I just spent the last 5 days (8 if you count the snow day which brought us through the weekend), immersed in an organic landcare course offered by the Connecticut Chapter of NOFA (Northeast Organic Farming Association).  Along with about 50 other like-minded green professionals, some from as far away as Wisconsin, I spent 30+ hours learning about everything from soil science (more interesting than it sounds) to site analysis to pest management to rain gardens to fertilizers and compost to turf management.

One of the most beneficial aspects of the accreditation course is the unfettered access to teachers who are noted experts in their field of study and who are more than willing to share their knowledge with a bunch of newbies.  Many of them had words of wisdom, inspirational nuggets or, if you will, compostings, truisms rich in knowledge and beneficial in so many ways.  I thought I’d share a few of them with you and see if they get your wheels turning, like they did mine.

◊  Don’t plant trees, plant ecosystems.

◊  Crabgrass is Mother Nature’s band-aid.

◊  Plants cannot move, they endure or die.

◊   A truly natural habitat is not always pretty.

◊   Feed the soil, not the plant.

◊   An educated eye is an indispensable tool.

◊   Don’t fight the site.

I hope you’ll come back again soon for some more NOFA composting’s, this time all about ‘green concrete’.