Re:Introduction



Hello everyone.  My name is William Perez, and I just joined the veggie 
list.  I am twenty-nine years old and live in Fleetwood, New York, a few
minutes from NYC, and I am a gardener at the New York Botanical Garden.  I
hope to learn lots from this list.  Actually, I know I will.  I've just been
given a veggie plot, and am pretty much starting from scratch in the
knowledge department.

Well, the first question that has been floating about in my racing brain (I
have seven other display gardens to contend with!) is crop rotation.  I'm
familiar with rotating crops in the traditional sense, but I've been
wondering how crop rotation comes into play in small mixed beds.  Our veggie
garden is composed of eight rectangular raised beds.  Obviously, one could
simply grow related veggies in each bed and just move them around year to
year.  But I don't want to do that.  The inspiration bug has bitten me a
good one, and I want to create ornamental beds with veggies planted in
pretty patterns.  This of course means that a bed could have any variety of
vegetables which would complicate the basic design of blocks or rows of
similar vegetables.  So, do I just throw crop rotation out the window and
just change the soil in the raised beds every year, or is it the case that
growing a variety of vegetables mitigates the problems associated with
monoculture so that crop rotation is not necessary?

Second question, can anyone suggest must have vegetable books?  Books that
no vegetable gardener should live without?

Third, but certainly not the last for as long as I'm a member of this list,
can anyone suggest any seed places that carry seeds of wild or original
species of modern day vegetable hybrids?

Okay, that's all for now.  But be forewarned, there'll be many "why is a
tomato red?" questions coming from this novice.  Thanks so much in advance,
and I hope to be able to help anyone in the future as my knowledge and
experience grows.
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