Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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A Conversation with Michael Pollan
http://www.organicgardening.com/feature/0,7518,s1-65-70-1810,00.html
By Therese Ciesinski

The author of The Botany of Desire and The Omnivore's Dilemma talks about 
gardening, nature, and (gasp!) why organic isn't what it's cracked up to be.

Pollan's small garden packs a lot of growing and living into a relatively 
small area. It's dominated by three large raised cedar beds filled with 
vegetables and herbs, which grow more than enough for Pollan, his wife, 
Judith Belzer, and son, Isaac. Taking up most of the remaining space is a 
huge fire pit, where the family often cooks. The August day is cool and 
overcast, but dry-typical Bay Area weather. We sit outdoors on a patio made 
of basalt that forms a black grid against the pale gravel paths.

His book The Botany of Desire has just been made into a PBS documentary, and 
we talk about how gardening requires us to have a plan, an agenda, but that 
sometimes what we grow has one, too. Certain plants succeed in getting humans 
to help them evolve and establish in places they couldn't get to without us, 
and they do it by appealing to human desires.

"The botany of desire is very much about getting in the gardener's head. I 
think gardeners instinctively understand this idea that they're manipulated 
by their plants-that it is a two-way street; you can't call all the shots. 
You have to let go."

Pollan discovered he was holding on too tightly when, as a novice gardener, 
he was driven to firestorm the burrow of a woodchuck that was raiding his 
vegetables, almost immolating his garden in the process. He realized that 
Americans have a split personality when it comes to the natural world: We 
simultaneously worship it and try to control it. But nature always has the 
last word. "I'm interested in the tension between the practical and the 
theoretical, and the garden's the place where we work it out. We read books 
to learn how to garden; then the reality turns out to be very complicated. It 
doesn't come out the way it's supposed to in the book, and there are always 
surprises." There sure are.

The photographer asks for an "action shot," and Pollan obligingly begins 
pruning an overgrown zucchini. There's a snip, then a "darn it." He's clipped 
too much and now holds a contorted bouquet of vines, leaves, flowers, and 
baby zucchini. So much for control. Sometimes we're our own woodchucks.

Want More?
Find the full article "A Conversation with Michael Pollen" in the 
November-January 2010 issue of Organic Gardening Magazine.