Have you read Pith + Vigor? If not, you’ll want to subscribe to this hip, local, garden lifestyle magazine founded & edited by author and landscape designer, Rochelle Greayer.
This summer’s issue has a piece entitled, Tao of Terroir. It features our own resident soil expert Priscilla Hutt Williams of Pumpkin Brook Organic Gardening. She was an early student in Dan Kittredge’s nutrient density soil classes. While the discussions focused on building soils to produce nutrient dense food, she saw tie-ins to her work in suburban landscapes with ornamental plants. “After all, it’s not much of a stretch from growing raspberries to roses, or from highbush blueberries to mountain laurels,” she said recently. “These plants are in the same families and have similar root and leaf structures as well as nutritional needs.” “We began taking a new kind of soil test that gave easy-to-read data about current levels of nutrients vs. desired targets. And every fall we amend soils for our clients according to nutrient density principles per these soil test results. It’s been quite astonishing! More intense color, more buds, more blooms, more strong woody growth. And the soils are full of life. I can tell the minute I walk in to one of these properties that it’s all working beautifully.”
This article is part one of a two-part series celebrating the UN naming 2015 the International Year of Soils #IYOS2015. The fall issue will take an in-depth look at one of Pumpkin Brook’s properties that experienced a complete soil health turnaround since nutrient density principles were applied.
