User:BluButterfly323/About you

Home Grown and loving it! I have been an amateur  gardener all my life. Personally I thought I knew what I was doing. Apparently I was wrong. How hard can this "growing stuff" be? Break up the soil, get rid of your weeds, make a few amendments, pop some plants and a few seeds in the ground with some water and fertilizer. Then stand back and let Mother Nature do her lovely thing. Chances are, if the weather cooperates, you see a slew of cucumbers, tomatoes, some tasty herbs that make your neighbors happy when you show up on their door with your surplus. Who doesn't like a rich home grown tomato fresh off the vine? (Especially if they didn't have to labor for it) Well honey, this year I have been baptized by the fire of environmental realism. It doesn't just miraculously happen because the sun rises every morning. There is a real science to all of this. And if you don't know what is happening 12 inches under your feet you are just whistling dixie and breaking a sweat for nothing. Rocket science is mere child's play compared to knowledge pertaining to the soil. You have to understand the scientific culture that is the backbone of successful gardening. And when I say successful, I mean things like the PH level, soil components, nutrient levels, aerobic quality, soil temperatures, microbes and the list just goes on and on. You have to understand and be able to deal with living things down there that you and I can't even see with the naked eye. So how do we do this? How have I even managed to see a single vegetable reach maturity or even open the seed packet correctly. The whole process of not knowing made me feel.....well dumber than dirt? You may be asking yourself "why now"? After all this time, why is she just getting around to asking the all important questions?. Is she on some mission from God? Nope. I moved. After 25 years of planting in the same little 10x 8 foot patch behind my house, I have a whole new plot of land to work with. And lots of it. No one has ever gardened this area before. I am starting from scratch. And being the OCD person I am, I want it right from the start. So I pull out my trusting laptop and begin where others have gone before. Google Land. My gosh. There must be places no man has traveled before. No wonder farmers work from sun up to sun down. This stuff is HARD. And it's not for the faint of heart or the lazy. You need an agricultural degree to understand some of this stuff. So to make life pleasant, and continue to enjoy my outdoor activities while still managing to supplement our food sources I decided to take it one baby step at a time. Using the KISS method I zeroed in on the areas that appeared to have the most impact. No temperature probes or mailing off soil samples and the like. Simply get out there and get my hands dirty. Feel the soil. Smell the soil, and look at the typical amendments that generally go along with the average garden. Sure, at some point I will find myself knee deep in the science of it all. But, for right now, with what I have to work with, and what I want to accomplish I am just going to keep it low key, and enjoy the fruits of my labors. It didn't take an expensive test kit to determine I have alkaline, clay soil. Since most plants crave a neutral PH I am not getting fancy with that either. With this being the first year for the garden I am unfortunately committing the ultimate garden NO NO. I am going to use a garden tiller. That is bad because you basically chop up any good earthworms you might be fortunate to have, and you kill the little microbial activity which I have come to learn is quite vital to the success of your crops. Good bacteria, it seems help control the bad bacteria, and help ward off the demons that sneak into your garden at night, leveling your tiny struggling new shoots. So, I tear up the yard with the tiller and then turn around and create all the stuff to amend the soil to the ultimate quality it so deserves. If I have read one garden forum I have read fifty. From there I weigh out the consensus and count the pros and cons. You know what they say. Everyone has an opinion, just like a belly button. This year, however, I have decided to try something different. I am not buying into the commercial fertilization method. It is all going to be home grow. I have composted every bag of leaves my neighbors have set out for the trash since last September. And I have discovered vermiculture. The socially acceptable name for worm poop.Worm poop or "castings" as it is also referred to is known in the industry as the "Black Gold" of compost. Yes I the squimish bug hater am raising WORMS. And their poop is going in my garden. Scientific research has declared it beats 10-10-10 hands down with double back flips. It feeds the soil and encourages regrowth of all the good stuff Mother Nature intended us to have. And I will be saving the planet, one bag of food scraps at a time. Seems my "Little Red Wigglers" can eat there weight in fruit and veggies on a regular basis. The more they eat, the more they poop and make little baby worms. These aren't your ordinary garden variety worm. They are compost specific prolific little critters. So I am keeping garbage out of the landfill and improving God's green earth to boot. Oh, yeah, and all that junk mail and newsprint......they eat that too. I got a win win situation. So this year when I tell folks I have "home grown" fruits and veggies' it will be the honest to gosh truth.