Grow Your Own
(Page 2 of 13)
May/June 1970
By Jeanie Darlington
At about this time, I quit the nursery. A third of the products I was selling were only making Standard Oil richer and the air and earth more polluted. I felt rather guilty.
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In the meantime, I had begun my garden. I chose a small 10' X 10' grassy spot which received full sun all day. I didn't really know where to start, but I thought I should somehow kill the grass. This was before I'd found the magazine offer and I didn't know that I could simply turn the grass under and leave it to decompose. So I applied a lot of sulphate of ammonia, which is a super rich nitrogenous chemical fertilizer, to burn off the grass. (Chemical fertilizers used in excess, and without water, will burn.) I later learned that this was a big mistake because the fertilizer killed the earthworms, and because the sulphur residue left by the fertilizer ate away whatever organic matter I added for quite a while. Fortunately the magazine and the fertilizer pamphlet arrived in time to save me from other such disasters.
I now had a 10' by 10' plot of hard, clay soil rich in nitrogen. With a lot of hard work, Sandy and I and my visiting sister and brother-in-law managed to turn over the soil. By the time we finished that, the fertilizer pamphlet had arrived. In it I read that I still needed to add some phosphorus (P) and potash (K) and some organic matter. So I dug in a sack of steer manure thinking that would be enough, organic matter. And I sprinkled on 5 Ibs. of bone meal (P) and a whole lot of ashes (K) from our wood stove.
Then I was ready to plant. I planted a lot of things both seeds and seedlings. Beginner's luck was with me and most everything began to grow. But the soil was still hard as a rock. Water would turn it to gooey mud, and a few days later it was cracked and rock-hard again. I cultivated it, but that didn't help much.
By then I was beginning to realize the importance of organic matter and proper soil preparation. That 10' by 10' plot could have used 10 sacks of manure.
Good soil should contain 50% air and water, 45% inorganic minerals from rock fragments, and 5% organic matter or humus. I seemed to have no air and no humus in my soil, only hard clay and plenty of sulphur residue. In fact, this is the state of many peoples' garden soils. And then they wonder why they don't have green thumbs.
The clay was supporting the plants and they were growing, but I wanted to improve the soil, because I was sure they would grow better. Compost seemed to be the answer. I could make my own humus out of weeds and grass and other things. And I had read that lots of compost would help reduce the toxic effects of a chemically treated soil.
I began my compost pile somewhat sceptically. Would all those weeds and grass clippings and leaves really turn into the beautiful, black crumbly substance they said it would? I added some vegetable peelings and scraps to the pile too, but not very often out of pure laziness. It was easier by far to throw them in the garbage bag below the sink than to walk all the way down the back stairs to the compost pile. It never occured to me then that I could separate the garbage.
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