I have been following numerous ideas on organic/sustainable gardening for years and have, in my way, tried to grow good productive gardens using what methods were available to me and reasonable in cost---yes, money is always an issue because food is so cheap in this country. I have seen concepts that appeared affective but cost huge amounts of money due to structure (raised beds), brought in fertilizers and expensive seeds and plants.
At times it has been hard to see some of these pay off, but still one has to respect the efforts. Of late, permaculture has caught on and while I can't say I am up an all the procedures, I am testing a few. We have chickens and they do leave behind nodules of fertilizer filled with nitrates and other goodies. But the thing I noticed is that 3-6 chickens simply do not produce enough manure to enhance more than 10 sq ft. In other words it is hard to scale this manure thing up to a level that is effective. I am beginning to think this is also an issues of other "sustainability" projects. Where do you get enough natural fertilizer to grow the food that feeds the world?
You don't, I suspect. Where do we find adequate cattle manure to enrich the fields of Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota. We need to get real. That stuff is all growing out there because of fossil fuel inputs.
However, the other day I went to the local dumping area where folks get rid of all their organic wastes---yard stuff mostly. There in front of us were pies of molding bales of grass hay. Bingo. I felt like we had hit an answer because this would significantly add to my garden's wealth. It did. But then I remembered that this grass had removed nutrients from another piece of land. So while I had gained, another property had lost. I don't think it is ever a win-win.
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