VEGETARIAN GARDENING; Ph; CLOVER; BUCKWHEAT; GREENFLY; BLACKFLY 2; WHITEFLY; HOVERFLY; CABBAGE; BLOOD, FISH & BONE; HOOF & HORN; FARMYARD MANURE; CHICKEN MANURE; CALCIFIED SEAWEED 3; COMFREY; NETTLES: 1 March 2004
DC e-mails: I wonder if you know of 'vegetarian' alternatives to blood, fish and bone, hoof and horn and farmyard manure. I am aware of chicken manure pellets, calcified seaweed and so on, it's just I'm not clear on how the contents compare with blood, fish and bone, for example. I have read the section in your book on comfrey. I currently use 'nettle brew' as I am fortunate to live in a rural environment and nettles are in plentiful supply! I planted 3 young comfrey plants last year and plan to get 6 more in April. As I have to wait for the young plants to fully develop I shall continue this year to make the 'nettle brew'.
RJH replies: "The notion that I am a vegetarian gardener for a part of my time -- introduced to me by DC's questions -- comes as a surprise, but, in fact, I suppose that is what I am. True, I use all of the non-vegetarian aids such as farmyard manure and blood, fish and bone fertiliser and so on, and, frankly, I do not know what I would do without them. There is no substitute for two-year-old and even older animal manure, in my opinion -- not even marvellous comfrey when that is used as a humus-creating soil additive. And we must remember that, nowadays, the animal-based feeds that can be bought over the counter are sterilised, so there is no risk whatsoever to the gardener handling them.
"What I would like to suggest is that there is a broader picture than is implied by DC's questions and comments, and, for me, it is that broader picture that the gardener needs to see and understand.
"I sum it up like this. Plants must be provided with the conditions in which they have the best chance to achieve their potential, whatever that potential may be. Those conditions are created by the application of techniques and aids, and by the partnering of techniques and aids with Dame Nature's ways. Feeding is but one aspect of all of that."
So, what does that mean when seen from the point of view of DC's questions?" asks R J Harris.
"I must talk in terms of specific examples.
"Take the cabbage."
In the walled, kitchen garden at Tresillian the cabbage grows gloriously and magnificently, adding decoration with its unfailingly unblemished leaves and holding out marvellous promise for the kitchen.
"Insert a cabbage plantlet into unprepared ground and leave it to its own devices for all of its natural life," says Mr Harris. "Do not feed it," he itemises, "do not see that it gets sufficient moisture, do not keep the pests away, permit the weeds to take over. What have you got? In the end, a wizened, stunted plant bearing a few caterpillar-riddled leaves of poor colour and habit. It is unfit for the kitchen and, if not uprooted and destroyed off site, a source of danger to the other plants.
"Now, insert that same cabbage plantlet into the bed that has just delivered bean crops and you can forget trying to cater for its great need for nitrogen by adding blood-based, manufactured feeds or their equivalents. The nitrogen fixed in the soil by the bean plants' roots is ample. And if you have any doubts about that, sow red clover alongside the cabbage plantlet. This also fixes nitrogen in the soil, increasing the nitrogen left by the bean plants.
"This is why the farmer sows clover in his fields when growing grass. Like cabbage, grass is nitrogen-hungry and easily nitrogen-starved. Clover makes a splendid companion to it. Also, as is well known, growing red clover is a very helpful way to employ ground that happens to be unused for a short space of time. A crop is developed from seed sowing to just before flowering. It is then turned in, its roots fixing nitrogen, its dense, green foliage adding valuable humus-generating matter."
Clover is happiest in sandy soil, the head gardener points out, but it tolerates almost anything -- even very heavy clay soil. "Incidentally," he adds, "the bees, too, love the clover, and are attracted into the garden by it. They pursue not its nitrogen, but its delightful flowers. Gardens, it does not have to be said, need bees."
Mr Harris suggests sowing buckwheat, as well, where the cabbage grows, so that the herb's pink flowers on its red stems draw in the hoverfly. This carnivore helps to keep the blackfly, the greenfly and the whitefly to harmless levels, giving the cabbage's luxuriantly developing leaves a better chance of achieving and maintaining the pristine condition that Dame Nature intends. "Then again," Mr Harris enlarges, "buckwheat sends its roots deep, deep into the soil -- so deep that drainage is improved and the soil is broken up in the very area from which the cabbage draws its sustenance. Another virtue: buckwheat's roots penetrate down to where the cabbage's do not, so that the herb does not compete with the cabbage for the available nitrogen."
p Clover is one of several green manures, and, alluding to these highly useful and blessedly low-cost aids to fertility, Mr Harris referred especially to mustard: "Probably," he said, "the fastest-growing of them all. You can have it ready for forking in to do its vegetarian job within eight-to-nine weeks." It offered an alternative in that it did not have clover's ability to introduce nitrogen into the soil. "So if the overall plan for the garden demands low nitrogen content in a given bed, it's the one to sow, not clover," noted the head gardener. "Both of them, of course, do that very useful thing of increasing the soil's ability to increase its moisture content. This happens in two ways: 1) the dense, green foliage of both is moisture-charged, being green, and conveys that moisture into the soil as it is turned in; 2) once converted in the soil into humus, the foliage becomes a moisture-retaining component of the soil."
p Ph content is worth thinking about, R J Harris suggests. "Clover sown in low-Ph top soil -- really low, that is, a rare Ph 2 or Ph 3, say -- may increase the risk of club root. This is worth noting in connection with clover sown adjacent to cabbage, which is well known to be susceptible to that disease. Myself," notes Mr Harris, "I check the Ph before committing myself. I look for an average Ph 6.5 to Ph 7.5. This is what most gardens have, fortunately. Even so, I leave nothing to chance. And if I find that the Ph is not what I want, I do not waste time trying to change it. Instead, I change my garden plan, avoiding the 'wrong' Ph." The manual, he says, is revealing on the subject of Ph.
p The above discussion lacks reference to the part that the moon plays -- if permitted to do so -- in achieving the several ends that are set out as desirable. For the practical reasons explained in 'R J Harris's Moon Gardening', the above-ground developers such as the cabbage -- and the clover and the mustard (to name but two of the many available green manures) -- are sown/planted at the start of the moon's second quarter, whilst the fertilising additives such as the turned-in clover/mustard are committed to the soil at the start of the moon's fourth quarter. The second quarter brings increased moisture and pressure within the topsoil, enhancing the possibility for the above-ground developers of seed germination or plantlet survival; the fourth quarter sees the maximum drawing down into the topsoil of whatever feed/fertiliser is applied onto it, or turned into it. The manual's two sections, Fertiliser and Moon (plus, possibly, a third: Soil) throw added light onto the general subject matter.
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