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Abstract

Market gardening is a low-tech, small-scale production system with an emphasis on diversity, ecological balance and community engagement. The basis of market gardening is a combination of agroecological principles and organic production. Through the employment of management practices that minimize soil disruption, and promote the use of composts, cover crops, and mulches to increase soil organic matter content, this type of production system is suggested to lead to long-term sustainability. In the current project, a newly established market gardening system was compared to conventionalized organic field production, and a field border, over one year in which soil samples were collected at four time points. With a focus on biological soil health indicators, analyses were made on soil organic matter, soil protein content, soil respiration, microbial activity, active carbon, and nutrient availability. The results showed significant enhancements in soil health parameters in the market gardening system compared to conventionalized organic production, as well as to the field fence line. This study thus underscores the potential of market gardening as a production system with a high potential to improve soil health and increase sustainability in food production.

Keywords

market garden; organic vegetable production; soil health; soil organic matter

Published in

Acta Horticulturae
2025, volume: 1, number: 1416, pages: 331-336
Title: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Sustainable Vegetable Production from Seed to Health Booster Sources
Publisher: International Society for Horticultural Science

Conference

International Symposium on Sustainable Vegetable Production from Seed to Health Booster Sources, May 12 - May 16 2024, Bucharest, Romania

SLU Authors

UKÄ Subject classification

Soil Science

Publication identifier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2025.1416.43
  • ISBN: 978-94-62614-15-4

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/142894