Organic Gardener's Composting by Steve Solomon

One of the things I enjoy most while gardening is GROWing some of my plants. I don't GROW them all because there is no point in having giant parsley or making the corn patch get one foot taller. Making everything get as large as possible wouldn't result in maximum nutrition either. But just for fun, how about a 100-plus-pound pumpkin? A twenty-pound savoy cabbage? A cauliflower sixteen inches in diameter? An eight-inch diameter beet? Now that's GROWing!

Here's how. Simply remove as many growth limiters as possible and watch the plant's own efforts take over. One of the best examples I've ever seen of how this works was in a neighbor's backyard greenhouse. This retired welder liked his liquor. Having more time than money and little respect for legal absurdities, he had constructed a small stainless steel pot still, fermented his own mash, and made a harsh, hangover-producing whiskey from grain and cane sugar that Appalachians call "popskull." To encourage rapid fermentation, his mashing barrel was kept in the warm greenhouse. The bubbling brew gave off large quantities of carbon dioxide gas.

The rest of his greenhouse was filled with green herbs that flowered fragrantly in September. Most of them were four or five feet tall but those plants on the end housing the mash barrel were seven feet tall and twice as bushy. Why? Because the normal level of atmospheric CO2 actually limits plant growth.