Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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

Hundreds of jars from such a small spot is at the extreme end of small
garden accomplishment.  You know it can be done, and you know how.  BTW you
anywhere near Wytheville, Marion, or Pulaski?

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 12/1/2007 at 8:52 PM Liz wrote:

>At 02:58 PM 11/30/2007, you wrote:
>
>>Thanks, I'll answer that.
>><snip>
>>It was an immigrant neighborhood, Italian,
>>Greek, and so forth. And they all grew pretty much the same way with
>little
>>money invested and even less work. Their own garden was only dug up at
the
>>beginning but never afterward. They weren't obsessed with weeding. Her
>>father manured it each year and kept permanent paths to walk on without
>>compacting the growing areas. No neat rows, no chemicals, no tillers. And
>>always, they cooked from the garden.
>
>
>And I'll chime in to add that it took me exactly two years in a 
>coastal area with very sandy soil to get a backyard garden prolific 
>enough to provide most of the family's food.  We composted anything 
>that didn't run away, covered the soil with ours and all the 
>neighbors' newspapers to keep weeds from growing (and keep the soil 
>moist), grew open-pollinated varieties that would take wider 
>variations in growing conditions than most hybrids, and figured out 
>100 new ways to prepare zucchini. My kids still talk about the 
>incredible tomatoes we had. And I canned hundreds of jars of 
>vegetables to keep us going throughout the winters, in addition to 
>what we ate fresh. We had a fairly large city lot, maybe twice the 
>size they typically are nowadays, but that was all. It was a lot of 
>hard work at the beginning, but after that, things pretty much kept 
>themselves going. And the only help I had was three kids from 6 to 10 
>years old.
>
>Liz in SW VA
>http://life-as-a-spectator-sport.com 
>
>_______________________________________________
>Livingontheland mailing list
>Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
>http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland