for much of the frost-free season, organic matter rots really fast
and a little compost of average quality makes a huge increase in
plant growth. Where summer is cool and soil organic matter
decomposes slowly, poorer grades of compost have little immediate
effect, or worse, may temporarily interfere with plant growth.
Hotter soils are probably more desperate for organic matter and may
give you a marked growth response from even poor quality compost;
soils in cool climates naturally contain higher quantities of humus
and need to be stoked with more potent materials if high levels of
nutrients are to be released.

Compost is also reputed to make enormous improvements in the
workability, or tilth of the soil. This aspect of gardening is so
important and so widely misunderstood, especially by organic
gardeners, that most of Chapter Seven is devoted to considering the
roles of humus in the soil.

GROWing the plant

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