Growing at the Speed of Life - A Year in the Life of My First Kitchen Garden

The plants that grow in our increasingly

rich soil will draw energ y and health from So what if there are more than 5,000
chemicals added to our food that are
this abundant goodness. Th e same plants generally regarded as safe (GRAS) until
will eventually become our nutrition. It must occasionally proven unsafe? What if

therefore be obvious that a best-practices, they gradually accumulate in certain tis­

“deep” organic garden will be the best possi- sues throughout my body? How does

ble choice for our daily food. this affect my enjoyment of food?
Answer: If I grew my own with mini-
So now, may I encourage you to explore mal input, as in low-input sustainable

what your soil needs in order to be well agriculture (LISA), I could eat with a
suited to growing nourishing vegetables! smile on my face.

2. Turf

Th e first challenge in preparing for our garden was to deal with the grass, or
rather the dandelion patch that passed for a lawn. I began to kill it with an or­

ganic preparation, but that showed no apparent effect. Scott suggested Roundup.

At this stage it felt like every good intention to go organic had just evaporated.

How could I use that stuff on a kitchen garden? I was given to understand that

there was no risk because Roundup’s active ingredients have a relatively short

half-life, and I had no living edible plant even close to the patch. Ironically, I had
to fertilize the grass first to get it to grow vigorously before adding Roundup, so

that it would more effectively kill the grass, roots and all. (As a Scot, I found the

additional cost for fertilizer hard to take, but I did what I was told.)

Within a week, my lawn was dead. I had succeeded in my very fi rst task

of  killing everything on site in a very inorganic way. Not exactly what I had

imagined!
I need to add, at this point, that I didn’t know that I could have achieved the

same result by covering the area with large sheets of cardboard, the kind that

protect mattresses in transit. I’ve since experimented with that method, and it

does work over time. Allow 2–3 months to effectively smother an area. Th e card­

board will decompose, adding another layer of organic material.

MY NEED-TO-KNOW LIST • 21