Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[mtncats <mtncats@yahoo.com>]

Good morning Paul,

 

Looks to me that cost of production will be the key.  Anybody producing has some incentive to pay attention.  Those engaged as a business won't be long, if they don't.  As you've mentioned, Coleman goes into this.  Gardening and running a business aren't mutually exclusive, but are often not combined.  To me, a non-commercial grower, it's still very important.  Nor do I isolate material from labor costs.

 

While my mother may have done a poor job of teaching me to grow well, she and my father did teach me simple economics.  Unfortunately, this seems to be unusual today.  Evidenced almost everywhere you look. 

 

A clear comparison between my approach and my neighbor's, while slightly OT, would be our housing choices.  Both of us have custom houses.  Mine is the essence of simplicity, with no apparent heating/cooling system and all maintenance nearly completely eliminated.  His is an incredibly complicated mix of high-tech systems, all requiring skilled technicians.  Needless to say, his cost many times what I spent, and will continue to do so indefinitely.  And yet, he believes we have similar houses, took umbrage when I suggested they were polar opposites. 

 

Our food growing follows the same patterns.  While I love my tractors, they've got almost nothing to do with food production.  Cost too much, from my perspective, to run/maintain for the little benefit he sees using his.  But, like his house, he doesn't see (or deem important) the cost.  And this is still totally ignoring the effect on soil (or the general environment); a slightly more esoteric argument if approaching the same end, cost.

 

Not unlike the herbicide/GM seed scheme.  Seems clear to me, but for believers it'll take economic shock to get them to peek behind that curtain.  Folks around here think I'm simply cheap. 

 

They're not wrong, but miss the larger picture.  You might think that the 2 master gardeners (both good friends) who've visited here and discussed growing would have been more curious but that didn't happen.  The wife of the one visiting last summer wanted to know why my tomatoes were so much more vigorous than theirs.

 

They were standing on my compost "pile", which doesn't look like much of anything.  I pointed down and said it was the dirt.  End of conversation.  At least they did notice my companion "plantings".  In quotations, as almost everything they saw were volunteers.  Certainly not orderly, but there's a complete meal in one small raised bed.  Which, after I cut off the tall plants, is what's now happily growing under glass, recycled from fogged sliding door panels.  . 

 

I know their neighborhood well.  Old subdivision built on a steep hill with no erosion plan.  They think it normal that the topsoil gets washed down the hill.  They also know it's a problem for gardening.  Why there isn't a constructive connection is the mystery.  Importing new dirt isn't the answer.

 

Trying to change the world, I'll leave to others.  Suffices for me to create an example (perhaps) worth examining.  Really tickled me yesterday to get the ear of those guys planning new houses.  Whether or not they'll follow through remains to be seen.  I only planted the seed.  In what I hope was fertile soil, rarely found.   

 

Tom (in central Va)

      

TradingPostPaul <tradingpost@riseup.net> wrote in part:

Very interesting to compare your and your neighbor side by side. Esp since
your costs are lower. I keep reading how conventional farmers are facing
higher and higher costs.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

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