BETTER DEHYDRATING & DEXTERS
(Page 2 of 4)
August/September 2000
Questions from our readers
Thank you,
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Jeffrey
Salisbury, MD
You are looking for Jerry Baker, self-proclaimed "America's Master Gardener." A decade or more ago, Baker included many concoctions such as you mention in a best selling book, Plants Are Like People (needing love and presumably thriving on stale beer, soda pop and condiments). He has parlayed the book's chummy style and quirky instructions for home gardening into a microempire in cluding a TV show, a Saturday morning radio/Web (at Broadcast.com) talk show called "On The Garden Line," more than three dozen repetitive books and videos, a newsletter, and a by-mail and online garden products catalog.
One observer we know calls Baker "the Richard Simmons of home gardening." Mother would not be so acerbic. If you can get past the schtick, Baker's directions are founded on sound gardening principles. In fact, many of his "secret tricks" are old-time wisdom straight out of early copies of MOTHER.
We put Baker's idea (dosing plants with tonics of expensive consumer-packaged products) into the category of gardening gimmickry/faddism - cute, fun to try, and harmless for the most part - but offering questionable benefits that can be achieved better at less cost using proven organic methods. For example, the plant nutrients left in wheat and barley mash after its been brewed to alcohol in beer are better (and much more cheaply) supplied by compost or cottonseed meal. The nicotine you can brew out of any kind of tobacco is a powerful, broad-spectrum insect poison. But tobacco is highly taxed and expensive (unless you have access to a supply of cigarette butts). You can find untaxed nicotine in commercial plant sprays... but nicotine kills beneficial insects as well as pests. Many organic pest controls are cheaper, more selectively effective and less dangerous: BT against caterpillars, soap suds and ladybugs against aphids and scale insects, and pyrethrum and rotenone against beetles, grubs and more.
Dear MOTHER,
Here I am with bags full of concord grapes, and I can't find my MOTHER EARTH NEWS recipe for making grape juice from over 20 years ago. You put the whole grapes in a Mason jar and cover with boiling water and sugar? Please help quick!
