An amateur gardener endured the teasing as she prepared the soil in her vegetable garden with dog food, alfalfa pellets, cat litter and other odd ingredients. But boy did her garden grow.
By SHARON KENNEDY WYNNE
Published June 14, 2003
[Times photo: Jamie Francis]
Carol Fox and gardening columnist John Starnes, whose recipe she followed, taste the tomatoes in Fox’s garden. Starnes says the garden is a perfect example of why it’s better to feed the soil instead of the plants.
[Times photos: Jamie Francis]
The shining achievement of Carol Fox’s garden is the tomatoes, which grew and grew until they topped out at 7 feet.
Carol Fox surveys her garden. She plans to use the dog food recipe again but won’t plant everything at once, as she did this year.
What caught her attention was the dog food.
Last September, amateur gardener Carol Fox, 51, was intrigued when St. Petersburg Times gardening columnist John Starnes told readers to prepare their soil for winter vegetables with a seemingly wacky combination of dog food, alfalfa pellets and cat litter, topped with cardboard and hay.
Fox's husband, John, 53, is the avid gardener in the family, but his tomatoes would always peter out before producing too much.
"When I told him I wanted to try this he just rolled his eyes and said, "Whatever,' and he put me in charge of the garden this year," Fox said. "He wasn't going to risk his reputation putting dog food in the yard."
"Carol's dog food garden," as her neighbors in northwest St. Petersburg dubbed it, is now a breed apart, with tomato plants that topped out at 7 feet and bushels of produce that keep coming.
The hardest part of her organic gardening experiment?
"Enduring the ridicule," she said.
"I'd hear, "Don't forget to water your cardboard, Carol.' "
Even her grandchildren were suspicious when she enlisted the two girls, ages 5 and 4, and her 21/2-year-old grandson to spread the dog food and cat litter across her 10- by 12-foot plot, Fox recalled.
"I could hear them talking and they said, "What kind of puppies is Grandma going to grow?' and the other one with the cat litter said, "She's growing kitties, too!'
"I'm not sure if they are disappointed that all we have now are vegetables."
Starnes isn't surprised by the Fox family's success. He got the idea 20 years ago from a "little old lady gardener; they give me all my best tips."
The dog food is a variation on the practice of saving fish heads, coffee grounds and other food waste for the garden. Any cheap dog food will do, Starnes says, because it is a perfect protein source with trace minerals and vitamins.
The alfalfa pellets provide trace elements, potassium, beneficial bacteria, protein and they release nitrogen and phosphorus.
The clay cat litter holds in water, something Florida's sandy soil sorely needs, and provides a bit of potassium for the stems, roots and fruit.
Tiling over the concoction with cardboard deters raccoons and rodents from getting at the dog food, and keeps the heat and moisture in, which speeds up decomposition, while keeping down odors. Spreading a couple bales of coastal hay keeps weeds at bay and also helps with moisture retention.
"Beneath that cozy blanket of hay and cardboard the weeds die and decay, and those organic materials decompose and feed the earthworms and bacteria and beneficial fungi that in turn nourish your soil," Starnes wrote.
Fox put the dog food mixture in the ground in late November and bought plants in mid February, starting with leaf lettuce, eggplants, green peppers and beefsteak and grape tomatoes.
After the plants were put in the ground, she could hardly see them over the hay. The couple went on vacation, asking their kids to water the garden while they were away.
"Well, they kind of leaped out of the ground," Fox said. "After 10 days they were a foot tall. That's when John said, "Oh my gosh, you might have something here.' "
Within six weeks, she had stalks of red leaf lettuce longer than her arm. She'd pull off some leaves for a salad and find four new shoots in a few days to replace them.
"It was unbelievable how much was coming up."
But the tomatoes were her shining achievement.
First she put wire tomato cages over her plants. They outgrew them.
Then came bamboo stakes. They outgrew them.
Finally her son showed up with 8-foot pieces of lumber that he buried for her. The tomato plants finally topped out at 7 feet, with a bouquet of yellow blossoms crowning each one.
"Oh, those will never bloom," her husband said, because it's too hot. They need cool nights to set as tomatoes.
Once again, her husband is eating crow along with his tomato sandwiches.
The top 2 feet not only set tomatoes, they bent over from their own weight, heavy with fruit. The towering plants created shade for the tomatoes underneath, shielding them from the June heat.
In an experiment, the Foxes put one tomato plant in untreated soil. By mid May it had finally started producing its first tomatoes, while the dog food garden had already produced dozens of tomatoes per plant, with dozens more on the way.
For the eggplants, which were planted in the middle of the tomato jungle, it's been an attack of the killer tomatoes because they were mostly suffocated by them.
The green peppers were doing well, though bugs were starting to feast on them by mid May, so they were getting a regular soak with soapy water to keep the bugs at bay.
But the tomatoes are still popping forth by the bushelful. The whole family, all the neighbors, a large network of friends, school mates, co-workers and bosses, have taken home bags of tomatoes that would normally cost $2.50 a pint in the grocery store, now harvested freely from Carol's dog food garden.
Starnes says the Fox garden is a perfect example of why it's better for gardeners to feed the soil instead of the plants. By doing a little front-end preparation, he says, the soil can do all the work for you.
Fox admits the article did seem odd, but the idea kind of grew on her.
"It did seem a little strange, but this was something I could do," she said. "Anybody can go to Big Lots and get a big bag of dog food. And this wasn't hard to do. My grandchildren did it, spreading the stuff all around, and they had a ball."
Fox plans to use the dog food again, but she won't plant everything at once like she did this year. She'll start earlier and stagger the plantings by a month - and give the tomatoes some space.
Feeding the soil
John Starnes' recipe for preparing the soil for winter vegetables suggests starting in late September for a December planting. But you can let the soil sit two to three weeks before planting, and you can plant as late as mid February.
You will need:
A 50-pound bag of cheap dog food nuggets.
A few bags of cheap clay cat litter.
A 50-pound bag of alfalfa pellets and two bales of coastal hay (try a feed store).
Enough cardboard boxes to completely "tile" your veggie garden.
Scatter the dog food, alfalfa and cat litter over your garden site. Water deeply, then cover the site with overlapping layers of cardboard boxes. Water the cardboard until it sags and softens. Tear the bales of hay and fluff the hay over the site. Use a coarse stream of water from your garden hose to tamp it down into a neat layer hiding the cardboard. Watering is not necessary unless there is no rain. In that case, an occasional soaking will keep things going.
