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August 08, 2008, 10:37 AM ET
Raising Heirlooms at Clemson U., and Worms at UC Davis
The latest issue of Organic Gardening magazine features a story about David Bradshaw, a retired professor of horticulture who now cares for the Heirloom Garden at Clemson University’s South Carolina Botanical Garden. Heirlooms, as any gardener out there would know, are the rare and odd varieties of flowers, fruits, and vegetables that gardeners cherish for their taste or their appearance — or because heirlooms offer some genetic diversity to an increasingly standardized set of commercially grown plants.
“Heirlooms are the memory banks that have been part of families for generations,” Mr. Bradshaw tells Organic Gardening. “There are stories and information in the seed.” One such story lies behind the heirloom “Turkey Gizzard” beans grown in the garden — their ancestors were found in the gizzard of a turkey by a Kentucky settler in 1802.
Because Organic Gardening is a “news you can use” type of publication, the article includes a sidebar with Mr. Bradshaw’s helpful hints on growing heirlooms — on spacing the plants, looking for pests, and outwitting squash-vine borers. (That last bit of advice would be especially helpful to me.)
The issue of Organic Gardening also features a short item on students at the University of California at Davis who have started a worm-composting operation, fed daily by 1,000 pounds of food scraps from the campus food service and by manure from the university barns. In vermiculture, or worm raising, one feeds the little wrigglers vegetarian table scraps, like coffee grounds, shredded fruits and vegetables, and so on. (Just avoid meat, dairy, and highly acidic foods.) The worms gobble it up and excrete castings — i.e., worm poop — that is rich in nutrients that plants love.
If worm poop excites you, note that the students hold worm-composting workshops every semester, and attendees leave sessions with free worms. — Scott Carlson
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