Description: This is
a VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
See text below
Text:
Not all vegetables need lots of sunshine. Mark
Hoffman and his wife, Guia, own a bed-and-breakfast
guesthouse in rural Kempton, Illinois. The Hoffmans
have also been growing food and flowers for
twenty-five years. For almost ten of those years,
Mr. Hoffman has been working with shade plantings.
He says visitors to his website -- greenhousebed.com
-- often ask how to plant in shade spaces. "The
bottom line here is that most plants will produce
more in full sun. But if you do not have full sun,
there are other options." For example, he grows
tomatoes near oak trees. Oak trees can produce a lot
of shade. But Mr. Hoffman says his tomato plants
grow as long as they get five hours a day of direct
sunshine, especially morning sun. Not only does this
go against the traditional advice that tomatoes need
six, eight, even twelve hours a day of full sun. It
also shows how plants and tree roots can share
nutrients and water. Mr. Hoffman also planted
asparagus around a tree at its drip line, the area
below the outer limit of the branches. Rain drips
down right on the asparagus. He says the asparagus
"has been there for six years now and is doing
wonderfully." The Hoffmans' website includes a list
of vegetables, flowers and herbs that have produced
acceptably for them in partial shade. Besides
tomatoes and asparagus, these include broccoli,
daylilies, horseradish, Irish potatoes, oregano and
winter onions. Mr. Hoffman says plants with wider
leaves seem to do better in shady environments. He
also found that his potatoes did better in partial
shade than in full sun. Moving them out of the sun
helped control an insect problem with leaf hoppers.
Mr. Hoffman does not use pesticides. Instead, he
planted the potatoes at the drip line, especially on
the east side of the tree. The potatoes get morning
sun, but they are shaded during the hottest part of
the day. Leaf hoppers dislike shade, and the hottest
part of the day is when they do the worst of their
damage. Time of day. Brightness of the sun. Shadows
from trees, walls and buildings. These all influence
how much sunlight falls, or does not fall, on
plants. And extension agent Curtis Swift at Colorado
State University says people interested in shade
planting should also remember something else. The
term "shade" can describe different amounts of
darkness. He says it can even mean different things
in different parts of the world. For VOA Special
English, I'm Alex Villarreal.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
