Is Crop Rotation Necessary? What About pH and Soil Type?

58 days ago

The above questions were raised , specifically about the Foundation’s Garden Master software as follows: 1: Does the Garden Master software allow you to enter the soil type and pH and and does it make recommendations based on these factors? 2: Does the software recommend crop rotation techniques for after year 1?

The answer is no to both questions.

There is no need to change your gardening plans based on soil type or pH.

In multiplied thousands of gardens – in every type of soil – in almost every known climate – Mittleider growers have grown highly successful gardens, with a wide variety of vegetables, with no soil amendments.

The ONLY thing you DO need to know is if you receive more or less than 20” of annual rainfall.

If you receive less than 20” your soil will be alkaline and you need to use gypsum as your source of essential calcium. If you receive more than 20” you need to use lime. The reason for this is that lime raises soil pH and gypsum does not.

There are three reasons for crop rotation – 1) disease, 2) bugs, & 3) nutrition.

There is not enough space in a family garden to move plants far enough to effectively avoid last year’s disease or bug problem. The cultural practices we employ are of much more importance and efficacy in minimizing problems with diseases and pests.

And if you follow the Mittleider Method of feeding, your plants will receive ample nutrition, no matter what you planted there the year before, so no rotation is necessary.

Mittleider Method gardening in Russia today

134 days ago

I have managed to communicate with some of the graduates of the Zaokski Agriculture College, and learned some amazing things about the Mittleider Method in the Russian Commonwealth countries.

There is an article posted in the Files section of the MittleiderMethodGardening@yahoogroups.com Group website – called Russianreport.doc.

Most all of the graduates of the Mittleider Agriculture Training Course are the envy of their communities. Many of them are
now highly successful commercial growers; some are even teaching agriculture in colleges and universities; some have TV programs; some have newspaper columns; and many of them continue to give gardening seminars themselves – with attendance sometimes in the thousands!

According to the responses I received it appears that the Mittleider Method of gardening is the most productive and popular method of family gardening in many regions of those countries.

How Healthy is Produce Grown in a Mittleider Garden?

134 days ago

An important question was recently asked by a member of the MittleiderMethodGardening@yahogroups.com group.

He asked “Has any type of testing ever been done on the MM produce? Just curious as I am just learning about the MM and putting in my first garden this year.” Ron

One memorable “test” of the quality of Mittleider Method-grown produce that I believe everyone will benefit from learning about is a situation that took place in Russia in 1989, when Jacob first went there to set up an Agriculture Program in a small newly established Adventist college in Zaokski – about 2 hours from
Moscow.

It was still the USSR at that time, and they were very suspicious of this American. They were just SURE he was doing something to hurt the Russian people.

Their Agriculture Agents came several times to the gardens and “stole” his beautiful healthy-looking plants, in order to test them for nitrate toxicity, etc.

After doing this several times some of the Agriculture Department scientists came to Jacob and admitted what they have been doing. They said that not only was there no toxicity in any of the plants they tested, but that Jacob’s plants were the healthiest they had ever seen.

They wanted to know all about what he was doing, and how he managed to get such healthy vegetables. Jacob was happy to teach them.

The Communists ended up sending some of the graduating students from Timorjasjev (sp), their most prestigious Agriculture University, to Jacob’s 3 month-long intensive training classes, and some of those students said “we learned more about growing
food in 3 months than we did in 5 years at the University”.

The government also for several years gave formal Certificates from that University to the graduates of Jacob’s classes.

They honored Jacob with a PhD from Timorjasjev, and they made him the featured speaker at the Yalta Conference of Agriculture Ministers.

And the Agriculture Minister went on their national television and announced that “The only food grown in Russia that’s fit to eat is grown in a Mittleider garden.”

Conduct Your Own Gardening Seminars!

167 days ago

We are happy to conduct free gardening seminars for groups, and do so whenever possible, however the super majority of you are neither in Utah nor Alabama (where we live), and so can’t easily arrange to attend a seminar with us.

However, after you become a competent Mittleider gardener yourself YOU can conduct seminars for your own groups, becoming more competent yourselves while helping others, and really do some good for the world around you!

Simply order the Gardening Seminars CD from me, study the 4 PowerPoint Presentations and additional files I’ve included, and offer your services to others who are interested. The seminars range in length from 1/2 hour to 2 hours, and include lots of excellent pictures and instruction.

I’ve priced it very HIGH, so only those who are truly committed and wealthy can do it! That’s a joke folks – it will cost you $10 plus $3 shipping.

You can pay through PayPal to jim@growfood.com and include your address. Or you can call me at 205-607-6210 to make other arrangements.

Meanwhile, I recommend you look in the Files section of the Group site at MittleiderMethodGardening@yahoo.groups.com for two files you can use to remind yourselves of the steps, and show
others to help them learn. They are called 6 Steps Recap and
Traditional Method, and they fit on legal-sized paper – preferably
front and back on one sheet.

Growing and Feeding Bananas

167 days ago

The question was asked by a grower in the South Pacific if the Mittleider Method works on banana trees. Following is my answer:

Yes, the Mittleider Method and the Mittleider natural mineral nutrient fertilizers work well with bananas. Let’s first learn a bit about growing them:

Banana plants are perennials which grow from underground rhizomes. The stalks are not real tree trunks, but are pseudostems, or tightly packed concentric layers of leaf sheaths, which support the leaves, and the flower and fruit bearing stalk.

One pseudostem may produce as many as 40 leaves. The plant also has an underground rhizome or corm, and a large fibrous root system. The entire plant is called a mat

The banana inflorescence (flowering stalk) emerges from the center of the pseudostem 10 to 15 months after planting, and 3-4 more months are required to produce mature fruit.

When the fruit reaches full size, and before it turns yellow the entire stalk is cut down, leaving only a stump, and the process begins again.

This entire cycle traditionally requires 15 to 18 months, but it can
be shortened when properly using the Mittleider nutrients.

Bananas are typically grown by propagating the larger “sword” or “maidenhead” pseudostems (including roots and some rhizome) from a mature rhizome, and then reducing the growing time for the following crop by allowing a second stalk to begin growing from the main rhizome of each of those propagated plants about 6 months after the first stalk emerges.

Recommended feeding times and amounts of the Mittleider fertilizers are as follows:

Mix 8 ounces (240 grams) Pre-Plant (PP) and 4 ounces (120 grams) Weekly Feed (WF) with the soil under and around the rhizome before planting.

Immediately after planting apply 2 ounces of nitrate or urea nitrogen to the soil around the plant, keeping at least 4” (10 cm) away from the stem.

After one week apply WF, and continue monthly, starting with 4 ounces and increasing by 4 ounces each month to 32 ounces after 8 months, applying fertilizer to the root zone and watering thoroughly each time.

Continue feeding monthly until one month before the fruit is mature, increasing the amount by 4 ounces each time.

Loosen the soil at the surface and apply Pre-Plant mix again at the
end of every 6 months, using twice as much as the amount of WF you are currently feeding.

How to Grow Peppers from Seed

172 days ago

Pepper seedlings are among the hardest vegetable plants to grow, and some of the hot peppers are even more difficult than sweet peppers.

Seeds should be planted at least 8 weeks before the ALFD (average last frost date) in your immediate area. And you should not transplant the seedlings into your garden until after the ALFD.

Use a soil mixture of 65% sawdust and 35% sand. Peat moss, perlite, Coconut husks, rice hulls, coffee hulls, or pine needles can substitute for the sawdust, alone or in any combination.

Mittleider Magic Pre-Plant mix should be applied to and mixed with the soil before planting seed – at 1 1/2 oz (3 tablespoons) per cubic foot of soil – then NO fertilizer should be applied until after the seedlings emerge. Water with plain water and keep the soil moist, but not soaking wet.

If you’re only growing a few (less than 50) plant the seeds 2” apart in a seedling flat. For hundreds or thousands of plants place 100-125 seeds per row in 1/4”-deep furrows 2” apart in a tray.

Cover the tray with burlap to avoid moving the seeds as you water.

Keep the planting soil-mix moist and between 75 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit. No light is best until the seeds show above the soil, then immediate sunlight is needed for 8-12 hours each day, to prevent the stem from “stretching” to seek adequate light.

If you can’t give the seedlings direct sunlight they must have grow-lights within 1” of the plant leaves for 16+ hours per day. Two Fluorescent lights – one warm and one cool – work well.

Again, constant temperatures should be maintained in the 75-85 range.

A Constant Feed solution of 16 ounces Weekly Feed mix to 55 gallons of water (a scant 1 ounce per 3 gallons water) should be used for watering the seedlings immediately after emergence.

Seedlings should be transplanted 2” – 2 1/2” apart by the time they get their second set of true leaves. The soil for this transplant should contain both Pre-Plant at 1 1/2 oz and Weekly Feed at 3/4 oz per cubic foot of soil mix.

Peppers grow slowly and need warm temperatures to do well. They will also require a few days to recover from the transplant, so don’t be discouraged if they are still small after 3-4 weeks.

Before transplanting to the garden take seedlings outside onto tables in full sun for 2 to 3 days, to “harden them off”, or acclimatize them to the outside growing conditions. If the nights get very cold bring the plants back inside.

Some protection may also be needed after the seedlings are in the garden. Mini-greenhouses made with greenhouse plastic over arched PVC frames will keep cold winds off the plants and allow the sun to warm the soil much faster.

Remove the covers when outside temperatures approach 70 degrees, and make sure that temperatures in the beds do not exceed 80-85 degrees. Some air flow during the daytime is important.

Article on Need for Reconnecting With The Land

178 days ago

A Mittleider gardener recently brought the following article to my attention. It talks about the need to update the methods of growing food worldwide. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7795652.stm

The article has some good points, especially the idea that the people of Great Britain (and everywhere else) should re-connect with their land. What they REALLY need to do is to adopt the Mittleider model as taught in this website!

Instead of doubling the world’s food output, we can increase food production as much as TEN TIMES over traditional methods.

And FAMILIES need to be taught how to do it THEMSELVES. That way control and responsibility, as well as the benefits, are all where they NEED and DESERVE to be – in the hands of the common people.

The problems of biodiversity, energy, water scarcity, and urbanization are best addressed and solved by FAMILIES taking control of their own food production needs. Let’s teach EVERYONE the system that saves more than 1/2 the normal water and is very efficient in space and energy conservation, while greatly increasing the quantity and QUALITY of their food.

The fact that the large majority of people live in urban environments only argues more strongly for the Mittleider growing system, because we teach people how to grow in the dirt OR containers ANYWHERE, and to grow VERTICALLY, to maximize the use of any available space.

A prime example of how this has worked in the recent past is the former USSR. I believe history will show that the Mittleider Method played an important role in saving the people of the Russian Commonwealth countries from returning to communism in the 90’s.

Those people were terrified of freedom and the responsibility it entailed when it was thrust upon them in the summer of 1991, but God sent Jacob Mittleider over there to establish his agriculture training program in a small college in 1989, and by the summer of ‘91 there were a cadre of teachers available, plus books, videos, and other materials translated and distributed throughout the country.

These things provided hope and a highly successful model to follow, and I’m told the Mittleider Method is now the most productive and popular way of growing family gardens throughout many regions of those vast countries.

One of these days – hopefully soon – the “tipping point” will be reached here in America, and people will wake up to the importance of growing their own food in the most sustainable and productive way possible.

Congratulations on being a part of it!

Urgent Call to Action for All Gardeners

182 days ago

Every gardener should immediately assess your needs for gardening materials and get them purchased NOW, before they become scarce or MUCH more expensive.

I’m thinking specifically of FERTILIZERS and SEEDS.

Anyone remember last year? Some fertilizers increased in price over 400%! They may do it again, or even worse.

It is SIMPLE, but don’t put off doing it! Here’s how:

1. Measure the total length of your beds or boxes (Example 5 – 30’ beds = 150’).

2. Total the amount of fertilizers you’ll need for one feeding: A. Pre-Plant – 150 ounces (1 ounce per running foot). B. Weekly Feed – 75 ounces (1/2 ounce per running foot).

3. Estimate how many times you’ll feed during the season: A. Pre-Plant Mix – 1 – single crop, 2 – ever-bearing. B. Weekly Feed Mix – 1. Single-crop varieties like cabbage = 5-6 X crops. 2. Ever-bearing crops – temperate zone = 10-12 prox. 3. Multiply ounces/feeding X expected feeding times: A. Pre-Plant – (Ex. 150 oz X 2 feedings = 300 oz). B. Weekly Feed – (Ex 75 oz X 12 feedings = 900 oz).

4. Convert ounces to pounds, or grams to kilograms: A. Pre-Plant Mix – 300/16 = 18.75# B. Weekly Feed Mix – 900/16 = 56.25#

5. Double the amounts for 1 year for a 2 year cushion.

6. Buy and mix your fertilizers, then keep them dry.

7. Calculate the seeds you will need, and buy them now as well.

I recommend every person who is concerned for your family’s food supply consider seriously getting a #10 can of heirloom garden seeds.

You can get what I believe is one of the best deals anywhere on these storage seeds – IF you want the mix of 16 seeds that are provided – either at the FFEF website at http://foodforeveryone.org/garden_ store/, or directly from the
Mountain Valley Seed Company at www.mvseeds. com.

Instructions for Creating & Planting Your Garden #1

190 days ago

Preliminary Steps – Lesson I (Using Jim Kennard’s 2009 Alabama garden as a model)

1. Determine how much space you want, then how much you HAVE that receives all-day sunshine. We wanted 30 beds, but only have a 35’ X 58’ sunny space, so that is our limiting factor.

2. Measure and stake the outline of your garden, keeping in mind the space required for rows and aisles (18” or 4’-wide beds & 3’ to 3 ½’ aisles). We chose 4’ beds with 39” aisles, in order to get 16 beds in that space.

We have only 2 ½’ end aisles, but we have 30’ of grass beyond that on one end and sidewalk on the other. And outside aisles are nothing on the East (a wall), and a hillside on the West, which we will keep mowed short.

3. Clean the garden area and remove everything, down to the bare ground. Two types of lawn covered our back yard, so we began by using an 8 HP Troybilt and tilling the top 2” of soil thoroughly. We then raked up and removed all grass, including roots, rhizomes, and runners.

4. Level the garden area as much as possible. Remove hills and valleys, and till high sections, using a long board to drag soil from high areas to lower areas.

Beyond general shaping, don’t worry too much about making the whole garden area level. It’s just the soil-beds themselves that must be level.

5. Measure, stake, and apply strings to soil-beds. Make sure you run your beds in the direction that is the most nearly level, and plan on having the water source on the high end of the beds.

Use 18” 2 X 2 stakes and drive them at least 6” into the ground. Use heavy nylon string, tying the ends before connecting to the posts.

Tie one end to the post and do not tie the opposite end, but pull it tight, loop it around once, then lift the string over itself. It will hold, and will be much quicker to remove when you need to till or weed, etc.

The Zoo-Doo Man & The World's Best Compost

237 days ago

For 20 years I have owned a 3/4 acre parcel adjacent to Utah’s Hogle Zoo, where I have grown a vegetable garden using The Mittleider Method as taught in many of the developing countries around the world by Jacob R. Mittleider. Because Jacob was satisfied that my garden represented him well he let me put his name on it, so it is known as The Mittleider Garden at Utah’s Hogle Zoo.

During that time I was privileged to help Dr. Mittleider on a few projects, and during the past 7 years, with his blessing, I have conducted 9 projects in 6 countries myself.

The Hogle Zoo garden is always extremely productive, beautiful to look at, and a very popular unofficial “exhibit” with the 850,000 annual visitors to the zoo.

Over the years many people asked, as they visited over the fence, if I used the zoo animals’ manure, and I always told them no, that I used natural mineral fertilizers. But one day a lady piqued my interest when she said the Seattle Zoo sells their
composted animal manure to the public as “Zoo Doo.”

I decided to check this out, so I talked to the Seattle Zoo people and found they pile the manure in win-rows, turning them occasionally. And after about a year, they dry, bag, and sell it.

I decided I could make a lot better compost than what Seattle got by leaving manure out in the rain for a year. So I first bought a Compost Tumbler and learned the best procedures and mixes as I tested small batches. Very soon I had constant 140+ degree heat for 3 weeks, and produced beautiful, black, sweet-smelling compost.

I then acquired a full-size 10-yard cement truck and began doing large batches. With loads this size, they maintained temperatures of over 140 degrees for 3 weeks, and then cooled down for one week. And You’ve never seen such beautiful material – I really felt like I made the world’s best compost!

I obtained the right to use the Zoo-Doo name, bought bags, T-shirts, banners, cart, etc. and began selling at the Zoo gift shop and in the local nurseries. I ended up on TV and in the local newspapers, and became known as “The Zoo-Doo Man.”

Whenever I had more Zoo-Doo than I could sell, I would drive the cement truck down to my garden and off-load the batch over the wall. I then put it into several soil-beds and grew vegetables with it – to compare which was better – compost or the Mittleider natural mineral nutrients, which I’d been using all along. And I grew good stuff with my Zoo-Doo.

However, the most important thing I learned in that two-year experiment was not how to make and sell Zoo-Doo. I learned for myself that I could grow better vegetables more consistently, and with a lot less time, cost, and hassle, with just a few pounds of inexpensive natural mineral nutrients, than I could with truckloads of “the world’s best compost.”

I therefore continue to put good, clean organic materials back into the soil when they are available, but I KNOW that highly productive vegetable gardens are not dependent on improving the soil with organic material.

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