Know Your Soil, Feed Your Soil
When I started writing this column, my challenge to everyone: reach for the Blue Zone and live a happier, longer life. Part of Blue Zone living entails growing your own food organically, without the use of chemicals harmful to you and to the environment. By doing so, you’ll better understand the intricacies of nature and the role good gardening practices play in protecting our planet. It means being more astute in your observations in your garden and building up your soil. You need to feed your soil to have your garden feed you.
My garden column predecessor, Dr. Frank Gouin, The Bay Gardener, is probably writing in the clouds, Feed your soil and make good compost.
A popular garden book from the 1830s reads, “The preventive operations are those of the best cultures. Vegetables which are vigorous and thrifty are not apt to be injured by worms, flies, bugs, etc.” Many old garden books stress the addition of organic matter from manure, compost or leaf mold.
It is also important to rotate your crops, aerate your soil, irrigate, mulch and select appropriate varieties of plants for your area.
After determining the pH of your soil and, if necessary, adjusting it to approximately 6.5, you should work on your soil microbiology by repeatedly adding organic matter. Organic matter in the form of compost, green manure, rotting leaves and logs from the woods feed the organisms in your soil. Your soil should contain about 1,000 insects per square yard in addition to various other microscopic organisms.
Becoming familiar with basic concepts will help you grow a sustainable garden. A few you might want to learn about:
- Planting legumes, which take nitrogen from the air and make it available to plants, gives you free fertilizer.
- Allelopathy is the chemical inhibition of one plant by another. Thus a garden won’t grow near a black walnut tree.
- Weed ecology involves controlling weeds by modifying soil conditions.
- Systemic acquired resistance uses compost to enhance plants’ resistance to pests.
Healthy plants are a goal gardeners work toward. There will be insect pests that you can pick off or, alternatively, safely spray with horticultural oil or a soapy water mixture. People fed themselves before the advent of chemical sprays and this is what we should strive for in our gardens today.