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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Jerry Baker

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "Gwen Giffen" <ggiffen@1st.net>
  • To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Jerry Baker
  • Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2006 09:29:12 -0500

I've been seeing Jerry Baker - "America's Master Gardener" - lately on PBS and wondering where he gets some of his stuff. He makes growing sooo complicated I'd give up if I had to do all that. He preaches compost and mulching, but he wants everybody spraying soil and plants with "tonic" made of Listerine, tobacco juice, Epson Salt, beer, and God knows what else. And he just told us how to use Roundup. Do people do all this stuff in home gardens?

Beer to feed the bacteria and Listerine to kill them?

I don't watch TV enough to see any of those programs. Some gardener guy was demonstrating expensive irrigation systems that he called "inexpensive" on Good Morning America last week - a program I watch every 2-3 weeks. I just use a hand-held garden hose. The only things I've used Round Up on are poison ivy, burdock and Japanese knotweed. Since being educated about Monsanto's legal practices, I will probably never buy Round Up, or buy seeds at Walmart again however, and have had my ears and eyes open for alternatives. Right now, I'm trying to shade the knotweed out with blackberry canes, and it seems to be working as well as the Round Up (with a little elbow grease). I pulled the knotweed and threw it onto a pile I am saving for the last area of eradication - the septic run-off area. I sprayed newly cleared areas with Round Up and covered with black plastic for a few months. I planted, and the birds planted blackberry canes, and I pruned them so they were nice and bushy. In one spot, I made a growing knotweed patch the site for an ongoing burn pile, and that is also working nicely in eradicating it.

In gardening, we do a little bit of everything. When I was 11 or 12, I discovered magazine subscriptions like "Cricket." One day my dad handed me the Publisher's Clearing House letter to play with the stamps (and other such mail he didn't want to mess with). I filled those things out and sent them in, but in MY name. One of the magazines I picked was Organic Gardening, mainly because I didn't know what "organic" was. With it, we got a free soil test kit. I was into scientific experiments, so when we got it, I tested some garden soil, and announced the results to my folks. They were amused. They skipped through the magazine - then a little, sort of thickish thing - and discovered the editor, Gene Logsdon, was someone they had been acquainted with in a little town we once lived in, Upper Sandusky, Ohio.

My dad was a spray can and chemical guy - especially with the beans and potatoes. My mother was an experiment with organic stuff gal. Since I was a girl, I learned mostly organic stuff, as my dad taught my brothers the spraying. We spent long hours snapping, freezing and canning, but never had as many quarts as either grandmother who did theirs single-handedly. (This amazed me always as a child. I felt nobody could have worked harder than us!)

As an adult, I'll have to admit that I keep a very small hobby garden; rarely put up food, and only if I'm in the mood for it. I buy stuff at the store. We'd like to do more, and have been experimenting with different ideas. My husband spends a lot more time in the garden than I do. We have shelves of canning jars and 2 working deep freezes in the basement. We use a lot of composted manure from our barns, and leftover hay on our gardens. The prolific slugs in the garden have had me stumped. They also make me realize that I've been fighting off parasites with my livestock for a very good reason. So we've tried a little poultry, but the poultry have made gardening impossible, as they also eat the things I plant. However, I doubt there is a slug or grub left in my garden. And we have more eggs than we know what to do with now, mostly laid in the outhouse-turned-garden-shed. (The chickens adopted it as a laying house). Next step is a fence around the garden, with controlled pasturing.

No fancy-schmancy garden show is going to talk about poultry and fencing. I get curious sometimes at those suburban ChemLawn sprawling well-pruned, rubber lined wood lots, and watch out of fascination at times. But I don't wanna live that way.

Oh, yes. My parents used to be on the Educational Television of Southeastern Ohio board (ETSEO), where they chose some of the programming for PBS, out of Athens. They were teachers, and my father was nominated sometime way back when. The board was a sort of private friendship entity over the years. I suppose you'd have to talk with someone on that kind of board, unless the show is programmed out of a higher programming entity, if you wanted a different program on instead. Is there someone doing a different program? It is just a thought. Does someone with livestock have a filming hobby, who could do one??? (If you included chickens, ducks and geese with gardening techniques, I'd be part of your audience!)

Gwen





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