Community Garden

Kalapuya Biointensive Gardens

Member American Community Garden Association ( ACGA)

The Name

Chemeketa is a Kalapuya word meaning place of peace.
Organic Gardening is based on knowledge and techniques gathered over thousands of years. In general terms, organic horticulture involves natural processes, often taking place over extended periods of time, and a sustainable, holistic approach.

The Reason

A garden is more than just a means of providing food, it is a model of what is possible in a community - everyone could have a garden of some kind (container, growing box, raised bed) and produce healthy, nutritious organic food, a farmers market, a place to pass on gardening experience, and a sharing of bounty, promoting a more sustainable way of living that would encourage their local economy.

The Method

This organic raised bed garden is based on the principles of the bio-intensive method. This way of planting and square foot gardening uses fewer nutrients and less water, and could keep a family, or community, supplied with an abundance of healthy, nutritious organic greens, while promoting a more sustainable way of living.

The biointensive method uses intensive planting, companion planting, biologic pest control, open pollinated seeds, compost crops, composting

Intensive Planting: The beds are 3 ft wide and in 6 ft long sections, forming a bed 100 square feet. Crops are planted in a hexagonal or triangular pattern in the bed. These wide beds and close spacing's not only allow more plants per area, but also enable the plants to form a living mulch over the soil, keeping in moisture and shading out weeds.

Companion planting takes place in both space (companion planting) and in time (crop rotation). Companion planting can be used to improve the health and growth of crops, and as a form of intensive planting, which uses vertical space more efficiently by mixing shallow rooting plants with deep rooting plants

Biological control of pests in agriculture is a method of controlling pests (including insects, mites, weeds and plant diseases) that relies on predation, parasitism, herbivory, or other natural mechanisms.

Open pollinated seeds, ensure genetic diversity, and allows the farmer to be self sufficient, harvesting seeds from his or her own plants, and cultivating varieties which are best suited to that particular region. Heirloom varieties are an example of this.

Compost crops are grown in the winter on about sixty percent of the cultivated land, they provide the compost and thus the fertility for one hundred percent of the cultivated land. This proportion of 60 % compost crops is crucial to the sustainability that is the goal of the biointensive method, and to the fertility of one's garden.

Composting allows the plants to transform and enrich the soil with organic matter, and also to return nutrients to the soil. Biointensive composting emphasizes the health and diversity of the microbes that break down and become a part of the compost. The roots of crops are left to decompose in the soil, and help to both fertilize and sew it together.

For more information, or to find out how you can get involved with the community garden:

Dan Markey
Kalapaya Garden Blog
(408) 353-6211