Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Gardeners use roots to keep past alive
Janet Lembke, Correspondent
http://www.newsobserver.com/1127/story/465798.html

Our notions of right and suitable food are strongly colored by early
experience. For me, the ideal dinner was, and always shall be, that served
by my Virginia grandmother during World War II: a roasting chicken brought
by horse and buggy from a Mennonite farm, asparagus and tomatoes from my
great-aunt's victory garden, and grocery-store rice, plus biscuits and
devil's food cake baked that very day in my grandmother's kitchen. Today,
no matter where I am, that dinner retains its primacy.

In her grand new book "The Earth Knows My Name," master gardener Patricia
Klindienst crosses the United States to talk with men and women who have
re-created New World gardens faithful to their native cultures. One of
them, Polish-American Gerard Bentryn, now a vintner on Bainbridge Island,
Wash., crystallizes the immigrant experience when he tells her, "First you
lose your costume. Then you lose your language. The last thing you lose is
your food."

Her quest was inspired by an unlikely gardener, the anarchist Bartolomeo
Vanzetti. As he lingered in prison before his execution, he found solace in
memories of his father's lush gardens in Italy (not incidentally, the
native land of Klindienst's family). Vanzetti's words led her to this
theme: "Where might we begin the work of remembering who and what we are?
The simple answer I offer here is, in the gardens of ethnic Americans."

Oh, the gardens she tours! They are as multifarious as the people who
cultivate and cherish them. The first garden is that of Clayton Brascoupe,
a Native American living in Tesuque Pueblo, N.M. He aims with considerable
success to restore traditional Three Sisters practices -- gardens
interplanted with corn, squash and beans -- to this arid land. Why aim for
restoration? Haven't the three sisters been the prime crops since time
immemorial? As she does on every garden visit, Klindienst looks here into
the history of this region -- the coming of the Spaniards, their
introduction of foreign livestock and crops, and the native population's
loss of much, from language to religion. Brascoupe, understanding that the
land is sacred, teaches several methods by which it can maintain its
integrity: biointensive gardening, which restores soil, and permaculture,
"a design system for creating sustainable human environments."

rest of article at
http://www.newsobserver.com/1127/story/465798.html