ABSTRACT
I have been a passionate vegetable gardener from my youth. My rst garden was in Cape Town, South Africa, where the soils were sandy and the long summers devoid of rain. This was a tough place to learn the trade: the soil water was quickly depleted, the nutrients easily leached, and my harvest often disappointing. Much later, I spent a gap year between school and university on farms in the hinterland of the north coast of New South Wales, Australia. This was dairy and potato country on rich red volcanic soils. Never had I seen such fertile soils effortlessly producing such luxuriant plant growth.
