April 16th, 2008 · No Comments

These efficiencies are tried and true. As Joyce Cooper, another member of the Travis County Master Gardeners writes in the group’s newsletter, “Natural gardening practices are not new…Rainwater harvesting, natural soil conditioners and the promotion of beneficial insects are all actually a return to the gardening practices used prior to World War II. We’ve come full circle.”

The return of these “old” ways is quite exciting, and may even be necessary in an increasingly polluted world that needs healthy food production, Ms. Cooper says, which is why the Austin gardeners decided to focus on sustainability issues as the theme for the 2008 tour.

ORGANIC GARDEN = ORGANIC FOOD

Organic gardening not only saves the planet from more pesticide overload, recent research shows that organically grown plants are often hardier and produce fruits and vegetables with higher nutritive content. The Organic Center reports on its science pages that organically grown veggies are higher in anti-oxidants than their cousins grown with chemical prompts.
So aside from conditioning the soil, these organic and sustainable practices may actually make your tomatoes juicier, tastier and quite possibly, more potent.

It’s the circular or to use today’s terminology “closed loop” system that seems to bring success: The diverse plantings (with most of the ground covered) make organic gardening easier, because the bugs “get confused” (Bakatsa’s words) and skip over many plants or they alight in a few spots and move on, never wiping out an entire species. Meanwhile, plants shelter other plants, the soil is enriched, because it’s better covered and less weedy and no chemicals have destroyed the “beneficials” or microbials in the soil.

The Native Americans seemed to know this intuitively and through experience. They developed companion planting techniques in which plants supported each other, like the famous “Three Sisters” method of planting corn, beans and squash together. The corn provides a tower for the bean vines to climb. The beans supply the earth with nitrogen to feed the corn. The leafy squash plants add compost to the soil at the end of their life cycle.

Of course, the Native Americans couldn’t get weed-and-feed at Home Depot. Still, the principle of planting complementary plants can work in almost any modern garden, be it in Texas or in Maryland.

In Maryland, for instance, the Frederick County Master Gardener Program promotes companion gardening and other sustainable practices as ways to reduce chemical reliance.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5