Читать книгу The Organic Garden - Allan Shepherd - Страница 7

Before you plant a single thing, get your soil care right. Plants need nutrients from compost to grow strong and prosper. Some plants will grow on poor soils but the ones we demand to grow most often, the vegetables, the fruit and the cultivated flowers, need to eat a lot of food to grow. Chemical gardeners use artificial fertilisers to feed their plants. Organic gardeners use compost and other soil improvers.

Compost improves the structure of the soil, helping soils to retain water when plants need it most, and provides food for composting creatures. Healthy soils produce healthy plants less likely to be attacked by pests and disease.

One of the most striking displays at the CAT visitor centre is a simple row of vegetable beds, one next to the other, each one filled with a different quantity of slate, soil and compost. The first bed is made up entirely of slate waste. The second bed is just slate and soil. The third bed slate, soil and compost.

Plants grown in the first bed are always small and weedy, and are attacked readily by slugs and other pests. Plants grown in the second bed are only slightly better served by the soil than those in the first. Only in the third bed, the bed stacked high with soil and compost, are plants able to flourish as they should.