Tuesday, February 28, 2012

A Day at Hobbit Gardens

Our wonderful Vice President for Education
set up a field trip for our Master Gardener group.

This trip was to Hobbit Gardens outside of 
Fillmore, Indiana.

Hobbit Gardens is an organic herb farm
owned and operated by Constance Ferry.
 Hobbit Gardens was organic before
organic was hip.

We did our part to help save the planet
and carpooled up to Hobbit Gardens.
It was about an hour and a half drive from the 
north side of B-town.

We drove through a few snow squalls on our way there.
There was even snow on the ground as we finally turned
into the gravel lane that led us to Hobbit Gardens.


 We arrived at 10 am.

Sadly, the gardens are asleep,
although Constance assured us that she has been
able to harvest feverfew near the house all winter long,
due to the mild weather.


 The herb garden.

I would love to see this in season.

Interestingly, 
we could smell the thyme as we walked past.


 Inside the shop.


 It was cool in the shop.


We were served lunch - a vegetarian lunch.

Lunch was a mixed salad topped with flax seed, chopped parsley,
and a tahini vinaigrette.
We were also served homemade whole wheat bread 
and red grapes.

 
Dessert, if you will, was rose petal scones with rose hip jam.

Delicious and all organic.


So what did we learn?

Only 1/32 of the surface of the earth is used to grow 
 all the food for all
the population of the planet.

It takes 100 years to create 1 inch of top soil.

The number one job of a gardener should be
to Grow Soil!
If you do that, you will have a healthy and vibrant garden.

We need pest insects so that we can have 
beneficial insects in our gardens.
So, don't use insecticides!

Organic gardening "stores" energy in the earth.

Use green grass clippings 
(as long as no chemicals have been applied to the grass)
as mulch around tomatoes and pepper plants
as the this mulch will heat the soil and make the plants happy.

Only buy cold pressed or expeller pressed olive oils.

When you fertilize and/or water plants,
you make the plants dependent upon those things.
DON'T DO IT!,
Doing these things creates weaker plants.
 
And Gardening is never benign.
We are always changing nature by the very act of gardening.


We left at 3:30 pm.
It was a lovely day,
spent with wonderful people.

2 comments:

Rosie Hawthorne said...

Out to create top soil today.

Marilyn said...

Still far too wet to do anything with this heavy clay soil. At this point I'd do more damage than good and the soil structure would never recover.