Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Friday, December 3, 2010
What is your lifes dream, what would you do if you had enough money to never have to work again? THAT is what ... http://amplify.com/u/hej3
Great new blog platform I am helping to write content for http://ping.fm/5eMiu http://amplify.com/u/hd60
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Outstanding article by Jim Kennard of the Food for Everyone Foundation about Plant Disease Prevention and Contr... http://amplify.com/u/gk6s
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Organic garden 2101 Mittleider
I am always amazed at how strong the plants in my Mittleider garden are.
This year I grew mostly heirloom seeds just to mention a few of the varieties I grew
Habanero Peppers
Onions
Horseradish
California Wonder Peppers
Roma Tomatoes
Yellow Pear Tomatoes
Cubenelle Peppers
Black Krim Tomaotes
Delicious Tomatoes
Organic Garlic
Super Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes
Health Kick Tomatoes
You can see video about my 2010 Mittleider organic garden here
What I do with most of my vegetables is chop them up and freeze them I call it my Vegetarian meal starters.
Next year I plan on building a greenhouse and also using Mittleider garden row covers to extend my season.
As I get more experience I am sure I can turn my Mittleider garden into a full time gardening business. I cant wait to get into the soil next spring
This is all part of my strategy to start my own Homestead, I want to use solar and hydro power and be totally off grid. But I will still need Internet access :):)
Happy gardening and I would like to give a big shout out to Jim Kennard of the Gardening Non-Profit Food for Everyone Foundation who teaches the Mittleider method.
This year I grew mostly heirloom seeds just to mention a few of the varieties I grew
Habanero Peppers
Onions
Horseradish
California Wonder Peppers
Roma Tomatoes
Yellow Pear Tomatoes
Cubenelle Peppers
Black Krim Tomaotes
Delicious Tomatoes
Organic Garlic
Super Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes
Health Kick Tomatoes
You can see video about my 2010 Mittleider organic garden here
What I do with most of my vegetables is chop them up and freeze them I call it my Vegetarian meal starters.
Next year I plan on building a greenhouse and also using Mittleider garden row covers to extend my season.
As I get more experience I am sure I can turn my Mittleider garden into a full time gardening business. I cant wait to get into the soil next spring
This is all part of my strategy to start my own Homestead, I want to use solar and hydro power and be totally off grid. But I will still need Internet access :):)
Happy gardening and I would like to give a big shout out to Jim Kennard of the Gardening Non-Profit Food for Everyone Foundation who teaches the Mittleider method.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Is your family prepared for a natural disaster or a financial collapse? http://ping.fm/gQOWK #preparedness
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Are you and your family preppared
I am very proud to be working with James Stevens His hardcopy book on family preparedness has sold over 760,000 copies.
Great news James has made his book available digitally you can purchase a digital copy of his Family Preparedness book and also join the Family Preparedness affiliate program
Great news James has made his book available digitally you can purchase a digital copy of his Family Preparedness book and also join the Family Preparedness affiliate program
Monday, October 11, 2010
Sunday, October 10, 2010
I just finished up a new #squidoo lens about Cubenelle Peppers I grew this year, delicious sweet Pepper which i... http://amplify.com/u/c8or
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Black Krim tomato
One of the many tomatoes I grew in my Mittleider sustainable organic garden this year.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Lemon boy tomato
Lemon Boy low acid tomato, I grew these in my sustainable organic garden using the Mittleider method.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
My Mittleider garden 2010
Great year with my garden got the blight but planted early varieties of tomatoes got about 85% of the yields better then last year for sure, please be sure to check out this lens and pass it on.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Food for Everyone Squidoo Gardening club please come in and create a lens http://dld.bz/bBsw #gardening #squidoo
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Phase two Mittleider garden setup
My garden is rocks rocks and more rocks the Mittleider method allows me to grow in this "soil"
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Are you a gardener? Learn to build a Squidoo lens about each plant earn and learn. http://ping.fm/rO5ML
Food for Everyone Squidoo gardening club
We are super excited to announce the Food for Everyone Gardening club on Squidoo.
Squidoo HQ has generously selected the Food for Everyone Foundation to be the first Non-Profit to start a Squidoo club.
We have a great group of people working in the Squidoo incubator it is so fun to share ideas, fears, and progress.
This is a great chance for gardeners to setup there first Squidoo lens.
Check out the Food for Everyone Foundation gardening club on Squidoo
Squidoo HQ has generously selected the Food for Everyone Foundation to be the first Non-Profit to start a Squidoo club.
We have a great group of people working in the Squidoo incubator it is so fun to share ideas, fears, and progress.
This is a great chance for gardeners to setup there first Squidoo lens.
Check out the Food for Everyone Foundation gardening club on Squidoo
Monday, March 15, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Our top 25 lenses on Squidoo
Examples of Lenses we have done for the Food for Everyone Foundation
Homesteading on Squidoo
Hydro Power
Cobbhouse on Squidoo
Spiritual Stories
Gardening NonProfit
Intensive gardening on Squidoo
Build a Mini Greenhouse
Sustainable vegetable gardening
Heirloom seeds on Squidoo
Start your own gardening business
Organic gardening
My Best information
Change the World
Global humanitarian Relief
Sturgis Motorcycle Rally
Help Non-Profits online
Food for Everyone Foundation Squidoo Group
How to start plants using growlights
Dr. Jacob Mittleider
How to preserve vegetables
How to build a gardening Tframe
How to feed your plants correctly
How to build a Hotbeds for seedlings
Gardening Non-Profit affiliate program
Homesteading on Squidoo
Hydro Power
Cobbhouse on Squidoo
Spiritual Stories
Gardening NonProfit
Intensive gardening on
Squidoo
Build a Mini Greenhouse
Sustainable vegetable
gardening
Heirloom seeds on Squidoo
Start your own gardening
business
Squidoo
gardening
business
Learn to sell your produce at Farmers Markets http://ping.fm/XScna #gardening #Farmers markets #mittleider
How to build Tframes for your garden to grow vertically http://ping.fm/YmueO Gardening #Tframes #Mittleider
How to build a row cover for your garden soilbeds http://ping.fm/rggik #gardening #row covers #mittleider
How to build a Hotbed outside to raise your seedlings http://ping.fm/mWe4V #gardening #squidoo #Mittleider
How to start your seeds inside using growlights http://ping.fm/7CEQv #gardening # growlights #mittleider
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Smut on corn fungus disease called Ustilago Maydis
Corn smut is extremely common. It cannot be controlled with fungicides, nor with treating the seed. Infection can occur through wounds. Therefore, avoid injury to roots, stalks and leaves while weeding. Insect damage can also leave the plant vulnerable, so eliminating corn worms and earwigs can help.
To minimize the damage, remove the immature galls before they break open - and eat, bury, or burn them.
Yes, it can safely be eaten! In Mexico, the immature smut galls are consumed as an edible delicacy known as cuitlacoche (wheat-lah-KOH-chay).
Think mushrooms. Even in the USA, restaurants catering to Hispanic customers sometimes feature this item on their menus. Try them cooked with scrambled eggs.
Meanwhile, to reduce the problem of having them grow in your corn, remove them early, and if the infection is bad, do not plant corn in that area for 3-4 years. Or develop a taste for wheat-lah-koh-chay!
To minimize the damage, remove the immature galls before they break open - and eat, bury, or burn them.
Yes, it can safely be eaten! In Mexico, the immature smut galls are consumed as an edible delicacy known as cuitlacoche (wheat-lah-KOH-chay).
Think mushrooms. Even in the USA, restaurants catering to Hispanic customers sometimes feature this item on their menus. Try them cooked with scrambled eggs.
Meanwhile, to reduce the problem of having them grow in your corn, remove them early, and if the infection is bad, do not plant corn in that area for 3-4 years. Or develop a taste for wheat-lah-koh-chay!
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Learn how to setup a Mittleider garden organic soilbed
First off, you MUST have direct sunlight all day long for vegetables to thrive. Therefore, use only the space that has no shade. And don't worry if it seems small! You'll grow twice the food in one fourth the space others are using, so just do it right in the space you
have. And actually, starting small is a good idea anyway! It's easier, more fun, and won't wear you out!
Level ground, or something with a slight Southern slope is best, in order to catch the sun's strongest rays, and to avoid rapid water run-off that will wash out your soil, seeds, and seedlings.
Begin by clearing your ground of EVERYTHING! No weeds, rocks, or anything else is allowed.
"Cleanliness is next to godliness" certainly applies here, and you surely want your garden to be a thing of beauty, as well as being productive!
Measure and stake the perimeter of your garden. This gives you an important starting point for figuring out how many soil-beds you can have, and then placing them properly. Let's use
25' X 35' as an example of what your garden area might be.
It doesn't really matter what direction your beds face, so far as sun exposure is concerned.
What does matter, though, is that the beds be level, and that you plant taller plants to the North or East of shorter plants. This is to assure that taller plants don't shade shorter
plants, and rob them of essential sunlight. So, align your beds to maximize those factors as
much as possible.
I'll assume we are able to run the beds lengthwise along the 35' dimension. Your soil-beds should be 18" wide and any length you choose. When you become experienced in this method of growing, and want to specialize in growing certain crops all the time, you may want to begin using 4'-wide beds, but let's stick to the best family garden layout for now.
The ideal size for aisles is 3.5', and since we have 25' width in our example garden, this
will give us 5 - 18" beds with 3 ' aisles. If you have only 23' you could get by with aisles a little narrower. But don't squeeze those aisles! You will be growing plants that need all of that space, and reducing the aisle space only leads to problems of not enough light and
air for your growing plants!
We'll make our beds 30' long. This leaves us 2.5' on each end of the garden for walking, and
30' is a good length, because it makes caring for the garden easy. More about that later.
Using 18"-long stakes, stake your 5 - 18" X 30' beds, with 4 stakes per bed.
Apply 32 ounces of the Mittleider Pre-Plant Mix, and 16 ounces of Weekly Feed Mix to the soil under your strings. This amounts to about 1 ounce and half ounce per running foot of
those VERY important natural mineral nutrients. Dig or till the soil of your soil-bed to a
depth of at least 8".
Then, using nylon string, tie strings between the stakes, to outline your soil-beds.
Begin making raised, ridged beds by pulling about 2+ inches of dirt from the aisles into the 18"-wide bed area under your strings. Smooth and level that dirt, and then check the level
of your bed area. It must be level to make watering easy and efficient, so don't ignore this
step! Move dirt from the high spots in your bed to the low spots, until your bed is no more
than one inch higher at the water-source end than the other end.
Make 4"-high ridges all around your bed by pulling soil from the center of the bed to just
beneath the strings. When you're finished you should have a planting area that is about 12"
wide and between 1 and 2" above the level of the aisles, with 4" ridges, the top of which
are 18" apart. Re-check the level of your planting area, and move soil as necessary to keep
the bed level from end to end.
Your Mittleider "Best of Organic" garden is now ready to plant!
have. And actually, starting small is a good idea anyway! It's easier, more fun, and won't wear you out!
Level ground, or something with a slight Southern slope is best, in order to catch the sun's strongest rays, and to avoid rapid water run-off that will wash out your soil, seeds, and seedlings.
Begin by clearing your ground of EVERYTHING! No weeds, rocks, or anything else is allowed.
"Cleanliness is next to godliness" certainly applies here, and you surely want your garden to be a thing of beauty, as well as being productive!
Measure and stake the perimeter of your garden. This gives you an important starting point for figuring out how many soil-beds you can have, and then placing them properly. Let's use
25' X 35' as an example of what your garden area might be.
It doesn't really matter what direction your beds face, so far as sun exposure is concerned.
What does matter, though, is that the beds be level, and that you plant taller plants to the North or East of shorter plants. This is to assure that taller plants don't shade shorter
plants, and rob them of essential sunlight. So, align your beds to maximize those factors as
much as possible.
I'll assume we are able to run the beds lengthwise along the 35' dimension. Your soil-beds should be 18" wide and any length you choose. When you become experienced in this method of growing, and want to specialize in growing certain crops all the time, you may want to begin using 4'-wide beds, but let's stick to the best family garden layout for now.
The ideal size for aisles is 3.5', and since we have 25' width in our example garden, this
will give us 5 - 18" beds with 3 ' aisles. If you have only 23' you could get by with aisles a little narrower. But don't squeeze those aisles! You will be growing plants that need all of that space, and reducing the aisle space only leads to problems of not enough light and
air for your growing plants!
We'll make our beds 30' long. This leaves us 2.5' on each end of the garden for walking, and
30' is a good length, because it makes caring for the garden easy. More about that later.
Using 18"-long stakes, stake your 5 - 18" X 30' beds, with 4 stakes per bed.
Apply 32 ounces of the Mittleider Pre-Plant Mix, and 16 ounces of Weekly Feed Mix to the soil under your strings. This amounts to about 1 ounce and half ounce per running foot of
those VERY important natural mineral nutrients. Dig or till the soil of your soil-bed to a
depth of at least 8".
Then, using nylon string, tie strings between the stakes, to outline your soil-beds.
Begin making raised, ridged beds by pulling about 2+ inches of dirt from the aisles into the 18"-wide bed area under your strings. Smooth and level that dirt, and then check the level
of your bed area. It must be level to make watering easy and efficient, so don't ignore this
step! Move dirt from the high spots in your bed to the low spots, until your bed is no more
than one inch higher at the water-source end than the other end.
Make 4"-high ridges all around your bed by pulling soil from the center of the bed to just
beneath the strings. When you're finished you should have a planting area that is about 12"
wide and between 1 and 2" above the level of the aisles, with 4" ridges, the top of which
are 18" apart. Re-check the level of your planting area, and move soil as necessary to keep
the bed level from end to end.
Your Mittleider "Best of Organic" garden is now ready to plant!
Monday, January 18, 2010
Skipped Watering
Q. I know the Mittleider Method of gardening calls for watering each day, and so that made me wonder what will happen to my Mittleider Method garden if I need to be gone from home a few days in summer. Is the
Mittleider Method Gardener held captive to his garden by the water hose?
A. It's called "chores". Have any of you ever owned a cow - or goats? Milking and feeding are twice-a-day jobs that must either be done by you or by someone to whom you delegate the responsibility.
Luckily, gardening isn't quite that demanding, but especially in the summer when it's hot, someone really needs to be watching and caring for the plants. It's not just the milk that will be lost - a cow or goat can walk to the water trough - but the plants may die.
With a Mittleider garden, however, it's really not that tough to get a neighbor to do it, since they are usually so happy to benefit from your largess as you share the harvest.
The need for water isn't confined to a Mittleider garden, it's just that we take so much better care of our garden than most, because we value the benefits of maintaining fast-growing, healthy plants.
This very thing is what motivates many people to automate their watering systems - so it's easy for others, and even kids to do - and some put the system on a timer to complete the process and eliminate the need for others' intervention entirely.
Plans for automating the watering system are in chapter 16 of the Mittleider Gardening Course, and that chapter is available free in the Store pages of the website at www.foodforeveryone.org.
Mittleider Method Gardener held captive to his garden by the water hose?
A. It's called "chores". Have any of you ever owned a cow - or goats? Milking and feeding are twice-a-day jobs that must either be done by you or by someone to whom you delegate the responsibility.
Luckily, gardening isn't quite that demanding, but especially in the summer when it's hot, someone really needs to be watching and caring for the plants. It's not just the milk that will be lost - a cow or goat can walk to the water trough - but the plants may die.
With a Mittleider garden, however, it's really not that tough to get a neighbor to do it, since they are usually so happy to benefit from your largess as you share the harvest.
The need for water isn't confined to a Mittleider garden, it's just that we take so much better care of our garden than most, because we value the benefits of maintaining fast-growing, healthy plants.
This very thing is what motivates many people to automate their watering systems - so it's easy for others, and even kids to do - and some put the system on a timer to complete the process and eliminate the need for others' intervention entirely.
Plans for automating the watering system are in chapter 16 of the Mittleider Gardening Course, and that chapter is available free in the Store pages of the website at www.foodforeveryone.org.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
How to avoid weeds in the garden
Weeds
Q. I have sooo many weeds! I weeded the garden before I planted, (or so I thought) I am constantly weeding. Is that normal?? I just can't kill all of them. Round-up seems to be like fertilizer to them. I looked on past posts and someone recommended boiling water. I will have to try it. I also tried the mixture of vinegar, salt and dish soap; it didn't work either.
Q. Weeds are just about the most common problem that keep people from having great gardens.
"E & O" weeding is what I recommend strongly. Early and often, and by early I mean as soon as the seeds sprout you should take them out - either with the 2-way hoe (see Tools in the Store section of the website www.growfood.com) or with the garden rake.
Continue weeding as often as necessary. Jacob said many times that "1 years' weeds makes 7 years' seeds." That is the sad truth, and it means that unless you have been weeding your garden diligently for 7 years you probably still have weed seeds that will sprout when they are brought to the surface by the hoe, rake, shovel, or tiller.
Keep at it, and DON'T let Roundup or any other store-bought solution take the place of elbow-grease. Half the benefit of gardening is the fresh air and exercise we get taking care of it.
Don't be afraid to take your ridges down in the process of weeding. It only takes 2-3 MINUTES to pull down the ridges of a 30'-long soil-bed, and about 5 minutes to build them again with the rake. This simple process will eliminate the large majority of your weeds - especially if you do it a couple of times. And hoe in the aisles when necessary, also when the weeds are tiny.
Q. I have sooo many weeds! I weeded the garden before I planted, (or so I thought) I am constantly weeding. Is that normal?? I just can't kill all of them. Round-up seems to be like fertilizer to them. I looked on past posts and someone recommended boiling water. I will have to try it. I also tried the mixture of vinegar, salt and dish soap; it didn't work either.
Q. Weeds are just about the most common problem that keep people from having great gardens.
"E & O" weeding is what I recommend strongly. Early and often, and by early I mean as soon as the seeds sprout you should take them out - either with the 2-way hoe (see Tools in the Store section of the website www.growfood.com) or with the garden rake.
Continue weeding as often as necessary. Jacob said many times that "1 years' weeds makes 7 years' seeds." That is the sad truth, and it means that unless you have been weeding your garden diligently for 7 years you probably still have weed seeds that will sprout when they are brought to the surface by the hoe, rake, shovel, or tiller.
Keep at it, and DON'T let Roundup or any other store-bought solution take the place of elbow-grease. Half the benefit of gardening is the fresh air and exercise we get taking care of it.
Don't be afraid to take your ridges down in the process of weeding. It only takes 2-3 MINUTES to pull down the ridges of a 30'-long soil-bed, and about 5 minutes to build them again with the rake. This simple process will eliminate the large majority of your weeds - especially if you do it a couple of times. And hoe in the aisles when necessary, also when the weeds are tiny.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Understanding Salinity & Osmosis for a Sustainable Garden
The physical law known as osmosis affects plants and animals alike, and it is important to understand how it works, so your garden can benefit, rather than be harmed by its universal effects. You will also be healthier if you pay attention to salinity and osmosis in your own body.
The principle of osmosis states that where there are two saline solutions separated by a semi-permeable membrane, the solution with the lower salinity will migrate across the membrane to the saltier solution until the two solutions are equal in salinity. I recommend you re-read the foregoing statement and really understand what it means, because it is VERY important.
In humans, animals, and plants mineral salts are essential to life. They are taken into the bloodstream of the body by mouth, or the sap of the plant through the roots, and are then used to build the cell structure and maintain the health of the living organism.
In plants, so long as the salt solution in the plant is stronger than the solution outside of the plant, available water will continue coming into the plant. A plant is more than 80% water by weight, and so plants need water constantly. In hot weather it’s especially important, since as much as 95% of the water that enters a plant is used to perform transpiration – like human sweating – to keep the plant cool.
Most everyone understands that if water is withheld from a plant it will quickly wilt and die. What most folks don’t understand, however, is that even if ample water is available to the plant roots, if it is as salty as the solution inside the plant, the plant CAN NOT absorb any of that water. And if the water being applied is saltier than the water inside the plant, water will LEAVE the plant.
How can something like that happen? Who would be so foolish as to water their plants with salty water? Actually it can happen fairly easily, and it does happen more than people realize. Let me mention two ways that are probably the most common, so that you can avoid having it happen to you.
First, many people apply 2-3″ of manure to their growing beds, in the desire to fertilize the plants and improve the soil structure. The problem is that many times manure – especially feed-lot manure – is quite salty, containing from ? to 2% each of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, in addition to other elements, even including such things as sodium chloride or common table salt because of salt-licks provided to the animals.
Applying 2+ inches of manure to a 30′-long soil-bed requires 200-300# of manure, and can add several POUNDS of these various salts to your soil. The salinity this creates will often pull water out of your plants, “burning” and even killing them. By contrast, the Mittleider method of feeding your garden adds about 7 ounces of salts to the soil in a 30′ bed a few times over the course of the growing season.
The second way saline water can get into your garden is if you use water that has had some kind of salt added upstream from your garden, or from a well with saline water. This almost happened to me just this morning.
I was watering the Armenia Project’s model garden I’m using to demonstrate and teach the Mittleider Method in Ashtarak, a small city near the Armenian Capital city of Yerevan. The water comes in a small canal, and it was clear when I began, but as I started to water a bed of eggplant, the water suddenly became very cloudy and dirty. Luckily, I noticed what was happening and stopped watering immediately.
If you ever find yourself with saline water in your plants’ root zone, you should flush the salts out as quickly and completely as possible. This requires heavy watering several times with clean water. Sometimes it’s fairly easy, and sometimes it’s difficult or even impossible to accomplish before your plants have died.
As with most everything in life, prevention is much better than cure, so avoid the conditions that can lead to a salinity problem, and you’ll help assure yourself of a sustainable garden with healthy, fast-growing plants.
Jim Kennard, President of Food For Everyone Foundation, has a wealth of teaching and gardening training and experience upon which to draw in helping the Foundation “Teach the world to grow food one family at a time.” Jim has been a Mittleider gardener for the past twenty nine years; he is a Master Mittleider Gardening Instructor, and has taught classes and worked one-on-one with Dr. Jacob Mittleider on several humanitarian gardening training projects in the USA and abroad. He has conducted projects in Armenia, America, Madagascar, and Turkey by himself. He assists gardeners all over the world from the http://www.foodforeveryone.org website FAQ pages and free Gardening Group, and grows a large demonstration garden at Utah’s Hogle Zoo in his spare time.
Gardening Books, CDs and Software are available at http://www.foodforeveryone.org
The principle of osmosis states that where there are two saline solutions separated by a semi-permeable membrane, the solution with the lower salinity will migrate across the membrane to the saltier solution until the two solutions are equal in salinity. I recommend you re-read the foregoing statement and really understand what it means, because it is VERY important.
In humans, animals, and plants mineral salts are essential to life. They are taken into the bloodstream of the body by mouth, or the sap of the plant through the roots, and are then used to build the cell structure and maintain the health of the living organism.
In plants, so long as the salt solution in the plant is stronger than the solution outside of the plant, available water will continue coming into the plant. A plant is more than 80% water by weight, and so plants need water constantly. In hot weather it’s especially important, since as much as 95% of the water that enters a plant is used to perform transpiration – like human sweating – to keep the plant cool.
Most everyone understands that if water is withheld from a plant it will quickly wilt and die. What most folks don’t understand, however, is that even if ample water is available to the plant roots, if it is as salty as the solution inside the plant, the plant CAN NOT absorb any of that water. And if the water being applied is saltier than the water inside the plant, water will LEAVE the plant.
How can something like that happen? Who would be so foolish as to water their plants with salty water? Actually it can happen fairly easily, and it does happen more than people realize. Let me mention two ways that are probably the most common, so that you can avoid having it happen to you.
First, many people apply 2-3″ of manure to their growing beds, in the desire to fertilize the plants and improve the soil structure. The problem is that many times manure – especially feed-lot manure – is quite salty, containing from ? to 2% each of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, in addition to other elements, even including such things as sodium chloride or common table salt because of salt-licks provided to the animals.
Applying 2+ inches of manure to a 30′-long soil-bed requires 200-300# of manure, and can add several POUNDS of these various salts to your soil. The salinity this creates will often pull water out of your plants, “burning” and even killing them. By contrast, the Mittleider method of feeding your garden adds about 7 ounces of salts to the soil in a 30′ bed a few times over the course of the growing season.
The second way saline water can get into your garden is if you use water that has had some kind of salt added upstream from your garden, or from a well with saline water. This almost happened to me just this morning.
I was watering the Armenia Project’s model garden I’m using to demonstrate and teach the Mittleider Method in Ashtarak, a small city near the Armenian Capital city of Yerevan. The water comes in a small canal, and it was clear when I began, but as I started to water a bed of eggplant, the water suddenly became very cloudy and dirty. Luckily, I noticed what was happening and stopped watering immediately.
If you ever find yourself with saline water in your plants’ root zone, you should flush the salts out as quickly and completely as possible. This requires heavy watering several times with clean water. Sometimes it’s fairly easy, and sometimes it’s difficult or even impossible to accomplish before your plants have died.
As with most everything in life, prevention is much better than cure, so avoid the conditions that can lead to a salinity problem, and you’ll help assure yourself of a sustainable garden with healthy, fast-growing plants.
Jim Kennard, President of Food For Everyone Foundation, has a wealth of teaching and gardening training and experience upon which to draw in helping the Foundation “Teach the world to grow food one family at a time.” Jim has been a Mittleider gardener for the past twenty nine years; he is a Master Mittleider Gardening Instructor, and has taught classes and worked one-on-one with Dr. Jacob Mittleider on several humanitarian gardening training projects in the USA and abroad. He has conducted projects in Armenia, America, Madagascar, and Turkey by himself. He assists gardeners all over the world from the http://www.foodforeveryone.org website FAQ pages and free Gardening Group, and grows a large demonstration garden at Utah’s Hogle Zoo in his spare time.
Gardening Books, CDs and Software are available at http://www.foodforeveryone.org
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
