I spent the better part of the weekened paying back for all that good compost we laid on the vegetable beds in the spring. The cosmos were seven feet tall. The zinnia were so big they had simply collapsed and were splayed all over the ground. The “mammoth” variety sunflowers had grown into sequoias, towing over [...]
Entries Tagged as 'compost'
Germination in Record Time
August 31st, 2010 · 3 Comments · garden
Tags: compost·fall·germination·greens·planting
Compost: It’s What Vacations Are For
August 5th, 2010 · 4 Comments · garden
I could have titled this piece, Don’t Go on Vacation! After 10 days away from our kitchen garden, it will take me three passes with the push mower to get the grass under control again. The eggplants are splayed on the ground, so heavy are their fruits. The tomato plants I had been trying so [...]
Tags: compost·kitchen scraps
Are You a Square Gardener, or a Row Gardener?
June 29th, 2010 · No Comments · garden
I have to admit, I’m a sucker for any kind of vegetable grown in a row. A row of lettuce heads fills me with envy, and makes me think it must have been planted by a genius.
But rows are for farmers. Rows are for walking down. Rows are for driving tractors through. Rows are not [...]
Tags: compost·vegetables
Urban Potato Harvest
June 9th, 2010 · 1 Comment · garden
I got a free compost delivery this spring that was so much more than I really needed I built a hill for potatoes for the first time ever. It’s about 15 feet long, planted with spuds from the grocery store that were sprouting in our pantry.
Well, now you can see the result. These are still [...]
Spring Garden Beds
April 25th, 2010 · 3 Comments · garden
Here’s an aerial view of our front-yard kitchen garden here in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House. Can you tell it’s still spring? In the view looking north, you can see the garlic we planted last fall next to the red mustard greens also from last fall that we are [...]
The Potato Hill is Working!
April 7th, 2010 · 1 Comment · garden
All I wanted was a bit of compost. Instead, this truck backed up to our driveway and dumped a huge pile. I had to get creative, so I built a long hill for potatoes that I had never intended to plant.
I formed a trench down the middle of the hill, then planted it with a [...]
Watch “Dirt” the Movie Today
March 28th, 2010 · 1 Comment · garden
In case you haven’t noticed, soil is one of my favorite subjects. The greatest event that takes place in our garden is not the vegetable harvest at the end of the season, but the day our food scraps and dried leaves and coffee grounds transform from “waste” into new soil, or what we call “compost.”
Civilizations [...]
Tags: compost·food films·soil
Can D.C. Schools Compost Their Food Waste?
March 21st, 2010 · 3 Comments · garden
I was involved in a fascinating conference call this week discussing the possibility of D.C. schools turning their food wastes into compost we gardeners can use rather than sending it to a landfill.
Composting food scraps from schools is foreseen in the “Healthy Schools” legislation pending before the D.C. Council. But apparently Chartwells, the contracted food [...]
Tags: compost
Profiles in Fertility: Maintaining Garden Soil Organically
March 15th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Sustainability, garden, urban agriculture
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 [...]
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 [...]
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
