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Allelopathy: the exudation by one plant of chemicals that inhibit the growth of another plant.

“American” crops: crops originating on the American continents – usually (but not always) frost-tender subtropicals or tropicals, from Central or South America.

Antagonists: incompatible plants, either or both of which may interfere with the other’s growth, health, taste, reproduction, etc..

Bentonite: an absorbent aluminum silicate clay formed from volcanic ash and used to line ponds, dams, and the “homesteader’s bathtub.”

Biodynamics: a practical-spiritual approach to organic gardening and farming, based in the work of philosopher Rudolph Steiner.

Biointensive: gardening techniques designed to maximize productivity while minimizing use of space and resources.

Bioregionalism: the art of knowing, and living within the natural limits and character of, one’s home place, or bioregion.

Bleach: a chemical agent used to sterilize pruning shears between cuts to avoid the spreading of disease.

Brassicaceae: the cabbage family (see “mustards”).

Bugs: most commonly (in this context) refers to insects in general; less commonly, refers to “true bugs,” a subset of that group.

C:N ratio: the ratio of carbon to nitrogen in, for example, a compost pile (where the ideal ratio is about 25:1 at the outset).

Carbon-rich browns: essential elements in a compost pile.

Castings: earthworm turds.

Central leader: a pruning style in which a single “central leader growing from the main trunk fills the center of the tree.

Clay: fine sedimentary material, with grains smaller than 0.002 millimeters in diameter.

Cloche: a mini-greenhouse, often constructed of clear plastic draped over PVC pipes (see “cold frame”).

Cold frame: a season-extending mini-greenhouse, often placed directly over a garden bed (see “cloche”).

Colloids: substances composed of many tiny particles suspended in a gel-like mass, with a high proportion of surface area to weight.

Community Supported Agriculture: a farmer-consumer partnership in which shareholders become more closely associated with a farm, paying a yearly fee and receiving a weekly basket of various vegetables (and sometimes other foodstuffs) throughout the growing season.

Companion plants: complement each other in nutrient and water requirements, growth habits, and demands for light; attract good bugs and give bad ones a fright; they can also discourage diseases, promote soil life, and keep down weeds.

Compost: a mixture of decaying organic matter, often used to enrich soil and improve soil structure.

Compost tea: a liquid amendment prepared by soaking finished compost in a barrel of water.

Cover-crop: a crop grown specifically to protect, condition, enrich, and turn back into the soil, or to be used as compost, adding rather than subtracting organic matter in the garden or farm system.

Crabgrass: any of certain grasses of the genus Digitaria; a troublesome perennial grass; second cousin to quackgrass.

Critters: animals.

Crumbs: aggregates of soil particles.

Crummy: slang for a beat-up old motor vehicle, especially one used on mucky physical jobs like tree-planting.

Devas: plant spirits.

Digging fork: a heavy-duty fork meant for working the soil, with tines stronger than those on pitchforks and not flat like those on potato forks.

dioxins: suspected gifts, absolutely free of charge, from the industry which supplies grass seed for our golf courses and lawns.

DNA: deoxyribonucleic acid.

Double-digging: any of several methods of hand-cultivating the soil to two spade-depths, described in detail in the books of John Jeavons.

Drip tape: plastic irrigation line that leaks water at specific points, sometimes through “emitters”; a more durable alternative, “leaky hose,” made from recycled rubber tires, seeps water all along its length.

Dung: sunshine.

Equisetum: horsetail, a plant high in silica, valued for its antifungal properties.

Factory farm: an animal concentration camp created to supply humans with meat, eggs, dairy and other animal products.

Five-hundred (500): one of the nine basic Biodynamic preparations.

Fukuoka, Masanobu: a Japanese rice farmer and pioneer of natural farming techniques.

Garden cart: a two-wheeled alternative to the wheelbarrow, more stable and able to carry larger loads, but not able to maneuver narrow paths between beds.

Garden spade: a rectangular-headed digging tool, far superior to pointy-tipped shovels for digging garden beds.

Gopher plant: Euphorbia lathyrus, also called “mole plant.”

“gray” days: days on which, according to the Biodynamic calendar, no work with plants should be done, due to unfavorable planetary and stellar alignments.

Green Gulch: a Zen Meditation Center with excellent garden soil, in Marin County, California.

Green manures: cover-crops or other plants incorporated back into the soil.

Hardening off: the process by which a plant is acclimated to being outdoors in the cold, wind, rain, heat, sun, etc..

Humus: a brown or black organic substance resulting from the decay of vegetable or animal matter.

Impact sprinkler: an overhead watering system that goes “click, click, click, click (etc.)” as it shoots off spurts of water.

Inoculant, compost: any of several organism-rich materials (manure, finished compost, worm castings, soil), layered into a compost pile to facilitate its composting.

Intern: (a) a student or apprentice, learning partially through practical, hands-on experience; or (b) unpaid or underpaid labor.

Jackson, Wes: author, teacher, researcher, and founder of The Land Institute, which is attempting to develop perennial polycultures (“natural systems agriculture”) to replace annual grain production on our natural prairieland.

Jardinero: gardener (Spanish).

Jeavons, John: author, teacher, researcher, and popularizer of biointensive growing techniques.

Kelp meal: a soil amendment made from seaweed, rich in trace minerals.

Lime: a mineral form of calcium oxide, commonly used to reduce soil acidity (raise pH).

Living mulches: cover-crops or weeds left growing where beds are not occupied by planted vegetables.

Loam: a benevolent mixture of sand (large particles of disintegrated rock, often silicate), clay (fine particles), silt (intermediate-size particles), and organic matter.

Malos por la salud: bad for the health (Spanish).

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa: “it’s my fault, it’s my fault, it’s absolutely totally my fault” (Latin).

Mollison, Bill: author, teacher, and founder of Permaculture.

Mulch: a material applied to the surface of the soil -- to provide nutrients and organic matter, to prevent evaporation of moisture, to reduce weeds, to prevent soil erosion, and/or to moderate, raise, or reduce soil temperature.

Mushrooms: fruiting bodies bearing spores of fungi that live underground, bursting through duff without making a sound.

Mustards: used interchangeably with “brassicas,” “crucifers,” and “cole crops” to indicate members of the cabbage family, Brassicaceae.

Mycorrhizal fungi: keep soil rich and alive; help trees and microbes alike to survive.

N-P-K: Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium.

Nitrogen-rich greens: valuable ingredients in a compost pile (food scraps and/or nitrogen-rich manures can supplement or substitute).

Open center: a pruning style in which the center of the tree above the main trunk is left open.

Organic matter: matter derived from living organisms.

Parasites: will make live matter dead.

Permaculture: a contraction of “permanent agriculture” and also of “permanent culture”; a design system for sustainability.

pH: a measure of soil acidity, ranging from 1.0 (impossibly acid) through 7.0 (neutral) to 14.0 (impossibly basic), with most vegetables preferring a slightly acid soil (pH 6.0 to 7.0).

photosynthesis: why we are here today.

PVC: polyvinyl chloride; bent pvc pipes are often employed as hoop supports for plastic cloches.

Quackgrass: Elymus repens, a creeping grass with conspicuous white rhizomes.

Radiation frosts: frosts which occur under clear night skies at air temperature above freezing.

Rainbird: brand name of popular overhead impact sprinkler.

Raised beds: garden beds that are raised above the natural level of the land -- often created by double-digging.

Red Sails: a favorite variety of red looseleaf lettuce.

Reemay: the brand name of a multi-purpose spun polyester fiber used for frost protection, heat or water retention, pest or pollinator exclusion, shade, or territorial marking.

Rhizome: a horizontal stem, usually underground, which sends out roots and shoots from its nodes.

Rock dust: finely ground-up rock.

Rock phosphate: a mineral form of phosphorus.

Rototiller: a motorized rotary cultivator and soil pulverizer.

Sand: large particles of disintegrated rock, often silicate.

Saprophytes: break down dead matter instead.

Secaturs: the L.L. Bean of tools, a hybrid of scissors and pruning shears.

Seedflats: boxes in which seeds become seedlings.

Seedling: a seed that’s germinated; love made manifest.

Seeds: love.

Self-sown: having reseeded itself (planted itself from a previous generation’s seeds) without human intervention.

Sheet mulching: any of several techniques of covering over existing vegetation and soil completely with a thick layer of mulch materials, then planting into or through the new layer -- or, in some cases, using the mulch mainly to smother unwanted vegetation, then moving it aside at a later date and planting into the weed-free soil below.

Silt: fine sedimentary material intermediate in size between sand and clay.

Soil microorganisms: microscopic and submicroscopic soil life, especially bacteria and protozoans, living at specific soil depths.

Spuds: potatoes.

Stacking functions: performing several functions with each element in a system -- a basic principle of Permaculture design.

Steiner, Rudolph: the Austrian philosopher whose agricultural lecture series in the 1920s inspired the development of Biodynamics.

Sucker: a secondary shoot coming from the base or roots or a plant.

Summer pruning: pruning done to stimulate better fruiting.

Sunchokes: Jerusalem artichokes, Helianthus tuberosus.

Symphylan: a small wormlike soil creature that feasts on organic matter and plant rootlets.

Tannic acid: “a lustrous yellowish to light brown amorphous, powdered, flaked or spongy mass [or liquid form thereof] having the approximate composition C76H52O46, derived from [hence contained in] the bark and fruit [and leaves] of many plants …” (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3^rd edition) [additions mine].

Thinnings: plants removed from a seedflat or bed because they are growing too closely.

Tilth: that desirable, crumbly structure in a soil that results from the activities of a healthy soil biota and sensitive cultivation practices; also, the quality of careful self-cultivation in a person.

Tuber: a fleshy, swollen, usually underground stem, bearing buds or “eyes” which may give rise to new shoots.

Un buen maestro: a good teacher (Spanish).

Un buen patron: a good boss (Spanish).

Urine: a valuable source of nitrogen for compost piles or in the garden, when used appropriately and in moderation.

Vavilov Centers: “evolutionary hot spots” located in a narrow belt of land close to the equator, where ninety percent of the earth’s vegetable life forms reputedly came into being.

Vermiculture: the cultivation of earthworms (directly in the garden soil) or of manure worms (in bins or in manure or compost piles).

Volunteers: self-sown vegetables; also, self-sown plants of any kind.

Ward, Tom: herbalist, wildcrafter, Permaculture instructor, appropriate-living guru, tree-house designer, and specialist in culvert maintenance.

Water sprout: a rapidly-growing, usually weak, vertical shoot coming off an established limb of a woody plant.

Weeds: can be good compost-makin’s or can keep the soil from leaving garden beds; they can be delicious too, better than other vegetables for you; they condition soil; good insects like ‘em too.

Windbreak: a hedge, fence, or row of trees which lessens or blocks the force of the wind.

Windrow: a long row of cut hay, grain, or other vegetative or organic matter, left to dry (before being bundled) or to compost.

Winter pruning: pruning done to influence shape and growth.

Zone one: the “household” zone in a Permaculture landscape.

 
Excerpted from The Beetless' Gardening Book: An Organic Gardening Songbook/Guidebook, copyright 1997 by Chris Roth (info./disclaimers [0]) (index [0]) (gardening guide [0])