9-16-12 City water or Rain water (Mother knows best)

Rainwater versus City water (Mother knows best)

Pictures are of my wife ... cause I'm holding the camera  :-)

Bed of okra ... notice the thickness of the stalk

Greenbeans ... just starting to put on beans

Jalapeno peppers ... still loaded in Sept

Tomatoes ... still active and about 9' tall after the hottest and dryest season on record.

Corn ... producing at the end of the season

     Have you ever noticed the explosion of new growth and size difference in the fruits from your garden after a nice long soaking rain?  Here you are … watering everyday … trying to keep your plants healthy and growing … but you don’t have a well so you have to use that ol’ supplied water that comes from where-ever in your county they send it from.  The plants are living, but they just don’t perk the way you would like them to.  Then you get a nice rain and they just come to life … instant growth and the fruits double in size over night.

     You’ve got to know that the water that comes in the pipes is just loaded with chemicals including:  Chlorine, Fluorine, Fluoride, Formaldehydes, Methane, added salts ... and the list goes on.  How many of these do you think are actually good for your garden plants?  The chemical make-up in your city/county supplied water is actually toxic to both you and your plants.  If you don’t have any other means of watering your plants, then you really don’t have any other choice but to use supplied water … without water, your garden will die.  But if you have access to ground water that has not been contaminated by industrial run-off, industrial dumping, or mass production of meat or crops and the problems that come with them … then a natural source of water will always be better than water that is supplied.

     Mother Nature is very good at taking care of herself and her children.  A long soaking rain has very many nutrients and things that your plants need that have been locked up in the atmosphere.  They are just waiting for that water in the atmosphere to collect itself and fall as rain to feed it to your yard and garden.  The water in ponds, streams, and wells many times has these same naturally occurring and beneficial elements in them as well.  Many times man-made or man-concentrated substances can leach or run-off into these as well so it’s always a good idea to check them out by sending a sample to your county extension office for assessment before using it on your garden.

     Areas with a lot of atmospheric dumping of smoke and gasses from industry also may have many bad chemicals that can come in the rain as well … maybe the old saying is true … we (human-kind) really are a virus on this planet.  But, since I am a member of a growing viral strain of humanity that would like to see a return to simpler times … there are things that you can do to stack the deck in your favor when it comes to limiting the concentrations of bad chemicals from building up in your body.

     It is a well-known fact that organically grown fruits and veggies are going to be better for your body in the long run than those grown in an environment where pesticides, fungicides, chemical fertilizers, and who-knows what-else are added to the mix.  There have been recent studies that show that organically grown fruits and veggies may not be any more nutritious … but they will be much better for your body because they don’t have all those man-made and supplied chemicals, carcinogens, and DNA enhanced strains of “whatever” that the scientific community still has no clues as to the long-range effects on human physiology (or environmental concerns).  Many times they do know the results … they are just willing to overlook them due to the financial incentives offered them from the government and corporations.

     A simple example of environmental impact would be the applications of too much fertilizer being added to hay fields to increase the grass productions.  Yep … more fertilizer makes more grass.  But the soil is depleted because the extra fertilizer kills all the other things in the soil that keep it healthy, the streams and ponds downhill receiving the run-off water are destroyed as eco-systems because the increased fertilizer allows specific vegetation to grow that thrives on the fertilizer and starves the naturally occurring life of both nutrients and oxygen.

     We had a pond do this in the late 70’s due to a neighbor applying chicken house litter to his pastures.  The pond was taken over by a green algae that killed all the other vegetation and killed all the fish.  It took about 15 years for the pond to come back after the neighbor stopped applying the litter to his field.  We also had to bring in carp to eat the algae, ducks and geese to eat the algae, block off the pond from use to the cattle, and restock the pond with fish in order for it to naturalize again.

     Sure would have been easier and cheaper for the neighbor to use better soil management techniques, and pasture rotation techniques.  If he had done this instead of using the “instant gratification” of more grass right now, then his pastures would have grown better every season, would have been healthier each season than the last, and there would have been no down-stream contamination effects to his farming operations.  After he gave it up on the pastures because the litter was costing too much when the pasture kept getting worse, and after we had 15 years of cleaning up the down-stream mess created by his techniques … the pastures he had are still poor.

     These same types of things are done very often in simple home gardens.  Use of pesticides kills bugs … but at what cost?  About 90 percent of the insects in your garden are not there to harm it.  Many times they take care of or keep in check the populations of the bugs that harm your garden.  Use of pesticides causes the propagation percentage of your crops to become less because the bugs and critters that assist in propagation are killed off or run off.  Use of pesticides many times kills the creatures in the soil that keep your plant roots healthy, kills the toads and birds that eat the bad bugs, kills the spiders and wasps that get rid of the bad bugs, gives you generations of health problems due to unnatural chemicals in your body’s cells that are passed on to your children and their children.

     It seems to make much more sense to me to use techniques of gardening that build the soil, make plants more healthy, make the garden eco-system more healthy, and make the future for our children more healthy.  If you don’t have a choice on where your water comes from when keeping your garden alive, at least be aware that there are many times more healthy alternatives.  I believe that we are here on this planet as caretakers.  The right thing is always the right thing … it may not be the easiest thing, or the fastest thing … but if we want our children and their children to be able to reap the benefits of this planet then some thought always should be to where our future will be if we continue to use techniques of instant gratification.

     Thanks for allowing me to vent.  I realize that I don’t know everything where gardening is concerned, I am willing to learn though.  Most of what I’ve learned is through trial and error … re-invent the wheel … that’s what I’m good at.  But I feel that I do have a healthy garden.  By using techniques that are natural and constructive for the soil, my garden seems to do much better than any I see in my part of the country … and it keeps getting better each season.  I hope those of you who read this will give some thought to our future as well.

     You don’t need a lot of expensive equipment to have a nice productive garden.  You don’t need a bunch of hazardous chemicals to have a nice garden.  All you need is to give some thought to the health of your soil.  If you will give your garden some love … it will love you back.

Thanks for reading … Duane.