but do have the money. Times:
For a fee, Mr. Paque, who lives in San Francisco, will build an organic garden in your backyard, weed it weekly and even harvest the bounty, gently placing a box of vegetables on the back porch when he leaves.
Call them the lazy locavores — city dwellers who insist on eating food grown close to home but have no inclination to get their hands dirty. Mr. Paque is typical of a new breed of business owner serving their needs.
“The highest form of luxury is now growing it yourself or paying other people to grow it for you,” said Corby Kummer, the food columnist and book author. “This has become fashion.”
Corrente -- Fashion forward!
Depending on the season, local produce can cost an additional $1 a pound or more. But long-distance food, with its attendant petroleum consumption and cheap wages, is harming the planet and does nothing to help build communities, locavores believe.
As a result of interest in local food and rising grocery bills, backyard gardens have been enjoying a renaissance across the country, but what might be called the remote-control backyard garden — no planting, no weeding, no dirt under the fingernails — is a twist. “They want to have a garden, they don’t want to garden,” said the cookbook author Deborah Madison, who lives in Santa Fe, N.M.
For a growing number of diners, a food’s provenance is more important than its brand name, said Michelle Barry, who studies American eating patterns for the Hartman Group, a research firm in Bellevue, Wash. As a result, grocery stores are looking to repackage products like milk and cheese to play up any local angle.
Good news. I hope.
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It may start with Mr. Paque...
When it comes to satisfying the "lazy locavore" it may start with Mr. Paque rooting around the backyard, but to efficiently fill the need, it may evolve into something like The Matrix for veggies: http://www.valcent.net/s/HDVGS.asp?Repor... Isn't capitalism something to behold?
I can haz garden consult?
Everything in my garden is growing great, except for a patch of kale and chard that are kind of puny. They're next to a dill patch that started out as volunteers, so we just let it go--but then I read in a guide to companionate planting that dill is pretty much the enemy of all other herbs and veggies.
Should I rip out the dill? (It looks pretty skimpy, too, come to think of it.)
un-boone companions?
I'm not a fan of the companion planting concept, lots of anecdotal reports dressed up as meaningful but very little hard data. There are some things to avoid, such as growing tomatoes under a black walnut tree (the tree produces toxins to which nightshade family vines are particularly sensitive) and in general a mixed garden of flowers and multiple types of vegetables seems to provide a better home for predator insect species that help keep the pests in check than is seen with block monoculture, but other than that...slim pickings for real science.
Here's a guide of claimed planting associations and supposed helpful plants for pest control from Cornell Ag, but again as the site cautions these are far more lore-based than scientific.
Some people might be tempted to say that indeed your experience here shows that dill is harmful to kale and chard, but there may be other explanations - especially since the dill is struggling too. It may be that this particular patch of ground is the problem for all three; any chance something was dumped there, like say used DE filter media from a swimming pool or soapy dish water?
How much dill does one family need? Especially since it is struggling too, why not pull it up or better dig it out, cut off the tops and set them to dry and replant the roots elsewhere (next to something you dislike!). If the chard and kale take off, you may be on to something but to be sure you'd have to reinstall the dill and see if the other plants again begin to struggle. Do you have children needing a science fair project for school next year? I can see the backboard now....
Chard is a tough customer, doesn't want much more than water, sun and nitrogen with only a little trace of this and that. For it to struggle says to me either the soil is truly poor or something inhibitory, like salts of some sort, must be present.
Do love a good mystery; I vote for yanking out the dill forthwith, then keep us posted. Good luck.
Next year (making assumptions)
when I double the size of my garden again:
1. "Insectarium" to attract predator insects
2. More flowers in the beds
[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Why wait?
Nasturtiums can still go in productively, especially around your beans. They'll reseed themselves, in their case a plus, look pretty and taste good too. IMHO a very rewarding addition.
Thanks, BIO
that's great. I think you're right--we didn't plant that dill, so why the hell does it think we (and the chard and kale) owe it a living? Freeloader.
There are no environmental dump issues with the dirt--just lots of home-made compost. And, lots and lots of good water!
Decisiveness is admirable
Do keep us posted, I'll be curious what happens with the chard and kale. I am a big chard fan, never had it fail except once when the deer got to it young and ripped it up by the roots. Can't imagine why it would struggle if all around are doing well.
Did someone show the plants a picture of Obama? Just asking.