fertilization

I was watching TV today and marveled to myself what a strange world we live in. One doesn't need to be watching TV or even own a TV to think this, but at the moment the inspiration came in the form of a commercial for gardening soil. The commercial was touting how great the soil-in-a-bag was, and how you were guaranteed that flowers and plants would bloom 50% better or some such statistic, if such a thing could even be quantified. I could just picture some lady with a pair of measuring calipers in the garden, checking to see if her yellow roses had indeed increased in diameter by 50% since switching to said miracle-in-a-bag. In fact, that's something my wife V. would probably do. "This stuff is crap!" I could imagine her saying when the results didn't live up to the promise. "So true you wouldn't believe it", I would respond.

But my focus here is not the claims the product made, but how the product struck me as another example of our devotion to excess here in America. We have plenty of land, and plenty of dirt for sure. But in our desire to have the most lucious of lawns, the biggest blooms of flowers, the most ferocious ferns, it's not enough. We have to go out and buy the premium potting soil full of nitrates and vitamins or whatever it is that plants really like. It's like taking the soil around you and supercharging it. How long before we start seeing some mutant fruit that bites your hand off? Ok, that was a little extreme I admit. But where does tending and nurturing your garden end and Pimp My Horticulture begin? Does anyone need a "green thumb" anymore, or just a green bag? Or a bag of green? I dunno what I am saying.

I find it somewhat odd that there are plenty of areas in the world where people can't grow enough food to eat, and I can walk right into Home Depot, or Target, or maybe even Safeway, and buy myself a big bag-o-dirt to start a garden with. I could drop a bag of this wonder dirt on the sterile cement pad outside my front door, and start growing something almost instantly. Are we shipping bags of this stuff to all the poor countries that we are giving aid to? Better yet, show them how to make it on their own. Why should anyone have to starve if this dirt works like it's supposed to?