Sunday, October 11, 2009

It's fall! Time to get your garden ready by getting your soil ready for planting. Last year for our garden we went out and got some turtle grass that had blown up in a storm. It had been lying there for quite some time and was thoroughly washed free of the salt content. I trucked it over to our garden and put a liberal three inches on top of the existing top soil. My good friend Hugh Morgan taught me that seaweed is very rich in nutrients for growing just about everything. Just be careful to get the salt out of it first.

To this I added a layer of vaca caca (cow manure) and two inches of topsoil for good measure, then rented a tiller and churned the whole concoction together. We spread a sheet of black plastic (which can be reused, or used for growing strawberries) over the entire garden to totally block out the sun, which accomplished two things. First, the contained heat essentially kills the nematodes, seeds and other things you don't want in your growing soil. It also starts the composting process of breaking down the organic material. We had this on for 30 days prior to planting and it worked just great.

Last year we did a lot of experimenting and what seemed to work really well for us was, first and foremost, herbs. We grew so much parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (sorry, it just rolls off the tongue like that - blame Simon and Garfunkel), basil and oregano that we couldn't use it or give it away. The other things that grew really well were collard greens and cauliflower, which produced several crops that fed us delicious meals for quite some time. Pole beans and peas did well, as did tomatoes; just be careful you keep a close eye on them. We went away for a week and green horned worms got on them and darned near took the whole crop. Cucumbers did fair, white eggplant was excellent, arugula and some lettuces did well. We didn't have a whole lot of success with romaine lettuce; it grew really fast but was a bit bitter. Probably we should have picked it earlier. My assistant, Nancy, is English and therefore genetically a gardener. She had good success with green beans, collard greens, romaine lettuce and upside-down tomatoes (tomatoes grown through a hole in the bottom of a bucket and suspended out of reach of iguanas and Key deer).

To control pests organically, we did three things. First we "ringed" the garden with diatomaceous earth as well as put it between the rows to control snails. Second, we sprayed the plants liberally with garlic extract (available in pet stores) and pepper. Finally, we "flew" several four-foot strips of yellow surveyor's tape coated with olive oil, which attracts and sticks white flies (they are drawn to the color yellow).

Our whole garden was about 400 square feet but grew much more than we were able to use. Since that time, we have moved to a town home with a brick patio and now we will be growing everything in pots. In this vein, one of my great delights these days is not pushing the organic remains of a meal into the disposal but, rather, putting them (excluding meat and cheese, of course) into a small compost holder by the sink with a charcoal filter on top so it doesn't stink, and then, when we have enough, taking it out to our Sun-Mar 200 composter. This has been producing dirt for us since I got it for my birthday last year. There is something very gratifying about not throwing this stuff away but using it over again.

Oh, don't forget your worm farm. If you need any further information on this, get in touch with Kim Gabel of the Monroe Extension Service who is really, and I say this with the greatest respect, the queen of worms. She can tell you how to start a worm farm and keep it going to provide earthworms for your garden, which is the surest way to keep the soil aerated and fertilized.

So there it is, lots of choices. If I have made any point in these columns, it has been that we've gotten pretty lazy about how and what we eat. It's a whole lot easier to buy a portion pack of six containers of chocolate pudding encased in a cardboard box and put into a plastic bag than it is to buy one small cardboard box and a recyclable container of milk to make your own pudding. Doing the one is easier, more expensive and worse for the environment. Doing the other is, well, need I say more?

Every time I drive by the vacant land in front of Poinciana School on Kennedy Drive, I think to myself, "Now there's a real opportunity for a meaningful education."