The Organic Home Nursery

(Page 5 of 6)

March/April 1972
By Roberta A. Fanning 
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In the distance are a pair of peacocks and Rachel's pottery kiln and—clear at the back of the property—are the artichokes, bee hives, a newly planted crop of alfalfa for the two dozen hens the Tickners share with neighbors . . . and some serious erosion problems from the people on the hillside above. 'The Tickners are fighting the erosion by burying everything biodegradeable in the eight-foot gully that snakes down the slope . . . and Donn will someday use native plants, grape vines (for wine) and winding paths to create a private arboretum for friends and customers. The additional ground cover should also hold the hillside in place.

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I sneaked a look at Donn's bookcase on my last visit to the Organic Home Nursery. He has five shelves of titles like PLANT PROPAGATION by Hartman (a pre-1950 botany textbook which Donn says is more useful than later books on the subject), HANDBOOK OF PLANT DISEASE, loads of Sunset books, another load of Rodale books, the 1952 Department of Agriculture Yearbook on insects, NURSERY MANUAL by Bailey (something of a bible in the field, I gather), LANDSCAPING WITH VINES and THE MAGIC OF TREES AND STONES: SECRETS OF JAPANESE GARDENING (the Tickners hope to visit Japan soon).

As Celeste tripped happily about, Rachel then led me out of the house past flats of Scotch moss, cans of dwarf citrus and an old wringer washer planted with herbs . . . to a mattress under an apple tree where we had tea garnished with fresh mint as we talked.

The future, we agreed, looks great for the Organic Home Nursery. The Tickners are doing well enough to move away from the pressures of pure retail selling (they even close the business on Wednesdays now) into other things. Donn even has time to do a biweekly column for a local newspaper and have a little fun trading plants for services and products that he and Rachel want. The Tickners, however, are not especially impressed by their newfound dollar success.

"For us," Donn says, "what is important is whether or not we enjoy what we spend most of our days doing, whether we are sane in doing it and whether we maintain our human dignity. We feel that having a reverence for ourselves implies the same for the earth and her fruits."

Reverence, you'll recall, was one of those "minor" attributes that the Tickners started with.

Hey gang! Donn and Rachel prefer to spend their time outside, not on the telephone. Please be kind.


TIPS FROM THE TICKNERS

Buy a soil test kit (about $6.50). You can run more than 20 tests with it and your garden will love you.

For every 100 square feet of garden, turn in:

50-100 lbs. composted manure
10 lbs. bone meal (or, in winter, phosphate rock)
10 lbs. granite meal or 2 lbs. kelp meal
3 lbs. trace elements

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