Wondering where or how to start your first home garden? We will share some of the initial steps that we used to start ours.

AdAgrA 2020: A Living Parable

<p>Wondering where or how to start your first home garden? We will share some of the initial steps that we used to start ours.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Homesteading

Cavell Blood

Your First Home Garden

Dear Father in heaven Lord, I thank you so much for the opportunity we have to learn more about you through the garden Let me ask you to be here as we learn more about how to start our own home gardens.

Amen Okay, So this talk is geared for those who are starting their first garden or if you have started a little garden if you had some pots of plants or whatever it's this is also geared for you.

If you've had some experience This might be covering a lot of things you already know.

But this is also geared for those who are in the country or if they do have a little plot of land and they're kind of more urban.

It's not really geared for if you're maybe living in an apartment and you only have something on the porch, because I am talking about kind of digging in the ground and stuff.

So if you don't have any like land, I don't know if that'll really apply, but let's get into it here.

So why should we or why are we going to garden?

To forge a closer relationship with God is 1 point I'd like to go over.

To the dwellers in Eden was committed the care of the garden to dress it and to keep it.

And their occupation was not wearisome, but pleasant and invigorating.

God appointed labor as a blessing to man to occupy his mind, to strengthen his body, and to develop his faculties.

In mental and physical activity, Adam found 1 of the highest pleasures of his holy existence." So this is, this is, the physical activity means we're probably not just sitting on a chair.

And I'm saying that because I sit on a chair.

The quote continues, And when as a result of his disobedience he was driven from his beautiful home and forced to struggle with a stubborn soil to gain his daily bread that very labor Although widely different from his pleasant occupation in the garden was a safeguard against what?

Against temptation and a source of happiness.

So this is a reason we should be gardening.

Even though it's going to be hard, it's not going to be easy, that very labor is a safeguard against temptation and a source of happiness.

Patriarchs and Prophets, page 50, paragraph 1.

Another reason is to grow your own nutrient-dense food.

It's nice to be able to grow your own food at home and to be able to go out into the garden and pick it when you're getting ready to have a meal, instead of having to run to town.

And then even if you do run to town, you're probably not going to get it as nutrient dense as if you grew it yourself.

So before I get into a little bit about what we're doing, I want to give you a background about my first home garden and the size of it.

We went to I think Lowe's or Home Depot and bought the PVC pipe and we bought we were out in California This was a redwood box We made the clay underneath of it really couldn't be used so we brought some some soil in and fill that in.

And this is just a drop cloth for painting that we just put over that as a way to keep things in there.

We didn't really have any training in how to grow things.

I think we watched a YouTube video on how to build this thing.

And we were renting at the time we only had just a little side garden to plant in there and it was mostly in the shade if you'll notice.

This was what it looked like almost the whole day we had a lot of trees there so I didn't even think about it but it wasn't the best place to grow.

We bought a 6 pack of broccoli from Whole Foods and planted those so that the broccoli was already about this big, transplants.

We started the lettuce inside and here's harvesting some lettuce.

We just harvested leaves about every day when we needed salad.

So we just harvested from each row, put some wood chips in between there and that was our entire broccoli harvest.

It wasn't very big but it was pretty neat to have your own broccoli, growing your own food there.

Also out on our patio we had some 5 gallon buckets and we had tomatillos, tomatoes, and cucumbers.

My wife worked at the cafeteria at Weimar and so they had a lot of extra food grade, not that it had to be food grade, but there were food grade buckets that they were just getting rid of so we got them from the cafeteria and put some plants in them.

So what I'm talking about can be applied more than just to this setting too.

Also before we get going here, Kind of like seed saving, question saving.

And I will have a time where we can all answer some questions.

I'll answer some questions as best I can.

And just so if you have a question as I'm going through, write it down.

And then we'll try to field them at the end.

We have a mic here if we wanted to do that.

It's not going to be good for Audioverse though.

OK, so before I get started, I want to say that it's probably going to be hard to cover everything in an hour that even if I was doing a one-to-one on what you need to get started.

There's just a lot of different things so we'll cover a lot of different topics here and but if you have questions please let me know at the end then.

So the points I'll be covering will be in reference to growing in the summer and not in the winter.

To start off I'd like to say get your soil tested And I don't want to be scaring anybody off, and so there is an alternative, but getting your soil tested, plants do best in a balanced soil.

I will show you a picture here of our garden where we did test our soil, but we didn't amend it right away because we just wanted to plant and you'll see how they were growing where it wasn't a good balanced soil.

There is a place where we get our soil tested, Waypoint Analytical.

I'm not going to go in depth here on how to get your soil tested.

There are people who are more qualified than myself who could tell you how to do that.

If you've heard of Bob Gregory, he is here presenting.

He has a DVD series that goes in depth on how to test your soil.

We've watched that and that's how we have worked on balancing our soils.

But it's important to know how to give your plants the best nutrients.

Well Cavell that sounds complicated And there is an alternative.

This right here was recommended to me by Paul Dysinger.

It's a 3-2-2 balance, and so it's a fairly light and well balanced fertilizer.

If you want to use a vegan mix you don't have to use this 1 but this is something that you can if you if you're not going to test your soil which is fine you don't have to I would encourage you that if you're gonna start a home garden, you need to start somewhere.

Putting the seed in the soil will get you somewhere.

But if you are gonna just start, I would say get a little fertilizer like this, and you can use that, And that will be balanced of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

It's not too heavy, but at least give your plant some nutrients in which they can grow in.

But this 1 is a nice light mix but it's also balanced.

But I will say that I wouldn't just stick here and just keep adding this year after year because your soil could be high in 1 of those elements there that this has in it and if you keep on adding you're adding something that it doesn't need.

So when you get your soil balanced, that would be a better mix for the plants.

Next point I'd like to cover is creating a sun map.

If you're looking to plant a garden, plants grow best in the sun.

So you'll want to make sure you're planting in a sunny area.

Now there might be certain times of day you look out and your lawn is like, maybe not your lawn, but We turned our lawn into our garden, so you might not be a lawn.

But anyway, where you're looking to plant, you might see like, oh yeah, that's a nice sunny spot.

And then 03:00, it's all covered in shade.

Yeah, Try to record the sun map several times per day.

I would recommend go out in the morning, as soon as the sun's coming up, see where it's at.

Is it getting sun already or is there still trees that are covering that spot that you want to plant in.

Because if it's not until like 10, 30 or 11 o'clock that you actually have sun there, then you're wasting a lot of time where the plant could be getting that sunlight that it needs.

Weston Adams

My Wild Orchard: Successful Home Fruit Production

Lord, I just want to ask that you will bless, help us to learn, help us to catch a vision, help us to be able to take something home that will give us some success, and help us to enjoy the process.

Okay, so I'm going to start out with a few pictures here.

This is when I was maybe I don't know 7 or 8 that's in Oregon.

So that's me picking huckleberries and some of my earliest exposure to fruit.

And I just included, this is a picture of our homestead where we live now.

I won't spend long on it, but it's an aerial photo.

You can see On the left there we have our orchard right in here.

It's been a big experiment, a laboratory.

So that's just a picture, that's about a half acre.

Half acre there and we've done some experimenting here in this half acre with vines, different things like that.

So another picture, this was in 2013, that's my dad and my brother planting fruit trees.

Actually that tree didn't make it, but still a document.

Another picture of the orchard, and I'll go through these pretty quickly because these are just some pictures of early on.

More recent, have some persimmons and my sister holding some apples.

But what I would like to start off with is the need for preparation.

And the orchard and vineyard both have many benefits.

There are spiritual benefits, mental, physical, many benefits.

But But from the perspective of a newbie gardener, how do they differ?

How do you, what is the differences when it comes to preparing for your orchard?

Between preparing for an orchard and preparing for a garden.

And these are some of the things I wanna point out.

With a vegetable garden, you can start with a clean slate each year.

So you mess things up 1 year, Hopefully you don't mess things up, but if you do mess things up, you get a new start the next year.

You have a relatively quick turnaround time, so you can learn from your mistakes.

You can afford to make your own mistakes, and you can correct them next year.

And with orcharding, we have a little bit of a different story.

With orcharding, you can't always start with a new slate each year.

And that's partly why it's so important to prepare, to prepare, to do your research.

It's great to experiment but start with some things that you know are solid.

Because you aren't going to be able to turn around like that like you will in the garden.

You'll live with your decisions for a while.

It's harder to turn around because your trees don't die at the end of the year, at least you don't want them to die at the end of the year.

And you'll live with your decisions for a while, so it's good to put in some up front research and decide what you're going to do strategically.

And you'll always learn, but it's really valuable to put in that upfront research.

And then experiment from there as you move forward.

You'll save time learning from others' mistakes and you'll find unique joys and opportunities.

The orcharding is a whole different ball game from growing a vegetable garden.

There are a lot of things that, a lot of joys in an orchard, in harvesting fruit, it's sweet, it's beautiful.

There are a lot of things that are different.

You get the rhythm of the seasons, even to a greater extent than you do in the garden.

So my goal is to give you all a jump start.

I'm still learning a lot, but I have also learned a lot and my goal is to learn, is to help you learn from some of the experiences I've had.

So you're still going to make mistakes, but my goal is to get it so that when you put in your trees, you'll be a few steps ahead of the game and you'll be starting with trees that will most likely do well in your area and you'll have a base from which to experiment.

So you're starting with something that's that's more or less sound that's my goal for you And I also talk about I want you to succeed with your own Wild orchard and I'm going to talk a little bit about this wild orchard concept Basically, the wild orchard is a concept of using the wild, looking to the wild flora around you.

What's growing naturally, what people have been planting that's doing well and harnessing that in your orchard to plant things that really do well.

The reason I have these pictures, this is out in the northwest, this is just along the highway, it's a tree laden with apples, They're just wild, just growing along the highway.

This is a pear tree, completely wild, no 1 planted it.

It's probably actually an escaped, they're not native, but they do so well that they've escaped and they grow wild.

So These are concepts, these are things that we can take clues from in developing our own wild orchard.

Looking at the wild flora, so I just put the wild orchard as a laboratory first and foremost.

Ideally it's a low spray or no spray orchard because you're using the natural flora to take cues as to what really does well in your area and what you're not going to have to manage so intensively.

The wild orchard is a culturally rich orchard because very often you will have be growing stuff that you won't find in the grocery store just because you're growing stuff that is regionally adapted and maybe people in your state or your region of the country know about it but people in other parts of the country don't even know about it because it's a regionally adapted thing and ultimately it's a fun orchard, at least that's the goal.

So I want to talk a little bit about basic fruit tree anatomy.

And this is, these are some things you're going to want to have in the back of your mind.

It's just kind of basic information about fruit trees.

Some of you may know this, but this is going to be, this is baseline information to have as you go into orcharding.

The first thing is that most fruit trees are grafted.

It basically it's the marriage of 2 living pieces of tissue.

So you have maybe a Red Delicious apple and a another type of apple and you it's it's possible to make bind those 2 together such that they actually grow together into 1 piece of tissue.

They're still separate in their features.

The the features of the 1 will, you know, the fruit color of the 1 will still be the same and fruit color of the other will still be the same, but they actually weld into 1 piece of tissue.

And the way I like to think about it is interchangeable parts.

So with a grafted tree, what you have is you have roots of 1 variety.

And you have Everything else is another variety.

So I think of it as interchangeable parts because you can basically choose the roots of the tree that you want.

I've got apple roots that are really strong and vigorous, big root system, they anchor really well.

And I have another tree that has weak roots but it has really good fruit.

With grafting what you can do is put those 2 together so you have a tree that has really strong roots and it has really good fruit in 1 tree.

Basically you have interchangeable parts.

And if you want another type of fruit you put another type of, the top part which is called the scion, you put another type of scion on the roots and you create a tree that has the strong roots but it has different fruits.

So I like to think of it as interchangeable parts.

And then the idea is the quote perfect tree because you were able to choose the roots and the top separately.

So that's the talk a little bit about the concept of grafting.

Now this picture illustrates grafting just a little bit.

Here we have, this is actually an almond tree, almond peach cross actually, but that's the main point that I wanted to illustrate is here we have a tree and if you will look right down here, we have purple leaves coming up.

This is a grafted tree, and the reason we have purple leaves coming up is because those are coming up near the roots.

And the roots of this tree happen to be a purple leafed rootstock.

So it's not good to have this shoot coming up that sucker needs to be cut off but what it does is it illustrates that we have 2 types of trees in 1 here.

We have these roots, this rootstock that is purple leaves And we have the scion which is the part that would produce the nuts up here on the top.

It's green So that's just to illustrate the concept for you like I said this wood needs to be cut off But it just illustrates the fact that you have the marriage of 2 plants in 1 when you're grafting So here's a diagram, the grafted tree, the perfect tree, and I'll move on here.

Another illustration, this is a tree that I grafted last spring And that is the graft union before I taped it up.

So those are the 2 pieces of wood put together.

Pamela Dysinger

Rekindling the Art of Hospitality

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the privilege that we have to come together to talk about something that I know is very important to you, and that is hospitality.

And I feel that it is important, just the challenges we've had in getting the presentation make me know that it's something that the devil would like to foil.

And so Lord, we just pray that your angels would put a hedge around us and that our minds would be focused and that we would gain a blessing from on high.

I'm just going to start without my presentation.

Well, I'll just start talking and if they...

I'm not going to really get into it yet until you can see.

Would somebody like to help you with this?

Yeah, we just don't have what we need, I guess.

But anyway, we're going to get into it just the same.

If you could see the first slide, you'd see a picture of my table.

And it was given to us in the 2006 probably.

It's an oak, I mean it's an ash wood table.

And if I took a close-up picture of it, you would see it is very scarred and very marred.

And just recently, I guess it was probably around Thanksgiving time, I wanted to write to the person who gave me that table and thank them.

And in the process of doing that, I decided, well, let me just calculate, I mean, roughly, I wonder how many meals I've fed at this table.

Now, I'm a mother of 5 children, and so just that makes quite a few, 7 of us.

So anyway, I felt like I estimated on a conservative note, and I figured 80, 000 meals.

So in preparation for this, I started talking to the older generation when hospitality was something that was the norm.

My father-in-law, his sister, they had a home that was constantly open.

My husband's Aunt Ruth, when I talked to her about hospitality, she just went on and on.

She said, you know, I don't remember a time in my childhood when we didn't have someone living with us.

Or we didn't have people around our table.

So that gives you some perspective of when we're talking about.

And so it was just delightful really to hear their memories.

And I said, do you have any regrets that your parents were that hospitable?

She said it was a huge blessing in my life and we've tried to do the same.

So she gave me the definition, her definition, I'm just going to get into my, so she gave me the definition, I said, Aunt Ruth, what do you think the difference between hospitality and entertainment is?

You can think about that, but we don't have time to entertain too much.

I'm just going to tell you what she said.

So the title of our presentation today was why rekindle?

So the question is why do we have to rekindle it?

We have to rekindle it because life has changed a lot.

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Series

Homesteading

Your First Home Garden

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Parts

Your First Home Garden

59m

My Wild Orchard: Successful Home Fruit Production

51m

Rekindling the Art of Hospitality

54m

Storing Food for the Long-Haul

56m

Safety First

29m

Sound Doctrine