For 4,000 years prior to the advent of factory-made fertilizers, the Chinese used every bit of organic matter they could lay their hands on–including their own excrement–to return to the soil the nitrogen and other nutrients their vegetable crops removed. It was only through meticulous attention to the cycle of terrestrial rot upon which new life [...]
Entries Tagged as 'compost'
Profiles in Fertility: Maintaining Garden Soil Organically
March 15th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Sustainability, garden, urban agriculture
Reader Poll: How Do You Maintain Soil Fertility?
March 11th, 2010 · 7 Comments · garden
Farmers and gardeners alike must deal with the same fact of nature: crops draw nitrogen and other essential nutrients out of the soil. Those nutritients must be replaced in order to continue growing crops into the future.
In bygone days, before the advent of factory-made fertilizers, farmers addressed the question of maintaining soil fertility by spreading [...]
Feeding Broccoli
November 22nd, 2009 · 3 Comments · garden
Can I just say how disappointing it is to spend weeks and weeks growing plants from seeds–moving the plants from seed cells into the ground, watching them grow, fretting over every bug bite–and still not getting the desired results? Such is my frustration with broccoli. We do love this vegetable, but trying to produce big [...]
Mr. President, Where Is Your Sustainability Czar?
November 4th, 2009 · 4 Comments · Sustainability
It’s that time of year when scenes like this unfold in our neighborhood here in the nation’s capitol: a National Park Service employee pushing leaves around the sidewalk with the most polluting device known to man–a gas-powered leaf blower.
Does anybody else remember when we did this with a broom and rake?
How do we expect nations [...]
120 Degrees
October 22nd, 2009 · No Comments · garden
Peeling back a layer of our compost pile this morning to deposit some kitchen scraps I was hit with a blast of heat.
“I wanna see the steam! I wanna see the steam!” daughter shouted when I returned to the house to tell what was happening in our garden.
She approached the compost pile warily, holding her [...]
Tags: compost
A Home For Your Kitchen Scraps
September 27th, 2009 · 5 Comments · Sustainability, garden, urban agriculture
Making compost is a second occupaton for The Slow Cook. Since we garden organically, without chemical fertilizers or pesticides, our source of fertility consists of what’s in the ground already and what we add to it in the form of compost. Being in the city, about a mile from Michelle Obama’s White House garden here [...]
Tags: compost·kitchen scraps
Do You Sift Your Compost?
August 20th, 2009 · 2 Comments · garden
I’ve never been one to run my compost through a seive. I know some people like to remove all the little sticks and clumps. But I never saw the need. Everything in my compost pile (well, almost) is organic. So I figure it will break down in the garden eventually. Why bother to pretty it [...]
Tags: compost·seed starting
Fun With Beans
July 22nd, 2009 · No Comments · garden
As one of our blogging pals recently remarked, how hard can it be to plant a row of beans?
Well, we don’t plant in rows in our kitchen garden here in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House. We plant in big squares. But the principle is the same. And we’ve found [...]
Tags: compost·green beans·planting
A Farmer and His Garlic
March 15th, 2009 · No Comments · Uncategorized
As part of his annual crop rotation scheme, Leigh Hauter over the years had planted garlic just about everywhere he could on his farm except for this strip of land on the slope just below his greenhouse.
The previous owners of Bull Run Farm had not done much in the way of erosion control. “There [...]
Tags: compost·CSA·garlic·local farming·mulch
Goodbye, Old Fried
October 5th, 2008 · 2 Comments · Uncategorized
Sometimes it’s hard to let go. This hat had served me well. It kept the sun off my face and marked me as a gardener. It became part of my identity. I wore the hat until it was in tatters. Finally, it was time to say goodbye to one straw hat that had served [...]
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, one mile from the White House.
