My Back Yard
Try this: Alfalfa Meal, cold processed Kelp Meal, Bone Meal and Fish Meal, mixed according to the directions for your size bed, dig them well into fairly good soil, saturate it, put in your favorite vegetable seeds according to the directions on the package, and stand back. In a month or three, depending on what you planted, you’ll have the most and best vitamins that money could buy.
“Our food should be our medicine,” said Hippocrates. With our food traveling 1,500 miles, arriving at our table 12-14 days after it was harvested, it’s not very likely to contain much nutrition; much less of medicinal quality. Vegetables start to lose their vitamins and minerals, in other words their flavor, the moment they’re taken from the plant. The difference between vegetables just picked from the plant, and what the local grocery store calls “fresh,” in flavor, texture, color and appeal-not to mention vitamin and mineral content, is staggering.
You can do it. If you need or want any help, just let me know.
Lee O’Hara
www.organichomegardener.com
WHAT IS HANGING IN BALANCE?
I am. There is no “we,” but only a world full of “I.”
It all starts every day with me. It doesn’t matter what “we” do or don’t do. It only matters what I do. I can do nothing about what “we” decide to do-or not do. What I have absolute power over is what I do.
I can do something to help my neighbor or a complete stranger. I can bring a smile to a harried waitress; or I can make her moment more miserable by demanding faster service. If her load is made a little lighter, I know I’ll get better service. I can help someone understand their environmnet, knowing that if they can understand it better, they’ll want it to be better. I can help a friend see a problem from a different viewpoint by just hearing him out. I can listen-really just listen, to anyone who wants to talk to me.
I alone will decide how well to prepare my soil now for a garden that I’ll want to plant in the spring. I alone will determine whether my garden is enormously abundant; or a dismal failure.
I am hanging the balance. Only I can tip the scales in my favor.
Lee O’Hara
http://www.organichomegardener.com
ROOTS OF TOMATOES AFTER HARVEST
Did your neighbor’s tomato roots look like this when he took the plants out at the end of the season?
They should have. These root stuctures are 2-3 times what one would normally expect to see. The one with the tape measure around it is 9 inches in circumference.
It was somewhat hollow and not necessarily representative, but a very productive plant. I planted 7 started tomato plants that were labeled “Beefmaster.” They were not Beefmasters, nor were they even related to “Beefsteak.” They were some unidentifiable little tomato that left me about 400 lbs. short of what I could have expected from Beefmasters. They were very good tomatoes, but they didn’t turn out to be what I thought they were.
Over the season, the 7 plants in their 80 square foot raised bed produced only 931 tomatoes, weighing a total of 441 lbs. That’s an ave. of 63 lbs. per plant, and an average of 173 tomatoes per plant. They weighed an overall average of 5.8 ounces each.
With Beefmasters, in 2007, I had 1,400 tomatoes from 7 plants, 200 tomatoes per plant, with an average weight of almost 10 ounces each.
If you want to get your neighbor something for Christmas this year, you might consider “the Organic Tomato” DVD. (If he only gives you 5 lbs. of tomatoes next summer, you’ll be way ahead!)
Lee O’Hara
