Ask Professor Produce

Dear Professor, I'm a beginning urban gardener planting my first bed this year and I'm looking for some dirt—not just information, actual dirt. Do any of the farms the Wedge works with offer organic dirt for sale?

—Evan, Minneapolis

So it's dirt you want, is it? Let me begin with some dirt on yours truly. You see, when I was a child my parents imbued me with a rock-solid belief that I could do anything I set my mind to. Somehow, coming from a rural environment, this proved true for a great many years. I backpacked across Australia, swam with dolphins in the Indian Ocean and hiked the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro. I strode amongst the ruins of ancient Rome. Rarely did the wayward foot of Fate tread upon any aspiration I set my mind toward—that is, until I bought a house in South Minneapolis, a house with a tremendous expanse of dirt that had once been a garden but these many years later was a lot of very dry, chalky earth thriving with extremely invasive weeds. Home, sweet home.

Considering myself at least as tenacious as crabgrass, I set about turning that garden around. I read books. I hoed. I sweat. I planted and watered and dug and sweat, I hoed and raked and mulched and sweat. In the end, hardly anything grew and the whole yard veritably reeked of fish emulsion fertilizer and improperly rotting compost from the pile I had set up in the corner of our lot. Soon the mice arrived. It was then that I gingerly transplanted my smarting ego into the rich, fertile valley of denial, and retreated into landscaping fantasies instead—lying blissfully on my carpet, cutting out small circles to represent thriving shrubs and trees and placing them on a cardboard mock-up of my lawn. It was beautiful, I tell you, my cardboard horticulture, replete with water features and loads of interest.

Eventually I had to admit a difficult truth: gardening, unlike adventure traveling, is not the type of thing that one can just launch into and rely on the salty cut of her jib to hardscrabble her through tough times. Oh no. Gardening is like building a pyramid—for goodness sake people, you must make sure your base is secure. This means you must start with good, healthy dirt.

So it is with a hard-won pleasure that I introduce you to something that is really going to make your gardens grow. We sell it during spring here in the Wedge produce department— Cowsmo Compost. This is organically certified, expertly composted manure from a 5th generation dairy farm in Cochrane, Wisconsin. This compost is organic, sustainable, locally produced, economical, weed-free and—to answer the question that is likely on everyone's mind—odorless. Odorless! Imagine.

Now, the amazing thing about compost is that it will improve any soil you mix it with—it makes hard soils soft, it helps dry soils retain water, it improves drainage in soggy areas and it is loaded with beneficial organisms that will aerate your soil, allowing your plants to dig in and root deeply.

Sure, that's great for urban gardeners, but even if the closest you ever get to gardening is maintaining houseplants, there is Cowsmo for you too. New this year, we will be offering smaller bags of potting soil perfect for transplanting your indoor plants—it is a mix of peat, organic Cowsmo compost, sand and nutritive additions in varying amounts depending on the intended use. In addition to Cowsmo products, we will also have a good selection of organic heirloom seed varieties from the High-Mowing Seed Company and a selection of bedding plants including more of the popular Ever-bearing Strawberry plants we had available last year from Gardens of Eagan.

That ought to be more than enough dirt to get you going—and growing—all season long. That is, as long as you really put your mind to it. Finally I leave all of you beginning gardeners with a bit of gardening wisdom that has really served me well: When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.