Impressive to intriguing

More advice on growing vegetables: narrow, small leaves: more nitrogen needed; skinny stalks and shallow roots, purple-tinted leaves: more phosphorus; small fissile flowers; more potassium. I hadn't thought plant were known so well. To me, a latecomer and a dilettante, it's enough that any plant lives and produces anything. But commercial growers have the inside scoop.

Another tip: if I want to fight nematodes in the soil, grow sorghum. What? An unwelcome kind of worm? And that tall pellet-headed grass that looks like a roadside weed? What can I do with it?  Oh, a kind of molasses? Well, then... But, of course, a farmer is very aware of everything affecting the harvest, especially negatively.

Finally, what about my trees and the larvae that defoliate them in the spring. A detergent solution sprayed on the trunk and branches will irritate the delicate skins of the gnawers, especially as they crawl up from the ground.

I learned much of practical significance, which I suppose I could have read in books or on the internet. Talking to someone knowledgeable, though, drove all the points home. The information will allow me to advance my idiosyncratic agricultural and floricultural projects.

The plant culture we discussed, however, came off as a little industrialized. The remarkable fact of their growing at all was displaced by a systematic inventory of nutritional requirements, protective strategies and yields. Does large scale production wash away the wonder? How much wonder had I actually felt, and wouldn't it be replaced by more curiosity if I knew enough to find out more?

Still I felt a shudder when, urged to try growing an new kind of tree, the reply was that, first of all, a market had to be found. Can't grown if it can't be sold. That professional expertise, despite its personal appreciation, is not for nothing.

The returns from my garden are modest since, as overseer, I'm rather indolent. Still it's the non-commercial, individuality of each plot and plant that affords me most pleasure. Ranks and files of, say, uniform bell peppers... Unless I need to eat, I'll stick to mine.