Rehabilitating the Gothic Greenhouse

I have 3 Gothic greenhouses that I constructed pretty cheaply out of electrical conduit and clips.  The construction information was published in an article with Maximum Yield (October 2008) and is also available on the Bountea website.

The North greenhouse was in dire need of rehabilitation.  In 2008, a snowfall of over 4 feet got wedged in the narrow pathway next to the greenhouse.  The pressure of the snow pushed in the conduit ribs somewhat, though it continued to function fine.  At long last, I  got round to extending the greenhouse sideways (getting rid of the pathway) to incorporate a bottle wall that will add thermal mass.

I re-bent the conduit ribs and attached them to the bottle wall.  Now I am rebuilding the end walls to enclose everything.  I intend to create a 2 foot wide cold frame against the bottle wall so that my winter plants will get a little extra warmth.  More later.

Late Harvest

It has been a slow summer in the vegetable garden.  Except for a 2 week period of severe heat, it has been generally cool after a very cold spring.  The tomatoes are only just getting going; some plants do not even have flowers.  I still have no peppers, cucumbers or summer squash and the beans are just beginning to set. 

The cool weather crops are naturally doing better than usual: I just harvested the last of the peas; the fava beans are still cropping; the cabbages, turnips and carrots are sweet.  Last nigh we ate a medley of sauteed peas, tiny beans, carrots and rutabaga - yum!

Opening the Garden

The Boulder Culinary Gardener opens individual members gardens to other gardeners during the summer.  On 1st August it was our turn and after a burst of weeding and house cleaning, about 30 people made the trip up the mountain.

It rained and rained and the temperature dropped down into the 50's!  Still, the hollyhocks made a brave showing, snacks were consumed and I learned more about the amazing resilience of bindweed.

Garlic

I rather overdid planting garlic last year - a full 6' x 4' bed closely planted.  Unfortunately, we took a trip to California just when the garlic was ready for harvest.  By the time we came back, all the stems had shriveled and the cloves were bursting out of their skins.

Digging the garlic without stems is a real pain and with little skins protection, the cloves are unlikely to last into the winter.  On the positive side, the skins simply dropped off and the cloves were extremely easy to peel.  Now we have bags of garlic in the freezer, roast garlic paste in the fridge and a big jar of pickled garlic.  The trug (English garden basket) pictured is  what we have left after giving lots to friends.

The garlic bed is newly seeded with spelt and buckwheat.  By September, it will be ready for winter crops.

San Francisco Indoor Gradening Expo

On the last weekend in July San Francisco hosted the biggest hydroponics and organic gardening show in the country.  This year, Organic Bountea shared a booth with our distributor, Humboldt Wholesale.  With the support of Humboldt Wholesale, Bountea products are now carried by nearly 100 stores across the country.  

Look for stores carrying the full line of our products under STORE LOCATOR on the Bountea website. 

Big Changes

Woops - I seem to have neglected this blog for awhile!  Some of that time I was in Ireland - a bit like returning to the technological dark ages.  I was visiting my large extended family and particularly my father Mike Evans, the gardening patriarch; he will be 97 years old this month.  Grandpa Mike is slowing down and only manages to garden a couple of hours each day.  He complains that the Bountea makes everything grow so fast that he can never keep up. (see more pictures of Ireland on Rocky Mountain Living)

Part of the reasons for the trip was discussions with a Dutch distributor of compost tea systems who will be carrying Bountea products in Europe.  That will hopefully happen before the end of the year.  Every few days we get requests from Ireland, Sweden, Portugal and even Turkey for our products.  It will be satisfying to be able to provide what people want and need.

At the beginning of June, Organic Bountea moved to a bigger and better warehouse and facilities near Sebastopol in California.  It is beautiful wine country with just the kind of environment we were looking for: quiet and peaceful but close enough to main trucking routes.  We are settling in and working hard to get production back up to speed. 

As Lao Tzu possibly said: "Moving is natural, stagnation is sickness."

Sutherlands Mother's Day Plant Sale

They call it, "Punching for Posies" - 3,000 revved up gardeners lined up to get the best deals in bedding plants, perennials and veggie starts at Sutherlands Mother's Day plant sale.  To calm the competitive spirit, music and food were provided; a well-organized system of tickets and payment kept it all moderately under control.

Bountea had a strong presence, handing out samples of SuperStart and educating some of the "bedding-planters" into the wonders of organic growing and compost tea. It still surprises me that only about 1 in 20 of Boulder residents has any interest or concern for their soil.  For the vast majority, it is stick in the plant and dump on the Miracle Grow!  Still, a few of those standing in line took the time to talk with myself or Stacey.

Person by person, gardeners are slowly taking more care of their soil ecology.

Cleaning the Pond

The pond was a mess.  After the long winter and recent 80 mph winds, it was full of pine needles, pieces of paper and a bunch of plastic plant pots.  I had not deep-cleaned it for about 5 years, so the bottom was covered with smelly black gunk and reed roots.

I pumped out as much water as possible, took off my jeans and plunged into the muck up to my knees.  After doing basic cleaning, a heroic battle ensued with the hydra roots of the water lilly.  From a tiny pot, it had grown to a 3 ft square slimy mass weighing 50 lb or more.  Sword in hand, I chopped it down to a mere 30 lb solid block and refilled with clean clear water.


The pictures are from fall and early spring last year.

Gray-water Irrigation System

The snow has finally melted and the frosts are intermittent, so it is time to redo the greenhouse watering system.

Water from the roof, showers and the clothes washer is collected in a 200 gallon tank.  I have diverter valves on the drain pipes in the crawl space that I turn on in the Spring and off in the Winter.

From the tank, the gray-water is filtered and travels underground to each of the 3 greenhouses via a 1" plastic pipe.  Each greenhouse has a shutoff to isolated the 1/2" distribution pipe that channels the water to the t-tape (flat drip tape) that runs the length of each greehouse bed.

This weekend, I cleaned out the supply pipes by attaching them to a pressurized hose, checked the filter system and started laying new t-tape.  I was excited because i had found some t-tape with 4 inch spaced emitters made especially for greenhouses. 

Unfortunately, once I had cut the the tape to the right lengths, set them up nicely and turned on the water, I found the company, Rain-Flo Irrigation had sent me t-tape with 12" spaced emitters.   They refused to credit me for the unused portion, so I am stuck with them.

Such is dealing with companies with poor customer service!  I will get the right stuff and try again when I have time.

Bountea and Wonder Soil

Organic Bountea and Wonder Soil, a company out of Las Vegas, are partnering in the development of new products.  Wonder Soil has a great line of compressed coir based (coconut fiber) products that expand as much as 9 times when water is added.  I am testing a mix of coir and Humisoil for germination growth rates.  Many of the seeds popped out of the soil mix in 2 days!  Expect to see Bountea Wonder Soil on the website within a few months.

I am not a good researcher and get impatient with comparative trials.  It is strange not to give each of my plants the best nurturing I can provide.  When I see a plant not thriving, I automatically reach for some remedy -- and spoil the trial!

Supporting Peas

The peas are about 2" - 6" and in need of support.  I have tried all sorts of methods: the English traditional methods are twiggy branches or mesh netting.  I don't like either as they are messy and hard to reuse.

After a lot of experimentation, I use a rather stiff metal mesh 4 feet high, that I stick into the ground and either tie to greenhouse ribs or to long stakes.  The mesh is fairly cheap, easy to clean and lasts indefinitely.  The peas seem to love it and crops are heavier and longer.

Do not listen to those seed companies that say you do not need to support dwarf pea varieties.  Peas love to climb and the higher the better.

Foaming Bountea

Time for another dose of Bountea in the garden.  I left it a little long and the foam started spilling over. 

I believe foam is a great indicator of biological activity and am told it contains the bodies of dead microbes!

I have heard that some "experts" say the foam comes from the yucca in the Bioactivator.  This does not quite make sense as it only happens when it is warm and has been brewing for a few hours.

If you want to reduce foaming, just add a little cooking oil to the brew.

Digging in the Garden

I was away over the last week and could not get into the garden.  So this last weekend was a bit of a marathon. 

I found that some strange roots (possibly aspen) had invaded some greenhouse beds and created a interlaced network about 9" below the surface.  Out came the Big fork (10" tines while the Little fork has 5" tines) and I had an energetic time getting most of the roots out.

Although I espouse minimal dig methods which only disturb the top 4 inches of the soil, I actually love to dig!  I was raised on double-digging that goes down 18" but that is not a good idea in my sandy soil.  So I create new beds (like the potatoes) or renovate the old ones as an excuse to get some real exercise.  I have my eye on a new patch for next week!

Potatoes

I have a complicated relationship with potatoes.  When I was 18 and living on a tiny croft farm on the Sheepshead Penninsula in the far South of Ireland, we planted potatoes in lazy-beds every year (see Bountea Article).  With the rain, peaty soil and a helping of cow manure, the potatoes simply grew themselves.

In my sandy alkali soil, I have had problems getting any kind of crop - and the potatoes often have a nasty dose of scab.  Last year I grew a couple of varieties of fingerlings with moderate success.  I dug deep trenches and filled them with peatmoss and pine tree mulch.  The more acid environment did help contain the scab.

This Sunday I started two new beds; potatoes like fresh soil.  I had forgotten how rocky my soil can be as I removed about 60 pounds of stones from an area 30" x 60".  I am trying the car tire approach: you plant 2 or 3 potatoes and cover with a car tire.  As the plant grows, you fill in the tire with more mulch and soil around the stem to provide an environment for the setting of extra potatoes.  There is a concern that the tires might leach chemicals but I will use weed block to keep the roots from touching the rubber.

I contacted the seed potato supplier, Ronniger Potato Farm, and asked for scab resistant varieties. Of their suggestions, I ordered Keuka Gold.  I also planted Peanut fingerlings for great taste.  Ronnigers also told me that I was probably not watering enough and the dry soil was promoting scab.

With better information and a few new growing tricks, I expect to a bumper crop of potatoes this year.

Mountain Gardeners Meeting

The food was wonderful, the conversation all about gardening - what could be better!  The Boulder Mountain Organic Gardeners had their first meeting with just 10 members - but a whole host waiting in the wings.  The conversation ranged over topics of intense interest to mountain gardeners:

• Plant protection vs. the devastation of hail, wind and critters
• Pollination by other insects than bees
• Which varieties of vegetable grow best at altitude and in short seasons
• How to get our rocky soil to become and stay fertile
• Project Budburst (www.budburst.org) - keeping exact records on plant development to help track climate change for UCAR in Boulder
• Encouraging the growth of aspens using wood-ash -- but make sure keep them far from your garden!

We meet next month in the mountain town of Nederland.

Preparing for Spring with Microbes

Not a very interesting weekend in the garden - mostly clean-up after the snow and getting ready for the burst of growth that will happen as soon as it stops freezing at night.

I sowed more cover crops (peas and barley), planted out the leeks and transplanted lots of Swiss chard seedlings that had set themselves.  The variety is my favorite - Verte a Carde Blanche - very sweet with a wide white stem and slightly crumpled deep green leaves.  We use the leaves and stem as almost separate vegetables.

I ran a bunch of Fall leaves through the shredder ready for another compost pile.  The old pile had cooled down so I turned it over, added a couple of handfuls of rock dust, some M3 and a good dose of Bountea.  The extra nitrogen and microbes really worked - in a couple of days it was steaming hot again.

It is always best to add all amendments, particularly rock dust, to either the Bountea or your compost pile. That way everything gets processed by the microbes.  Microbes are king of the garden. The picture is of microbes in compost tea.

Green Manure for Tomatoes

This is the right time to begin thinking about your tomato beds.  I am not  exactly sure where all the varieties will fit but I know they like lots of food.  I had 15 minutes to spare today, so I sowed some green manure in a couple of places.

I gave the 2 beds (each 4' x 6') a shallow forking and raked them smooth.  This year I am experimenting with Field Peas and Spelt.  I usually use clover and barley but I wanted a change.  The big seeds are easily sprinkled over the soil.  I gently raked them in and covered with a light dusting of leaves.  That's it.

The seeds should germinate quickly with the peas climbing up the spelt stems as they grow.  In May/June, I will fork them under and plant the tomatoes.

Boulder Mountain Organic Gardeners

I have been a member of the Boulder Culinary Gardeners (BCG) for a number of years.  It is wonderful collection of avid vegetable gardeners with a vast range of experience.  Lately the group has become so popular that it has been hard to hold meetings of the whole group.  Instead it now provides classes on a number of gardening topics to all comers.

One difficulty I have with BCG is that members mostly garden in the Boulder flatlands at around 5,500 altitude.  That means they enjoy an unfair growing advantage over us Mountain gardeners.  The season is shortened by about 10 days for every 1000 ft altitude; my last frost date can be June 1st.  The picture is of the path to my greenhouses.

So a few of us hardy Mountain gardeners have got together to start our own group: Boulder Mountain Organic Gardeners (BMOG).  We hope to hold our first big meeting in a couple of weeks.  You have to be crazy to garden in the Rocky Mountains so it should be interesting!

If you are a gardener, think about joining or forming your own group.  It is an immensely valuable arena to share gardening experiences. Tell me about your.

Why Do We Garden? #2

Gardening is never done, is never complete, is never totally under control.  To garden is to inhabit a world where the need to create order, design, form comes up against the forces of chaos, unpredictability and serendipity.  We have to face the fact that we are attempting to impose our will on a patch of ground - and it will resist.  

This is not because nature is ‘bloody-minded’.   It is more that we are part of a universe that is neither totally orderly nor totally disordered.  In technical terms, the universe and our garden, are “chaotic”.  As we try to impose order, it will inject the unpredictable - not do exactly as it is told.   In this way, gardens are a bit like adolescent children: they naturally resist parental control but will sometimes comply if cajoled, encouraged, nagged or screamed at. 

A gardener has to be an intelligent, loving and firm parent figure to the forces of nature that wish to grow wild and free.  Maybe the gardening personality is one in which the need to to have control is balanced with the need for acceptance.  Maybe the gardener is one who is seeking to come to terms with the universal laws of chaos.  Are you involved in the struggle between order and chaos?

Brewing Bountea - the lazy way

Yes, I have only just got round to brewing my first batch of Bountea! 

 

Being a rather rough-and-ready gardener, I am not too picky about the brewing process.  Sometimes I brew for 24 hours - sometimes I leave it for as long as four days (and pop in a little extra Bioactivator).  Instead of a 4-gallon Brew Kit, I use a large 50-gallon Brewer.  This allows me to make a diluted batch and treat the greenhouses straight from the barrel.

During the Winter, water barrels in the greenhouse provide thermal mass; the one nearest the door now becomes the brewing container.  I simply throw in the diffuser unit, attach the air pump and put in a heater unit if it is cold at night.  Then I add the same ingredients as for a 4 gallon brew: 2 quarts of Humisoil and a cup of Bioactivator.  This makes a rather dilute brew but is easy for me to remember.

Because the temperature is cold, I brew for 48 hours.  I like to see a bit of foam on the top as this tells me the bacterial microbes are reproducing well; this only happens if the brew is warm.  Longer, cooler brews tend not to produce much foam but often have a stronger population of fungal microbes.  Early in the season, I am looking for more bacteria than fungi in the brew as this is what fast-growing, leafy vegetables like.

During the last hour or two of the brewing process I add a cup of M3.  This is particularly important if I want my greens and salads to grow fast and sweet.  Right at the end, I add 1/2 - 1 cup of Root Web (if this is the first brew).  Root Web is amazing.  It not only helps the roots of most vegetables grow stronger and more efficient, it also puts carbon into the soil.  Mycorrhizae capture carbon dioxide from the air and create a stable sticky black carbon chain called glomalin. This is the binding substance of fertile soil.

When my Bountea brewing is done, I fill my watering can and splash it all over the greenhouses and garden.  Even easier, I use a cheap sump pump that I cover with a strainer bag.  This is dumped into the barrel of Bountea  and I hose the beautiful brown stuff wherever I want - can't be easier!

Peas, Carrots and Parsnips

Two feet of snow this week - time to dig another path to the greenhouses! 

March is an important month for sowing cool weather seeds for a mid summer crop, so there is some pressure to get stuff in.  I have a row of early sown peas just coming up, but there can never be too many.  We eat the snow and sugar snaps in salads or straight off the vine.  The pod peas we consider special food as they are less prolific at this altitude.

I plant peas in the cool greenhouse; shading extends their flowering and cropping into late summer.  When the snow melts, I will plant a later crop in the garden beds.  I had sown a January cover crop of rye in the greenhouse and I simply turned the 5" purplish leaves into the soil.  Peas are planted 1/2" deep in three rows about 3" apart every way (I sow each row offset from the others to save room).  I always protect with a floating row cover in case mice and voles eat the tender shoots.

Peas
Mammoth Melting Snow - the earliest, very prolific and hardy and keeps cropping until it gets hot
Cascadia Snap - a small bushy sweet snap that did well last year when planted late and neglected
Sugarsnap Snap - our favorite, with the plump sugary pods that are just wonderful
Mr Big Pea - big pods with lots of peas that have a large pea floury flavor
Mayfair Pea - smaller bushy sweeter variety of pod pea.
I believe all pea vines need to be supported.  The bushy varieties will double their crop if they have something to climb on and will not get so many diseases.  I will talk about support suggestions later.

Peas and carrots are good companions, so I planted rows of carrots between the peas.  The peas shade the carrots a little but will be finished before the carrots are ready to crop.
Carrots
Scarlet Nantes - our favorite, very tasty, especially in the Fall
Red Cored Chantenay - a pretty-looking tasty variety that keeps well over the winter
Atomic Red - did OK last year but not a favorite
St Valery - new this year
Yaya - new this year, love the name!
Danvers Half Long - good reliable variety

Parsnips
I always plant parsnips though they can be tricky to get started; the seeds are very slow to germinate.  Harris Model is a so-so variety but often the only one available.  I found a very nice Biodynamic variety some time ago (forgot the name) and am planting my own seeds from it.  Parsnips are planted like chard and beets - 3 seeds about 3" - 4" apart and then thin out the weaker plants.

What's Happening with John Evans?

My brother John is the brilliant inventor of the Bountea Growing System.  He has an intuitive feel for the needs of the soil and plants -- he just seems to know what they need.   However, like many inventor types, he is most excited and entranced by the next big project, the next gigantic challenge.  The everyday grind of running a small business is not for him - so he helps us with product development but keeps to the background of Organic Bountea.

For the last 2 years John has been on a quest to change agriculture in the Philippines.  It is a developing country with wild weather and wildly 'interesting' people.  It suits John perfectly.  The picture is of John (front, second from right) with his Bantay Bayan partners traveling by bus to a Compost Tea seminar.

I am helping John set up and populate his blog - "John Evans - Quantum Soil."  You can also find the link on this page. Hopefully we can keep it updated and entertaining.

New Bountea Catalog

Our new CATALOG is just printed and should be on the shelves and in your hands in a few weeks.  In the meantime, you can download the pdf.  It includes not only our product information but instructions on how to brew Bountea with in-depth brewing tips, application charts and more.  Please let me know what you think.

Planting Tomato Varieties

I am late planting tomato seeds inside.  Last Friday, I made up another batch of starting mix (coir, Humisoil, sand) with a little SuperStart and added a bit of M3, as tomatoes are heavy feeders.  The 2 1/2" seed containers are a good size and I put one seed in each containers -- about 6 plants of each variety.

Tomatoes are easy to germinate and I always have too many plants for my greenhouses - so I sell, swap or give away the extra.  Here is what I planted this year.

Prudens Purple: our favorite - large, late, heavy cropping, extraordinary vivid taste, deep pink P
Cherokee Purple: great taste, green/purple, medium large F
Aunt Ruby's German Green: new this year P
Glacier: very hardy and early, medium size, OK taste F

Sun Gold: the standard gold cherry, heavy cropping, reliable, sweet F
Gold Nugget: determinate, sweet, gold bush cherry - great for the deck containers P
Black Cherry: new this year P
Martinos Roma: new this year P
Black Plumb: favorite plumb - dark, tasty, good for drying (from a friend)
Orange ?: a variety given by a friend

I also planted some peppers and an eggplant.  I do not do well with them but keep trying different varieties.
Fooled You: new this year P
Klari Baby Cheese: new this year F
Napoleon: new this year P
Swallow Eggplant: new this year F

Do you have some favorite varieties you would like to share?  Please write a comment.

F = Fedco Seeds  P = Pinetree Seeds

Transplanting Onion and Leek Varieties

It snowed deeply last night.  I had to plow our road and dig a path to the greenhouses.  The picture is of our deck.
My first task was to transplant the onion seedlings that were languishing in a seed tray:

Greek Salad: a deep purple pungent onion that keeps well, has great taste but is hard to come by P
Tropea: an Italian thick neck variety - great flavor F
Red Marble: New to me F
Bunching Heshiko: Japanese geen onion type - good flavor P
White Scallions: very hardy and reliable F

Another tray is filled with leeks which I will transplant in a week or so:
Lincoln: the standard variety F
Lancelot: my favorite, non-hardy very long and sweet P
Bleu de Solaize: very hardy, overwinters well F
F = Fedco Seeds  P = Pinetree Seeds

The First Compost Pile of the Season

Saturday was a beautiful Spring day. In a burst of sun-induced energy, Orianne and I plunged into the garden. We stripped off the row covers to see what was alive, dug up the last leeks, cleared away the leaf mulch from the cover crops, tuned over a couple of small beds and made a bin of compost. 

We tend to collect a number of 5-gallon buckets of kitchen waste before I get round to composting them.  The buckets sit on our deck, slowly disintegrating into a stinky rotten mush.  This smelly decomposition is caused by anaerobic microbes that like a sodden acidic environment.  While this muck is not directly good for plants, it is high in nitrogen (the smell is ammonia, NH3) and makes excellent compost when mixed with garden waste.

I got the chipper shredder fired up - it is the secret to making quick compost.  I dumped alternating amounts of wet kitchen waste and dry leaves into the shredder hopper.  The ground mixture spewed straight into the 3' x 3' compost bay.  I turned the mixture, soaked it with plenty of water and covered the pile with a plastic sheet, a layer of carpet and an old comforter.  The next day it was heating nicely.

I managed to get stinking waste all over myself, so I smelled pretty bad afterward -- one of the many joys of composting.  

Any composting tips you would like to share?  Comments?  

Why Do We Garden? #1

Why do we garden? Most gardeners can create a ready list of reasons: to grow food, create beauty, keep fit, be in nature, etc.  These are true -- but they only reflect our surface intentions.  I am interested in the deeper motivations that push normal people to become dedicated or even compulsive gardeners.

To create a garden, to grow and arrange, is as much an inner activity as an outer one. We mold and sculpt the raw material of our gardens into a reflection of our yearnings and desires. Some of these desires are ego-driven. We want to create something extraordinary to command the admiration of the crowd -- even if that crowd is only ourself.

As I garden, I sometimes glimpse a hidden audience who look through my eyes and evaluate what I am doing. This can be helpful; it provides an objective evaluation of what I am trying to achieve.  It can also have the darker aspects of competitive criticism. The inner audience is judging me.  Without noticing, I start to gardening for these phantom others rather than myself. I become more concerned with how things look rather than how they feel.  I forget to ask the plants their opinion.  

Why do you garden?  Please let us know.

Oriental Greens

I love the hardiness, taste and versatility of oriental vegetable. We use them in salads, stir-frys and steamed together. The varieties I planted in October overwintered well in the green house despite -10F temperatures. Here is my list:

Fun Jen Pai Tsai is a loose-leaf light green Chinese cabbage - very hardy and mild tasting P

Tatsoi is a dark green Bok Choi type - good for stir-fries F

Mibuna is a Japanese spear-shaped mustard type green - very hardy E

Mizuma is a Japanese curly-leafed peppery green, less hardy - good for salads E

Chin-chiang Cabbage is is light green Bok Choi that grows tight - best harvested small E

Kojisan is a Komatsuna Japanese loose-leafy green - extremely hardy with large round dark green leaves E

Hon-Tsai Tai is a loose-leaf fast-growing purple green with a very sweet cabbage flavor E

Chinese Spinach is very hardy with spear-shaped leaves and an old-fashioned soapy flavor E

F = Fedco Seeds  P = Pinetree Seeds  E = EvergreenSeeds
My recommendation: Fun Jen Pai Tsai, Kojisan and Hon-Tsai Tai. Plant them now and in the Fall.

The Ecological Approach

Ecological gardening works with nature not against it. It accepts uncertainty and values questions more than answers: How do my actions impact the web of life? Am I forcing the environment to do what I will? How can I respect this ecology and help it create something of benefit to life and me? Am I giving back as much as I take?

These are difficult questions without simple solutions.

There is no avoiding the reality: gardeners mess with nature. It is not natural for me to have a garden in a mountain forest. My greenhouses, mostly made of non-renewable resources, allow me to recreate an ecosystem that is more like zone 6 than zone 3.5. In return, to balance the debt, I build fertile, microbial soil that would take thousands of years to create naturally.

For many years I tried to garden conventionally – and failed. My vegetables were mediocre; 50% of my plants and trees died. Only when I started using Bountea and built a foundation of living soil did my garden thrive. Now my garden ecology is full and rich. Birds flock to eat abundant insects and seeds. Bull snakes hunt the chipmunks (the picture is of one under my deck). The compost pile writhes with immigrant red worms. There is more of everything: bigger healthier cabbages and bigger healthier cabbage worms.

Steps to an Ecology of Gardening

To be an ecological gardener is more an attitude than a program. I try to look and listen to how nature does things and take that as my cue. Here are a few suggestions:

Waste nothing. Everything in nature is recycled and transformed into something useful. I put all organic material (and I mean all) through my shredder to make compost.

Work with the sun. All energy comes from the sun – and it keeps coming. Use natural light whenever possible. Get out in the sunlight. Trap it in a greenhouse and feed it to your plants.

Be generous. Nature is never stingy. It always creates more than it needs – more seeds, more weeds, more insects. I always plant too much. Then I have enough when chaos strikes, and plenty of gifts for friends.

Support diversity. Just look at the natural world -- it is rampant with diverse living organisms. I plant over thirty varieties of vegetables because I love the differences in taste and texture. Even my indoor plants have colonists and companions to keep them company.

Give more than you take. Life is a gift that can never be fully repaid. Add more life to your soil than you take from it. Nurture your plants with love, care, and natural foods.

Include yourself. Nature does not exclude you. You are a living organism and have similar needs for nurturing as your plants. Be your garden – grow yourself.

Planting Fava Beans

Like most gardeners from the UK, I love Broad Beans aka Fava Beans. They are easy to grow, heavy cropping and have a wonderful flavor -- once you get used to the stronger taste. They are great raw straight out of the pod, boiled quickly with a sprig of tarragon and a dab of butter, or cooked and added to salad. For a smoother sophisticated taste, you can strip the skins off once they are cooked -- but I think this is time-consuming and a waste of great nutrition.

Many people believe that favas cause an allergic reaction. This may be true for a tiny percentage of people but it is unheard of in England. Actually they are one of the most ancient foods grown in all countries around the Mediterranean, particularly North Africa. Favas are legumes but not actually beans; they are closer to peas and vetches so they need to do most of their growing in cool weather. When it gets hot, they will often drop their flowers and not set the pods. I always plant lots of favas in late Winter: they are Givers and add Nitrogen to the soil so tomatoes or other Takers can be the next crop.

I planted my favas inside in late January -- the old standby Windsor, a couple of Italian varieties Supersimonia (my favorite) and Violetta and a Japanese variety. The Japanese favas never sprouted but the other varieties grew tall and strong (some of them 2 feet). Even though we are still having snow and hard frosts, I had to get them out into the greenhouses.

I plant them in a double rows 8" apart and 8" spacing. Because it is still so cold and I had not hardened the plants off, I set them quite deeply in my sandy soil, then mulched the plants with 9" of leaves and covered everything with a floating row cover. I have not brewed Bountea yet, so I added a sprinkling of M3 and Root Web when I prepared the soil (I am out of SuperStart or I would have used that!)

Next weekend, I will do another big fava sowing in the cooler greenhouse. I want to see how that Japanese variety do when planted direct in the soil.

Garden Show in Las Vegas

Trapped inside a giant pyramid with no way to get out -- that is my experience of Las Vegas.

Bountea was exhibiting at the Las Vegas International Gardening Expo and I went along to help. The Expo was in the Mandalay Bay next door to my hotel (maybe 10 miles of corridor walking).

I live a sedate life at 7,400 ft in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains -- surrounded by Nature, my garden and plenty of snow. Las Vegas exists is a different universe. My first mistake was to book a room in the Luxor -- the pseudo-Egyptian hotel. All surrounding hotels run together like a giant maze, designed to trap me for eternity, requiring miles of hiking in artificially-lit giant structures. The outside world became a distant memory. On my way out to the airport shuttle, I followed the signs and found myself in a castle dungeon.

I did try to eat the "food" -- but, alas, it was not food. I craved living vegetables, real cups of tea. Thank God it was only 3 days and then home -- not enough time to starve but I could feel scurvy setting in.

The good part: the owner of Wonder Soil (http://www.wondersoil.com), Patti, helped me escape enough to remain sane -- to eat at a wonderful Japanese restaurant and to visit her factory to see the compressed coir wafers being made. Wonder Soil and Bountea are partnering in a new project that will hopefully bring our customers a truly innovative new product. More later.

I write this looking out at the pines, the snow and blue sky. Maybe it was all just a strangely disturbing dream (it seems to have made a real dent in the bank balance).