Publication Date: Friday Oct 17, 1997

Laying the groundwork

At the end of his episodic adventures of trial and will, Voltaire's Candide urges us to cultivate our gardens. Many Palo Alto residents are doing just that today. And now is the right time to consider the care of a garden or lawn.

October often presents ideal conditions for preparing a lawn, said Bernard Trainor, design director for the Palo Alto landscape design company Botanika.

"If you do it too late, it will be too cold," he said. "Autumn is the ideal time because the temperature is gentle enough to promote growth and there is enough water in the soil."

To prepare for putting in a lawn, Trainor suggests cultivating the top 6 to 12 inches of soil by loosening it with a cultivator or rotary hoe. Continue to break up the soil until its texture becomes fine, at which point one should roll the soil over and rake it smooth, Trainor said. One may then distribute seed or roll out turfs onto the prepared soil.

Generously water the lawn for the first four to six weeks, Trainor said, in order to make sure that the lawn does not dry out. After about the sixth week, Trainor suggests reducing the watering to three or four times a week. About this time, after the first four to six weeks, the lawn should be mowed, he said. One may also use the lawn clippings from the mown lawn to fertilize it.

"Rather than resorting to a chemical fertilizer, this puts the nitrogen from the cut grass blades straight back into the soil." He also said that this method is highly resourceful and effective.

"Garden refuse accounts for 50 percent of our dumping ground in California, and 50 percent of that is estimated to be lawn clippings," Trainor said.

Alternatively, expert horticulturist and author John Jeavons has developed a "biointensive" method to prepare garden soil, taking advantage of complementary crops.

While Jeavons' method has been applied globally to combat famine by replenishing soil for crops, his technique can just as easily work to improve gardening in one's back yard.

Jeavons highly recommends preparing a garden soil by the middle of October, before the rains. He suggests growing a winter compost crop by using either a cereal rye plant, which will grow three miles of roots a day and has a five-month growing season, or a winter wheat crop. He also said one may use hulless oats and hulless barley.

"You can literally grow your own oatmeal in your back yard," he said. The compost material provides the soil with all of its needed nutrients, such as carbon and nitrates, to grow food efficiently.

Jeavons said his method will have two to six times the yield produced by conventional techniques.

He instructs growers to use deep-soil preparation, to dig 24 inches into the soil; to use compost to create a higher yield of soil rich with nutrients; to plant plants close together where "the leaves touch or barely touch during maturation" (this also helps vertical root growth); to create "symbiotic" plant relationships--placing a carrot plant near a bean plant, for example; and to apply all of these techniques in conjunction with one another.

Jeavons' book, "How to Grow More Vegetables, Fruits, Nuts, Beans, Grains and Other Crops Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine," sums up the nature of his work. In fact, Jeavons grew much of the material for his book from Palo Alto soil.

Patricia Becker at Common Ground said that now is a good time to plant winter cover crops to enrich the soil. She called these crops "miracle workers."

"Rich, fertile soil with lots of humus is the key to bountiful gardens," she said.

For rich, fertile lawns, Jeavons suggests using 1 pound of organic fertilizer hoof and horn meal with 1 pound blood meal and 1 pound fish meal per 100 square feet. These fertilizers are time-released and will last all year. For those growers who do not want to use animal-based fertilizers, Jeavons offers a "vegetarian" alternative: 6 to 12 pounds of alfalfa meal. He said that lawns are currently dormant and recommends using only half of these fertilizer amounts in the fall; the full recipe is suggested for the spring.

"Fertilizing is something you absolutely have to do with your grass," said Don Ellis resident horticulturist at The Gamble Garden Center. Ellis said that fertilizing the lawn after the first growth, about one to two months later, will increase the nitrogen levels in the soil. He also said to use half of the normal amount of fertilizer this time of year because of cooler temperatures. Palo Alto resident Adrienne Duncan has used Jeavons' method in her own back yard.

"You name it, I've got it," she said. "It can get a lot from a little bit of land."

Duncan has prepared a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables, from Brussels sprouts and cauliflower to beets, onions and carrots, in her fall bed.

"Everything green" is how she describes her compost material of leaves, grass clippings and dead plants, which are then mixed with chicken dung and lightly spread (3 to 4 inches in the spring and about half that amount in the fall) on top of the garden soil.

"It's my mini-garden," she said. "It works in my back yard."



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