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How to Garden and Save Lots of Money |
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Grow Your Food |
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Editor’s note: If you want to
save bucks and eat better, here is a good article to start with. I have known
the author for decades, and he has walked the walk.
BEGINNING YOUR ORGANIC FOOD
GARDEN As the gardener tends his
plot and seasons pass, the more benefits he likely realizes. He or she may
begin with the single aim of reducing food bills, then find the flavors are
far superior to the supermarket's. With the extra vitamins and regular mild
exercise comes a gradual improvement in general health and vigor. News of a
trucker's strike brings no stress. The confidence and security derived from
independence from expensive stale produce and killing frosts in far-off
agri-biz fields cannot be estimated in dollar value.
As produce ripens so
grows the pleasure in sharing lore with other gardeners, as gardeners have
practiced since man evolved from hunter and gatherer to gardener and home
builder. Now the garden begins to be recognized as a quiet and patient
teacher waiting for the gardener to open to its subtle and profound lessons.
One may begin to experience spiritual joys as the garden, once a mere work
place for "digging in the dirt", evolves into a refuge, a retreat
for mindful meditation.
Why organic?
The home gardener chooses
to grow organically so his plants can feed on nutrient-rich, natural soil
instead of artificial fertilizers, and he declines to play the fool by
spraying poison on his food.
Site: The plants
require a reasonably level site with minimum six hours' sunshine, access to
water, and soil conditions that allow for deep-dug compost beds. Choose a
spot that is protected from strong winds, away from trees and large sun- and
water-hogging bushes. Southeast of the house is best, due south next best,
east is third best; forget west and north. In southern and southwest areas of
the
When the world
wearies, and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden. - Minnie
Aumonier
Soil:
Gardening is like good parenting: you think first always in terms of meeting
the needs of the garden. You take care of the soil, the soil provides for the
plants, the plants produce food for you. So the three most important things
in gardening are: Soil; soil, and soil.
In most areas there are
three types: clay, sand and humus. It is good to have a mixture favoring
humus, but in any case your soil will improve with compost. Be an extremist
here; composting cannot be overdone. No need for home gardeners to test for
pH. As a general rule, whatever the problem or deficiency of your soil, lots
of compost will fix it.
Compost: The organic
gardener is not troubled with poor soil, because wherever he is, he makes his
own. I've raised gardens in
Layer a few inches of
each: topsoil (humus), greens (grass clippings, raw vegetable kitchen scraps,
leaves), manure (horse, cow, chicken, never dog or cat). No meat. Keep the
pile moist but not wet, and aerate it by mixing (turning) it every few days.
After a few weeks (composting is not an exact science) it will be ready to
spade into your garden soil, or fill up garden beds, and/or use as mulch.
Behold this
compost! Behold it well ...! It grows such sweet things out of such
corruptions. - Walt Whitman
Mulch: Mulch is
compost-type material used to cover the soil's surface after the plants have
started. Other than compost, mulch is by far the best friend and work saver a
gardener ever had, far better than any $1500 tiller. Apply two or so inches
of grass clippings, peat moss, leaves, chipped Xmas trees, bark, pine
needles, the list is nearly endless. People even use newspapers, old carpets
and flagstone, but these do not feed nutrients to the soil as do the above.
TWO: THE METHODS
Why not combine the best
gardening methods known today? You want practices that (1) produce the most
abundant crops in the least space; [2] provide the most vitamins, flavor and
economy; (3) require the least work, water and tools, (4) most effectively deter
harmful insects, plant diseases, and weeds.
Organic methods deliver
healthiest produce, most economically. The composted soil produces largest
crops, and makes for the strongest plants - which insects like to avoid.
Raised beds, once built,
are work-savers in many ways: more efficient use of compost and mulch,
smaller garden to fence and shade, and more production per plant (because the
soil is not compacted by treading between rows).
Intensive planting
combined with deep mulch raised beds multiply food production per square foot
many times over. The "shade mulch" keeps down weeks, keeps soil
moist, saves water.
Companion planting has
been proven to discourage predatory insects; basil among the tomatoes, for
example. In fact, scattered plantings of French Marigolds, onions, radishes
and any mint herb will do much to discourage the bad bugs, but keep good ones
like Lady Bug and mantis.
Successive plantings can
easily double your food production by extending the growing season alone.
Beginning with starting seed flats of tomato and cabbage family in late
winter, you can raise a spring garden, a summer garden, and a fall
garden.
Year 'Round
Gardening. In the late '70s, early '80s Sherrie and I pioneered a
method of producing vegetables all winter long in the outside garden in
northern climes, eliminating the need for greenhouse, root cellar, freezing,
drying or canning. Our New Years Day vegetarian meal consisted of 20
vegetables bursting with flavor, fresh-picked from raised Natural foods will
be the medicine of the future. - Thomas A. Edison
See my regular gardening
column in back issues of Homesteaders News, and my article on winter
gardening in Feb '85 East West Journal. The feature article in #45
Homesteaders News describes winter gardening in the North in detail. . Check
out also TMEN's book, A TO Z HOME GARDENER'S HANDBOOK #7. For my planting
instructions for all four seasons, see the color centerfold in The Mother
Earth News #85.
THREE: THE PLANNING Stage (1) of gardening is
doing your reading; Stage (2) is creating the plan. These can be as enjoyable
as the stages following: (3) digging in the dirt, and (4) plucking the
harvest. This information below - indeed, for this entire article - is
selected and condensed from Norm Lee's Book of Garden Lists [see end
of article]:
The most common mistakes:
[List #93] How To Avoid Work [List
#59] The wise (and lazy) gardener plans a small garden, loads raised beds
with deep compost, and plants intensively. This reduces losses from pests,
diseases, and drought. The raised bed intensive planting uses the compost,
water and mulch most efficiently, reduces the stooping and bending, and
virtually eliminates weeds. There is no plowing, tilling, hoeing,
cultivating, weeding, spraying, dusting, etc.
You can quickly spend
$2,000 on tools, sold to you on the claim that they "save work".
When you calculate the hours of work required for the money to pay for them,
those expensive tillers and weeders, and sprayers are not so cheap. You need
only four tools [List #67: shovel, rake, trowel, and a four-tine fork. In
hotter climes, a hose for irrigation.
Tools that make work
[List #68]: roto-tiller, hoe, cultivator, plow, harrow, seeder, chemical
sprayer, sprinkler ...
To forget how to
dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves. What to plant
1. Easiest to grow [List
#101]: radish; leaf lettuce; spinach; tomato; onion sets; sweet corn; summer
squash; beet green; bush bean; turnip; pea When to plant seeds:
1. On Average Last Frost
Date [List #36: beans, corn, cucumber, pepper, cantaloupe, pumpkin, summer
squash, winter squash, watermelon Space to allow:
Minimum space
requirements per plant [List #63]: 1. Plant per person: 20
radish, carrot, beet, onion, turnip 2. Normally potatoes,
sweet corn, squashes and melons are grown in patches, not raised beds. See
List #65 for plants per square foot.
"I consider this
collection of vital information one of the few essential tools for the back
yard gardener... [ Norm
Lee's Book of Garden Lists ] belongs with the trowel, the shovel,
and the compost fork." NORM LEE'S BOOK OF
GARDEN LISTS
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