“No Weeding- No Watering- No Pesticides- No GMOs- No Fertilizers- Ever!
How the Secret Garden of Survival Works.
Imagine a food garden that you only have to plant once in your life-time, that takes up very little space, that will provide food for you and your family for the next 30 years; that can grow five times more food per square foot than traditional gardening; and where you never have to weed, never have to water- never have to use fertilizers and never have to use pesticide– ever.
And the whole garden is disguised to look like overgrown underbrush, so that anyone passing by would not even dream that you had food growing there!
Interested? That is what Rick Austin is going to talk to you about. …It’s the essential homestead and prepper food source that can provide you with all the fruit, vegetables, herbs, nuts and berries, that you and your family can consume in a year.
Find out how Rick Austin took a half-acre southern slope in North Carolina and turned it from red clay into a “food forest” in one year.
Rick Austin is known as the Survivalist Gardener, and is a preparedness, homesteading and off grid living expert. He is the author of Secret Garden of Survival-How to Grow a Camouflaged Food Forest which is now the #1 Best Selling book in Garden Design.”
YouTube
Secret Garden of Survival
One amazing fact is Rick said grapes taste better and produce seven times more when growing in an apple tree. He plants a guild of beneficial plants around each main fruit or nut tree that work together naturally. He made swales to capture the water so the garden no longer needs watering even after 6 weeks of drought. A commenter on YouTube said his ideas were no match for growing corn with industrial agriculture. Rick responded by saying “Actually I produce 5X more food per square foot than a traditional garden, or commercial farm. In fact, I feed 8 adults all year on just half an acre of land for my Secret Garden of Survival. And I feed much of my livestock too. You could scale up, but you really don’t need to use more land if you are just trying to run a sustainable homestead.” For those who don’t believe this, just stop and realize that nature has had millions of years to develop the perfect growing system.
Where is the data about: calorie yield per unit area (or some other unit of nutritional value; proof of productive yield over the long term when all trees have reached their mature height and canopy; increased time spent harvesting dispersed areas of the one crop; the actual species grown (with numbers of each) to show that real nutritional variety can be achieved, and to illustrate that adequate quantities of food staples are being produced and not just unusual fruit crops.
Without at least that range of data I could not be convinced that he is feeding 8 adults year round (and unspecified) livestock.
Presumably the livestock are not eaten, or is he saying that the livestock are housed on that half acre?
Sorry, but I’ve done a permaculture course, I’ve been growing food for years, including using some permaculture practices, and I’ve looked at permaculture properties, including Geoff Lawton’s in Australia.
It is not fair to mislead people about what can be grown and the quantities that can be produced in a “food forest”. People in the developing world have really been producing all their own food for many centuries and none of then depend entirely, or even mostly, on a “food forest” – I have worked in rural areas in Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and China and I’ve never seen it and never heard of it having happened in the past.
I don’t know if he’s quantified his production in detail, but that’s something you’d have to take up with him. The potential for enormous harvests is there however. We’re starting to see increased production in our forest garden even though it’s far from being well developed. I estimate I ate a truckload of papaya last year. One young lime tree can start producing a bushel of limes after just 2 years. One little banana plant can turn into 10 giant banana plants loaded with bananas in 1-1/2 years. I’ve seen Marian plum trees with a truckload of fruit each. But in all honesty it takes an enormous amount of work to achieve great results, and it typically takes years to get significant production. Building up the soil can be very challenging. This is fine with me because I love working in our forest garden. It’s the most pleasant spot in the world for me. I labor on in hopes it becomes awesome in 5-10 years.
A safer, easier, more sure bet for high yield food production is a good greenhouse. Watch this Curtis Stone video about a microgreen grower in Vancouver. This guy has very detailed production records. I’m currently gearing up to do something similar in our mesh hoop house. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uVL-PvzQxU&t=4s
Note: I think you’re asking valid questions. All too often people hype their product or idea. It would be good to see at least a one page summary of his annualproduction. Maybe this is in his book, not sure.