Home Soil
In fact, we don’t seem to realize that this living soil is the necessary foundation of a garden. Soil is not dirt.
In fact, we don’t seem to realize that this living soil is the necessary foundation of a garden. Soil is not dirt.
There are all types of gardens. I think Silver does a better job of teaching this important lesson even as he restricts his list of plant allies to a few that work for him. That is the point.
So don’t go by the book. Go by the garden. Learn what is there and how it fits into its community. Then fit yourself into that community.
So as I was already grousing about the pantry, I decided to review my garden plan for next year… and found it woefully inadequate.
Hopefully I’ve convinced you to plant a fruit or nut tree or two in your yard. They can be tucked into a garden, only need pruning twice a year, and they give you pretty flowers, nice fall colors, and lots and lots of food.
So…imagine that somewhere, or in many places at once, a self-replicating Gaia movement were to start, whose adherents call ourselves, simply, “Gaians.”
That gardening works always takes me by surprise. I put these hard and cold and seemingly inert nuggets into dirt and, wondrously, plants happen.
We are at the mercy of our climate, which is as it should be. Nevertheless, we have ways to push our seasons a bit, and most take very little effort and are pretty cheap and easy to do.
So this is my pest control toolkit: rotation and companion interplanting. It works as well as the chemicals do, and in many ways it’s more reliable than the chemicals — because pests can adapt to the chemicals…
Let’s talk about the big question of the year: “How much do I grow to feed my family for the year?”
Vegetable gardens in this country are largely seen as a “summer thing”, and I believe this is because the crops people associate with vegetable gardens are mainly summer growing.
The bottom line is this: anything you grow now is something you no longer have to buy or worry about finding in a food store. Things are not going to get better, no matter what the ads say.