Organic garden project

At Àgora Portals school we have started a new project. We are the first of the archipelago to have an organic garden, located in one of the school’s terraces.

We followed the method of D. Gaspar Caballero de Segovia, which we are going to describe in the article below. During the next year we will tell you all about the experiences of our young farmers. Happy holidays!

The Gaspar Caballero de Segovia method is a system which comes from Mallorca, the result of several years’ experience on a farm called Sa Feixeta in the town Costitx. This method is surprisingly simple and effective. It is easy and pleasant to grow organic vegetables by planting seeds in a minimum space of land with a minimal amount of maintenance too.

Six basic steps of the method.

1.- The ”parades de crestall”.

“Parada”: a rectangle patch of land 1.5 metres wide. The length can vary (for home gardens it is recommended to make the terraces three metres long, or no longer than 6 metres).

“Crestall”: a layer of compost, which is placed over the “parada” like a cover, it mustn’t be mixed with the soil.

2.-  The ”parades de crestall” must not be stepped on.

Therefore, we will leave paths of around 50 centimetres around each “parada”.  If you make more than four “parades” and you have enough land , the best idea is to make the central paths up to a metre wide and make the garden in the form of a cross. So we will be able to enter and manoeuvre a wheelbarrow without damaging the plants.

3.- “Fems de bassa”, the native compost of Mallorca.

The fems de bassa are the best food we can give to the earth. It is a simple, economic and ecological to return to the land part of which, at some point, we have removed. There are many ways to make compost, and so the saying that, "There's more than one way to skin a cat," is particularly appropriate.  Anyway, we must bear in mind that the wider the variety of constituents that is used, the better the compost will be.

4.- Planting.

The planting is carried out in a denser manner than in traditional gardening. The plants will need only a small space to live, so that once grown, the leaves will touch each other, creating a microclimate retaining soil moisture for longer with a clear saving both in water and work to keep them free of weeds. We recommend planting herbs and flowers between the “parades de crestall” and around the garden. The more the better. It is not recommended to plant potatoes or sweet potatoes in the “parades de crestall” because in the next planting season, the growth of the tubers from the previous harvest would devastate the new crop.

5.- Watering.

With an exudative irrigation system, a layer of compost and denser planting, less water will be used and the moisture will be more consistent and uniform than with other irrigation systems.

Soon our native worm workers will appear which will improve the soil structure, they will drain it with the excavation of galleries and at the same time they will fertilize it for nothing with their valuable excrement. The combination of the compost, constant moisture, insects, micro organisms, etc.., will make the land become very fertile and the plants that grow in it will be more robust, strong and resistant to pests and diseases. The constant moisture, not stepping on the “parades de crestall”, the compost cover and the continuous planting of vegetables means that it will not be necessary to dig the earth again.

6 .- A four year rotation cycle.

Rotation is the succession of different crops in the same field. If we cultivate plants of the same family year after year in the same place, this will make the diseases stronger and more persistent. On the contrary, with a good sequence, by planting different plant families with different vegetative ways and root systems and different nutritional requirements as well as avoiding as far as possible probable diseases, this will also benefit the earth and successive crops.

Quadrennial rotation cycle: the rotation of four years on four or more “parades de crestall” (they always have to be multiples of four) is to move (rotate) each year and each one of the ”parades”.  In this way, we will plant crops from different botanical families than those we decided to plant at first when we designed the garden until the quadrennial cycle has finished (and so on).

As we become more familiar with this gardening system, we will have new ideas to make the work even easier: we will adapt tools for planting, we will build mini-greenhouses, we will intersperse crops, etc. This is in fact what it is all about, to experiment, until each one finds the most appropriate way of working in the organic garden in the most simple, pleasant and fruitful manner.