Do you want to give your trans­plants the best start in life? Then say hello to the soil-block! Come learn why this simple, eco­nomic method pro­duces the health­i­est trans­plants around!

AdAgrA Conference 2024: Growing Better

<p>Do you want to give your trans­plants the best start in life? Then say hello to the soil-block! Come learn why this simple, eco­nomic method pro­duces the health­i­est trans­plants around!</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

Darlene Keith

Plan It, Grow It, Eat It!

So I've been gardening for about 40 years.

I started in my 20s when my husband and I moved from Atlanta to the country.

And so a couple of years ago maybe 2 and a half years ago we retired from Butler Creek and I have about a half acre garden now and I love it I just keep expanding and growing more.

So I'm going to ask you a question you can turn to each other and share so you get to know each other a little bit better is why do you want to have a garden?

Okay we'll take a couple minutes for that and that's for you.

Okay I think we've about taken enough time hopefully you've learned something about each other while we've been sharing.

And so now I'm just going to go into the presentation and as I said hold your questions but you can write those down and ask later.

And so this presentation is supposed to be about how to start a garden, how to plant a garden.

I think there's some tips in here that might be helpful even if you've been gardening for a while you don't have to be a totally new gardener.

But if you do think that this class might not be for you, they have the two-foot rule and you can feel free to leave.

My presentation is on the handout, almost everything, and so if you want to catch a different presentation and download that handout, that's perfectly fine with me.

So, okay, so we're going to start now, And I just want to start with Genesis 2 8 and the Lord God planted a garden Eastward in Eden and so we see as we were told last night if you were there for the presentation That you know God was a gardener.

He planted a garden and he intended us to be gardeners.

And so it's a privilege that we can partake in that creative process of creating food.

And I remember when I first started planting a garden, how excited I was that I could see take this little bitty seed and plant it in the ground and get this huge plant that produced so much.

I just want to start touching on some things that you need to consider if you have not gotten a piece of land of your own and you are looking, then there are some things to consider.

I'm just going to briefly go through this, some things I thought of.

When you're looking for land, look for a good gardening spot while you're doing that there's things to think about This is actually my husband clearing land when we first bought our piece of property.

It was just it was just raw land There's lots of trees.

We did have to cut down trees for the power line.

And so we didn't take those stumps out though.

And later we have cleared more and more, but we just left everything in.

We plant around the stumps, around, we get all the roots that we can, but that's a process, it's taken a lot of time, and so we just keep planting around that.

And there are many obstacles when you go to find a site, but you can work around all of those.

You wanna make sure that you have a good sunny spot.

Sun is essential for the garden, and most gardens need at least 6 hours of direct sun each day.

My sister and her husband don't have much space.

They do container gardening, And they barely meet that minimum at that, but they still get a good garden.

So there's some things they do that helps with that process of getting more sun for their garden.

We did put in drip irrigation, but you've gotta have some source of water that's close to your garden.

It's very difficult if, like we had a drought for almost 2 months in Tennessee, about 2 months.

And so I think I would've lost most everything if we had not been able to water our garden.

And so some different options, if you have well water or city water, if you have a spigot that's somewhere close.

I mean, we ran hoses for quite a ways until we put in the drip irrigation.

And, but some people water from a spring, a stream, we have friends that use rainwater catchment system, but you've got to have some source of water generally.

I know there is dry farming, but it's not the easiest thing to do.

And so here is, we ran from across this little road from our house to this, my husband put this in and that's the source of a half acre.

We did 1 1 system for the whole half acre and we just cut things on and off to be able to water.

And if it's close to your home it's going to be better.

If you have it far away from your home you're not going to be able to see it every day maybe or you may forget about it, you get busy, and you really need to check on your garden on a regular basis to be able to see.

It makes it easier to transport things back to and from the garden.

You can also look at the garden, which just gives me a mental lift if I just walk out there and see everything growing.

Other considerations is drainage is in the area where you're thinking of planting is there a lot of standing water after rain that's not good you can work around it but it's better if you have a place that drains a little better.

I call perennial, I think that should have had, maybe it should have had 2 R's in it, I'm not sure, but perennial, pernicious weeds, kudzu, bermudagrass, johnson grass, bindweed, honeysuckle, poison ivy.

There are others, I've dealt with quite a few of these and they're very hard to get rid of, So if you can choose an area that's not infested with those, you're going to be better off.

Okay, And slope, some slope seems fine, but if it's too steep you're going to get a lot of runoff.

It's just very hard to keep things where they need to be.

And type of soil, usually you're stuck with whatever that area has, but something to think about too.

Is it sandy, is it clay, is it rocky, and then direction and distance from shade trees because that's going to shade your sun if it's too close to buildings or if you can get on the south side of those things it's going to be better.

This was probably the second or third year that I gardened.

And I did raised beds, but I've done a lot of different kind of gardening over the years.

And you need to choose the kind of garden that you want, what works best for you.

What works in 1 situation may not be the best for another.

And yes, we're told a lot of ideals, and I'm sure all of those are good, but you have to find what works for you.

And don't feel ashamed if you decide to just do traditional row gardening.

She has a beautiful garden with a lot of produce every year.

They till it up, they mark it off in rows and it's a great garden and she gets lots of produce from it.

I've done all kinds of gardening and I found that I can get a good harvest from any of these types.

These are my gardens at different times when I did do row gardening and We had great, great harvests from all of those.

Generally, if you're gonna do row gardening, you're gonna need a tiller or something like that or have somebody plow it up for you because it would be hard to dig all that for rows if you're just doing it by hand.

That was me when I was at Wildwood many years ago.

We just had somebody till it up and then I raked it into rows.

And this is when I was at Butler Creek and did wide rows there, we tilled it up every year and did that.

Yeah, Okay, so I'll answer at the end though.

And so these are some questions that you need to ask yourself if you decide you want to row garden.

These are things you need to think about.

How long do your rows, do you want your rows to be?

Between the rows, What are you going to use to do that with?

A tiller, a tractor, a wheel hoe, hand tools?

Paul Dysinger

Seed Starting Tricks: How to Start Seedlings That Thrive

My name is Paul Dysinger and I grew up, everywhere we went we had a garden.

She was always growing something, taking plant cuttings with us on airplane, because we lived overseas for many years.

I was born in Sudan, ended up spending time in Tanzania and Yemen.

And so my mom would bring cuttings with us on the airplane, or she would take her compost with her from 1 place to the next place.

So she is the real deal when it comes to a green thumb gardener.

So we always had a garden, we always grew something, but it wasn't until my teens that we moved to Tennessee and my dad ended up partnering with his brother John on Bountiful Blessings Farm.

And I worked on the family commercial farm for many years and then branched off and started teaching gardening on a home level and a homestead level and then from there it has grown into now where we develop garden and farm planning software and we'll give you a little peek at that.

Probably not in this class, but another later class.

We'll have some flyers that we'll hand out a little bit later though if you're interested.

But today, this morning, we're going to be talking about seed starting tricks and how to start seedlings that thrive.

And basically we're taking from the experience on the commercial farm, you know, starting tons of plants, hundreds, thousands of starts.

How can you take that and apply it on the home level and be more efficient and productive with your starts?

Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer as we get started.

Heavenly Father, thank you for this time that we can come together, that we can talk about starting seeds, and I just pray that you would send your Holy Spirit to come into our hearts.

We know your word is a seed that comes, and we want it to sprout and grow just like we're talking about these plants sprouting and growing.

So thank you for this time that we can think about it and please bless us with your presence here in Jesus name.

All right, So seed starting tricks how to start seedlings that thrive how many of you have started your own seedlings before?

All right, I think most of you how many of you have not started your own seedlings before?

Okay, we got we got a good little number here as well So we're gonna be talking about some some tips and tricks.

We're going to talk about direct seeding because there's 2 ways that you can seed your plants.

You can seed them inside when you plan to transplant them outside later, right?

Or you can direct seed your seeds right into the garden itself.

So we're going to talk about direct seeding.

We'll talk about transplanting, which is the other method of seeding them inside, getting them ready to transplant outside.

And we'll talk a little bit about why we like to use soil blocks when we start seeds.

And we will give you our potting mix recipe.

And we will talk about transplanting successfully and some tips on how you can actually transplant those plants out successfully.

So just a quick reminder, I was told as a presenter that if within the first 5 minutes you decide that this isn't the class for you, you're welcome to go find another class.

If this is the class for you, then stick with us and we will walk through our training here.

And also a quick reminder, I will try and save time for questions and answers at the end of the class here.

So if you can hold your questions, which means if you have a pen and paper, feel free to write those questions down and we'll try and save some time to cover question and answers at the end.

That's primarily for the recording because this is being recorded for Audioverse.

You probably hear this at the beginning of every session, but all right quick reminder.

Why would you direct some seed crops and some crops and why would you transplant some crops?

Am I in the way of you guys being able to see the screen?

Oh yeah, we've got limitations here, don't we?

I'll just try and stand back a little bit as we go through.

Number 1, it's not practical or economical to transplant some plants.

And some examples of those are like tap-rooted crops like carrots and parsnips.

You're going to plant so many carrots in a row that it just doesn't make sense to transplant them.

The other aspect with carrots and tap-rooted crops themselves especially, is a tap-rooted crop is going to throw down a root deep quickly, right?

And they actually don't like being transplanted as much.

They don't like the, their roots being messed around with.

And so taprooted crops just are known for not being very good transplanters, even if you were going to want to transplant them.

By the way, some herbs, example of herbs of those would be like cilantro and dill.

Also you would want to just direct seed in your garden.

Legumes, peas, beans, you know, they're larger seeds and there are some times where it may make sense to transplant a legume.

But oftentimes, it makes most sense just to direct seed them into your garden.

I'll give you an example of a time where it makes sense to transplant.

It's actually another large seed, but corn.

Oftentimes you'll direct seed corn, but it can be beneficial to transplant corn in the case where you have issues with birds.

Have any of you had issues with birds in your corn?

So we've had issues with birds in the corn.

You plant them, they just start to sprout, the birds see those sprouts coming up and they just come and peck off your corn.

Whereas if you start your corn in a large soil block or a pot or something, then you can transplant it out later when it's tall enough that you're not gonna have issues with the birds.

So that's an example where you might transplant some of those larger seeds.

And then you have fast-growing crops like radishes and spinach.

Again, you're also going to be seeding these pretty close together.

Although, I have to say that we have transplanted a lot of spinach And there are times where it can be beneficial to transplant spinach versus direct seeding it, but it's often direct seeded as well.

And then herbs can often go either way except for those tap-rooted ones that I mentioned earlier where you're pretty much gonna most always want to direct seed those.

So, germination percentages for direct seeding are actually typically lower than the percentage on the seed packet.

So you're gonna get your seed packet and it's gonna say 90% germination rate, right?

That is being tested under a nice environment where everything is perfect, right?

And they will do germination tests on those seeds and that's when they're gonna give you that germination rate.

Out in the garden itself with the elements and the Yeah, it's just not the ideal germination spot usually.

So your germinations are typically going to be a little bit lower than on the on the seed packet.

And so what we encourage doing is allowing for a fudge factor of 50 to 100% germination, which means, an example is if you want to plant, if you want a plant every 4 inches, let's say you're planting peas or green beans, which oftentimes you'll want plants spaced about 4 inches apart.

Then what we encourage doing is seeding a seed every 2 inches, and as those plants come up, you can always go in and you can thin them out.

And how many of you find it really hard to thin plants out?

For example, with beets, you can do this with peas too, it's really great.

But if you plant them thickly and then you come in and you thin them out.

So like with with beets you can eat the little beet greens.

Here's another great example with beets is you can thin them out to the size where they'll grow baby beets and then you can come in and you can harvest you can thin out the baby beets which are going to be about that big and The leftovers are going to grow up to the full beet size.

So you can maximize your harvest actually by using a thinning method.

Brianna Beckner

Super Simple, Savvy Soil Blocking

While we wait to get the slides up, let's see.

How many of you here are familiar with soil blocks?

And how many of you have no idea what a soil block is?

Well I'm gonna share with you about them.

While we wait, I'll tell you a little bit about myself.

I work on Bountiful Blessings Farm in central Tennessee and I've been there for a little while and I do most of the seeding in the greenhouse for the whole farm.

They are a lot of fun to make and super simple savvy soil blocking.

Okay so here's side-by-side pictures of some soil blocks on the left here and a standard plug tray on the right.

The plug trays are what you commonly see in most nurseries And what we're going to do is kind of take a look at what is a soil block, and why are soil blocks so amazing, and then how do I make them?

A soil block is made out of lightly compressed potting soil.

It serves as both a container and the growing medium for the transplant seedling.

So 1 thing you can see here in the picture is does that look very root bound at all?

So yeah, when you see a normal plug, when you pull it out, sometimes you see it's all root-bound and the roots are twisted up because it just keeps circling around.

So the cool thing with a soil block is that there's air in between each block and when the roots grow to the edge of the block, they hit the air and they stop and they wait before growing out.

Sometimes like these ones, you know, it's already starting to come out a little bit, but it still will have a much better head start.

Soil blocks, So yes, it promotes healthy root growth.

It gives more adequate space for it to grow.

Sometimes in plug trays, the focus is to get as many plants as possible in the smallest amount of space.

So sometimes plants don't get as much space to start out in as they really need.

So oftentimes soil blocks, you know, allows for more soil volume.

And there's many different sizes of soil blocks.

So many times, I don't know if you guys have gotten plug trays from the store and you know they break pretty easily.

You know if you're making a lot of them every year then you usually have to get new trays every year, and you're just throwing more trays out, and so what's really nice is you know you have 1 tray, and you can use it for years and years and years.

So when you transplant a soil block out, since those roots have been sitting there at the edge waiting, you can plant it in the ground and they'll get a much quicker start.

When we plant on the farm, we try to be efficient.

So we'll have 1 person setting out plants, and sometimes we'll just walk and throw the soil blocks down on the ground.

They don't break, they hold together very nicely, they're very sturdy and hardy.

You don't have to be very ginger and careful with them, which is really helpful for planting quickly.

Okay So I'm going to share a little bit on how do you make them?

So all you need is a soil blocker, some potting mix, a container for mixing it in, and trays to hold the blocker or the blocks.

1 really cool thing is you can use any tray.

There's people who use cookie sheets, People use just pieces of like polycarbonate.

You can put soil blocks on anything you have.

1 is 2 inches and the other is 1 and a half inches I believe.

So the 1 on the left here can make 5 blocks at a time and the 1 on the right makes 4 blocks and you can just fill up a tray 4 at a time.

It's kind of like building sand castles and you fill a mold and then you tip it upside down and pull it off and you have your sand castle.

So here's an example of what we do on the farm.

We have a tote or bin for mixing all of our potting mix with the water.

And my favorite way to mix it up is with my feet.

But you can use whatever you have on hand, a hoe or your hands, depending on how large of a quantity you're going to be making.

Here you'll see what the soil blocks look like.

You'll also see a stack of trays, so it's nice that they stack all together.

On the right, you'll see the mini soil blocker.

These are very helpful for getting a headstart on plants that are gonna be in a greenhouse for a long time.

So I think Paul mentioned earlier that tomato is an example of 1 that you would pot on.

And so you'll start in these little tiny blocks, they're about this big, and you'll pot it on to a bigger block about this big, and then pot it on to another pot so you can have it for a long time in the greenhouse and get a really early start on tomatoes.

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Series

Home Gardening

Super Simple, Savvy Soil Blocking

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Parts

Plan It, Grow It, Eat It!

58m

Seed Starting Tricks: How to Start Seedlings That Thrive

58m

Super Simple, Savvy Soil Blocking

20m

Dying of Thirst? Making Sure Your Parched Plants are Suitably Satiated

1h 1m

Beating the Botanical Besiegement

1h 14m

Winter Harvest Secrets: How to Extend Your Growing Season

50m

Soil Health for the Home Gardener Part 1

55m

Soil Health for the Home Gardener Part 2

46m

The Perpetual Harvest Hack: How to Grow a Continual Harvest All Year Round

1h

Save that Seed!

1h 3m

The Ultimate Pest Control Formula: How to Beat Bugs Organically

56m

Sound Doctrine