Fertilization of plants, fertilization of minds

     My list of garden tasks today included fertilization of plants and some educational fertilization of my garden mind... A local nursery, Miller Farms, hosted spring seminars today featuring talks by local experts. I went to the early lecture on Growing Vegetables on the North Coast given by Eddie Tanner, a local market gardener who has written a book called "The Humboldt Kitchen Gardener." He tried to cover a smaller subset of the topic focused on eating from your garden year round.  The whole event was a benefit for Community Alliance with Family Farmers and their farm to school program which educates kids about where their food actually comes from.  The clickable photo can tell you more.

Eddie Tanner

Eddie was quite knowledgeable and could even make himself heard over the pounding rain and cars going by on Central Avenue.  He started the talk detailing what he considered cool season, neutral season, warm season, and hot season crops.  He described the temperatures needed to grow these crops, and when one needed to plant them in succession in order to maximize eating from the garden year round.  He discussed and answered questions about season extension via greenhouses or row covers, and then talked about the characteristics of early, main season, and late or storage crops.  It was great to be encouraged to think about extending seasons and the benefits of row covers and late season crops.

I then came home and set about fertilization of the early crops I have growing including broccoli, chard, lettuce, peas, radishes, mixed greens, and perennial blueberries and fruit trees.  I also fertilized the roses.  When we first moved to Humboldt County in 1988 I had a job as a gardener/ranch hand in Southern Humboldt county in Piercy.  The owner of the ranch had a son who was just launching a business creating a seaweed based fertilizer called Maxsea.  While not strictly organic because it contains small amounts of commercial fertilizer as well as seaweed and organic fertilizers, I have used it ever since and found it to be very effective.  Today I mixed the fertilizer into a watering can and watered away.  I also spread some pelleted chicken manure (a nice new touch to the chicken manure family).  I gave handfuls of epsom salts to the roses and fruit trees for the micro-nutrients it contains.  Finally I spread some iron phosphate pellets (Sluggo) to discourage the slugs and snails.

It was good to have my brain engaged in thinking about new ways of doing things in the garden, and to get some fertilization done even on such a windy, rainy, and chilly day.