The Organic Home Nursery
(Page 4 of 6)
March/April 1972
By Roberta A. Fanning
Slowly, word about the Tickners continued to spread and Donn and Rachel gradually built a steady clientele of repeat customers. Thanks to those regular "old friends" who come back again and again, the Tickners no longer have to "sell a plant to buy dinner"... and Donn now has the time to do more and more landscaping, which he feels is the most creative aspect of the plant business.
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Probably the major advantage that Donn and Rachel's expanded income brings them is the labor-saving machines the Tickners can now buy. A 15-year-old Oliver tractor ($660) enabled Donn to put in 120 artichoke plants, cultivate around his apple trees and turn under 200 pounds of mature Bell horsebean (an excellent ground cover and source of green manure). Other boons include a '64 Dodge van ($400, used), heaters for the greenhouse and a three-horsepower posthole auger to speed up the initial process of turning natural materials into a customer's soil (Donn's whole approach is "feed the soil to feed the plants").
Not everything at the nursery has been or will be mechanized, however. It takes about two hours a day but Donn still waters his plants by hand because he feels that that's the most efficient and beneficial way to do it. He also prunes his apple trees with hand shears.
The Organic Home Nursery has come a long way from its original 15 clippings. The Tickners' 2 1/2 acres are covered with plants and they can offer a customer a complete stock of fruit trees, vegetable and herb seedlings, flowers, ornamentals, house plants, organic fertilizers and sprays. They also continue to sell apples from their orchard (10 tons from two acres last year) and the artichokes will be coming along soon.
The panorama inside Donn and Rachel's nursery is most impressive. As you travel up their dirt drive lined with flats of petunias and calendulas, pots of Chinese pistachio and Norfolk pine, you suddenly come upon an unbelievable vegetable garden filled with huge, succulent fruit. The paths in the garden are kept free of weeds and mud by a thick layer of newspapers covered with soil and sawdust, the produce is mulched by something that looks good enough to eat and herbs and onions line the garden's edges. This is the Tickners' own food supply. Off to the right, more gardens lie spotted under the apple trees . . . though these are hard on the orchard and will be moved later.
A garage stacked high with large containers of tanglefoot and bags of cocoa bean hulls, blood meal, lime and bone meal stands at the head of the drive. To the right of the building is the Tickners' small house—now crammed with indoor plants—and to the left, Donn and Rachel's greenhouse. Behind the garage, the land slopes gently upward in terraces covered with pots of plants set on black plastic to keep their roots out of the ground.
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