Jule Klotter
Twelve years ago this month—on the advice of multiple gardening books—I started a gardening journal. It marked my determination to grow organic vegetables. One would think that growing vegetables would simply require following directions and a lot of physical labor.
But which directions? Like so much in life, there is more than one way to reach a goal.
All the gardening books and the Master Gardeners that I queried every Saturday morning at the local farmer market suggested starting small. Good advice. I decided to start small by using containers to grow two tomato plants, two pepper plants, Malabar spinach, and basil. The 3-gallon containers received plenty of sunlight and were easy to water. I had used a recommended combination of peat, vermiculite, and manure as soil. Light, water, and dirt—what more could they need?
According to my journal, the tomatoes got end blossom rot and tomato hookworms stripped leaves, ate tomatoes, and left dark poop pellets on the concrete walkway. Hail and windstorms knocked one container over. Despite this, I managed to harvest seven tomatoes. Peppers were another story; only one small green pepper was produced. Learning to grow food is not for the easily discouraged.
The person at the farm store explained that lime was needed to prevent end blossom rot in tomatoes and other vegetables. But how much lime? Too much of any necessary mineral—whether calcium or phosphorus or nitrogen—can cause other problems. I didn’t want to constantly test and re-test. There had to be another way.
A turning point for me was listening to a two-part podcast, hosted by Jill Cloutier, called “Life Within the Soil.”1 The interview with Doug Weatherbee introduced me to the idea of permaculture and the work of microbiologist and soil biology researcher Elaine Ingham.2 Weatherbee explained the symbiotic relationship between plants and microbes in the soil; plants provide simple sugars as food for the bacteria and fungi, which then provide the minerals and nutrients plants need.
As Dr. Ingham explained in another podcast, it’s the amount of life, of microbes—not minerals and nutrients—that determine the health of the plants.3 Dr. Ingham has developed a system to regenerate soil within months and taught others the techniques, which are now used throughout the world.4
Instead of growing plants, my focus turned to “growing soil”—finding ways to provide an environment that allowed beneficial microbes to thrive. Regenerating the soil makes plants resistant to pests and disease and more productive. Plowing, chemical fertilizers, herbicides—the mainstays of conventional food production—cause dysbiosis, an imbalance, in the soil environment.
I couldn’t begin to identify the diverse microbes and nutrients needed so that meant moving from containers to actual garden beds. Every year I tried a different method—lasagna gardening, a keyhole garden, double-digging.
I finally decided on a combination of double-digging to create a bed (because of the heavy clay soil) and composting in place by growing cover crops (buckwheat, winter rye, sunn hemp, vetch, clover, etc.) and then folding the plants over and covering them with straw or hay so that they decay in place, providing food for the soil’s inhabitants. Before planting, I also add some compost from the bins where I collect leaves, kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, and other compostable materials. I now have four 3’ by 14’ vegetable beds and five 3’ by 10’ beds surrounded by fencing to keep the deer out.
Every season I try growing a new vegetable or variety. Last summer I bought a “Carbon” tomato plant from a farm store; it stunned me with its vigorous growth and the fruit’s complex taste and meaty texture. I’ve already bought seeds to grow more next summer.
Peppers are no longer a challenge; they are quite content to produce abundantly into the fall when given an occasional supplement of foliar calcium spray made from eggshells to prevent end blossom rot. The garden has also produced various types of garlic, summer squash, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, cabbage, collards, kale, and most recently spinach.
Apparently, previous attempts at growing spinach were thwarted by critters who enjoyed eating the sprouting greens. Last fall, I started the plants indoors and transplanted them to the garden when they had four good-size leaves. This time they made it to maturity. It has encouraged me to try a similar strategy with English peas, which had failed to grow in previous years.
In addition to getting me outdoors and providing exercise, my vegetable garden has taught me about patience (to everything there is a season), resilience (if at first you don’t succeed…), and, perhaps most importantly, the value of observing and working with nature instead of trying to force a quick result.
If the microbial environment in soil determines the health of plants, what about the microbial environment in our bodies? We think we can take probiotics and supplements to strengthen the gut microbiome that is under assault from antibiotics, pesticides, and the many chemicals added by the food industry to increase shelf-life and prevent spoilage. But is that true? Would it be possible to protect and nourish the human microbiome like the soil food web? And if we could “grow soil” internally, what would human health look like?
A few weeks before our last frost date, I’ll start planting cabbage seeds and those English peas indoors. I feel blessed to have a long growing season here in the South, access to a garden, and the physical ability to work the soil. I am also blessed to live in a state that encourages small farmers who grow heirloom vegetables and who use sustainable practices to raise meat animals.5
Not everyone is so fortunate.
I hope in the coming year each of you finds a local farmers market or a neighbor or community garden that shares fresh produce. And if you have the inclination (and haven’t already), think about growing soil.
In This Issue
Erik Peper, PhD, and Richard Harvey, PhD, examine the connections between food quality and health in their article “Are Food Companies Responsible for the Epidemic in Diabetes, Cancer, Dementia and Chronic Disease and Do Their Products Need to Be Regulated Like Tobacco?” Ultra-processed foods now account for 55% to over 80% of the calories consumed in the US, corresponding to a huge increase in obesity and chronic health issues.
The authors see a parallel between the tobacco industry with its heavy advertising program and its denial of nicotine’s addictive effects and the food industry. Food manufacturers have created chemical additives that “trick the brain” into desiring more of their products; in a sense, they have hacked the body’s evolutionary survival mechanisms to create a demand for these adulterated foods.
The health hazards of smoking are now widely recognized, and smoking rates have declined. Can we do the same with ultra-processed foods?
References
- Cloutier J. Life Within the Soil – Part 1 of a 2 Part Interview with the Soil Doctor. Sustainable World Radio. January 10, 2011. https://sustainableworldradio.com/life-within-the-soil-part-1-of-a-2-part-interview-with-the-soil-doctor/
- Dr. Elaine’s Soil Food Web School. https://www.soilfoodweb.com/
- Cloutier J. The Universe Beneath Our Feet – The Soil Food Web. April 8, 2016. https://sustainableworldradio.com/the-universe-beneath-our-feet-the-soil-food-web/
- https://www.soilfoodweb.com/about/
- Cloutier J. Growing Soil, Biodiversity, and Food with Grassfed Animals. November 18, 2016. https://sustainableworldradio.com/growing-soil-biodiversity-and-food-with-grassfed-animals/
Published January 13, 2024