Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

no wonder - chemical fertilizers and hybrids

Non-electric survival gardening*
By: CountryMouse
25 July 2003
http://www.alpharubicon.com/primitive/nonegardencm.htm

Back on June 13, I decided that it was time my niece and nephews learned
some…yes, that dreaded "R" word…Responsibility.

I was doing my brother a favor and watching the kids, so we (read I)
decided to put in a garden for them to tend at my mom’s place. Mom and
Dad had an area where they would put a few plants, but nothing major since
they are up there in years.

Armed with a GardenClaw™, a few rakes and several packets of seeds, we
headed out to plant our garden. Now most of ya are thinking "well, ain’t
it a bit late to be just starting a garden?" Yes, it was a rather late
start, but as LL4e has mentioned several times, the weather goes in cycles.
It rained 25 of the 31 days in May and was colder than normal. Everything
that had been planted by others rotted in the ground or washed away. They
were calling for the same weather conditions in June for our AO as well,
just a bit warmer than May.

The area we were planting in hadn’t been seeded in two years, so we first
needed to clear out the weeds. These were picked and pulled and as I turned
up the ground with the Claw™, the kids were able to get the weed roots
and clumps better. It was around 98* that day, so we kept water nearby and
took frequent breaks as the area has no shade.

With all three of them working at the weeds and the few stones we happened
upon, it didn’t take very long till I could rake the area smooth and
begin laying out the seeds. We did a short row of sweet corn in the back
near the fence with wax beans and green beans in front of it. Farther down
the fence, we planted snap peas. In front of the peas, we planted eggplant.
All of these veggies were voted on by the kids. Our next move was to plant
lettuce, collards and carrots in a tote that would sit on the deck.

So…our success…….well, all I can say is it’s very good we weren’t
counting on those crops. Of the 40 seeds of corn, only 5 came up. We have
16 of the 30 wax bean plants, 5 of 30 green bean plants, no eggplant came
up and we have 10 of the 20 peas. Of the plants that came up, all have
flowers and are growing, just not very big. The lettuce and collards are
both doing great and the carrots are growing as ok….just not as well as I
had hoped. I have been using Scott’s™ fertilizer on the garden and it
doesn’t seem to be performing as the Miracle Grow™ has in the past.

One thing to remember, this was not intended as a survival garden. It was
planted to give the kids something to do over the summer and to teach them
responsibility. Had this been a survival situation, the entire ½ acre
back field would have been planted as well as the ¼ acre lower field and
given the performance of some of the seeds, we would have starved, since we
couldn’t plant earlier than we had.

A few other observations…

   1. Working the ground with the Claw™ is still very hard
work….regardless of what they say about it on TV. You need to wear gloves
(had the blisters to prove this) and one thing that got old quick was
having to turn it in the same direction all the time.
   2. You need to really convince irresponsible kids from irresponsible
adults to do this. If you make it fun, it holds their attention a bit
longer.
   3. Plan ahead for your planting area. This was done spur-of-the-moment
(typical me) and planned as we went along.
   4. Don’t wait till afternoon when it’s the hottest out to start
gardening. It will kill you before you really start.
   5. Taking 2 five minute breaks every hour or so is not enough in the
heat…especially with kids and not being used to it due to previous cooler
temps. Retreat to the shade when possible and keep plenty of cool drinking
water on hand.
   6. Get the notion that you are super-human and can do the job of a
machine in the same time frame as a machine out of your head. What seems
like it won’t take that long will take longer given certain conditions.
Heat and humidity can and will work against you.
   7. Check your seeds. Everything had at least a few plants come up except
the eggplant, which is a family favorite. We planted the entire package of
seeds and got nothing from them. Make sure you store seeds you know will be
at the very least partially successful in growing. *BTW…all of the seeds
we planted were hybrids.
   8. Stick with what you know will work. Miracle Grow™ worked for me in
the past and that’s what I store. Just figured I’d try something new
this time around. The results sucked.

Now, there was a nice little bonus to doing all of the gardening by
hand…it was great exercise! Got the blood pumping and I felt much better
afterward. In fact, I actually slept that night!

Remember, if you’re not trying it or doing it, then it doesn’t work!