Fertility

Here is a great little peek into the power of fertilizing.  There are many, many things that a gardener can spend time doing with a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction e.g. tilling, weeding, building trellises, etc.  But in my book ensuring a fertile soil tops the list in terms of important things one should do to succeed at growing healthy and nutritious vegetables.  These two carrots were from the same seed pack and planted into two separate beds on the same day last spring.  And no, I did not take the runt from one bed and the best specimen of the other bed, these are average carrots from each spot.  The small one in the foreground (about the diameter of a dime) actually grew in mechanically superior soil we stripped of sod but otherwise left as it was "naturally".  The much larger carrot in the back grew in a bed we amended with a number of minerals our garden soil is deficient in according to "Albrechtian" principles.  We added calcium, sulfur, phosphorus, copper, zinc, manganese, and boron.  We also added a few pounds of kelp meal to the bed for trace minerals.  And some compost.  The flavor of the bigger carrot was a little better.

-Edmund