It’s time to start chitting! And I mean that in the best possible way. If you have been growing your own potatoes you know what I am talking about. Take the potatoes out of storage and let them sprout in daylight.
Potatoes kept in the dark form long unwieldy sprouts. If yours have done that then the only thing you can do is pull them out of the cupboard or storage area right now and break off all those long sprouts. Then get to work chitting them.
It’s all happening in the soil, or as grape growers say “in the Terroir.” Wine grapes grow better on special but not always better ground. Grape like grape ground. This is stony rocky soil that can barely raise a radish yet it is perfect for grapes. Why is that? Grapes are a perennial crop so the plants are not pulled out and replanted ever year. So there is time for the active biology in the environment to slowly eat the soil.
Right. So it’s is probably true that there is nothing new in Agriculture. And yet I continue to order books both new and old, online and through book stores. The use of minerals by plants is well documented in books like The Intelligent Gardener by Steven Solomon and in Gary Zimmer’s Advancing Biological Agriculture. With hundreds of books launched hourly and all the old ones still waiting to be read there is always something to be learned about gardening from a book. It is the deep dive of learning less common in today’s twiiterverse or caption-driven instagram society. Some tidbit of wisdom or some unknown factoid is waiting to be discovered in every new and old book I order. Or maybe it is only new to me because, as mentioned, there really is nothing new to everyone anymore. Or at least I thought that until I got the call.
What I learn every time I visit a community garden is that there are so many ways to do everything and this Berlin garden is an amazing example of ingenuity and inspiration. As the rain starts falling the group gets up for the site tour. HH gives me the signal he is tired of waiting patiently so I edge my way out of the garden. I hate to leave. These are my people.
Last year my cauliflowers killed my tomatoes. But I am a sucker for punishment so this year I wanted to see if the cabbages would do the same thing. So it is the first full week of July and the verdict is in. I think my cabbages are killing my tomatoes.
Soil Research shows improving Your Garden Soil by adding organic matter improves the world by reducing climate change. New York Times writer Kendra Pierre-Louis says soil research shows ordinary back yards are more likely to reduce climate change over parks. This isn’t the first time I have heard of gardeners saving the world one back yard at a time….”Terra Pretta: How the World’s Most Fertile Soil Can Help Reverse Climate Change” impressed me last year. Adding Biochar is one way to permanently boost carbon in the soil and take carbon out of the air.
