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| John Taylor poses in the URI agronomy fields (Photo by Nora Lewis) |
John Taylor is intrigued by the
methods that ethnic communities use to grow their native vegetables in urban
settings in the United States.
So the University of Rhode Island scientist is testing some of those strategies to see if the methods could increase crop yields of more conventional vegetables.
So the University of Rhode Island scientist is testing some of those strategies to see if the methods could increase crop yields of more conventional vegetables.
“The U.S. has an increasingly
diverse population, and for many immigrants, continuing their food ways is an
important way to reproduce their culture,” said Taylor, URI assistant professor
of plant sciences, who earned his doctorate studying ethnic home gardens in
Chicago.
“The way some ethnic groups grow their crops is often quite different from how other people grow those same crops.”
“The way some ethnic groups grow their crops is often quite different from how other people grow those same crops.”
Taylor is focusing his initial
studies on growing several varieties of amaranth, a leafy vegetable popular
among African, Asian and Caribbean cultures, and bitter melon, a warty
cucumber-shaped fruit with medicinal values favored in India and Southeast
Asia. He is growing the two, along with a sweet potato variety grown for its
leaves, all together in the same space, a practice called polyculture.
“In polyculture, you’re growing multiple species together to get more production from a unit of area compared to growing those crops in monoculture,” he said.
“It’s a way to maximize the use of
space. In many Chinese-origin household gardens, they sometimes double
production because they have a vine crop growing vertically on a trellis with a
leafy ground layer below it. It helps the household be more food secure.”
In his experiments, Taylor is
growing amaranth, bitter melon and sweet potato in various combinations in two
200-foot rows and in 25 eight-by-ten-foot plots at the URI agronomy fields.
“Land is always at a premium,”
Taylor said. “I want to use this as a model for growing other more conventional
crops. The same strategy could be used for growing cucumbers, squash and pole
beans, for example.”
Despite the wet spring, his crops
are growing well. The bitter melon began blooming last week, and he expects to
start harvesting amaranth and sweet potato leaves soon. He will document the
yield of each crop and compare it to the yield of the same crops grown in
monoculture.
“We hope we’ll find that the
polycultures yield more than the monocultures,” said Taylor. “Then next year
we’ll play with the system a bit, trying different densities of plants,
different arrangements of plants, to see how we can improve the system. And
then we’ll start using those results as a model for other more conventional
vegetables.”
In addition to his polyculture
studies, Taylor is growing 14 different varieties of bitter melon to determine
which grow best in local conditions.
“I probably have more bitter melon
in production than in all of Providence,” he joked.
Taylor will share the results of his
work with various ethnic communities in Rhode Island. He is already doing
outreach to local gardeners through the Southside Community Land Trust in
Providence.