Canterbury Creek Gardens is a unique place. We don’t hype how great our plants, living soils and insoluble organic fertilizers are. We explain how they work and show you the results you can get from using them. We grow plants to mature, harvest size. By doing this, we know varietal strengths and weaknesses. Over 40 years, I have tested thousands of varieties, and countless growing techniques. At Canterbury Creek Gardens, we know our plants are as healthy as possible, and our variety selections are the best possible for our location. Our products work — and they make it easier for you to be successful too. Why would anyone spend 40 yrs. trying to grow better veggies? It’s simple. We have a health (and financial) crisis caused by degenerative diseases resulting from nutritionally deficient diets. Even with all of the discoveries of modern science, and all of the money spent by food manufacturers, there is no food, vitamin, or supplement that is better for preventing these illnesses than what you can grow in a backyard organic garden. No “superfood” will help you live longer or be more productive. No food will help your kids do better in school. People who eat the most vegetables are even significantly happier. But the nutritional value, and the health benefits of these vegetables varies dramatically depending on cultural practices used to grow crops. Vegetable gardening is like taking a test with a lot of questions. This is not a pass-fail test. In this case, every question you get right makes your food quality a little better and plants a little more productive, healthier, and easier to grow. This is a test you don’t want an average grade on, or even above average. On this test, you want to have a perfect score. Gardening with nature is like taking this test with an expert in the field helping you. It’s easier because there are a myriad of creatures taking care of little details we don’t even recognize or yet understand. We work hard to grow the best veggies possible here — chemical-free, nutrient rich, and with superior flavors. Since few of us eat as many veggie servings as we should, what we do eat should be the best quality possible. This is the food I want to eat, and share with our CSA members and all our customers. It’s not harder, more time consuming, or more expensive. It’s easier because you have help. Every spring, we just take out last year’s plant and put a new one in the same hole. We plant some flowers for pest control. We chose more vigorous varieties and feed them well to minimize disease problems. We spend very little time on maintenance because we provide support systems that the plants just grow into. A well fed, healthy plant is easier to grow and produces more, tastier, and nutritionally superior food. Just take some time to learn — and the more you learn, the easier it becomes to grow more and better food. We have had some amazing success stories here, a 28′ w x 8′ h x 7′ d tomato plant, a sweet pepper plant that produced 142 peppers, a paste tomato we picked over 1200 tomatoes from, and 7 ft tall pepper plants. I’m not saying this to brag about big plants, but to underline the point that plant size and productivity are reflections of food quality, and despite what people think about their own gardening results, most gardeners, including myself, fall far short of plant potentials. For example, the genetic potential is for a single corn plant to yield 8 ears of corn — and over 340 lbs of tomatoes per plant. Every year, I know we make mistakes that prevent us from reaching the genetic potential of our crops. We might miss a week fertilizing, didn’t prune on time, or were slow in recognizing an insect or disease problem. This means our flavors and nutritional content also have room for improvement. To grow superior food, you need to enlist the support of nature, use techniques learned by studying nature, and do what you need to do to support this system. Take a few minutes to learn how important soil life is to plants, and learn about natural pest control. It is a long article. It was written in response to many customers saying they want to grow vegetables naturally. But if you really want to grow plants “naturally”, you have to understand how nature works to help plants, and what tools are at your disposal. Volumes have been written about every subject. This is as concise as I could get, so it is by no means complete with every symbiotic relationship of plants. Just understand there are innumerable natural creatures whose sole purpose is to help plants grow bigger, healthier, and more productive. They can be at your disposal if you provide the right conditions for them. One of the major causes of reduced crop nutrient levels is reduction of soil biology. Even if you don’t garden, it pays to understand this because it will also make you a better consumer. The informationhere is free and something you will not get from any other retailer in Northern Ohio. We only ask for your financial support (in the form of purchases) to help keep our business growing. These are trying times for all small businesses and we all need your help.

We start planting warm season crops outside in early June. In just a few weeks, they will have already outgrown most plants started a month earlier. Why? Because when we plant, there is already an established nutrient uptake system in the soil for our plants to grow into. This email is about how that happens — having knowledge and patience — understanding and teaming with nature instead of fighting against it (like when you till your soil). People often tell me they want to garden “naturally”. But I think few really know what this means. It should mean: – Plant at the right time. This can’t be overstated. – Create a biologically rich, living soil and keep it alive or reinoculate it annually. – Fertilize with a natural, organic, insoluble fertilizer that provides all of the nutrients essential to plant growth. These fertilizers benefit the entire soil-plant ecosystem. – Do not disturb the soil with damaging practices like soil tilling. – Learn how to aerate your soil. Plant roots and soil microbes work best under highly aerobic conditions, pathogens prefer poorly drained soils. – Properly support your plants with as little pruning as possible, but definitely prune when needed. – Surround your plants with an assortment of flowering plants to attract beneficial insects, both predators and pollinators.

Soils in our Great Plains were created from massive herds of animals trampling down plants and dropping manure on top of the flattened organic matter (aka fertilizing). We mimic this method by mulching with our winter or spring cover crops, or a clean weed-free straw. We chop cover crops down, drop the residue on the soil, and spread our fertilizer on top of it as shown below. This is a multimillennial tested process that has created the most fertile soils in the world — and the soil you want your food growing in. This is plants growing “naturally”.

In only a few weeks (see below), the mulch has mostly decomposed and we often reapply straw mulch. These mulches protect the soil pores from getting clogged by the force of water droplets, and it provides cover for many soil predators, as well as worms.

Timing I believe improper timing is a mistake every gardener makes at some point, including myself. It took me several years of problems, and delayed and reduced harvests to finally associate them with improper timing. I have planted tomatoes from April to August, and I have seen the results. Timing your plantings correctly makes a difference. Plants are very complex, many with twice the number of chromosomes that we have. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution have programmed them to germinate, grow, and reproduce at certain times and on a particular schedule. Incorrect timing may not kill a plant but it is critical to optimum health and productivity. People think they didn’t make a mistake with planting early if their plants survive spring frosts. They do not realize pest damage in summer, and reduced yields, are also results of planting too early. I have seen this happen many times over many years. See it for yourself in the video below. There is a clear winner in terms of health and productivity. Like humans, plants have periods of infancy, adolescence, maturity and reproduction, and these are results of hormonal changes. These changes take place as a result of factors like age, stresses, soil temperature, and even the angle of the sun in the sky. When their age and stresses (like being rootbound) cause an early reproductive phase, they become more susceptible to pest damage and productivity drops because they did not fully mature prior to reproduction. Planting closer to their natural cycle makes life much easier for your plants — and for you. This is why researchers recommend planting onions, shallots, peas, and most cruciferous veggies in April — and warm season crops when the soil warms up and the soil biology is ready to help them grow and thrive — usually early June.

Here is a comparison of 2 rows of Mountain Magic Tomatoes, planted 2 weeks apart. You can see that the row on the right is healthier and more productive than the row on the left which was planted 2 weeks earlier.

Growing naturally doesn’t mean not fertilizing. In nature, almost all nutrients are recycled and more are constantly added through the actions of soil creatures breaking down inorganic objects like stones, etc. Manures, and dead plants and animals are plentiful, from the smallest creatures on up. Try parking your car under a tree for just a couple of days to see how plentiful bird manure is. And unlike nature, in your garden nutrients are repeatedly harvested and taken away with your nutrient rich crops, so more need to be added. In nature, plants don’t grow on their own. They are aided by billions of soil microbes per cubic inch, and have been growing with this help for 460 million years. The soil microbiota is as important to plant health as our gut microbiota is to our health. Plants also benefit from help provided by other neighboring plants. In a natural setting, seeds drop to the ground and when just the right combination of conditions occur (daylength, soil temperature, moisture, etc), they sprout. Sometimes it takes an extended cold period, sometimes it involves fermentation to prime the seed coat. As soon as they sprout, their roots begin to look for nutrients but maybe even more important, they look for a mycorrhizal fungal network (aka nature’s internet). They even release hormones called Strigolactones from their roots to attract mycorrhizal fungi in the soil to grow towards their roots. Mycorrhizal fungi grow by attaching to the surface of the root or to the inside of the root cells. Then they send their filaments (called mycelium) into the surrounding soil, effectively extending the plant’s roots and root absorbing capacity ten to 1000 times — far beyond what the plant can do alone. They also connect plants together and allow them to share resources.

In this image, the brown roots are actual plant roots while the white root-like growth is mycorrhizal fungus which extends far beyond the plant roots and absorbs many times more nutrients than the roots could alone. Mycorrhizal fungus is not found in depleted or sterile soils, or bare soils. It needs to be constantly fed by plants which is one reason why winter cover crops are so important, and why we inoculate the plants we grow and sell with mycorrhizal propagules. Notice how the younger plants have attracted the fungal mycellium created by the older plant. Once connected to the network, they can obtain all the nutrients the fungal network carries through it. It is obvious your crops will do better if they just have to tap into a fungal network to get started. In your garden, you can create this network by planting an inoculated spring cover crop — onions, shallots, peas, greens, or other cool season crops. They can create a mycorrhizal network your tomatoes (and other warm season crops), can benefit from when planted several weeks later. The exception of these early crops is the cabbage family, which doesn’t use mycorrhizae. The pic below shows a tomato planted into a container where shallots have been growing for several weeks — and — establishing a microbial community for the tomato.

Supporting your soil biology will dramatically help your plants — young and old. If the seedling can find the right network and tap into it, this fungal system will supply the young plant with nutrients. It can also supply a seedling with energy in the form of sugars made by other plants, and shared through the network. This sharing of resources can fuel a plant’s early growth, allowing it to get established more quickly without having to expend energy or resources to grow a larger root system, or grow more leaves for photosynthetic energy. Established plants helping young plants grow is common practice in nature. The same exudates (the sugary root secretions) from plant roots that can feed seedlings also feed the microbiome of the soil, again, through this fungal network. Some of these soil microbes provide protection services for plant roots by attacking root pathogens. Others provide growth hormones, antibiotics, and a wide array of compounds used by the plants to help them grow and be healthy. Several miles of ultra-fine mycorrhizal fungi filaments can be present in less than a thimbleful of healthy soil. They colonize every tiny soil particle to provide an active exchange between plant roots and microbial communities living on these particles. There is an army of hundreds of billions of microbes in every handful of healthy soil. Their primary task is decomposing decaying organic matter and soil particles — extracting basic nutrients — and building organic compounds used by plants and animals throughout the food chain. This army of workers are fueled by sugars produced by plants during photosynthesis. These workers are producing nutrients and other substances the plant needs, and they are being fed by carbs produced by neighboring plants. This is an amazingly complex and resilient system, but it can also be fragile and easily damaged by poor cultural practices, like bare soils, poor fertilizing, and tilling.

Fertilizer benefits vary greatly Nutrients are not wasted in nature, they are recycled and the next generation is rebuilt as every living organism lives and dies. In your garden, fertilizers should replace the soil nutrients that in nature would come from animal manures, rotting vegetation, and decaying animal bodies (from the tiniest insects, to the biggest predators). Fertilizers are even more important in your garden because of the repeated harvest of these nutrients via your nutrient dense crops. Most natural nutrient sources for plants come in insoluble forms that are unavailable to plants. Plants need nutrients and insoluble forms are best because they also stimulate microbial actions by stimulating root exudates (sugary root secretions). plants are forced to pay for these nutrients by releasing exudates. Insoluble fertilizers result in plants that produce more exudates, feeding an even bigger soil ecosystem which can provide a plant with more nutrients — and maybe even more important — all of the other beneficial services they provide. When you use soluble fertilizers, including organics like fish emulsion, these soluble nutrients flood the soil. This reduces the amount of sugars roots release, which reduces all the soil microbiota activities, reducing the production of plant protection substances, and even disrupting plant hormones produced by the soil microbiome. The salts in chemical fertilizers further damage soil microbiota activity. Soluble and chemical fertilizers also inhibit production of strigolactones which make it harder for plant roots to team up with mycorrhizal networks. How do fertilizers affect the big picture? In the US, there are adequate amounts of phosphorus in almost all soils. However, with reduced biological activity this stays locked up and unavailable to plants. So soluble phosphorus is used. Being soluble means that although some gets absorbed by plants, much of it washes through the soil and into waterways. This runoff of soluble nutrients is the major nutrient source for harmful algae blooms. In biologically rich soils, using insoluble fertilizers, nutrients can be stored for thousands of years — until needed by plants. Carbon sequestration In nature, with healthy plants and a healthy soil microbiome, excess carbohydrates are produced from photosynthesis. These unused carbohydrates are also fixed, or sequestered, into the soil for later use. This can be a very robust process. An acre of properly maintained lawn or garden can actually sequester the annual carbon emissions from one car. In poorly managed soils, like our farm soils today after years of chemical use, carbon is being oxidized and released into the air in the form of carbon dioxide. This is now happening at such a rapid rate that experts are now describing our soils as “hemorrhaging” CO2.

Natural Pest Control When a healthy plant gets attacked by pests, a series of events is stimulated. The plant starts producing compounds that repel the insects, and others that attract predators — signaling to them there is food (pests) present. These compounds are released into the air and some are also released through their roots into the mycorrhizal network to warn surrounding plants. Very quickly, neighboring plants also start releasing the same compounds to repel pests and attract predators, because of what they learned through “Nature’s Internet”, mycorrhizal fungi. Plants in biologically poor soils are isolated, leaving them more susceptible to pest damage. Many predators prey on insect pests as juveniles but, like butterflies, are nectar feeders as adults. They lay eggs near an insect infestation which becomes a food source for their young. But to keep the adults in your garden you have to provide the nectar that they live on as adults — which means growing their favorite flowers nearby. At Canterbury Creek Gardens, the majority of our pest control is now growing flowers near plants, that feed the predators, that prey on the plants we are protecting.

These flowering containers were planted in the middle of a large planting of tomatoes. Diversity is always good for attracting a larger number of beneficial insects — but our experimentation has showed us the best flowering plants to use going forward. Below shows a picture of how this is becoming standard practice — even on large farms. You can see the rows of white flowers spaced to provide good coverage for these particular veggie crops.

Comparing Cultural Practices Many gardeners plant their summer crops (which were greenhouse grown in sterile potting mixes) into cold lifeless soils — depriving them of a lot of help. The soil just suffered a huge setback in spring from being tilled — destroying mycorrhizal fungus, and worm tunnels it took a year to make. This is the “natural” drainage and aeration system of the soil, and it is destroyed by tilling. Imagine the difference when veggies started in biologically rich soil (including mycorrhizae), and planted in soils where a mycorrhizal system, and microbial community is kept alive from the previous year or when that microbial community has a chance to get established before planting warm season crops. The mycorrhizal systems from our potted plants — and the mycorrhizae in our prepared soil — quickly splice together, giving the young plants a much quicker start to the season, and saving them energy and resources to grow bigger and faster. Our plants are more protected from pest damage and more productive because they have had a rich and robust soil microbiota to help them from infancy. We also pinch off the first couple of fruit sets from our large tomatoes, because we find that the extra week or two of producing more leaves and building more energy causes them to ripen faster. The first tomatoes we harvest every year are from the small potted plants that were never planted up. They are trying to mature a few seeds before they die — the urge to procreate. Of course they only produce a few fruits and quickly deteriorate. For us, earlier tomatoes are a sure sign of stress and reduced yields. For early fruits, plant an early variety. Sometimes we do this with one plant, but they are usually less productive than main season varieties, and sometimes have to be pulled early. Anybody that has tried to mature broccoli in summer heat knows the problems created with quick bolting. Onions planted too late seldom, if ever, produce top size bulbs. Peas may wilt and die even before harvest if started too late. Planting summer crops too early creates similar problems, but are usually not associated with stress damage from early planting. This year grow your plants more “naturally”. – Plant them at the right time. – Prepare your soil so their soil helpers are ready for them. – Plant cover crops or early season crops, but get something growing. – If you are going to till, add enough of the right amendments so you don’t have to do it again. – Plant a selection of flowers to attract beneficial insects. – Feed your soil and not your plants with an insoluble organic fertilizer, and one rich in trace minerals that are essential to the health of all living creatures. – Mulch with a loose, well aerated mulch like chopped and dropped cover crops, or clean straw. Almost all living creatures benefit from the way plants convert the sun’s energy to food energy through photosynthesis. Countless numbers of them are trying to help plants grow bigger and faster. The most productive gardeners learn how to harness these benefits. Gardening is simpler, more fun and rewarding, and more productive when you get some help from Mother Nature.

A tomato plant we planted the second week of June that was only about 2 inches tall when planted, grew to 28 ft. wide x 8 ft tall x 7 ft thick in 120 days. Here it is after about 90 days.