Grow Your Own
(Page 7 of 13)
May/June 1970
By Jeanie Darlington
Most importantly, it's better for your soul to garden organically. If you use chemical fertilizers, you are disregarding the fact that soil is a living breathing thing. Soil becomes only a medium which supports plants upright. Chemical fertilizers destroy many life forms such as beneficial soil bacteria and earthworms. Poison sprays not only pollute the atmosphere, but also kill many harmless insects and many helpful predators, thus destroying the balance of nature. Gardening organically is working in harmony with nature.
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Notes:
1. All of the dates in this book refer to the Bay Area, where the first killing frost comes around November 30 and the last killing frost comes around January 30. But as it still takes another month and a half before most spring planting can begin, the frost date is rather meaningless. In most cases, you can plant tomatoes one week after the last killing frost. Here we wait until April 1st at least. Check with local successful gardeners for the best planting dates in your area.
2. My experience with organic gardening has been with a small backyard garden. This book is meant to tell you the basics of what you need to know to garden organically on a small scale family basis. As the size of your garden increases, certain factors may change. But everything in this book can apply to gardens at least up to 100' by 200'.
I didn't grow my garden to save money on the food bill. That would be pretty hard to do with a 10' by 10' garden. It probably costs about the same or a little bit more than buying vegetables at the supermarket. But I get so much pleasure going out to the garden on a cold December morning to pull some leeks for a nice leek and potato soup, and going out again a few minutes before dinner to get some tender oakleaf and ruby lettuce leaves for a crunchy salad. It isn't the same as supermarket buying.
With a larger garden, you do begin to save money by raising vegetables.
3. Throughout this book you will be reading about N (Nitrogen), P (Phosphorus), and K (Potash). These elements are very important. It would help you to either memorize the symbols or remember to refer back here.
HUMUS
Soil is a living, breathing thing. It is ideally made up of 50% air and water, 45% inorganic minerals from rock fragments, and the rest organic matter, which is called humus.
The virgin soil of this country once contained an average of 4% humus. This figure is now down to about 1.5% or less. The amount of water and air is proportionately down to about 30%, due to the lack of humus. There is no room for water and air in hard, compacted soil. And the inorganic mineral content is up to 68.5%.
Half of this mineral content is due to chemical fertilizer residues that have built up in abnormal and damaging quantities. The continued use of chemical fertilizers and sprays (which leach down into the soil,) is already a serious problem and is getting much worse, as you probably know by now from articles in newspapers and magazines.
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