Standing at the Fall Fair one year next to my first-prize-winning tomatoes, I heard someone say, “There’s no way those were grown organically, they don’t get that big unless you fertilize them.”
Not so! Not only were my tomatoes only fed compost, but a lot of the other prize-winning vegetables that day were grown the same way on other farms. They’re not always labelled as such, but they have been quietly grown in the way that many people have always grown them. On top of that, vegetables grown well, in good soil and fed compost, often taste a lot better than those grown quickly with fertilizer. Taste is not evaluated at most fairs yet, just appearance and size, but I hope it might be in the future.
Food grown traditionally in soil and compost might be better for you too. Some modern studies that have analyzed organically grown vegetables compared to those “conventionally” grown have found higher trace minerals, which makes sense as they were fed more trace minerals from the compost than those just fed fertilizer. Perhaps that is part of their good taste as well.
And growing vegetables without fertilizer is easy: even lawn care services in our area are moving away from fertilizers nowadays, and not just because they want to keep chemicals out of the water table. In our area, they’ve found that it’s cheaper, less work, and works better to apply some alfalfa pellets to a lawn instead of fertilizer. If it is applied once in a season, the lawn looks green and healthy well into the next season as the alfalfa composts, and pets and people can play on it continually.
We have the same experience with our vegetables – we apply compost at the start of the season, sometimes with a bit of lime or bonemeal (organic), and that’s it for the season. Some of our neighbours really have this down to an art, and grow amazing, delicious vegetables on a larger scale with compost that is purchased.
In your home garden, if you don’t have homemade compost (I’ll post in the future about how to make this stuff well) you can always purchase some at a local garden centre. It will cost less than some fertilizer, be healthier for you and your pets to be around, and feed your plants for the whole season.
So, you are thinking, what about all of those other additives that I have read about that I need to feed my vegetables? I would say that like anything, there are always ways to do things in a more precise way and to tweak systems so they work better. Yes, a sprinkling of wood ash over your beet and rhubarb rows will make them grow better, but if you don’t have any or forget, I can assure you that some nice beets and rhubarb will grow anyway in your good soil and compost.
Keeping things simple to start will ensure that you don’t feel intimidated and throw in the towel. Healthy plants just need lots of light, the right amount of water and heat, and good, well-aerated soil with nutrients to eat. That’s all. Therefore with a bit of sunlight, water, and some good compost mixed into the soil before you put the plants or seed in, you’ll be able to grow big, healthy vegetables. And even better, they’ll taste great!
(Fun fact: the Saanich Fair is the longest-running fall fair in North America!)