Finally, I get to have houseplants and they stay alive.
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.
Spreading manure is a great way of bringing yourself down to earth.
You cannot increase the efficiency of photosynthesis. We improve the performance of farms by irrigating them and fertilizing them to provide all these nutrients. But we cannot keep on doubling the yield every two years. Moore's law doesn't apply to plants.
Many years ago it was taught that plants and animals were composed of different materials: plants, of a chemical substance of three elements,- carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; animals of one of four elements, nitrogen being added to the other three.
And the more profoundly the science of biology reveals the laws of the life and development of living bodies, the more effective is the science of agronomy.
Although I am a voracious plant predator, one has to realize that there is not a human need for fruits and vegetables: just ask an Eskimo.
I do not yet know why plants come out of the land or float in streams, or creep on rocks or roll from the sea. I am entranced by the mystery of them, and absorbed by their variety and kinds. Everywhere they are visible yet everywhere occult.
Turns out tomato feed is the gift that keeps on giving. It's good for any plant.
The more we can grow on already cultivated land, the better.
I grow strawberries, watermelon, onions, you name it.
The wood of any tree growing anywhere records fairly faithfully the oxygen and hydrogen chemistry of the water the plant has access to through precipitation.
… a gospel of dirt
I have to keep up with the scientific literature as part of my job, but increasingly I found myself reading things that weren't really relevant to my academic work, but were relevant to gardening.
In plants, vitamin K is found principally in all kinds of green leaves; leaves which have grown in the dark and therefore have not formed chlorophyll are poor sources.
You gotta water your plants. Nobody can water them for you.
But it was soon ascertained that this quaternary matter of the animal body was chemically the same in the plant, was elaborated there, and only appropriated by the animal.
Anyone who knows me will attest that at any time during the day, you are most likely to find me picking tayberries, 'deadheading' peppermint, or succession-planting shallots. There is almost nothing, really, that I would rather do.
The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love.
Let me tell you about a place where technology won't work. When you walk onto a farm and are standing on soil, there is no technology that is going to take that soil and transform it into something that is five times more productive.
I have raised beds, perennial beds, cut flower beds. I have an island on a pond that's just covered in peonies. I have an herb garden, tons of vegetables, raspberries. I have everything. I'm a green guy.
We have a well and a garden. I crawl around in the mud and grow great vegetables.
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.
The biggest obstacle to good gardening is the desire to know the answers and not the questions.
What's not to aspire to about how to grow your own fruit and vegetables and plants, and then being creative?
