AdAgrA 2014 Conference

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Home Gardening

Edwin Dysinger

2- Balancing the Home and Garden

This session we're going to be talking about balancing the home and garden.

Actually, it's going to be balancing and preparing the home garden, balancing our home lives with a garden, making sure that we are doing this successfully in a way that's not overrunning our whole lives, and then some tips on planning and preparing your garden.

And in the program booklet, you'll notice that the next session after this is called Seeds, Starts, and Bed Preparation, where we're getting into some real nitty-gritty practical bed preparation techniques and starting your plants and stuff like that.

And I've actually jumped up the seeds part to the end of this session.

So at the end of this session we're going to be talking about seeds.

How do you choose seeds that are good and healthy and organic?

Some of you might be wondering what about GMO seeds and hybrid seeds and what do all those mean?

So we'll touch on some of that in this session as well.

But I'll go ahead and invite my dad to come on up here.

She was helping out with another session just this last time, I believe.

And we are from, just a quick introduction to us, if you haven't heard of us before, we are from Bountiful Blessings Farm.

It's a farm that is just down the road from here, actually.

My uncle started the farm as an organic strawberry farm about, I don't know how many years ago it was.

My dad partnered with him and later joined him, our family joined him in 2006, and since it's diversified until where we're now growing over 50 to 70 different varieties of vegetables and herbs and berries.

So that just gives you a little background to where we're coming from.

And we grow all year round, through the summer and through the winter.

Dad, do you have anything you wanna say, starting off with a little introduction?

Yeah, I'll just say, the topic has intrigued me and and challenged me because as Paul said we're our farm grows year-round and markets year-round but my brother John Grows in markets for spring and summer and and we grow in market for fall and winter and we share the farm resources that way You know we can use the same equipment, but not be competing quite as much as if we were growing for the same seasons.

Anyways, we are in the thick of our season right now.

And like I said, the whole idea of balance, life doesn't seem so balanced to me right now.

So the whole topic of balancing the home and garden, little introduction.

It's really the first step in setting up your garden is figuring out what you're going to do, planning it.

And laying out your garden and keeping it up should be an easy and pleasant experience in your life.

We want it to be as easy and as pleasant as possible to balance and to plan our gardens.

So planning on paper or with a program is important.

There are programs that you can get online for planning your garden and stuff like that, or you simply doing it on paper, I highly suggest planning it, putting it into a calendar.

And we'll touch a little bit more on that, I believe.

Set a whole year out in advance and know what resources, that way you'll know what resources you'll need ahead of time and how much time to give to each aspect of the garden.

It just gives you a big picture of what's going on for that year, so you're not just constantly trying to figure out what you're going to do the week of.

So here are some factors to think about when planning out your garden.

And this is a little overview of what we're gonna go over in the planning the garden section.

First of all, taking other commitments into account.

What other commitments do you have in your life right now?

Or what other commitments are potentially in your life that you need to take into account because the reality is the garden takes time, right?

And you need to know how much time you can give to that and look at your life and see is there something that needs to give to put time into the garden.

Anyways, we'll talk about that more in that 1.

Different crops require different amounts of labor.

And when you're growing, if you're growing a summer garden or a winter garden, They take different labor requirements.

Your garden size, how big you're going to grow your garden.

This was a big 1 for us that we've been thinking about and talking about for a while.

Of course, we're doing it on a farm scale, but the same principle applies when it comes down to our home gardens.

And I have an online gardening course where I teach people how to grow their own food.

And I've had someone contact me and say, you know, the garden just isn't the peaceful environment that people talk about.

You know, I get stressed when I'm out there because, you know, there's so much to do and I'm trying to figure out what to do and we don't want that experience, right?

It's gonna be hard work, whatever way that you put it, but having a good plan and choosing how big your garden size can be a big key here in making a good experience for you.

Then there's laying it all out and setting up your planting schedule.

All right, so let's jump right in with taking other commitments into account.

You know what, what Paul is outlining here as far as planning goes, I think it's important to recognize that if you're just beginning, you might not know all the things that are going to be involved.

I would encourage you, plan to the best of your ability, but Don't let what you don't know stop you from trying.

What is going to help you really know what is needed and what's involved is just jumping out there and doing it.

So I want to encourage you, if you don't feel like you can perfectly outline everything and plan ahead, don't let that stop you, Don't let that hinder you.

The best thing you can do is jump in, see what you can learn from this year.

Don't let things that went wrong this year discourage you, it's a chance for you.

I think that's 1 important lesson in gardening.

There's always another chance to try again and do it better.

All right, so taking commitments, other commitments into account, what are some of your other commitments that you might have in your life?

There is of course going to be your home and family.

Those are daily commitments that we have.

And thankfully with the garden, you can include your family in that, hopefully, and it can become a family thing that you're doing, not just by yourself.

There's church commitments that may factor into your life.

There are school, social and school activities.

The purpose of this slide is really just to give you a little, think about your life, and this is especially for people that are just jumping into the garden right now, just starting out.

And even for those that are in the, you know, even if you are gardening a lot right now, it's something to consider.

What kind of social activities are taking up your time?

How much time can you realistically give to the garden?

And more importantly, how can you how can you prioritize for your garden?

How much time can you give to the garden?

Can some of your social activities suffer so that you can give time to your garden?

Because you're going to have to fit it in somehow.

And in our lives here in America, our lives are extremely full.

Paul Dysinger

3- Seeds, Starts, and Bed Preparation

We're going to try and get started here and First of all I want to welcome everyone back to our session here where we're going to be talking about all about Seeds starting and bed preparation can everyone hear me can you hear me okay?

Just want to make sure that's coming through well All right All right, So last time we ended up talking about different types of seeds, GMO seeds, hybrid seeds, open pollinated.

And continuing on with that, these are just some little thoughts to consider with seed when you're purchasing seed, when you're looking for what kinds of seeds to grow.

There's evidence, wait, did I already say this?

Something that you may want to consider when selecting seeds.

You want to look for seeds that grow something that actually tastes good and that has good eating quality.

This is something that you can look for in seed catalogs.

They may say something on it on the seed variety itself that it's resistant to a certain type of disease.

And if you're especially having problems with that disease, that's something to make note of.

Days to maturity, that's especially if you're growing in the winter.

You need to make sure that you have that your plants are mature by the time winter sets in and the cold hits.

Storage quality, if you're growing storage vegetables, make sure you want to grow ones that will store well.

These are things to look up when you're thinking about growing a certain type of variety.

Look up information on that and see if they are known for good storage, or are known for good taste, or are known for good pest or disease resistance, you should be able to find it either in the catalog or you can Google it online.

Ease of harvest, for instance, carrots with strong tops and beans that grow above the bush are easier to pick.

The time of harvest is something to consider, especially with extending your season, and frost resistance and hardiness, especially for your spring and fall garden.

There are certain varieties that are more frost resistant than others, and so that's something to consider.

And going on here, day length, short day varieties for winter growing.

I know I'm kind of speeding through these.

What happens is, as the winter comes, as your days get shorter, your plants slowly stop growing.

And you'll notice it just in the natural world.

And they may not totally stop growing, but they come to a point where they're almost stopped growing.

And it's about where the days become 10 hours or shorter, I believe.

If you have, for instance, self-blanching cauliflower, then you don't have to go out there and blanch it Which is keeping the sunlight off of the cauliflower?

Non-staking or determinant tomatoes can you know be a convenient for you?

There are more So if you want to there there's more things that you could look into.

The New Organic Grower, last session, it was mentioned that there's books for school.

There are books for gardening that I would really encourage you, if you want to learn more, to invest in some books for gardening.

It's actually focused more on market gardening than home gardening, so it's a little bit more in-depth.

But the 4 Season Harvest is 1 that's a little bit more for the home garden, which is an excellent book by a gentleman by the name of Elliot Coleman, who grows all year long up in Maine.

And he can do it without additional heat sourcing and stuff like that.

So when it comes down to buying your seeds, where should you buy your seeds?

How do you know that it's a good source for buying seeds?

Johnny's Selected Seeds is an excellent company that we use quite a bit.

High Mowing Seeds, and I believe all of these seed companies that I'm giving you will give you a free catalog.

If you go on to their website, sign up for their catalog, they'll send you a free 1.

High Mowing Seeds, Baker's Creek seeds, Southern Exposure, Seeds of Change, Territorial Seeds.

These are all great seed companies that you can feel confident in buying seeds from them.

Not all of them are 100% organic, although High Mowing Seed, I believe, is 100% organic.

Not sure about Baker's Creek, they might be a hundred percent organic.

Johnny's isn't, but they all have something in common and that is they take what's called the safe seed pledge.

And that's something that you want to look for if you're looking for a seed company, someone that has taken the seed safe, the safe seed pledge, which is basically they're saying that they don't sell genetically modified seeds.

That's basically what the safe seed pledge is.

And how you plant your garden can actually make a difference here.

If you're direct seeding or if you're transplanting into your garden.

If you're direct seeding into the garden, then you actually have to put in a lot more seed than if you are transplanting into your garden.

Direct seeding is just putting the seeds right into the ground.

Transplanting is starting them in a little soil block or in a plug tray or something like that All right seed companies will usually give you estimated numbers for direct seeding your vegetables Seed is relatively cheap, and it's a good idea to purchase extra just in case so when it comes to purchasing your Purchasing seed is pretty cheap, so you might as well purchase extra save your seed in a cool dry and dark place for the best results and Freezer you can do you can do in a freezer Yeah, we've done it in a freezer ourselves.

Freezer, an old refrigerator, or yeah, I mean you're talking about a freezer that's on, right?

Yeah, Just to clarify, yeah, you can do it in a freezer or an old refrigerator that you have.

If you don't keep them well, your old seed that is saved properly should still do fine, but there's really no guarantee when it comes down to it.

As the years go by, your viability is gonna is gonna slowly drop.

So you know you could save them for a couple years and still have good germination, but it might not be as good as at the beginning and it's just gonna slowly drop over over time.

Yeah and we've noticed I believe a drop as well we had although to I appreciate you sharing that and just for everyone that is online the comment was that the viability dropped half to 3 quarters after a couple years of saving seeds in a freezer, and we've noticed a drop as well.

We haven't been taking as close records on it.

It's amazing what God does to keep seeds viable for...it's not genetically...yeah, there you go.

Okay, She was just saying that with her spinach, it was even less.

There was about a fourth of it that grew up after the 2 years.

Thanks, I really appreciate those comments.

Remember that a good garden plan can really boost your whole garden experience.

After laying out your garden and choosing what to grow and marking out your growing calendar, you'll be ready to prepare the beds and start putting the seeds in the ground.

Seeds And then here we go into the official.

So that was kind of finishing up from last session.

Here we go into seed starts and bed preparation.

Why direct seed some seeds, and why transplant other seeds?

Direct seeding is literally just planting the seeds straight into the ground, right where they're going to grow all the way to maturity.

And it's not practical or economical, when it comes down to it, it's not practical or economical to transplant some crops or some vegetables.

Crops and are some vegetables and some examples of these are tap-rooted crops, carrots or parsnips, low return per square foot crops, so that's talking about more on the on the farm scale right there, corn and pumpkin, legumes, your peas and beans, and fast-growing crops like radishes and spinach.

These are all ones that do well direct seeding and that you might want to direct seed into the garden.

And 1 of the things here is on our farm, we actually transplant probably 80% to 90% of our vegetables.

And I'll hit some reasons why we do that.

And so first, what I'm doing here is just showing you that there are some seeds that it's more efficient to direct seed than transplant, but at the same time I'm going to be telling you that if you can transplant them there's some really great benefits from being able to do that, starting your own seeds and then transplanting them.

So how to direct seed, it's pretty self-explanatory.

But at the same time, if you're totally brand new to gardening, here's a quick little rundown.

Hand seeding is usually used for the cucurbit family.

Stephen Meyer

4- Steps to Productive Soil

Dear Father in Heaven, we just thank you that we can be here.

We pray for your Holy Spirit to teach us that we will be able to take these things and use them to really do something that will be to your glory.

We thank you for the soil that you've made to sustain our life.

And we want to be intelligent cooperators with you and really making it productive.

We want to be good stewards to make those wise investments that will pay the rich dividends that you have promised to us.

False witness has been born in condemning land which, if properly worked, would yield rich returns.

When you're harvesting your garden, it just hits you.

And that's what God plans for you to have, that kind of harvest.

The narrow plans, the little strength put forth, the little study as to the best methods, call loudly for reform.

Does your garden in this sense ever call loudly to you for reform, okay?

And this is the areas in which we need to bone up, right?

The strength we invest in it, the work, it's work, isn't it?

And the study as to the best methods and to really have a plan, see?

And so we're gonna try to give you kind of a game plan, not necessarily a recipe, but a plan.

The people need to learn that patient labor will do wonders.

There is much mourning over unproductive soil, when if men would read the Old Testament scriptures, they would see that the Lord knew much better than they in regard to the treatment of the land." And we'll talk about that at the end, our last point especially, the next sentence there.

Okay, and this is, That first 1 was from Fundamentals of Christian Education, page 323.

And this 1 is from Volume 6 of the Testimonies, 178.

This was kind of a rebuking quote, that last 1, wasn't it?

We should work the soil cheerfully, hopefully, gratefully, Believing that the earth holds in her bosom rich stores for the faithful worker to garner.

And that's what you should feel like when you're harvesting your garden.

And to me, there's just such an excitement there.

You know, hopefully, gratefully, cheerfully.

There's an excitement in figuring out how to work the land and see it really produce.

With proper intelligent cultivation, the earth will yield its treasures for the benefit of man.

The earth is waxing old like a garment, but the blessing of God which spreads a table for his people in the wilderness will never cease." Those are great promises and they work.

Yes, building organic matter has to be at the top.

Balanced nutrients, I can't emphasize that enough.

It has to be managed nitrogen, grow green manures to stimulate the microbes and all the other things.

And rest the land, that's right out of the Bible.

Prayer, it should be at the top of the list, shouldn't it?

Because you should pray before you garden that you'll have wisdom, okay, and strength.

And afterward that God will bless what you do.

But we're going to start here with building the organic matter.

And organic matter, you know, is just such great stuff.

Once you realize what it is and what level it needs to be to get the benefit, then you really, you know, Go for it.

It's exciting to build the organic matter put it on there because it improves the soil structure if it's a sandy soil, it'll it'll make it more, you know loamy and If it's a clay soil, it will loosen it up Okay, so where it helps both kinds of soil, of course it feeds the microbes and as that's the food for the microbes, is the organic matter.

And Neil Kinsey, the man that does our soil testing, he's like a doctor of soil, okay?

He says that if your organic matter's less than 2.5%, your microbes are on a starvation diet.

But as microbes break down the organic matter, they release plant nutrients, and of course they break that organic matter down into a stable humus, which has the ability to hold the nutrients, protected from leaching, but yet available to the plants.

You know, we just kind of think that the nutrient solution is kind of like a nutrient soup there in the soil and there is a nutrient solution, you know, it's actually soluble nutrients.

But the major way the nutrients are held is on the clay and the organic matter.

It's held by positive and negative charges.

The negative charges on the humus and soil particles and the positive charges on the ions of calcium and magnesium and so forth.

And that holds it, it's available to the plant when it needs it, but protected more or less from leaching.

It can sit there for a thousand years and when your plant needs it, it's available.

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Series

Home Gardening

7- Seed Saving for the Home Gardener

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

2- Balancing the Home and Garden

54m

3- Seeds, Starts, and Bed Preparation

52m

4- Steps to Productive Soil

1h

5- Organic Weed Management

46m

6- Pest Control: Natural Remedies for the Garden

56m

7- Seed Saving for the Home Gardener

1h

Sound Doctrine