.
One candidate for the "early" slot is to plant onion sets and yank them out as green onions when the potato plants are about 10" tall. That does not produce much more protein or calories as you are basically converting the bulb into greens.
One candidate for the late slot are snap peas. Not only are the peas edible, but so are the growing tips of the vines. They produce a reasonable amount of protein and the snap peas are a premium food product. Being a legume, the plants have the capability of fixing nitrogen (a fertilizer).
Timing could be a little bit tricky. A plant that is listed as requiring 60 days to maturity might take significantly longer sailing into the headwinds of shorter days and cooling temperatures. But if you figure a harvest date of October 15 for digging your potatoes, then you might plant from mid-July to August 1st which would give you 75-to-90 days. It would be an easy experiment to run, planting one row-every-three-days during that potential window.
I remember Kennebec plants as being very upright which would make working the seeds inbetween the potato rows easy.
Most potatoes start to get a little bit tattered looking by September. The plants are sucking nutrients out of the leaves and stems and moving them to the tubers. The loss of yield should be pretty low as long as the pea plants are not shading the potatoes before September.
One advantage of snap peas is that they are heavy yielding since you eat both the peas and the thick, crunchy pods. Another advantages is that Mrs ERJ adores them and I adore her. So by the transitive properties of gardening, I adore snap peas.
Bonus images
This year's lesson was to have the blade of the shovel vertical and ALMOST touching the string marking the row. That resulted in a hole that had a vertical face in-line with the string and a sloping side away from the string. The potato pieces were place at the bottom of the hole which did not vary in relation to the line regardless of the variation in the depth of the hole.
An additional advantage was that the shovel did not knock the string around the way it did when I was not as deliberate with the angle of the blade of my shovel.
I placed a marker stick every 8th hole and I lined it up with the bottoms of the holes, not the string. You can see there is a little bit of off-set in this image.
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One of last year's failures was when I was not able to till the patch and a young man graciously offered to do it. I pointed out where the first two rows were and he seemed to be able to identify the potato plants among the weeds.
He couldn't, and was too embarrassed to admit it. He tilled over five of the seven rows of potatoes.
This year, I pushed in sticks to mark the precise location of the rows. And I was not happy with how well the sticks blended in with the dirt so I tied an 8" whisp of Mrs ERJ's yarn on each marker.
Double-bonus pictures
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| This is the 1800 square-feet that I planted to a cover crop. The circle is where the hay feeder was placed and the beaten area was caused by the cattle's feet when the ground was muddy. |
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| This is what it looks like away from the beaten area. |
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| The composition varies by location but generally includes clover and rye plus the normal assortment of weeds. |
I broadcast red clover seed into the patch to thicken it up. It will be interesting to see how the area beaten by the cattle's feet will respond over the growing season.
I have about 1500 square-feet of potatoes planted and the 1800 square-feet of the cover crop. By my figuring, that means that on a square-footage basis I have about 27% of this year's garden planted.
Another double crop is a pig in a small pen by the garden, or meat rabbits. Weed ten minutes every day and feed your protein. Woody
ReplyDeleteA couple thoughts, here in Alaska I grow crops like squash both summer and winter in raised beds in a hoop house. I transplant the squash into the back third of a 2.5 foot bed and plant spinach in the front. By the time the squash need the front of the bed the spinach has been harvested. I plant my potatoes along a drip irrigation tape. I use a planting device that allows me to stand upright . You spread the handles, push device into the ground next to the tape, drop a seed potato in, push the handles together and lift. Gently tamp with a rake after completing the row. Works especially well if you have an 8 year old grand child carry the seed and drop them in! I irrigate heavily just before it is time to hill the potatoes and pull the drip tape. It would work well with your onions or perhaps radishes!
ReplyDeleteProbably be a good idea to till the beaten area if you want it to recover quickly.
ReplyDeleteOne thought on the Japanese- They are 'industrious', in that they care for those plots on a daily basis to keep the weeds, etc. out and they plant dense plots.
ReplyDeleteI drag my pasture every spring with a chunk of chain link fence. Breaks up the poo piles and will cover any seed that you throw down. I carry a bag of seed and throw on bare spots on the way by. Try to time the effort on the day before a good rain. By the way, my pasture is 50 miles north of you so same grow season.
ReplyDeleteHow do the Japanese keep the soil from becoming nutrient depleted? Do they fertilize the soil regularly? And with what?
ReplyDeleteWith the lefts war on petroleum, which is a major source of the
components needed for fertilizers will the Japanese continue to be able keep productivity up? Important questions.
Historically they used "night soil" much like the Chinese.
DeleteAlso, in village the house roofs were thatched with rice straw. Reroofing houses was a communal village affair and straw was gathered from all fields. Every 7-10 years a roof was rethatched and the massive amounts of straw were spread back.on the fields. By rethatching a new house (or 2 or 3 ) every year the fields had yearly additions of straw/compost.
Serious out puts require serious Inputs. As NFO noted the Japanese farmer puts his inputs every day. The weeds pulled get to feed their critters like Anon #1 spoke of.
ReplyDeleteThe fertilizer of the daily footprint and eye of the farmer level thinking.
Farmers of 40 Centuries described this:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/767895.Farmers_of_Forty_Centuries
I have a free Kindle version worth reading although I should get a hard copy. There is enough useful data for daily use.
Previous to the "Green Revolution" of massive chemical farming, fertilizers and herbicides and "Roundup Ready crops" farmers in the Orient were doing multi-cropping, Pond cycle farming, cover cropping, recycling animal and human waste safely to keep their fields fed as to feed a population far higher density than even the current USA.
They were Permaculture before the West "Discovered" Permaculture.
Sad to say way too many Oriental Farmers fell from "Traditional Farming" (too dirty and hard work) into the Monsanto School of soil is just something to hold the plant up and chemicals daily routine.
John Seymore of the small holder farming fame also spoke of how a small holder could produce a high volume of good quality food on a human scale vs the machine level mass production.
One of John's quotes I've enjoyed "Ah, Mr. Pig the gentleman that pays the rent". As the Irish Tennant Farmers had Mr. Pig and fed him often from what was weeded and side of the road harvesting rough stuff. His meat was scarce eaten by the Irish but sold to pay the rents.
An amount of food per square acre vs per man hour used.
As I expect fuel for the tiller and tractor to become very dear in price, I've been doing more permaculture and pond cycle gardening in my learning efforts. That and using solar power to charge my electric sherpas like the leaf chopper for fertilizer, electric chainsaw for coppicing and the walk beside E-bike as a mule for my garden cart hauling.
I’ve been growing dwarf snowpeas (sugar peas) for a 3 or 4 years now. I can get 2 crops per year, although the second one s not as vigorous or abundant. Easy to grow, freeze well, tasty, and I can save the larger ones for next year’s seed. It’s a winner for us. I tried a larger variety of sugar pea but we didn’t like them as much, and I didn’t get more pods on larger plants.
ReplyDeleteSouthern NH