organic gardening

Five Minute Gardening: Use what nature gives you. This seaside gardener uses seaweed, shells, and seashore stones as food and mulch. Stones, seaweed and shells dissolve slowly putting minerals back into soil.

Seaweed also provides food for soil organisms. Seashells and other shells sweeten soil and give back calcium.

Companion plants keep pests down.

Driftwood trellises are for scarlet runner and painted lady beans. If you have ample straw available it makes great mud resistant, grass-free walkways, keeps weeds down and can be composted, providing a coarse aerating layer over finer, denser compost. Locate compost piles strategically around the garden.

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RATIONALE: Organic gardening affords us with what has become a luxury: food free of synthetic pesticides and herbicides. Organic gardening practices strive to keep mineral content high in the supporting soil. Conventional farming practices deplete minerals and trace minerals. If they are not put back into the soil resulting crops are inferior. Rutgers University; Firman E. Baer Report, tested organically grown foods with off-the-shelf non-organic plant foods. They tested spinach, tomatoes, cabbage, lettuce and snap peas. Organically grown plants tested had significantly higher weights of nutrients, minerals and trace elements as compared to the off-the-shelf non-organic plant foods. Total mineral matter was on average three times higher in the organically grown foods tested. Cobalt was missing entirely from non-organic snap beans, cabbage, lettuce and tomatoes. On average organic foods contained 20 times more iron; 15 times more manganese, 40 times more copper; 7 times more boron; 6 times more potassium; 5 times more magnesium; 5 times more calcium and twice as much phosphorus. These elements are critical for maintaining optimum health and strong bones.

Recent evidence suggests that Canadian federal regulations adequately control carcinogenic exposure from conventionally grown vegetables and fruit. This study suggests that when push comes to shove it is better to eat fruits and vegetables with trace amounts of pesticides than to avoid eating fruit and vegetables (see ES&T, Feb. 1 1998, P. 81A; Cancer 1997, 80) The study done by toxicologists from the National Cancer Institute in Canada concluded that Canadian regulations control carcinogenic exposure through the diet. Thus, you can reduce your risk of cancer even when eating slightly toxic foods. Strange study! Natural compounds in plants protect us from the pesticides we put on them. At least in Canada.

What we don't know is the cumulative toxicity of eating pesticide laden plants over a long period. And the accumulative toxic effect of pesticides that have a common mechanism of toxicity. Perhaps there are synergistic toxic effects when more than one toxin is ingested. Consider in a recent study over 60 pesticides were discovered in a California carrot field (for more see "Today's Chemist at Work", The risk cup taketh over..Dec. 1997; p 35).

The American Chemical Society's spring national meeting (2000) unveiled information on widespread contamination of drinking water, streams, rivers, lakes and water tables. Drugs excreted by humans and livestock pass through landfills, conventional sewage treatment plants and livestock waste ponds to poison fresh water sources. Contaminants that invade our fresh water supplies include aspirin, caffeine, nicotine, clofibric acid (cholesterol reducing drug) anti-inflammatory compounds, psychiatric drugs, anticancer pharmaceuticals, analgesics and the like (Science News 4/01/00, p. 212.) Many of these drugs percolate through soil unscathed into the water table and poison downstream ground water sources. An estimated 40% of all antibiotics manufactured are given to livestock. Large feeder lots are potentially dangerous sources of waste water antibiotics. Hog waste lagoons are laced with antibiotics. In time, these reservoirs give up their effluent to surface run off and ground water reservoirs. There is unfolding evidence that livestock excrement lagoons may harbor antibiotic resistant bacteria (Science News, 6/5/99, p.356). New state of the art drugs called efflux-pump inhibitors are designed to impede the function of the cellular pump in livestock, thereby preventing infective microbes for ejecting antibiotics designed to destroy them (Science News 2/12/00, P.110). What if these cellular pump inhibiting drugs escape into our water supply? Will wildlife lose their ability to fight disease? Will we be only a few miles downstream from drinking water sources laced with cellular pump inhibitors? What price do we pay for the chronic exposure to trace concentrations of these contaminants? (Go to: What you can do).

The use of synthetic pesticides and herbicides on our food supply and ground water will reap a savage harvest of human lives unless we do something about it. Practice Eco-Activism prepare your own organic garden. Grow open pollinated heritage foods. Cut your food costs and add entertainment, exercise and luxury to your life...Grow and eat food of the highest quality.

Manure Tea: Fill an old pillow slip or panty hose with manure (horse or cow). Tie of "bag" and drop it into a garbage can or large bucket of water. Cover. Let sit and stew for about ten days. Pull out bag and water left in the container may be poured or dripped around root zones of plants. Dump manure from bag on garden or onto mulch pile.

Fava Beans and other legumes may be used to improve nitrogen content in exhausted soil when planted about 6 weeks before your first frost. Seeds of fava beans may be sowed three inches deep in rows ten inches apart. Keep moist through winter. As fava beans flower mow down the plants and till all into soil. Transplant annuals three weeks after mulching.

Minerals: Every February I put rock dust on my garden, and a good "organic" source of lime. In Mid March I broadcast about 50 lbs of cracked corn and 50 pounds of rice over the soil.

The birds like that. They mingle and munch, defecate. In time, the rice and corn putrefies, fungus grows on it. Bacteria begin to enjoy. Nematodes and earthworms, pill bugs and other earthy creatures mingle in and out of my corn and rice, escaping down into the earth, leaving contrails of waste, enriching my soil.. Their holes vacuum in Nitrogen from the air. This ether of Earth's gases becomes the starter material for nitrogenous compounds that will nourish the plants of my garden. It's a good start. But why all the trouble anyway...

-peanut shells, buckwheat hulls, ground corn cobs, saw dust, chopped straw, coffee grounds

-high lignin content and silica content of above makes this a permanent structure.

1. Till in what you have 3 times. Ideally 3 feet deep. Can dig French trench or use spading fork.

TIP: -20% of nitrogen comes from air, good aeration from organisms and their holes in the soil.

TIP: After fixing structure of soil add earthworms. Red worms will stand more heat.

Organic Amendments (A. nutrients for organisms and plants B. Soil stability )

** Caution: I do not use manure of any kind as a mulch or in my compost pile because animal feces harbors heat resistant bacteria and other microorganisms that may contaminate the food crops I use compost on.

NOVEL AND VERY GOOD: NEWSPAPER, SHREDDED. GOOD SOURCE OF LIGNIN, INK COLOR IS SOYBEAN BASED AND SEAWEED BINDER

-do not overcultivate, this destroys earthworms and other living organisms and effects soil structure..

TIP: manure (do not use manure on food you plant to eat) any kind+stinging nettles and/or dandelions and water...makes adequate liquid fertilizer. Substitute animal flesh instead of manure above if you will use the tea on food plants. For example: fish meal.

Feed this to soil organisms. IT'S FOOD FOR THE GUYS WHO MAKE YOUR GARDEN SOIL GREAT. USE OFTEN AND DILUTED, ADD TO SOIL OF NEEDY PLANTS ONE QUART OR LESS TO GALLON OF WATER.

You may purchase commercial Soil Innoculants for Microorganisms. Ask at your local sustainable gardening store for answers.

*Sand is too much porosity. Clay too little porosity Loam: considered just right.

Organic materials adds aeration to clay soils and stops water loss in sand soils and leads to a loam soil.

WEEDS ARE NOT BAD GUYS: THEY ARE DEEP ROOTING AND ADD AERATION BY DRILLING HOLES. WHEN THEY ARE PULLED THEY AERATE. DO WEED PULLING, NOT TILLING.

GOOD SOIL FORMS SOIL COLLOIDS: A GLUEY SUSPENSION OF HUMUS, WATER, MINERALS AND ACIDS THAT MAKE MINERALS SOLUBLE.

USE LIME SPARINGLY OR NOT AT ALL. LIME IS HARD ON SOIL LIFE, EARTHWORMS BALANCE SOIL ph. HUMUS AND/OR EARTHWORM DROPPINGS SLANT SOIL TOWARD ALKALINITY. IONIZATION COMES NATURALLY WITH EARTHWORMS AND DROPPINGS.

Adding rock dust to soil adds full complement of minerals AND IN A COLLOIDAL FORM charged to be attracted to mucigel of roots.

EARTHWORMS INCREASE NITROGEN, HUMUS, MUCUS, MAKE AVAILABLE MORE MINERALS, ADD 5x THE NITROGEN; 2x THE CALCIUM, 2.5x MAGNESIUM; 7x PHOSPHORUS; 11x POTASSIUM.

EARTHWORMS EAT AND KILL HARMFUL MICROORGANISMS AND IMPROVE AND INCREASE BENEFICIAL ORGANISMS

EARTHWORM FOOD: GRASS CLIPPINGS COMPOSTED (INOCULATE WITH WORMS AFTER ABOUT A WEEK) RED WORMS MORE HEAT TOLERANT; ADD COFFEE GROUNDS, CORNMEAL AND A PINCH OF LIME.

MICORRHIZAE: ARE A LIVING BRIDGE FROM THE SOIL AND ITS WEALTH TO THE ROOTS OF THE PLANT. THEY ABSORB ORGANIC AND INORGANIC NUTRIENTS AND PASS IT DIRECTLY INTO THE ROOTS. THEY GREATLY FACILITATE PHOSPHOROUS ABSORPTION. SOMETIMES CALLED INDIRECT ABSORPTION

HERBICIDES AND PESTICIDES KILL FUNGAL MICORRHIZAE. LIME ALSO KILLS MICORRIZAE BY ph IMBALANCE.

ROOTS HAIRS....ROOTLETS AND ROOT HAIRS ARE SURROUNDED BY A COLLOIDAL MUCIGEL, FULL OF BACTERIA WHICH FACILITATE PASSAGE OF ROOT THROUGH SOIL AND ABSORPTION... LIKE WATER LUBE AT OIL DRILL HEAD.

Chelation is typically a carbohydrate sphere around a mineral, making it absorbable and available to cells. Minerals move and metabolize when chelated

ENDOCYTOSIS PROVES PLANTS CAN TAKE IN WHOLE MOLECULE AND LARGER GRANULES NOT JUST IONS OF ELEMENTS...COATED PITS ON ROOTS (SOME FED BY MICORRHIZAE) INVERT OR EVERT WHOLE MOLECULES AND LARGER GRANULES FROM PLANT TO EARTH, EARTH TO PLANT.

COMPANION PLANT GROWTH AID IS ACHILLEA MILLEFOLIUM, MOST PLANTS HAVE SECONDARY CHEMICALS THAT INHIBIT GROWTH.

TIPS: DO NOT FERTILIZE TOMATOES, LOWERS BETA CAROTENE IN STUDIES OF TOMATOES, NEGATIVELY EFFECTS ABSORPTION OF BORON AND CALCIUM.

GASES: air, nitrogen fixing organisms, and decomposition, abiotically fixed on minerals by sun energy: plants need nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide.

cheap nitrogen sources: air, coffee grounds, soybean meal, hay, hair, spent hops, feathers.

MINERALS: Humus has more than 1/2 ability to hold minerals. Lignin in humus and protein of the lignin are responsible for this. Terminal moraines have great mineral content=rock dust; sea weed.

FOSSIL CLAY FOUND IN ABUNDANCE AT GRAND MERE BEACH IS GOOD SOURCE OF MINERALS AND CALCIUM.

STONES DO NOT HURT GARDEN MAY HELP ESPECIALLY GRANITE: PEBBLES DECREASE RUNOFF, REDUCE RAIN COMPACTION.

TIP: LIQUID SEAWEED SPRAY INCITES ROOTS TO ABSORB MORE NUTRIENTS, INCREASING GROWTH, PERHAPS CAUSING MORE PITS TO FORM ON ROOTS.

SEAWEED MINERALS: COPPER, CALCIUM, POTASSIUM, PHOSPHORUS, IRON, MAGNESIUM, etc; in chelated form.

TRACE MINERALS: Lack of a mineral or mineral cause a host of deficiency diseases in plants.

To avoid mineral and trace mineral loses: add manure and seaweed or fish emulsion, fossil clay.

LIME: Use dolomite lime, oystershell flour, milk, or corn (calcium key ingredient, good organic soil does not need ph adjustments).

VITAMINS: Needed in very dilute quantities. B vitamins and Vitamin C most studied.

ACCELERATE GROWTH WITH VIT C AND H2O2 (50PPM EACH) EXAMPLE: 50 MG VIT C IN ONE LITER OF WATER. SOAK SEEDS 6 HOURS IN .1 % SOLUTION OF VIT C TO INCREASE YIELD BY 14%.

SUGAR: ONCE PER YEAR ADD 1% SUCROSE SPRAY TO ENHANCE FORMATION OF VITAMIN C IN SOIL AND PLANTS. PHOSPHORUS HELPS PLANTS FORM SUGARS WITH ADEQUATE SUGAR IN SOIL AND VITAMIN C.

TIP: SEAWEED CAN BE GRANULATED OR SHREDDED AND USED AS A SURFACE DRESSING TO PROVIDE MINERALS AND TRACE ELEMENTS.

Activated carbon and ozone filters remove traces of drugs from water. These systems are being widely employed in European waste water treatment plants. Help your community consider the installation of these processes. In the interim, consider charcoal filters and if affordable ozone filters on your personal drinking water sources.

Be conservative in your watering. Don't broadcast it in fine spray. Soak the plants that are to be watered. Not all plants need be watered. Water herbs less often or not at all.

Put dried manure and grass clippings in a gatorade like container or large bucket with lid. Cover with water. Let sit of 7-10 days, then dip off this nutrient rich soup and pour around roots of nutrient needy plants like tomatoes, peppers, Chinese cabbages.

When applying a summer mulch to your garden in early June be certain to water your plants deeply, generously before covering with mulch. The mulch will keep the moisture in. But if you don't water it will keep rain moisture out, unless it is a real soaker. Do not mulch wet areas with springs