Healthy transplants make healthy plants! This class will cover everything from soil to seeds including: The effects and conditions of potting mix ingredients; germination and plant requirements before entering the field; and observing the object lessons of our successes and failures.

AdAgrA 2020: A Living Parable

<p>Healthy transplants make healthy plants! This class will cover everything from soil to seeds including: The effects and conditions of potting mix ingredients; germination and plant requirements before entering the field; and observing the object lessons of our successes and failures.</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

Home Gardening

John Dysinger

Joshua Dysinger

Succession Planting

Our dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this beautiful morning.

We thank you for the encouragement we have already heard.

We ask that you would give us wisdom to make it clear and succinct.

And I pray for those who listen that they would be encouraged and empowered.

Okay, so I am going to just do a little bit of an overview on why you wanna do succession planting.

My dad will get into more of the ins and outs, especially for the summer season.

And then I'll touch on the fall and winter again at the end which is a little bit more confusing and difficult but we'll try and at least point you in some of the right direction.

You can see some succession planting in this picture, at least a couple there, the peas.

Because the classic, you can only use so much zucchini and squash in July I mean and it just seems like your eyes are always bigger when you go to like you know it's like 2 squash plants you know that's nothing but when it starts producing You know you really can't use that much so You spread your you spread your produce out through the through the season.

My dad found some funny side things there.

Zucchini car making, you got to figure out something to do with all your all your stuff and You know you're from the south when you only lock your car during zucchini season.

So another reason it's more efficient, more, yeah your garden space is used more efficiently because you're not putting everything in at once.

At least around us, it's like, I guess, late April, beginning of May, people put their garden in.

And then it grows until it's either full of weeds or gone or whatever but you know with the succession planting you don't need as much space you just plant you know a little bit half a row of lettuce and a few squash plants.

And you're, as those are coming out, you're putting more in.

And so you don't need as much space and you've got the stuff that's growing, the stuff that's in transplants keeps you eating fresh year-round so this is 1 of our you know end of May beginning of June CSA boxes and then this is 1 of our probably end of December or January boxes.

It makes the garden more manageable, which is pretty much the same as the efficiency in space, because you're not, everything's on a smaller scale because you're not putting it all out there at once which makes it just feel much more much more manageable.

And so now we're going to go into the more nitty-gritty and this is this is general guidelines.

And especially in the winter, at least our winters, have just been all over the place.

So every year is different you can't you can't count on every year being the same but we'll try and give you a good ballpark and at least give you some good overview on succession planting and try and simplify it.

So, I just wanted to emphasize a couple things that Joshua was talking about.

You know, Many of you, in fact, I know there was a class, I don't know if it's today or it was yesterday, on canning and preserving.

Many of you preserve food, and that's great, and there's nothing wrong with that.

But I think most people would agree that preserved food is not as healthy as food picked straight from the garden, right?

Isn't that, as a general rule, I think that's true.

So, you know, when you just plant a big summer garden, and then you've got all this work of canning and Preserving it's it's a lot of work all at 1 time So we do Actually very little preserving now we do applesauce We can tomatoes because we don't like to buy tomatoes in the wintertime We do freeze like our berries strawberries and blueberries, but that's hardly preserving.

And we do some peaches, but literally that's about it.

And so the point is, that's all work we don't have to do.

When it's summertime, man, we have a lot of tomato sandwiches and corn on the cob, right?

And green beans and squash and all those good things.

But come fall, we're eating broccoli and kale and, you know, all the root crops.

And in the wintertime, we've got lots of salads and cooking greens and carrots, amazing carrots.

So in many ways, it just seems simpler, right?

You just go out every day and say, okay, what's for dinner?

So that's kind of in my mind, the biggest beauty of succession planting.

To try to simplify this, what we are encouraging you to do, and just to back up a minute or for a second, Joshua was saying, you know, it's it's not an exact science.

And this is what makes what makes gardening so challenging.

And as Elliot Coleman, my kind of my gardening mentor says it's the mountain that you never summit Can you imagine for somebody who's into conquering?

This is the year we're gonna summit the mountain and you never summit it no matter how long you live every year has enough challenge to it and It's enough different that you don't get it all right.

So that can either discourage you or it can just push you on, man.

And So saying that, with all the weather changes that we have nowadays, we can give you these guidelines, but the only way to ensure that you're always going to have something ready to harvest is to do what what I call a shotgun approach.

You know you've got to if if this is you know if like for us for our winter carrots we we did experimenting in the early years and we decided August 24 was the target date for planting our winter carrots and those stay in the ground all winter.

But because every fall is different some are cold like this year.

This was a really weird year You know We had this really cold snap in the fall which really shuts down the growth of the plants and then it warmed up again, you know, and it's been warm ever since pretty much.

But so, you know, our carrots didn't size up like they I mean, they're now slowly sizing up, but they didn't get the size we wanted them to because that cold just shut them down.

So you see what I'm saying it is a little complicated but anyway let's just get into it here.

So we're going to suggest, because we're trying to simplify this, and even on our farm, commercial growing, I have 1 seeding day a week.

And that, as Joshua said, in the fall, that really is not enough, because the planting dates bunch up in the fall.

But anyway I think for a home gardener 1 day a week is good, but you just have to put it on your calendar.

And so there's some crops that you do on 7 day intervals.

And again, you know, on a home scale, you may not even want to grow all these things.

And also, we're going to try to get all these on the Adagra website.

So 7 day interval crops are mainly direct seeded crops.

I mean, we pretty much direct seed all these baby leaf lettuce, baby leaf greens, so that would be all your other baby stuff like arugula.

There's lots of Asian kinds of mizuna, tatsoi, you know, many greens that you can seed.

And these you're just growing small So you have to seed them often and these like I say are direct seeded We actually discourage direct seeding because direct seeding will discourage you if you don't have your weeds under control and that's what the next session is about.

Almost everything we do is transplanted with the exception of these.

So on this page just to kind of show you how it's set up, the first column we have the crops and the intervals.

Then the second column has some planting recommendations.

And this is first sowing, you know, we give some some guidelines for first sowing and then so up to so your first sowing in this case is 6 weeks before the last frost and Then your last sowing would be 4 weeks before the first frost does that make sense First frost in the fall and last frost in the spring.

That's and again these are averages you know it can vary a lot but this is the average last frost in the spring and the average first frost in the fall.

For us in Middle Tennessee, average last frost is April 15, and average first frost is October 20.

And you'll notice, and we won't we don't have time to talk in depth about all of these, but you'll notice Our planting recommendations for most of these and these are cool weather crops We don't recommend sowing more than 6 weeks before the last Frost in the spring and this is outdoors.

I need to also point out if you have a protected environment Like an unheated heat hoop house you can start You can push these back like at least a month So rather than 6 weeks you could go 10 weeks So the first of February is when we start seeding in earnest.

But all that stuff is gonna go in a hoop house, an unheated hoop house.

Anything going outside would be the 1st of March, would be when we're seeding it.

The only exception, I think there's 1 or 2 exceptions, Spinach, you know, in the seed catalogs, they will say as soon as the soil can be worked.

That's a famous line, you know, as soon as the soil can be worked.

Well, that can vary by months, you know, depending on the year.

But the key there is to actually work the soil in the fall.

And you just have it ready, sitting and ready to go in the spring.

And then the third column, I have some notes.

Alan Seiler

Simple Soil Science

Dear Father in heaven, Lord, I just pray that you would open our minds and hearts, that you would give us understanding of your creation around us, because Lord, your thoughts for us are thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give us a future and a hope, especially in our agricultural endeavors, because you put man in the first garden, Lord, and you desire for us to be examples to those around us.

And Lord, you desire for us to have success, and you have made laws in nature that work in particular ways so that we can have dependable results if we're willing to follow.

And I just pray that in this introduction, you'd give me words to speak that they might find a place in each one's mind, and they might be able to practically know where to start, at least, Lord, to go forward in this adventure.

Okay, so first question, What does Harvard University have in common with soils?

Or how are soils like Harvard University?

I know it's an interesting parallel, but this is a good conceptual comparison.

Some people would say opposite to fertile in some ways.

Well, my comparison was a little bit different than those.

Harvard has the largest endowment in the US, probably in the world.

They have an endowment of $38 billion for Harvard University.

And it's like, wow, what could you do with that type of money?

This is their endowment currently for the university.

And I believe they, from this endowment, they got, what was it, dad?

$1.6 billion in yearly revenue from that endowment.

So how an endowment works is, basically, Endowments supply money by working off the interest of the endowment.

So you have a lot of money and you said, hey, I'm going to put it in the bank.

And the bank says, sure, put it in our bank.

And then obviously that interest compounds over time.

And so an endowment takes the portion, or most at least, take that portion of that interest that's earned.

And they don't touch the money that's in the bank.

They just take the interest and they use that to fund what's going on.

Each element in the soil, And we're going to go over the elements in the soil, is a certain size endowment to make sure that there is enough money or nutrients actually being supplied.

So let me go to my next slide here so I make sure I don't repeat myself.

Okay, so these, we're going to talk, just a bit of an outline.

This is kind of what we're going to try to cover today.

The big 3 plus 1, which I'm referencing elements here, the middle 3, the 5 dwarfs, and we're going to go over taking a good soil sample.

So how this kind of works is that Think of an endowment, right?

You have a large amount of money that by interest, right, is yielding a smaller amount of money that you use to fund things, right?

So for instance, let me give you an example, like phosphorus, okay?

If you take phosphorus, the ideal levels of phosphorus in the soil with the test that I'm recommending are 220 to 330 pounds of phosphorus in the soil.

Now, that amount that you see in the soil, the plant is not accessing that entire amount.

The plant might be accessing 5 pounds to the acre in the soil solution around all the little soil particles.

But you have to have that much phosphorus in the soil to make sure that much trickles down so that the plant can have access to it.

So the big amount is the endowment, the small amount is kind of the interest that's constantly being bled out.

And that's how all the elements in the soil work.

You're putting in a larger quantity to make sure that the smaller amount on a weekly basis is actually getting to the plant.

So it's a really good analogy of how it actually works in the soil.

So we're going to go over the big 3 plus 1.

Now the reason that I'm going, I have this division is because if you're farming and let's say, the best way to visualize this is let's say you have absolutely, not absolutely nothing in your soil, but let's say everything's pretty low in your soil and you're wanting to build it up, okay?

Which elements are going to give you the biggest bang for your buck.

Which ones are what would be considered primary elements?

Then there's secondary, and then there's traces.

And that's kind of what we're going through here, which is basically to say, look, if you don't have these elements, you're never going to get down the road.

It's kind of like saying, the big 3 plus 1, and the reason I do it that way is because most people don't think about the plus 1.

The reason that it's like a car in some ways.

There's certain components like the plushy leather seats in the car.

It might make your ride nicer, a nice grip for your handle.

But ultimately, you just need a steering wheel, 4 wheels, a way, a motor, and that car will go down the road.

So some of these elements are really, really critical.

And then as we go down, if you were to be prioritizing how you amended your soils, you would say, okay, I need these because if I don't get these, the other ones really aren't going to make a difference for me.

Not all elements are as of high value or as important.

So we're going to go over the big 3 here.

Discouraging Thorns and Thistles

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day.

We thank you for the things we're learning.

We thank you for the things you're teaching us and that you want to work with us in the garden.

And Lord, as we talk about weeds, we know that there's so many lessons to learn there.

I pray that as I try to teach practical things, that you will be teaching spiritual things, that we will take the practical lessons of eradicating weeds and apply them to our characters.

These things we pray in Jesus name, amen.

Okay, I knew this was gonna be a popular class because it's something that's a universal, right?

And so I have, I think I've got 15 strategies here that if you read the the description I said it's really simple but I didn't say easy right you understand the difference between simple and easy I know exactly how to keep weeds out of my garden.

Does that mean my garden is always weed free?

Unfortunately not, that's our goal, but we're not there yet.

And the other key word there is timely you know and that's the challenge with market gardening because you may know I need to be doing something but there's some other things that are pressing and ahead of that so anyway because this is a home gardening track, I've tried to I've tried to organize these according to the what I would say should be your priority.

I've tried to prioritize them for the home gardener.

So have you ever had a garden that looks like this?

But yeah, it's like you go out there and you plant your seeds and you come back 2 weeks later And I know they're in there somewhere.

No, I mean, that just makes you want to go back inside, right?

He who tills the soil is to make his work an object lesson of the careful, thorough work which must be done in the culture of the soil of the heart.

So I ask you, is your garden an object lesson of the work that you want God doing on your hearts?

And do you see how our gardens can become this incredible living parable to share with our neighbors?

You know, when they come over and they say, wow, I don't see any weeds.

And you can share spiritual principles, spiritual truths.

So it's really, it's not just life giving to yourself.

I, if anyone was in Portland, or if you listen to the Weed Seminar on AudioVerse, There's a lot of similarities, but I did I did add a few new ones.

And there was 1 that I was thinking of this morning, man, I should add that.

So if I think of it, I will I will I will share it.

But anyway focus on soil health and tilth or the structure of the soil and you're saying wait a minute, this is a weeding class, not a soil class, but this is just coming home to me more and more.

If your soil is in good, I like the word tilth, but it's not a common word, You know, if it's that crumbly, dark, I mean, everybody knows what beautiful soil looks like.

If your soil is like that, weeding becomes so much easier.

And so you want to remove all rocks and perennial weeds.

You know, whatever that takes, you're out there with your digging fork, digging up the dandelions, digging up the dock, or whatever you have out there, the Johnson grass.

You know any rocks I would say bigger than a quarter, I mean ideally you even get those rocks out, but depending on where you're from some soils have a lot of rocks and those are going to confound you in everything you do in the garden.

But every year it seems like the frost brings up more, right?

I don't know how that works, but it seems to work.

Again, it's getting that soil in good shape.

Make sure soil chemistry is balanced because if any of you were here on Tuesday, or you probably you heard it in Alan's class yesterday, getting the chemistry right in the soil will actually loosen it up.

If you have a hard clay soil, the reason it's hard is because the chemistry is wrong.

And then you want to keep it loose with a broad fork.

And there's a number of reasons for that, but 1 reason I'll just mention here is that if you grow in beds you're not compacting you don't walk in your beds you walk in your aisles and so your soil stays looser and it makes it makes cultivating so much easier.

These practices should be your first line of defense against weeds.

And the beauty is, if you keep that soil loose, it helps with everything else as well.

The roots of the plant are going to go down better, you're going to have healthier plants.

So it's really, as many have said before, soil is the key.

Okay, here's another 1 that's super easy, but you just have to plan ahead.

So, you know, most people, when they garden, they go out, you know, the guards have been sitting fallow all winter with all those weed seeds from last year, just lying there waiting to spring to life again.

But they go out there some day, some warm day in the spring and they get the rotor tiller out and they till it all up and they seed it and then they get that first picture I showed you.

You know after a couple weeks it's this huge mess.

Well So do your soil working 2 weeks ahead of time or even further if you can.

And I don't encourage tilling, but you know, if you do, I'm not gonna judge you for it.

When I say tilling, I mean, rhodotilling.

But just do whatever you do for soil preparation ahead of time and then act like you've planted your garden, but you really haven't, you know?

So in other words, water it when it's dry and you just let all the weeds germinate.

And you deal with them before you ever plant your crop you're trying to get.

So there's a couple ways you can do that.

Probably the easiest thing, we'll be talking about the collinear hoe here in a minute, but just take a very, you know, a small bladed hoe and just tickle the surface of that soil.

You're not wanting to dig deeply because you're just going to bring up more weed seeds.

You're trying to deal with those weeds in the very top couple inches of the soil because those are the only ones that are going to germinate.

So if you just kind of stir the soil, and so the key is you got to get the weeds when almost before you actually can see them.

Once they get this big, you've lost the war, almost.

Okay, so ideally you would do that a couple times.

Let the weeds germinate and come up, deal with them.

And you will get rid of, I say, at least 80% of all your weed problems before you ever plant your seeds.

Simple, but how many of us are on top of it enough to plan 2 weeks ahead?

That's the challenge, But a really, really simple, easy strategy that is very, very effective.

Larry Lesher