John Harrison Quotes

Turns out tomato feed is the gift that keeps on giving. It's good for any plant.

Topsoil is a place of digestion. It sucks and chews things into smaller pieces. When it's hungry, it turns grey and stony; when it's thirsty, it opens thousands of cracked lips. Subsoil is more skeletal: it doesn't digest.

As far as plants are concerned, they can't tell whether that nitrate ion comes from artificial chemicals or from decomposed organic matter.

You gotta water your plants. Nobody can water them for you.

Soil is an almost magical substance, a living system that transforms the materials it encounters.

It has been recognized since the dawn of microbiology that the soil is inhabited by a living microscopic population which is responsible for the numerous reactions that take place in the soil and that affect the life and economy of man in many ways.

From dead plant matter to nematodes to bacteria, never underestimate the cleverness of mushrooms to find new food!

The soil is not a mass of dead debris, merely resulting from the physical and chemical weathering of rocks; it is a more or less homogeneous system which has resulted from the decomposition of plant and animal remains. It is teeming with life.

I once tried to raise two tomato plants, and they died in spite of the fact I fertilized them every morning. Duh.

Sometimes, as is the case of peach and plum trees, which are often dwarfed, the plants are thrown into a flowering states, and then, as they flower freely year after year, they have little inclination to make vigorous growth.

Soil is a living ecosystem, and is a farmer's most precious asset. A farmer's productive capacity is directly related to the health of his or her soil.

Compost makes houseplants very happy.

Finally, I get to have houseplants and they stay alive.

We have to stop treating soil like dirt.

Gardening does so much for your brain. You're learning how a process works, and how important it is to do everything right so that you can eventually enjoy a tomato three months later. I've always been patient, but gardening really helps you with that.

What's not to aspire to about how to grow your own fruit and vegetables and plants, and then being creative?

Micronutrient deficiency in the soil results in micronutrient malnutrition in people, since crops grown on such soils tend to be deficient in the nutrients needed to fight hidden hunger.

You can't chemical your way out of soil infertility

If a healthy soil is full of death, it is also full of life: worms, fungi, microorganisms of all kinds ... Given only the health of the soil, nothing that dies is dead for very long.

Weeds play an important part in building soil fertility and in balancing the biological community . . .

I used to laugh at my friends who garden, but I now garden. You don't even feel like you're exercising. You're having fun, and you're being healthy at the same time.

I am a gardener, I have a big green thumb, and I can take care of these plants really easily because they are all fake.

I feel very guilty about not having a vegetable garden, but it is quite time-consuming.

We have a well and a garden. I crawl around in the mud and grow great vegetables.

We have a thousand hydrangea plants bordering the house, and they were all supposed to be pink, but a handful of them keep turning purple.