Sunday - Noon to 6pm
Monday - Noon to 6pm
Tuesday - Closed
Wednesday - Closed
Thursday - Noon to 6pm
Friday - Noon to 6pm
Saturday - Noon to 6pm
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In the past, when Americans had major problems to deal with, like the Great Depression or World Wars, they got busy digging. Victory Gardens saw us through times of trouble before, and they may be even more timely now. They may be a perfect solution to this latest crisis. And since it looks like we may have more free time this year, this could be a golden opportunity for us to take a closer look at the food we are eating and learn how to improve it.
Corporate food is simply less nutritious than it should be, or used to be. Farm soils are deteriorating and spewing CO2 into the air, driving climate change. Processed foods replace nutrients with salt, sugar, and even worse substances. Even Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto executive, and former food czar of the FDA, has said the food additive situation is out of control. Modern agricultural practices are also damaging and depleting our water supply. And our immune systems are just not as strong as they used to be.
Scientists say that when a new problem occurs, they first look at what has changed since the problem started. By any reasonable standard, the takeover of our food supply by huge corporations has been an abysmal failure.
As a ray of hope, a correspondent in Italy recently said Italians are now rediscovering home cooked meals, and people are liking it. We strongly believe cooking your own meals is a way to better health. This is why we include simple and healthy recipes every week with our CSA packages. So much has been lost since we began to get our nourishment from corporate farms, corporate retailers, and corporate kitchens instead of small farms, small retailers, and our own gardens and kitchens.
As experienced by tens thousands of people who participated in Victory Gardens, the benefits of gardening are endless -- fresh air, exercise, working with soil, and best of all -- garden to table. Many continued gardening the rest of their lives. Everyone should experience garden to table, and even if you have limited space for just a small herb garden or salad garden, this daily enjoyment should be yours too. It makes you more aware and respectful of food, and prompts you to make good choices over bad -- which can only serve to boost your immune system. And boosting your immune system is tremendously important to all of us.
Join others in a return to some of the simple pleasures in life -- good meals, excellent exercise, and the feeling of excitement, empowerment and accomplishment you get from producing your own food. It feels great to grow your own food -- it feels great to be able to substantially cut into food costs -- and it feels really great to prepare a home grown, home cooked meal.
Don't spend free time ahead vegging out in front of the TV or the internet.
Lets make some lemonade and get busy digging!
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Garden in a jar
We have nutrient rich sauces available from the veggies we grew last year using the best organic cultural practices. You can treat yourself or someone else to our Salsa, which is our traditional letcho tomato sauce recipe - so thick this year that we named it Salsa. It's wonderful as a basic pasta sauce - or any dish that calls for tomato sauce. Our sauce is what I always reach for when I feel a little run down. And of course, there's our Arrabiata sauce - same base recipe, but with a little zest!
When people compliment our sauces and pepper relishes, they are complimenting our seedlings, our soil, our garden timing, our garden maintenance, our harvesting practices, and our culinary achievements. It's a great feeling!
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We will try to help
Due to Spring demands, I have to keep conversations brief, and am unable to have conversations with everyone, but I guarantee you will get more and better advice from Canterbury Creek Gardens than any other garden center in the area --
starting with this email about living soil.
We are chemical free, we make our own living soil, we make our own organic fertilizer, and we seed thousands of healthy plants using both. We grow an extensive garden right on the property using relatively new, but well tested, organic methods that save time and money -- and produce outstanding yields. So stay tuned for future emails. Our past emails are on our Facebook page if you would like a primer on the importance of rich soil and organic fertilizer. Our website also has a lot of great information.
And think again about our obelisk kits to avoid a learning curve. Whether you are a new gardener, or experienced gardener, they should pay for themselves the first growing season. Or start with a few of our fiber pots and our living soil.
With vegetable gardening, any money spent is an investment -- if you do it right. The return is great food, exercise, a sense of achievement, and better health.
For those interested, we have a few spots left in our summer CSA program, which will save you money, and support your personal pledge to strengthen your immune system.
This way, your salad will also be guaranteed every week.
If we have any more organic gardening seminars this Spring, they will be outside where we can spread the chairs to the appropriate social distance. We will do what we can via emails, but that can only be limited due to my time constraints. The first step however, is starting with the best soil possible.
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Think Before You Dig
It's not about how big your garden is, but how productive it is, how good the food is and how much food you put on your table.
It is not about how much soil you buy and haul in, it is about the quality of soil you are using.
We have been getting regular calls from people who have installed, or are making, raised beds asking how to improve their soil. I wish they would see how we grow things here first. It's cheaper, easier, and more productive. All we do every year is dig a small hole and plant. We even grow our own mulch here in the same containers we later grow tomatoes, peppers, cukes and squash.
Traditional gardening involves building raised beds (time and money) -- hauling in tons of soil (more time and money) -- buying amendments and working them into the soil (more time and money) -- and then weeding all summer (lots of time). And then ending up with mediocre results.
Compare that to pouring a few bags of soil into a 30" diameter pot and growing vining crops like tomatoes or cucumbers big enough to fill the same 4x8 ft. space. You can end up with results like this from just a couple of square feet and one plant.
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Successful gardening starts with living soil
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Your health and your immune system begins with how you treat your gut microbiata.
Your plant health and vigor depends on the soil it is growing in, and its ability to sustain a robust and healthy soil microbiata.
A healthy vegetable plant requires loose, well-drained soil that also holds water well, so structure is very important. You can see in the pic of our potting soil below that it will drain well, and yet the organic particles will also hold ample moisture for plants.
This loose structure is also ideal for soil creatures to begin to do their work.
I often use the analogy of a bee hive when I talk about soil structure and soil microbiata. When a beekeeper builds a beehive, there is an ideal structure that allows their bees to maximize the production they get for their efforts. But even the most perfect beehive will not produce honey without bees.
You need to bring as complete of an assortment of biological soil creatures to your garden soil as possible. The best source of these creatures is high quality, fresh compost. Note: Since these microbes are aerobic, meaning they require oxygen, buying compost or compost manure in sealed bags, that have been palletized, and shrink wrapped, is a waste of money.
In the pic below, you can see small black particles. These are pieces of composted organic matter. They contain the same microbes that have been breaking down organic matter in the compost pile. This brings a sampling of beneficial microbes that formed the ecosystem of a compost pile. And then, because they are in a great environment that holds moisture, but not too much moisture -- and is loose enough to contain ample amounts of air (being aerobic, they need oxygen) -- they get very busy and reproduce very quickly.
This activity also stimulates plant growth which stimulates release of sugars into the soil -- just like the nectar released to insects and other animals. What fuels a beehive is sugary nectar produced by flowers. The soil sugar release stimulates greater soil activity and therefore better plant health.
Soil microbes do more than just feed plants.
Soil microbes break down organic matter and recycle the nutrients it contains. And like the microbes in our digestive system, they also provide an amazing array of other substances for plants. This includes growth hormones, antibiotics, and many other compounds that plants require for optimum health and productivity. They also physically protect plant roots from soil diseases and predation by plant pests found in the soil.
Plants can grow in sterile, moist, well-drained soil found in sealed, potting soils. However, they will not be as productive or healthy without a rich soil microbiata to nourish and protect them.
Living soil is where our food chain begins
Compounds produced in the soil not only keep plants healthy, some of them are also used by our bodies and some are formed into other nutrients that we need by plants. These are called phytonutrients because they are formed by plants during processes that are fueled by the sun's energy during photosynthesis.
Soil microbes are the beginning of, and a very important part of, our food chain. They help to keep us healthy.
And don't forget, as I mentioned in previous emails, just being exposed to living soil can also make you happy. We can all use that benefit these days.
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Our soil gets even better with proper care -- and can last a thousand years.
Notice in the picture above, in our freshly made soil, rice hulls were the smallest particle size.
After a year or so, undecomposed rice hulls are the largest particle size as you can see in the picture below. And yet as small as these soil particles are, this soil maintains excellent drainage and porosity. It is unmatched at holding water and nutrients. It is the ideal soil for microbes to live and roots to grow.
You can also create this soil in your garden but it takes many years of work.
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This is soil that cannot be manufactured by man, only a combination of biological factors over time. But by
using a living soil, and also being a good steward of this soil,
you can quickly create something that takes nature thousands of years under ideal conditions.
We have been using this same soil, in the same fiber pots for 10 years now. Compare that to spending time and money every year, for 10 years, amending and turning soil.
The cookie crumble texture is called granular soil peds, or granular soil aggregates. Granular soil ped structure is made and maintained by soil biology under the right conditions. Soil life also protects it from compacting so they can last a long time.
Rich granular ped soils, created along the Amazon river basin (called terra preta soils), by villagers thousands of years ago, still maintain that same fertility today.
Soil maintenance, like soil building, is docne by soil inhabitants -- and they are fed by plant sugars. So keep something growing in your garden as long as possible (like Winter and early Spring cover crops) and you should never have to turn your garden soil again.
A customer came up last weekend for field peas. She said she used them last year and had the best garden ever. Let your cover crop use their sugars to build a robust soil biology and your tomatoes can save energy and get right to growing faster. This is the key to earlier and more productive harvests -- not planting early.
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Below are a couple of pics of terra preta soil. These soils were created by the agricultural practices of farmers
over 1,000 years ago. They extend several feet below ground level, and are considered the most fertile man-made soils in the world.
Rain forests eventually overgrew the farms, but the terra preta soils remained stable. Normal topsoil depth in rain forests is only a few inches, so when these tracks of land were discovered as rain forests were cleared, researchers knew something else had created these soils.
This prompted researchers from all over the globe to try and understand how they were created.
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Below is a closer look at the terra preta soil made by farmers as long as 2,000 years ago.
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It looks remarkably like the soil that we, and our customers, are finding in our fiber pots after a year or so, with healthy plant growth.
It is a perfect soil that soil creatures build for themselves given ideal conditions.
Using a better constructed, living soil is a big reason why we get such great production from such small containers.
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This cherry tomato plant measured 12 ft. wide by seven ft. tall by 5 ft. deep -- almost the size of two raised beds, and it was growing in a pot only 28 inches in diameter. The soil and container had been used for several years prior to this plant and it was really cooking.
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26273 Detroit Road
Westlake, Ohio
440-899-2740
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