Vegetable Gardening West of the Cascades

[botias]

I got an Amazon box the other day, always a happy thing. Inside were the novel Howl's Moving Castle was based on, two books on gardening on the West Coast, and a box of ink jet-printable business cards. So far the first gardening book has explained a lot, like why I have had success with lettuce, carrots and radishes and that's about it. An early sub-heading: Our Soil Is Poor. :| Another: Our Manures and Composts Are Low-Grade Too. Yay! Guess who has been fertilizing (or attempting to) with compost? The veggies I've had success with don't require a lot of soil fertility. The book has a scientific approach to fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides not always found in organic gardening circles. No, the chemical fertilizers don't result in less healthful produce BUT farmers who use it can and often do ignore soil health which does affect the food, and the powerful and quick release fertilizers must be wielded with a care and precision that doesn't always happen, resulting in environmental damage. Also, another denunciation of wood mulch, or indeed any mulch at all. In other climates this sort of thing works out, but not here where it only breeds huge populations of slugs, pillbugs and earwigs, and keeps things unnecessarily soggy.