Gardening

I've always been abstractly aware that plants grow from the dirt. I even knew some things about how they worked: fueled by sunlight, built from carbon dioxide, catalyzed by proteins and inorganic cofactors, and pumped full of water. A simple enough protocol, one that I thought well-suited to large-scale industrial adaptation. I previously regarded gardens as tedious and inefficient, demanding labor and expensive additions to produce yields. Gardens were in my mind less efficient than industrial agriculture at producing interchangeable products.

That opinion changed as my understanding of nutrition and microbiomes developed. Fruits and vegetables contain far more bioactive molecules than are listed on FDA labels. Flavenoids, carotenoids, terpenoids, furanocoumarins, alkaloids, and more are present in an infinitude of combinations in different fruits and vegetables, but as a rule are less abundant in industrially-produced food. I learned more of the soil biome; of mycorrhizae and rhizobia and the symbiotic relationship many other microorganisms share with plants. Gradually I became aware of the relative sterility of industrially produced fruits vegetables, and the effect of this sterility on the human microbiome. The implications of these nutritional and microbiotal differences are unclear; more research is needed to demonstrate if these differences are positive, negative, or inconsequential. However, I hypothesise that more abundant (non-toxic) bioactive molecules and microbial diversity are net positive, and choose to move my diet more in the direction of these features. 

Parallel to these developments I began to explore the fields of permaculture, sustainable agriculture, and intensive gardening. I now see gardens is ecological sculptures: functional, aesthetic, comprised not only of plants but also of microbial, fungal, invertebrate, and vertebrate actors. They can be engineered, incorporating not only top-down design but also natural selection processes such as competition and symbiosis. I've passed the "literature review" phase of my obsession in which I consume tomes of digital and print material and am now putting these ideas into practice. Already I have experienced the joy of placing the literal fruits of my labor into my cooking pot, and I'm hungry for more.

Present take-aways:

It is possible and highly rewarding to grow a densly planted bed of salad greens through the winter in my climate using simple protective cloth. These greens, while slow-growing in the winter months, are of an exceptional quality due to the the concentration of sugars and other nutrients in the sap acting as a natural anti-freeze.

Tomato plants respond to high balanced nutrition with vigorous and unrelenting growth. Plant heights of 10-15 feet are easily achievable, with corresponding large yields of high quality fruit.

Cultivation of small-flowed plants with continuous bloom through the growing season sustains a population of parasitoid wasps that control many insect pests. Cilantro is particularly excellent at this application with desireable foliage as an herb, quick transition to umbilliferous flowers, followed by the production of green immature coriander pods, followed by profuse self-seeding and dry coriander production.

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