Time to stock up on starts

Now is the time to be stalking the vegetable starts at local nurseries. There are never enough vegetable starts to go around in normal years (a good reason to start your own if you can), but this year there is a huge increase in interest in growing vegetables and that means even more scarcity. Now, not the day the all-clear is given to plant outdoors, is the time to seek and buy from your local nursery. Wait, and you will most definitely lose.
Buying vegetable starts can be a spur of the moment thing, but it is better if you can do a bit of planning before you go to the nurseries of your choice. Start with a simple diagram of your gardens and what you want to grow in each and how many plans will be needed.

Along with starts, don't forget to buy seed things that can be grown from seed planted directly in the garden. The traditional ones include kale, carrots, lettuces, peas, snap peas, beets, spinach, beans and potatoes. All of these can be grown in containers as well as in garden beds. Consider, too, collard, arugula, tatsoi, mizuna, pac choi and mache. Again, these are all very easy to grow.

This year remember that rototilling is a big no-no. As I go around the country teaching gardener's to team with microbes, this advice engenders the most resistance. Simply put, rototilling is an antiquated home garden practice which does much more harm than many gardeners, particularly those who love to till, want to admit. Believe it or not, it is based on a 17th century idea that plant roots eat soil and is wrongly fostered by the ad revenues rototiller manufacturers bring to gardening magazines.

Tilling, double-digging and other methods to break up soil clearly destroy the soil food web, kills worms and most important destroys the all-important fungal network that just two years ago was found to hold most of the carbon in the soil. It is simply bad for gardening. Don't do it.

Ah, but what about starting a new garden from scratch? O.K, you got me. If you feel like you must rototill up an area, do it this one time and never again. Better yet, place newspaper, six sheets thick, on the ground and cover with good compost, humus and soil and forget the tilling.

Instead of tilling, drill or poke holes for seeds or pull a stick down a row to create a furrow to plant in. That is all you need to do. Consider this: Plants will grow through cement and pavement. You don't need to break up soils.

Next, if you have been using chemical fertilizers in the past, now is the time to stop. This, too, is a wrong-headed practice that resulted from the introduction of chemicals left over from WWII munitions production. Instead use organic microbe-feeding foods like soybean meal or other organic soil products with NPK numbers (representing nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, key plant nutrients) under 10-10-10. If you need more convincing than better tasting produce, consider that a USDA study showed a salad grown before WWII contained 40 to 60% more nutrition than one grown with chemicals.

If you have been using chemicals (or rototilling) consider rolling seeds or the roots of starts in an endomycorrhizal fungi which grow with the roots and help feed plants. If you are already a Soil Food Webbie (I don't use the term "organic gardener" because the USDA allows food to be labeled "organic" even though up to 5% of the fertilizers used on them can still be non- organic) and haven't used chemicals or rototilled for two years, you can skip this step.

Finally, gardeners always share, especially in Alaska. When you plant your vegetables, remember to include "one row" to feed those less fortunate than you. Take the harvest from this row to Bean's, a branch of the Alaska Food Bank or to neighbors or friends who need help in these trying economic times.