FOOD FOR THOUGHT

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

A four step process to organic gardening, for beginners to weekend gardeners that can start immediately. The process described in this booklet is drawn from experienced gardeners and research; its goal, to minimize effort while maximizing garden yields.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT - follows a logical four step method to gardening; from start to finish.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT - provides pointers for step by step organic gardening, specific to Southwest conditions.

We call it the “ground round”: Dig it; Plan It, Grow it, Eat it (and start anew). Each step naturally makes organic gardening an easy and productive experience. This resource booklet is designed to help you succeed, one step at a time.

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

ASU DEPTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

Dr Mayland Parker, Dr. Dan Robinson, Dr. Grant Moody, Dr. Vic Miller (KAET)

AGRICULTURE EXTENSION SERVICE; U of A

Dr Bill Johnson

COMMUNITY RESOURCES:

Gary Russo, Gentle Strength Food Co-op East-West Foods, Dayton’s farm, Bob Salazar,

Organic Gardening and Farming (Rodale Press)

Guide to Organic Gardening (Sunset)

Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit, Adele Davis

LOCAL GARDENERS:

Michael and Annie Mangino, Cliff and Jean Dayton, George and Maziel Wilkens, Andre Lugo, E.R. Bishop and family, A.T. West and family, and experiences of community gardens for over 35 years.

Organic Lessons from Alwun House award winning gardens, since 1971.

CREATED BY

ALWUN HOUSE FAMILY & FRIENDS

Compiled and Edited by Kimberly G Moody

www.alwunhouse.org

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DIG IT:

COMPOST

A. START COLLECTING COMPSTABLES

1. Home

2. Yards

3. Nearby Business Wastes (coffee shops!)

B. C0MPOSTING TECHNIQUES

1. Soil Banking

2. Composting

GROUND BREAKING

A. SELECT LOCATION: must have light and water

B. WEED IT

1. Turn over your selected dirt area

2. Take out all grass and weed roots

C. SOIL PREPARATION

1. Soil types

2. Compost application

3. Mulch

PLAN IT:

CROP SELECTION & CYCLES

A. MAXIMIZE YIEID

1. High Yield Crops

2. Long Harvest Cycles

B. MINIMIZE EFFORT

1. Choose Crops adapted your specific location and season

2. Select easy to harvest crops

SKETCH LAYOUT AND TIME CROPS

Ways to Maximize Yields, and Minimize Effort.

A. COMPADABILITY.

B. COMPANION PLANTING

C. KEEP GARDEN JOURNAL

GROW IT:

ACT ON YOUR PLAN

A. GROUND PREPARATION

1. Level Soil

2. Furrow

3. Water

B. PLANT CROP SEEDS SUCCESSIVELY

C. MULCH SURFACE AREA

Critical in Southwest Heat, saves water; and makes everything grow easier

1. Watering

2. Nutrients

a. Compost Application

b. Pest and Disease Control

D. HARVEST

EAT IT

Prepare for Bountiful Bounty (it gets easier with each passing season).

PREFACE

We recommend starting small! This translates to a garden that is easily workable (4’x6’?). The PROCESS outlined in these four simple steps, is designed to grow with you and your family’s needs. What you don’t plant today, you might plant tomorrow. So the following information and philosophy about gardening is offered in love for our earth, and the desire to share our experience of this life nurturing affair.

Alwun House first developed Food For Thought as a multimedia program in 1974, featuring slides, humorous soundtrack, a local gardener facilitator, and booklet. Performances were presented to community groups, schools, colleges, public parks, KAET, KDKB, and community garden clubs around Arizona. This revised booklet summarizes that information.

DIG IT

Start Making Compost

Compostables are biodegradable materials. Set aside a special container for household compostables as the first step. “Dig it” starts easy enough with an empty plastic garbage can. Place a recycle symbol on your compost collector to remind those in the kitchen of your ecological concerns and of your garden awareness. Outside, save plant and grass clippings.

A. Collect Compostables, as every gardener experiences, there’s never enough compost to turn your “dirt” into “earth.” By adding compost to your dirt, you have found the secret to maximum garden yield for minimum effort. The ideal gardening earth is so soft you can use your hand to work the soil, scooping up the rich brown/black decomposed materials, doesn’t happen overnight, but you’ll soon see how fertile and alive your soil can be. If the Garden of Eden were found today, it would be with such a soil; soft, spongy, deep in color and a rich sweet earthy smell. To get your dirt into the condition we’ve described requires work. We’ve found a way for you to get earth rich in composted humus easily and naturally. Simply start collecting your compostables.

1. Use your home biodegradables, recycle. Save food scraps - don’t throw them away. Save soft, biodegradable paper - each day Americans “get rid of” one million dollars worth of trash - recycle. Save materials in your specially marked plastic container, regularly add to exterior compost pile. Note that in composting, these materials are adding rich and full nutrition and an active microorganism balance to your soil. They bring good health and vigorous plant growth to your garden

2. Save lawn and plant trimmings - don’t waste them on a city landfill. Outside resources are your next source for compost materials. Yards have plenty of clippings and leaves that can be collected and used at home. Don’t clip and throw away... use what you’ve already got.

3. Local business wastes.

1. Pulp from juicers, vegetable wastes from markets.

2. Coffee shop grinds (worms love coffee grinds/tea leaves) – good acid for soil.

3. Horse stables, dairy farms, chicken coops have an excess of industrial waste - use it knowing you have a hot item. Manure is necessary in composting, as its high nitrogen content breaks down the compostable materials - no cat shit!

You may buy “garden soil” product already made, but your homemade will be richer in humus and more organically balanced than commercial products. And you’re recycling existing material otherwise wasted.

B. Composting Techniques:

1. The Soil Bank is the easiest way to get a garden. You get it on installment payments. You have a resource - what do you do? Make a payment. Stick it in the ground; “Soil Bank it.” If you start now, this coming season you’ll be ready to plant seeds in the richest ripest soil you’ve ever seen.

Soil bank a small section of ground the size of a medium garden (6’x4’). Root out weeds, dig in compost material into the dirt. Water, and watch a soil bank grow.

a. Working systematically from one corner, dig a hole deep enough to bury and cover with 6” dirt, your kitchen compostables. Keeping the area moist begins your earth building process.

b. Throw a few grass clippings on top, and manure from time to time to develop the nitrogen eating compost process; this adds a “humus dressing.”

c. Leave the banked area for a month or two (watering to keep moist), and witness the miracle of dirt - turned soil.

Start your soil bank now, and by next planting season you will have the best earth this side of Eden. It will be moist, soft and spongy, and so full of nutrients that the crop yield surprises many gardeners. The growing ease of this gardening-process will surprise you.

2. The Compost Pile is the next suggestion as to what to do with the bucket of compostable materials. A Pile of organic refuse is a simple method of providing the necessary ingredients for the composting process.

Needed are:

a. Heat: a 4’ high pile - ventilated - provides the most important factor in composting. Heat-loving bacteria flourish, and with an occasional turning of the matter, air is provided. Too much heat or stagnation produces a foul-smelling bacteria. Balance moisture and heat by using a black plastic cover - but be sure to allow for ventilation (with holes in the top), and occasional turning.

b. Moisture: keep the compost pile as moist as a squeezed sponge (Note; Not soggy, as excessive water defeats the necessary air circulation). If dryness occurs, the bacterial process stops; the compost pile dies... Composting is a living process; its microorganism and bacterial growth is like that of a plant - which needs air circulation and moisture to live.

c. Nitrogen Content: Compostable kitchen scraps are usually high in nitrogen. There are a variety of techniques you may use to increase “food’ (nitrogen) for the bacterial process. Try adding green manure (fresh high-nitrogen plant greens - e.g. beanplants, or other succulent green clippings), or a Super Soup: In a bucket of water, add a shovel or two of manure (bird manure is hottest). Let it sit in the sun for a couple of days, and pour it over the pile. Remember to turn the pile occasionally.

Variations on this process are limitless. Watch a 4’ pile of compostables shrink to a 2’ mound of living and nutritious mulch in a month or two. Come up with your own interesting timesaving techniques to composting using the three basics - heat, moisture and nitrogen.

Local gardeners succeed by making a compost pile their first step in gardening. Without compost or mulch, there’s no nutrition or aeration in the soil, little protection for plant roots, and difficulty in maintaining moisture: you have hard ‘dead-pan’ dirt.

Instead, minimize your effort and maximize your return by composting. This simple method of recycling your compostables in a soil bank or a compost pile, you’re on the road to a successful, abundant garden. It’s naturally easy.

Ground Breaking:

A. Select Location

Light and water are the two main considerations. Hint; maximize the sun exposure each plant will get with rows running north and south.

B. Weeding prepares your bed.

1. Break the dirt 6 - 8’ deep, and take out all grass and weed roots.

2. Turn over shoveled dirt.

3. Water area.

C. Soil Preparation:

1. Types of soil.

Most yards have substandard dirt. Home developer’s level/scrape the top soil to build. Arizonans mainly experience sandy or clay soil - a mix of which produces “Caliche” - useless for planting as this dirt forms a very hard surface.

The three basic soil types are:

a. Clay - add gypsum to improve aeration and drainage: add 25% compost.

b. Sand - add organic material to aid in forming soil to retain moisture and create a medium for root growth.

c. Loam - rare earth in these parts - a beautiful blend of organic matter, sand and clay.

Soil is basically an accumulation of particles which have resulted from the action of weather on rocks. However, these “dirt” particles alone will not support plant growth. “Dirt” becomes “soil” only when these other components are present: Organic matter, Living organisms, Soil aeration, Moisture, and Nutrients for plant and microorganism growth.

Making your soil easy to work, depends on the amount of organic matter present; which retains moisture (if not over watered), maintains abundant soil nutrients, and porous enough to allow easy air circulation.

2. Compost Application:

Regardless of soil type, adding composted matter to your garden, gives you healthier plants from additional microorganism and bacterial growth. When possible, add up to 50% organic material for the amount of dirt you are preparing.

Continually adding humus will make prime black soil; loose and crumbly, well-aerated and easy enough to work with your hand. As the Rodale Organic Gardening people have bean saying for years, “a healthy plant - is a pest free plant: having a natural resistant wax coatings and systemic immunity activities. So the benefits of active microorganisms mulched into your soil, literally makes a healthier plant, resistant to bugs and other problems. The beauty and value of having your own compost pile is now seen; not only in dollar savings of what it would cost to buy commercial organic matter, but in the valuable nutrients essential for healthy plant growth.

3. Mulch

A time-saving surface application provides effortless benefits. Aside from surrounding your vegetables with a heat protective material, mulching substances like lawn clippings, straw, shredded paper, begins the composting soil banking process.

Mulching benefits:

a. controls weed growth

b. conserves moisture (save money and time watering).

c. regulates the soil temperature (stronger plants with better yields)

d. cuts down on cultivation (more time and effort saved).

You will find mulch and composted materials the backbone of every gardener’s success. Maximize yields - minimize effort; it’s the natural way.

Here we point out that chemical fertilizers are superficial growth stimulants, and are not desirable for use for a variety of reasons. Their chemical stabilizers and by-products destroy natural microorganisms and bacterial growth process. This imbalance further impedes the delicate symbiotic life processes of the soil. J.I. Rodale of Organic Gardening pointed out how the “health of mankind is inextricably bound up with the health of the soil.” Recall the 1930’s dust-bowl lessons? Avoid where possible, use of chemicals.

PLAN IT

What might seem a logical first step, “planning” follows “Dig It” because for successful plans to give more yields, there must first be good earth before planning what to plant. Soft fertile earth in which to grow green lush and healthy plants starts with a “soil building” program. ‘Dig It” comes first, out of pragmatic practicality. Having prepared it, now your soil has three valuable assets:

1.) Changing dirt into earth. This provides a medium for successful gardening. Our criteria for success is, ease and high yields.

2.) Gain experience of “working” your planned gardens size. This makes you less inclined toward immediate conversion of the whole back yard. Start small, letting your yields build confidence, and your first garden experience will successively make it easier next season.

3.) Follow a natural sequence. Planning your crops creates a relaxed and harmonious environment. It’s the difference between working with nature for abundant yields with ease, or fighting against a stubborn, stingy, weed infested, pest filled Hell’s half-acre.

The following considerations to include in your Plan will make gardening a pleasant and productive experience; the pleasure of a tastefully planned environment.

Crop Selection and Cycles

Obtain seasonal plant list from Ag Extension Service, local papers, or Sunset Guides. Most beginning gardeners plant what they are familiar with. Give some thought to other seasonal crops suited for your location, ones that will give you abundant harvest yield in return for less work. Look at each row in terms of food servings. Ask yourself, “how many servings am I getting per foot, in this row?” Here’s a pointer for your plan; choose crops that produce more per plant: maximize return.

A. Maximize Yield: think about prospective plant qualities: Is it “High yield”? Will you eat more than you throw away (recycling to compost-pile naturally).

1. How many different ways can the food be prepared? Raw? Steamed? Mixed? Stuffed? Creamed? Tomatoes, bell peppers and squash are extremely versatile and high yielding plants. Jerusalem artichokes are a novel “must try” (It’s tubers can be eaten like potatoes; uncooked it has the sweet texture of water chestnuts or bamboo sprouts). The plant looks like a sunflower; its roots prolific tubulars (that’s your “seed”). They’re difficult to find in stores, yet so aboundant and versatile in use.

2. How much of plant can be eaten? Can you eat leaves, stem and root? (e.g. spinach, lettuce and chard are great. Is the ratio of harvest quantity to the amount of critical ground space used a good one? Melons will take over a large area.

3. Length of Harvest:

a. How long does the plant produce fruit? Tomatoes and squash produce all summer long, as do Bell peppers and chili peppers: That’s a lot for one plant.

b. Successive planting. If you’ve chosen a crop with a long growing season, it can be planted several times (a couple weeks apart) in one season. Recommend as a means to extend and increase yield per crop. Most seed packets contain enough seeds for two or three successive plantings for more food, over a longer period - and It won’t all be ready to eat the same week.

c. A money saving tip, is not harvest your strongest plant - let it go to seed, and harvest the seeds, replanting next season.

B. Minimize Effort

Some crops are so effortless and carefree, they are quickly adopted as the gardeners’ favorite, adding relish to a table, while leaving time for cultivation of a specialty food (e.g. ginger, broccoli or asparagus)

1. The crop should be sturdy, and adapted to the location. For a large list of such plants, see your county agent, local articles, and/or talk with others who have experience. Remember, “What works for others, may not work for you.”

2. Easy to harvest and prepare crops, Leaf crops are among the easiest – peas, beans and strawberries are more difficult.

Sketch Layout and Timing of Crops:

Once you have a basic idea of what you want, you’re ready to decide when to plant and where. Sketch out your overall design; try to have your furrows running north and south for most even sun exposure. Provide space between rows according to the crops selected. This rough sketch will show you how much space you have for each crop. At this point, you’ll see how many tomato plants you’re going to need. The gardener who plans ahead prevents time consuming errors. Spacing and timing crop harvests can assure fresh food at the table year round. This planning will prevent an overabundance of radishes. Eliminate feast or famine, plan it to last.

A. “COMPADIBILITY” planting, emphasizes two crops per row. This is your secret of easy, high productivity. Of the crops you have chosen, think about which ones will “double up.” Plant on either side of a single furrow with harmonious crops. Try to get as many rows double-cropped for double yields. Determine compatible growth patterns by asking high do the plants go?

1. How wide does the bush, or vine get?

2. How do the roots spread? Will they crowd each other?

3. Plan to double-crop furrows, and successively plant. This overlaps harvest times on the same row.

Plant cauliflower for late summer (or brussel sprouts which harvest on into December). By double-cropping you’ll increase harvest, and successively planting in two week intervals, will extending your harvest season. Keep open to the wide range of possibilities in harvesting double crops, and planting successively year round: you’ll have enough to share with neighbors.

B. “COMPANION PLANTING” puts one plant next to another for its protection of a susceptible food crop from pests or disease. Save time, money and effort. Give in to the natural way of pest and disease control. You can eat most of these bug repellents. “Companion plant” a whole garden plot by ringing it with plants that repel pests and/or discourage disease (eg. around garden parameters, plant garlic clumps, mint, nasturtiums seed, and horseradish to keep down the aphid and other pest populations. Use marigolds to combat nematodes, the microscopic worms which injure roots making them susceptible to bacterial wilts, fungus or root rots.

For tomato bugs, try mint or basil. For potato worms, plant clumps of horseradish. If using marigolds or nasturtiums around a crop, turn them under when they’re through blooming; composting leaves still protect while adding needed mulch around the crop, and they reseed for free (transplant extra flowers into your flower beds).

See why it’s said, “A healthy plant is bug and disease free.” Keep plants healthy with a companion marigold (they’re colorful, too). Talk to other organic farmers for additional tips. Individual crop rows can be protected by a companion plant. Use the same natural repellents and fungicides as above to aid susceptible crops

C. Keep a Garden Journal: A gardener learns from mistakes. Note what you planted, and when you planted it. You may want to save articles that give tips to doubling tomatoes yields, or keeping the aphids away and enjoying the garden more. You can learn from books and literature, but experience of what does and doesn’t work will be your best teacher for what to do, and when to do it.

GROW IT

ACT ON YOUR PLAN

With the real work behind you, these next steps are the most fun and rewarding. Seeds and transplants respond rapidly to a properly built soil.

A. Final Ground preparation:

1. Level the ground to allow water to flow in desired direction.

2. Furrow Rows according to “plan”; allow adequate space between rows for walking, arid future plant growth.

3. Water. Fill the furrows and let the ground settle (if necessary, level the “high spots”). Let the earth dry until only slightly moist.

B. Plant Seeds Successively: Plant according to seed packet directions and plan for successive plantings. If you only plant the seeds necessary, and save the rest in the packet, you’ll not have to thin and throw away seedlings. Keep the soil moist until plants begin to put on inches:

C. Mulch Surface Area; Lightly sprinkle seeded area with a little mulch, allowing you to water without exposing the seeds.

D. Emergent Plant Care: If you have already taken out the grass and weed roots from the soil when “digging it,” and added compost, this step is the much easier.

Composted earth is so loose and crumbly, if a weed does appear simply pull it out. Of course, if the soil is still “humus-less,” a shovel may be required. The more experienced the gardener, the more compost and mulch is used. Now you see why you wanted all grass and weed roots out of the garden before planting. It becomes increasingly more difficult to dig up once your crops start growing. Bermuda roots don’t go away by ignoring them.

Aside from weeds, you have only two other concerns: watering and occasionally adding nutrients as necessary. Some gardeners add only enriched compost between plantings, while most add decomposed materials during peak growing seasons. In either case, you’ll want to add “mulch” to top soil.

As plants grow, sprinkle a 1” or 2” of mulch as extreme heat/cold protection over the garden surface: also stymies weeds, saves water and adds nutrients. Use compost as nutritious mulch. Other materials are straw, wood chips or newspapers spread out over unplanted areas.

The values of continuous mulching are:

1.) Eliminates weeding, retards their reoccurrence aerates the soil; cut down on cultivation (shoveling) time.

2.) Adds humus (organic material) to the soil.

Conserves moisture; cutting down on water costs, since it doesn’t evaporate so fast.
Regulates the soil temperature, aiding stronger plant growth.
Protects the plant, and keeps the fruit cleaner.

You can see how much easier and time saving mulch is: it also helps with water and nutrition, the two main concerns for healthy plant growth.

E. Watering

Watering is a prime example of “learning by doing.”

General Guidelines:

1. Water sufficient to keep soil damp one inch beneath the surface. When germinating seeds, keep the top soil moist - as plants emerge, water less often, but deeper.

2. Don’t over-water, as this packs the soil and does not allow air to enter the soil as the water evaporates. The plant suffocates without air in the root area. Excessive watering will wash the soil’s nutrients below the root zone. It is a good idea to deep water your garden twice a year, this removes the accumulating alkalinity (soil/water salts), from your soil.

F. Nutrients

Compost, or good organic matter, is the best source for plant nutrition. If you raise a healthy plant, you eat a healthier plant. If chemical fertilizers are used to give the plant an artificial boost, it makes the plant more susceptible to pests and disease. Chemical fertilizers bind nitrogen to chemical stabilizers and antibacterial agents, creating plants with growth, but little substance.

1. Use compost for most of the plants needs. We recommend reliance on compost for most of the plants’ needs. Compost promotes an ecologically alive environment for nature’s way to work - work with nature, don’t fight her, let gardening be naturally fun.

2. Worms thrive with the presence of decomposed materials, their excrement is rich in plant nutrients. These soil builders also aerate your soil - saving cultivating time.

The bacteria and micro-organisms that are active and growing in decomposing organic matter, is the prime additive that nature feeds on - one the chemical industry has forgotten.

Chemicals don’t add humus, or aerate the soil for you, or contribute to the living process of soil (it needs bacterial action just as your digestive system needs it).

G. Pest and disease controls.

Most experienced gardeners agree that a “healthy plant is a disease and pest free plant.” See “Plant It’s” companion planting section for best pest control and the natural ecological measures for birds and other pests (Try Importing ladybugs, praying mantis for pest control in your garden).

We tend to notice the one or two bad bugs, yet most insects are not harmful. Don’t expect a bug free garden. The best defense is strong and healthy soil. If a sufficient amount of decomposed organic matter is already in the soil, it eliminates much of your time and bother with pests and disease. And the organic micro life will supply vital nutrients for a healthy plant with bountiful harvests.

A little science: to build healthy plants, you’ve got to use humus, or decaying plant material. If minerals are generously supplied, they are ionized by soil bacteria, holding soil moisture better. The soil fungi which grow in the plants roots pick up the dissolved minerals to feed the plants. This relationship between fungi and plant roots is known as a “mycorrhize symbiotic relationship.” If all minerals are generously supplied, the plants will remain healthy and resist disease. As a bonus, crop protein, mineral, and vitamin contents are higher.

SIR ALBERT OBSERVED THAT BUGS AND WORMS DESTROYED ONLY UNHEALTHY PLANTS. IT NOW APPEARS THAT SOIL MOLDS PRODUCE AUEOMYCIN, STREPTOMYCIN, PENICILLIN, AND OTHER ANTIBIOTICS THAT BUGS, WORMS AND APHIDS WILL NOT EAT. WITHOUT SUFFICIENT HUMUS, MOLDS CANNOT GROW TO PRODUCE ENOUGH ANTIBIOTICS; AND HERE COMES THE INSECTS.”

Harvest: as you plan, sow, you shall reap.

This is the moment you’ve waited for - picking the fruits of our labor. When harvesting, there is no need to describe the fun and pride the child in all of us experiences.

1. The ground turned to soil.

2. The seed turned to plants.

3. Plants turn to food

4. And God knows we love to eat; and the cycle continues, enriching as it grows.

The “Ground Round”:

DIG IT, PLAN IT, GROW IT, EAT IT

(repeat)

One word of advice, harvest at the peak of quality, as the fruit loses nutrients after reaching its peak, becoming pithy and less flavorful. Successive planting assures a peak harvest over a longer period (‘Plan It”). Enjoy more, longer. And if your crop is overabundant, and you run out of friends to give your prize crop to; think up ways to distribute it. Farmer Markets, and Park and Swaps are springing up everywhere.

EAT IT

The nutritional value of eating fresh foods is best. The United States Department of Agriculture having evaluated nutritional values of foods grown by various methods bears this out. But what a lab can’t explain is the incomparable texture and flavor of a “just-picked” salad, steamed asparagus, and other crops of your choice.

The pride and pleasure of eating your own freshly picked ear of corn, or picking your salad just before dinner, requires no endorsement. You know the food is fresh and healthy, and has no wax or rancid oil coating, with no poisonous chemical residues inside the skin of a month-old fruit or vegetable. And since you’ve dug, planned and grown it, naturally you’re blessed with abundance. In health, enjoy it!

As you learn new ways to be more productive, share them with your neighbor or pass them on to us at Alwun House and Gardens, 1204 E. Roosevelt, Phoenix, AZ 85006. It is our sincere wish that your garden be an enjoyable and provocative experience; giving you abundant food for mind, body, and spirit. That’s why we synthesized this Four Step garden guide.

Enjoy your garden and landscape improvements. Dig it.