都會農耕: 零成本的七種菜園加分法

都會農耕: 零成本的七種菜園加分法

7 No-Cost Ways to Grow More Food in Your Garden

by Sami Grover, 翻譯: Sunny Arky

When I wrote a post about products that help promote soil biodiversity, some commenters were skeptical about commercial products that are shipped long distances with all the packaging and waste that goes with them.

They may have a point. After all, the secrets of healthy soil usually start at home.

And many of them are free. Here are some of our favorites

堆肥

沃土首重養土，培養土壤中益生菌，你可以選用肥料或有機物。不管蚯蚓堆肥或紙箱堆肥，利用身邊的素材就能自製肥料，不僅補充作物養分並培養土壤益生菌，並提升保水及排水能力，並減少垃圾量！

Compost everything

First and foremost, if you want to build healthy, lively soils, you first have to add food for the soil microbes that inhabit it. That food comes in the form of compost and other organic matter. Whether you are making worm compost or composting cardboard boxes, creating your own soil amendments from materials that would otherwise go to waste is a no-brainer. Not only does it add plant nutrients and beneficial microorganisms to your soil, it also aids with both water retention and drainage and reduces the amount of crap you are sending to landfill too.

覆蓋、覆蓋、覆蓋

土表覆蓋是減少用水的良方，同時抑制雜草、避免土壤乾燥或雨水沖刷。同時ˇ對土壤保溫，以利養分吸收。你可以花市購買覆蓋物(今年我用松枝)，但也有許多免費的材料，例如紙箱、報紙、枯枝落葉都很好用。如果你的花園種有足夠的植物，也可利用chop-n-drop覆蓋法，也就是將枯枝老葉鋪土覆蓋(我有時就用粗糙過老的瑞士甜菜覆蓋)。

Mulch, mulch, mulch

Mulching is a great way to reduce water use, suppress weeds and protect soils from drying out or erosion. It also keeps soils warm, meaning that more nutrients are available to plants when they need them. You can, of course, buy mulch from the garden store (I have been using bales of pine straw this year), but there are also plenty of readily-available free materials that can be put to use. Cardboard, newspapers, lawn clippings and shredded leaves are all useful in their own way. If you have enough plant material growing in your garden, you can even explore chop-n-drop mulching where you simply cut back excessive growth and let the cuttings fall as a mulch. (I sometimes do this with overly tough and overgrown chard leaves.)

排泄物堆肥

這不是人人都適用，如果你想利用任何市售肥料(不論是否為有機)為作物補充養分，你可能會想找到更貼近家庭生活的資源。我在「用排泄物拯救人類的五種方式」(5 ways that urine can help save humanity,
原文：http://www.treehugger.com/clean-water/5-ways-urine-can-help-save-humanity.html

)文中提到，尿液不只能取代合成肥料，更有研究指出利用尿液澆灌的蕃茄與對照組相較之下，成長情況明顯較佳。一般常見的用法是一份尿液加九份清水稀釋(很多人建議可以直接尿在水桶，再以雨撲滿收集的雨水稀釋使用。)

Use urine as fertilizer

This one is probably not for everyone, but if you supplement your plant's nutrients with shop-bought fertilizers of any kind (organic or not) you might want to consider a source closer to home. As mentioned in my post on 5 ways that urine can help save humanity, not only can pee replace synthetic fertilizers, but research has shown that tomatoes grown with urine actually out perform their conventionally grown counterparts. Most sources I've looked at suggest diluting 1 part urine with 9 parts water. (Many folks suggest simply peeing in a watering can and then filling up the rest from your rain barrel.)

保種和扦插

對節儉的人來說，保種不只是減少作物換季時的種苗開銷，同時可以利用保種培育最適合當地氣候環境的品種，當然對土壤裡共生的微生物和小動物。這也表示能減少病蟲害並有更多產量。或者藉由扦插獲得種苗，以蕃茄為例，摘除的側芽也可以扦插。

Save seeds and take cuttings

For the frugal, saving seeds is not just a great way to reduce your expenditure each planting season. Over time, you can also breed unique varieties of plants that have adapted to your specific climate and conditions, not to mention co-evolved with the micro-flora and -fauna that inhabit your soils. And that should mean lower instances of disease and pests and, hopefully, better yields too. It's worth noting that you can also increase the number of plants you're growing by taking cuttings—tomatoes, for example, can be grown from the side-shoots you normally pinch off during pruning.

收集雨水

集雨也是省錢良方。同時大部份不知道的是雨水灌溉對植物更好。根據布魯克林植物園指出，雨水澆灌的好處包括較少汙染物，較自來水接近室溫，因此比較不會傷根，雨水本身不含氯，因為氯會破壞益生菌影響植物生長。

Collect rainwater

Collecting rainwater is another one of those activities that saves money in-and-of itself by reducing your water bills. It's perhaps less well know, though, that rainwater harvesting can also benefit the plants in your garden too. According to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the benefits of harvested rainwater include that it typically has fewer contaminants, it is kept at a luke warm temperature and thus doesn't shock plant roots as tap water can, and it also is not treated with chlorine, a chemical which may destroy soil microbes and inhibit plant growth.

善待蜜蜂

大部分的人都知道植物依賴昆蟲授粉。由於我們所吃的食物不是果實就是種籽，代表蜜蜂或其他授粉者扮演著重要的角色。你當然可以買華麗的花束來吸引蜜蜂，但是也有更便宜的作法，只要讓植物持續生長直到開花，就能提供充足的蜜源(反正你也不會想除草！)，周圍放上一些枯木就能提供非群居蜂類棲息。或許我們不需要詳述，但善待蜜蜂最簡單的是不要再浪費錢購買傷害牠們的化學藥物。

Encourage bees

Most folks know that pollinators are absolutely central to plants' reproductive processes. Because much of what we eat is either fruit or seed, that means bees and other pollinators are central to what we eat too. You can, of course, encourage bees by buying fancy wildflower packets—but there are cheaper ways too. Simply leaving plants and weeds to flower can be a great way to provide forage (you didn't really want to mow the lawn anyway!), and leaving dead wood around can provide habitat for solitary bees too. We probably don't need to tell TreeHugger readers this, of course, but the simplest way to support bees is to stop wasting money on the chemicals that kill them.

別亂挖洞

這對傳統的園藝人士來說很難，但在特定情況下可考慮不挖地菜園的轉換，建立不會被踐踏的苗床，鋪上厚厚的覆蓋層及大量的有機物，苗床能保護土壤中的蚯蚓、益生菌、真菌等，這些元素有助於保持沃土。

雖然苗床未必能提高種苗產量，在網路園藝論壇仍有不少爭論，但身為一個懶人，我保證這樣會大幅減少你需要花費在每一棵作物的勞務，同時提升土壤固碳量。這些都是苗床法的好處，也是我在書中值得一提的。

Don't dig

This one's often a little hard for traditional gardeners to grasp, but a strong case can be made for transitioning to a no-dig vegetable garden. By building raised beds which are NEVER walked on, heavily mulched and fed by top dressings of large amounts of organic matter, proponents of no-dig gardening say it protects vital soil life including worms, microbes and mychorrizal fungi which all play a part in maintaining soil fertility.

Whether no-dig gardening actually increases garden productivity per plant is a matter of much debate in the gardening forums online, but as a committed lazivore I can confirm that it greatly reduces the amount of physical labor you put in for each "unit" of harvest and increases the amount of carbon stored in the soil too. These are both yields of their own kind that are well worth celebrating in my book.