Healthy Soil Equals Healthy Plants by Ian Orlikoff
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ordering seeds, Farley is the group’s treasurer and depends upon spread- sheets to determine what seeds are stored, when they should be planted and when the supply is depleted. Her children, who help with seed trays, planting and pulling weeds, love play- ing with wriggling worms they pull out of the bin.
Like Farley’s children, Lindsay
Smith’s 5-year-old, Cooper, and 1-year-old, Cameron, hover around the worm bin while mom and 1-year-old Annie enjoy watering the garden and feeding the worms on Tuesdays. “Annie goes along and naps in my baby back- pack,” says Smith, who also spends time on Sundays doing miscellaneous tasks.
Smith’s junior gardeners love Sunday harvest time. “My children like to eat the veggies they pick and have been more eager to try new things that they’ve helped to grow,” says Smith, who adds, “It’s fun listening to the kids tell the neighbors, ‘I grew this lettuce myself!’”
Reaping
Spirit-Filled Harvests Michele Manta, an English major at FGCU, discovered Cassena via the Natural Awakenings Meetup. Although she has an extensive container gar- den of her own to tend, she drives 10 minutes to water the community plot on Thursdays and multi-task on Sun- days. “Gardening is a lost art that I find relaxing,” advises Manta, who enthuses about the money she saves by doing it herself.
Melissa Plotkin joins in on Sun- day workdays to appreciate the sense of community. “I have a garden at my home, but there is something very special about growing, learning and
o grow healthy plants, you need healthy soil. If you can cook a pot of spaghetti, you can create compost, an almost magical garden component that enriches the soil by improving its ability to hold water and prevent nutrients from leaching out or running off. Compost also encourages healthy root growth and im- proves plant vigor and the soil’s microbio- logical activity, thus enhancing the soil’s life cycle. Just as importantly, it converts a
byproduct into a resource and lowers the pH of Florida’s naturally alkaline soil. Nature has been practicing composting since the first forms of plant life began. Through the decomposition of once-living organisms, the soil was improved enough for plants to grow in succession, from grasses on up to old- growth conifer forests. In fact, higher forms of plant life could only develop as the soil became increasingly enriched through the natural composting of organic materials.
Today’s organic farmers and landscapers improve soil quality through in- depth knowledge of the microbial processes taking place and an understanding that synthetic fertilizers and chemicals deplete the soil, rendering it tired and unproductive. Taking advantage of modern bio-science and technology to im- prove the quality of life within the soil, some farmers now use aerated compost teas and compost extracts, a process that extracts the microbes, nutrients and humates, which are then applied in a liquid form.
Organic wastes must go somewhere, and gardeners see the soil and its ca- pacity to recycle as making a contribution to conserving resources and energy, while simultaneously improving the environment.
Ian Orlikoff is an accredited organic land care professional and the owner of Eco Logic Land Care. For more info, call 239-348-1302 or 239-348-1330, email
ian@EcoLogicLandCare.com or visit
EcoLogicLandcare.com. See ad, page 42.
sharing together,” notes Plotkin, who is the organizer of the Really Really Free Market, in Naples. Janet Weisberg considers herself a novice gardener, even though she’s preparing for her third growing season. Living only minutes from Cassena, she frequently strolls over to offer up prayers, do Reiki on the plants and wiggle her toes in the soil. “When I’m there, I’m in a place of gratitude for the bountiful harvest to come and making a soulful connection to a conscious Earth,” notes Weisberg, who describes the garden as a place of color and lush beauty.
When the garden initially exploded with big, colorful vegetables and herbs, Weisberg recalls that no one wanted to pick anything. “We’d never seen pro- duce that looked that luscious before,”
she remarks. “When Gerry explained that we had to pick the fruits of our labors, or otherwise the plants would flower and we wouldn’t have anything to eat, we rose to the occasion.”
Planting Seeds for Future Growth A champion of community gardens, Richard Van der Meer, the group’s handyman, built the worm bin, laid a concrete block path along the garden’s edge and built trellises for tomatoes. He has high hopes for creating another larger garden elsewhere. “We’re maxed out with 10 people, and I’d like to see a project closer to town, where we can have as many as 100 people involved,” he advises. “I feel that Naples is over- due for a citywide community garden, because of all the master-planned,
natural awakenings March 2011 41
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