Organic Gardening Info from Peaceful Valley

In our nursery we just got in these really beautiful Spiral Aloe plants for sale. I personally am going to have to give in and get one for myself. I’ll keep it in a container I believe.

In reading about it and finding out more it is a fascinating plant. Member of the aloe family (duh), and currently endangered in their native South Africa. They have previously been very difficult to grow in cultivation, but it seems that a few basic requirements, especially regarding winter placement have been worked out. It turns out that this successful cultivation is a positive thing, as it allows nurseries to sell this high demand plant, as opposed to it being taken in the wild.

From the U.S. Botanical garden website:

“Threats to populations of spiral aloe include overgrazing, unsustainable harvesting by plant enthusiasts and people interested in its medicinal properties, and the increasing rarity of its pollinator, the Malachite Sunbird. Currently, cooperative efforts between conservationists and nurseries to propagate plants for commercial trade are having some success in reducing the numbers of spiral aloes collected from wild populations.”

Mostly I wanted to show you a picture:

Our new and improved nursery is going to be wonderful this year. We are offering a wide variety of drought hardy, deer resistant plants, which will grow well in our area. We are also offering a wide range of natives from Cornflower Farms. And coming Mid-April, organic seedlings!

Read this article on tending, planting and caring for native plants. 

I talked to a guy in the Peaceful Valley store who found out through a soil test that he has really high levels of micronutrients (he was probably overzealous with the Azomite).

It’s kind of like what happens when I reach too often for the Girl Scout Cookies or Valentine chocolate.  My body gets overloaded then I crash and feel like I need more! A vicious cycle of wrong signals!

So in the soil if there’s too many micronutrient competitors, they antagonize each other.  Pretty soon an all out brawl breaks out!  Zinc has Copper in a head lock…Manganese is gouging Iron’s eye out…Nickel body slams Boron!

As a result of the overload below, the brawling micronutrients are unavailable to the plants, so the above ground symptom is that the plants need MORE micronutrients.  And the natural reaction is to reach for more Azomite.

Whew! I’m tired.  A Coke sounds really good (but maybe I should have some raw almonds instead…).