Roissy-en-Brie An interesting post from Jacob Morrow on urban farming:
how to buy disulfiram Two sections of these books particular caught my attention. One (from The Winter Harvest Handbook) is about the tradition of small, but intensely cultivated, market gardens, which were commonplace in nineteenth-century Paris, although they all but disappeared in the twentieth century. This type of gardening (la culture maraicher), according to Coleman, relied on an ambitious system of cold frames, warmed by horse manure mixed with straw which came from the city’s stables. The manure, when it had broken down, also served as good compost — so good, in fact, that “the soil increased in fertility from year to year despite the high level of production.” The gardens typically consisted of one or two acres, and were tended by six workers per 1.5 acres. These gardeners (the maraichers) not only provided the city of Paris with much of its produce, but also exported their vegetables to Britain. At the same time, they maintained wonderfully healthy, productive gardens, with rich soil and minimal pest problems, and did so without pesticides or chemical fertilizers.
Of course, now we don’t have horse stables to provide tons of local-source fertilizer. It’s ultimately counterproductive to produce food far away from a source of fertility. But of course, there are still lots of animals in a city: pets. San Francisco is using poo from dog runs for energy. I found an internet message board with a post from a reader who used composted dog manure (nearly a ton a year!) for her garden. Dog manure, I think, poses relatively more health risks for humans than other animals, but if done on a large enough scale (i.e., with enough heat), it could be a source of fertility for an urban garden.
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