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Victory Garden visit

This was written by Doreen Howard, a long member of our
sqft listserv and a professional gardening author.
Please direct any comments to her:  doreen@tgn.net

>  Gardeners in other parts of the country, including those at the PBS
>Victory Garden in Boston, never have the disease and pest challenges that
>gardeners like me in the South do.
>  On my visit to the best known garden in the country last week, I noticed
>how perfect the vegetables and flowers were and asked how they that was
>achieved.
>  Roger Swain, host of the program, answered, "Just a little Bt dust, some
>hand-picking of caterpillars, a few sticky traps and solarization of the
soil."
>  With a 95-100 day growing season, followed by months of below-freezing
>weather, insects and diseases die or go dormant. Little in the way of
>disease and insect control is needed.  I poked my head into the workshop
>where equipment and supplies are kept and found only a few organic
>insecticides on the shelves.
>  I, on the other hand, have a climate, year-round, that is conducive to the
>rapid reproduction of every bug and disease know to man.
>  If you've ever felt a bit inferior about your gardening abilities after
>watching the Victory Garden program on Sunday, don't!  I think all us Square
>Foot gardeners work harder and achieve more.
> First, as mentioned above, the Boston garden has a less hospitable climate
>for insects and disease than many other places in the US. Second, the garden
>isn't as large as it looks. All photographers know that wide
>angle lenses make anything look larger.  Such is the case of the Victory
>Garden. The main garden where the program is shot is barely an acre. The
>vegetable patch is no bigger than average backyard plot used for SQ FOOT
>gardens.
>  The immaculate look is achieved by two full-time gardeners, including Kip
>Anderson, who has the dirty fingernails to prove his job. Roger Swain's are
>clean; he is just the program host.
>  Soil is as loose and fertile as it appears on camera.  You can literally
>push your arm into it up to the elbow effortlessly. But, the enormous
>amounts of compost incorporated into the dirt to achieve this looseness
>comes from Wilson Farms, across the road.
>  The 35-acre market farm, locked in the middle of densely populated
>suburban Lexington, Mass., is totally organic. Compost is made in such
>gigantic quantities that it has to be turned nightly with a bulldozer.
>  Vast fields of perfect lettuce, red cockscomb, yellow sunflowers and
>lavender and white striped eggplants are a visual delight.  The farmstand,
>at the edge of the fields, is chocked full of the best looking and tasting
>cut flowers, fruit and vegetables I've seen in years. I
>sampled just about all of it, too!
>  The Wilson family employs integrated pest management, always using the
>least toxic choice for problems.  And they concentrate mightily on building
>the soil. They believe in feeding the soil, not the plants.
>  I found Wilson Farms to be much more interesting than the Victory Garden,
>because it was real.  The PBS creation is an illusion, although, a
gorgeous one.
>  The Victory Garden television program will air a six-week series of visits
>to French gardens beginning Saturday, Oct. 25. Adrian Bloom, a British
>horticulturist who specializes in perennials, will guide viewers through the
>La Grasse Perfume fields where flowers such as jasmine are grown for the
>scent industry.  Other stops will be in Provence (including the medieval
>village of Bonnieux), Nice, Monte Carlo
>and Avignon for a truffle hunt.
>  Missing this season are regulars Jim Wilson and Peter Seabrook. To quote
>Jim, when I asked him about it, "We've been downsized like other
corporations."
>  You will find Jim Wilson and his unique brand of garden wisdom on a new
>Home and Garden Television channel program that will debut in mid-September.
>Peter Seabrook will join him for many of the shows.

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