Houston Organic Gardening Symposium

Kim really wanted to attend this organic gardening symposium for our 18th anniversary.  Her gardening guru, founder of Urban Harvest, was one of the speakers.

After choosing our workshops our day looked like:

1. Breakfast :-)
2. Betsy Ross (for real), elderly rancher woman from West Texas, talks about soil fertility, the soil food web, native plants, movement of energy from soil to dinner table.  She was cool.
3. John Ferguson, one of Texas' most knowledgeable soil scientists, master in physics, who wore ostrich boots delved into the science of composting.  This guy had my gears cranking.
4. Heidi Sheesley, one of Houston's best known horticulturalists, showed us about 75 different trees and shrubs to attract hummingbirds and butterflies.  I want to visit her.
5. Lunch :-)
6. Paul Tukey, a radical left wing green guy, who made his million off of lawn care, got sick from the chemicals and changed his ways spoke.  He's more on the political end and made a passionate speech.  You know, I hate to say it, knowing that most my friends and family hate this -- but you may lose me to the green side - totally.
7. Diana Liga, another horticulturalist, spoke about "permaculture" (my interest in this was actually more about system's design as it relates to software engineering... this is my own take)
8. Bob Randall, the Urban Harvest Guru, Rice lecturer, gave us an overview of how he basically lives off 100'x100' space.

What I came away with wasn't so much about gardening, but their way of thinking... yeah, they got to me.

Here's a simple example - I've known that plants need nitrogen in the dirt.  I've always thought that you spike the dirt with nitrogen and wallah --- good dirt --- big tomato.

These guys don't think that way.  First they don't call it "dirt", they call it "soil".  What's the difference? "Dirt" is "inorganic".  "Soil" is "organic".  By "organic" they throw in "biology".

There is what they call a "soil food web".  It's a real deal.  There's a network of bacteria, fungus, dead leaves,worms, molds, mites and all sorts of weird crap that interact to make healthy "soil" for plants.  The plants and fungus/bacteria/mites/worms/molds/dead leaves/weird crap all work together exchanging protection, nutrients, minerals and stuff (you can see what happens under a microscope)

"Soil" is a living mess --- it's own little system.  Plants have for ever, naturally, interacted with this living mess in a mutually beneficial arrangement.

What the organic dudes are saying is that that is still the best way --- even economically (the only time, it seems, I can legitimately and realistically use the word eco is with the word "economically" as this is the god of all "eco"s, and all other "eco"s are subject to this fundamental "eco" of economics, I mean money... yes, we can all listen now, but we won't because it must be a con by compost lovers, the left's green dragon).

So what's the difference between nitrogen spiked dirt and "soil"?  They talked a lot about that - some about mineral and vitamin depletion.

This actually led me to think about my arms.  Frankie mentioned to me on Thursday that a friend of his was found to have a magnesium deficiency.  A girl that sat at our table was at this conference for a similar reason --- she was basically debilitated and found a change of diet brought her back to life.  The green freak quit his millions after becoming very very ill due to the chemicals he was using.  The physicist, who dispelled my nitrogen myth, had a similar story where he almost died because he has a low tolerance for some lawn chemical.

Anyhow, I'm signing up to see that girl's doctor who happens to have an office right here on Bay Area Blvd.  She drives an hour and a half to see him!  He's next door!  I'm excited.

I don't want to make this post too long, but I've been thinking a lot about permaculture and thinking how it might relate to systems engineering.

A final note, me -- the guy that has never won anything --, who has always said, "the only way I win is if I work my tail off" - me, that guy, won two, count them - two!, prizes at the show.  One, I was at a table of 10 and had a piece of tape on my chair and another in a roomful 100 or so, won 1 of 4 prizes.  The odds are about 1/250 I think.

Take home -  a huge fern and three bags of "organic" mulch.

PS: and still got to fish :-)