Recap of Foundation Work - 2008-2009

Apr 28, 09:51 AM

In November of 2007 we were asked by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) to go to Popayan, Colombia to conduct a two-year family gardening project. During the first phase we were expected to assist 100 families (60 LDS and 40 non-LDS) to learn and grow gardens.

We established a one acre garden on the Agriculture College campus of the University Del Cauca , including a large seedling greenhouse and storage shed.

Thirty five adult students committed themselves to being Leaders and investing at least 20 hours per week (plus travel time to and from their homes) for three months of intensive training. The training consisted of 2 hours in the classroom and 4+ hours in the garden, three days per week, plus time in their own gardens replicating what they learned, again with our assistance as needed.

In the greenhouse we grew 10,000 seedlings at a time, and tables outside the greenhouse could hold 10,000 more, so we produced ample seedlings for the demonstration garden, our students’ home gardens, plus many to give away to other families in the community.

In spite of very heavy rains 5-7 days per week the Model garden flourished, and after about 6 weeks the College Dean and many of the professors requested that they be taught these scientific gardening principles and procedures. One college class even conducted an experiment which proved the superiority of the Project’s (Mittleider) fertilizers as compared to their traditional materials. This turned out to be very impressive to all who saw it, and was beneficial to the Project.

In the first two months, in addition to the model garden, most of our student leaders created, planted, and cared for gardens at their homes, and very quickly they were being asked to teach and assist their neighbors and friends.

News of the Project soon spread throughout the community, and educators, government agronomists, and even the Mayor and Governor became interested. At the request of the Governor two student leaders created a beautiful and productive garden outside his bedroom window, which was tended by soldiers stationed there to protect the First Family.

The Governor’s support carried much weight in the region, as he was formerly a university president, the Colombian ambassador to Brazil, and the National Defense Minister.

After our departure in the spring of 2008 the man we trained as our replacement started a new training cycle with another large group of students. He was also asked to teach about 90 University Agriculture students. And that Spring six of our best student graduates were hired to replicate the Project in the city’s high schools.

We believe the Popayan Project has the potential to make a very big difference in the way family gardening is done in that area of the country, and that many more than just the 100 families’ lives will be blessed.

After only 10 days to recuperate at home we traveled to Armenia and the Republic of Georgia for a month, to help with on-going projects in those countries.

In Armenia we assisted the FFE Foundation’s Country Director with the current year’s demonstration greenhouse and garden near Gyumri, the country’s second largest city. They are receiving positive attention from growers in that region, with many people requesting seedlings and advice on growing.

The Georgia project is funded by USAID through the International Relief & Development Foundation (IRD). The IRD Country Director, Mr. Charles Specht, had us assist him in teaching and showing 1,080 small farmers in 36 villages how to grow tomatoes using the FFE foundation’s methods.

It was IRD’s second year using our methods, and they had several trained supervisors in place already, so our work this year was made much easier as a consequence.

It was very gratifying to watch and assist as needed, as these good people grew more than 100,000 tomato seedlings in 36 small greenhouses, then transplanted them into the individual farmers’ gardens.

After transplanting they installed T-Frames, with wire and baling twine strings for all those plants to climb, and then fed and watered, pruned and removed sucker stems, and guided them up the strings, so that tomato plants only 8” apart received ample water, food and light, and grew faster, healthier and more productive than anything the country had ever seen before.

The year 2009 was a monster-travel time, with multiple trips to Idaho, Utah, and Arizona, where we taught 15 free day-long seminars to more than 1,500 people from February through April. In May and early June we traveled to Armenia (with a few days in London in transit), and expected to assist another large project in Georgia as well, but a civil war made us decide against taking that risk.

The Foundation’s model/demonstration greenhouse and garden in Getk, Armenia continues to be a success, as it is almost the only garden in the region that survived a couple of severe hail storms in June. The Foundation’s Country Director grows varieties of vegetables that are “impossible to grow” in that region, and is highly respected. She provides seeds and seedlings, answers questions, solves problems, and is highly regarded throughout the community.

After returning home we worked on creating a good greenhouse and garden on our own property, and filming everything as we went, in order to produce an educational DVD outlining the process in as much detail as possible. This has its unique challenges, since the material in which we’re growing consists of a little subsoil and sandstone.

After trying to prepare the beds with a large tiller – going over and over the garden 8 times, we still had to use a pick-axe to get every plant in the ground. And water runs off so quickly that we must water at least once daily, and in the hot weather twice was sometimes not enough. We really got a chance to prove our promise to the world of a “great garden in any soil, with no soil amendments”.

We also worked on putting gardening training materials on several websites, so people, wherever they are around the world can have access to simple methods that will always work no matter what their circumstances are.

We have already created 7 different gardening websites in addition to the Foundation’s main site, and we were successful in getting the simple but highly effective Mittleider Gardening Basics Course onto www.ProvidentLiving.com/familygarden/index.php and the Benson Institute’s website at http://bensoninstitute.org/Publication/Pamphlets/FVG_Containers_Oct08.pdf. These websites receive more than one million visits each year from LDS Church members, and we have high hopes the gardening module will do some good.

We continue to look for opportunities to assist other groups and organizations wherever possible. In 2009-and into 2010 we have found many opportunities to send gardening training materials to dedicated individuals and groups to assist them in teaching and demonstrating highly productive family gardening principles and procedures.

Hybrid Seeds - How Good Are They, or Are They Bad

Apr 19, 09:13 AM

Someone posted comments on a preparedness group blasting hybrid seeds as being a terrible thing, against natural law, and even dangerous for us to be using. I submit that the person is lacking in understanding of the facts, and is confusing hybrids with GMO seeds.

Here’s how I feel about whether or not hybrid seeds are good and valuable:

“We are all hybrids! And most of us can reproduce, just as the hybrid seeds can reproduce (the person claimed that hybrid plants were sterile). But our progeny will be different than we are, just as the progeny from hybrid plants’ seeds will be different from their parents.

In humans it makes for uniqueness and diversity and is wonderful. In vegetables and fruits it isn’t so great.

Honorable dedicated growers spend their lives painstakingly cross-breeding multiplied thousands of plants, in order to find the parental match that gives you and me the tastiest, healthiest, fastest growing, and most disease resistant fruits and vegetables possible.

And even after they have found that match they must work HARD and CAREFULLY to assure that each desirable female blossom is pollinated with the exact desired male pollen. Imagine the work involved with tomatoes, for example, where the blossom is tiny and EACH BLOSSOM CONTAINS BOTH MALE AND FEMALE PARTS!

That means they have to use tiny tweezers and magnifying classes to REMOVE the male anther BEFORE it is mature, and then introduce the CORRECT male anther to the female pistil at the exact time they both are mature, and hope pollination occurs – all the while making certain that no OUTSIDE pollinators, such as bees, get to the blossom.

The cost of producing great hybrid seeds is tremendous, and what do the seeds cost you and me? Let’s compare the best hybrid seed with a well known heirloom seed and see what it means in your garden.

Ace tomato seeds can be purchased from MVSeeds.com for $4.50 per ounce. That’s 10,000 seeds for next to nothing! How many will you plant in your garden – 10? 50? Either way the seed cost is nothing. What will it produce? Probably a few pounds per plant, but the size, taste, and other qualities we want in a great tomato are not available.

Big Beef tomato seeds, on the other hand, cost $250 per ounce! The smallest quantity MVSeeds.com sells is 100 seeds, and they cost $5.75. So, each seed costs 6 cents. That’s terrible, isn’t it!?

Or is it, really. Let’s compare what you get for your 6 cents with what you get from your virtually free Ace seed.

The Ace is a determinate plant and produces a crop of medium small tomatoes for a few weeks, whereas Big Beef is an indeterminate plant and produces great yields of large, juicy, tasty tomatoes for MANY months – even longer than a year in the tropics – until frost kills it.

Big Beef also has the best disease resistance of almost any tomato variety known to man. That single fact often means the difference between great success and total failure in your garden. How many times have you lavished MONTHS of time, energy, and money on your tomato plants only to have some disease wipe them all out about the time you finally started to harvest a crop. It’s common. Just last year disease wiped out a substantial part of the tomato crop in the entire USA!

I figure that each tomato plant in my garden produces between $30 and $60 in tomatoes. If I grew Ace tomatoes each plant would produce between $10 and $20 in tomatoes. How important is the cost of seed?

For my very limited budget Big Beef, and the other hybrids I use, are worth their cost MANY TIMES OVER!

Tiny Gardens - Plant Across the Width to Maximize Yield

Feb 19, 06:03 PM

Many people have only a small space in which to grow, and want to plant so as to get the greatest possible yield in the least space. Here’s one idea to do that.

You can plant across the width of a box or soil-bed,m rather than the traditional lengthwise, if you’re willing to do the extra work of feeding, watering, weeding, and pruning that it requires.

Remember the first law of plant growth – direct sunlight all day long, and that applies to all of your plants, for optimum harvest.

Therefore, planting close together as I’ll suggest here requires that you prune your plants so that they do NOT shade or overlap each other.

You’ll also need to water by hand, to assure even coverage to all plants.

And if you’re in the soil weeding will not be as easy because of the close proximity of plants to each other. The two-way hoe is still the best tool for the job.

And remember to quit feeding the single-crop varieties three weeks before they reach maturity, so as not to waste fertilizers. Multiple crops are certainly an option for several of those, especially spinach, lettuce, and green onions.

Here’s what you could do in a box 4’ wide by 16’ long – from North to South (or East to West):

Tomatoes (2), cucumber (2) and vining squash (1) – close to edge
Zucchini (3) – 2.5’ from edge
Peppers (5) – 2.5’ from zucchinis
Broccoli (5) – 2’ from peppers
Cauliflower (5) – 2’ from broccoli
Spinach (9) – 1.5’ from broccoli
Spinach (9) – .5’ from spinach
Red leaf lettuce (9) – 1.5’ from spinach
Romaine lettuce (9) – .5’ from red leaf lettuce
Green onions (48) – 1.5’ from romaine lettuce
Italian parsley (16) – .5’ from green onions
Sweet potatoes (5) – 1’ from onions, at opposite end of box

Tomatoes, cucumber, squash, and zucchini all must be grown on 2” X 2” stakes and pruned to one stem – tomatoes right at the crotch, cucumber and squash cut sucker stems after first female blossom. Zucchini – older leaves pruned as they touch the ground or interfere with adjacent plants

Broccoli and cauliflower leaves should be pruned to keep them off the ground and away from adjacent plants (the leaves are edible!).

Sweet potatoes will only work in the space describes above if you can let them run outside the box. You’ll need to prune and train them so they don’t cover your onions and lettuce.

Best Source of Nitrogen for Your Plants

Jan 13, 10:30 AM

A reader asked “Am I able to substitute the amonium nitrate in the weekly feed with ammonium sulfate?”

The answer that follows is important for everyone to know:

Ammonium sulfate is only 21-0-0, as opposed to 34-0-0 for ammonium nitrate. In addition, 21-0-0 has substantial sulfur in it, which lowers soil pH. If you WANT to lower your soil’s pH then 21-0-0 will help you do that. However, if your area already has pH lower than 7, because you receive more than 20” of annual rainfall, then sulfur (and 21-0-0) is probably not the best solution.

34-0-0 is the BEST nitrogen source no matter where you live – if you can get it – but others can be used, including urea (46-0-0). This may be the better replacement if you live in a high rainfall area.

However, urea takes time to become available to plants because it has to undergo multiple chemical changes before becoming available to the plants.

Meanwhile, because nitrogen is volatile, some of the nitrogen can easily be lost to the air before the plants get any. To help reduce the loss of nitrogen through volatilization always mix it into the soil, rather than simply applying on the soil surface.

Use the same quantity of urea as you would ammonium nitrate, again because of the slower availability and losses incurred.

Jan 9, 02:19 PM

A gardener asked the following question about building small greenhouses and growing in cold weather using information from the Mittleider Grow-Box Gardens book: “Since I am in zone 3 it would be very helpful if I could have the rest of the information the article referred to on “cold weather gardening” in chapter 12 if you think I need it. Is that the information that will tell me how to double-layer the greenhouse to have a 3-to-4 inch dead air space?”

Here’s my answer, which will be helpful to anyone who is building a greenhouse to grow in cold weather.

Chapter 12 of Grow-Box Gardens does indeed show and tell you how to double cover the greenhouse. I am sorry that Grow-Box Gardens is currently out of print and unavailable. Hopefully we can figure out how to get it re-printed inexpensively enough to have it available again by next growing season. In the meantime, let me tell you a few things the book says about winter gardening in cold climates.

Seedlings should be started in warmer weather and transplanted into the greenhouse by early fall if possible, so that much of the vegetative growth takes place before it gets cold.

During the cold months plants can be maintained and harvested at lower temperatures. It is important, however, to maintain soil temperatures above 50 degrees as long as possible, otherwise the plants will go dormant.

A greenhouse is important, and it should be double-covered, with a dead-air space of 2-4”. Building the greenhouse east to west, with the north-side wall built into a hillside or against an insulated wall, can reduce heating costs significantly, and even provide some heat from the mass of the north wall.

If you’re really serious about growing in cold weather, hot water pipes buried 4-6” deep inside the greenhouse near the outside edges will provide some heat and ward off cold from the frozen ground outside.

If it is too cold to keep the entire greenhouse from freezing, consider a greenhouse within the greenhouse to protect valuable crops.

Arched PVC frames covered with 6 mil greenhouse plastic, with a small space heater inside, can keep a row or two of plants warm enough to save them even on very cold nights, if it is inside a greenhouse already.

If daytime outside temperatures rise above 65 degrees some ventilation should be provided in the greenhouse.

Gardening by the Foot - A Container Gardening Treasure

Nov 25, 10:43 AM

I have said nothing about this book for a long time, for just one reason. Our inventory of books had brittle binding glue and the pages would fall out at the least provocation.

We’ve finally solved the problem! We purchased a machine and re-bound this great gardening book ourselves, using a Plastic Comb Binder.

Now that we don’t have to worry about them falling apart on you, let me tell you why those growing in containers need to consider getting your copy NOW, while they are available (Grow-Box Gardens, Let’s Grow Tomatoes, and Grow-Bed Gardening are all out of print).

Gardening by the Foot is filled with almost 250 pictures illustrating 140 pages of Jacob’s great how-to instructions on every aspect of growing in containers.

Following are the chapter headings:

1. Introduction
2. Why use Mini Grow-Boxes?
3. What are mini Grow-Boxes?
4. Choosing a Location
5. preparing the area for Mini-Frames
6. Tools and Materials
7. How to Make Mini Grow-Boxes
8. Filling Grow-Boxes with Soil
9. Pre-plant Fertilizers
10. Starting Plants from Seed
11. Planting Seed in Mini-Boxes
12. Transplanting into Mini-Boxes
13. Making markers and Marking Mini-Boxes
14. Fertilizing Crops in Mini-Boxes
15. Common Garden Problems
16. Increasing Yields in Ever-bearing Crops
17. Transplanting Gallon-Size Plants into Mini-Boxes
18. Installing an Automated Watering System
19. Harvesting
20. “A” Frames and Greenhouses
21. Installing Strings to Hold Tall Plants
22. What To Do With Trouble
23. Soil Maggots
24. Nutrient Deficiencies and Corrections
25. Units of Measure

Are you serious about growing your own food? Get Gardening by the foot and SEE how the best gardener in the world did it – in his own backyard garden and in 27 countries around the world.

For a paper copy you can mark up and take to the garden with you, go to
http://foodforeveryone.org/gardening_by_the_foot/.

Or you can get the digital download instantly and save a few bucks by going to
http://www.howtoorganicgarden.com/products_pdfs.htm.

Be patient, you have to scroll down the page past several other books.

Natural Mineral Fertilizers - Make Your Own

Oct 6, 10:50 AM

Would you like to remove the guesswork from growing healthy plants, and know you’re feeding them just what they need? The Mittleider Magic fertilizer formulas provide all 13 natural mineral nutrients that vegetable plants need, and if you can’t find them pre-mixed locally, you can mix them yourself.

The Food For Everyone Foundation website Learn section at www.foodforeveryone.org/learn has Dr. Mittleider’s fertilizer formulas, which have been tested and proven in 34 countries all around the world. Look under Grow-Boxes at the lower left of the main screen, and then go to Fertilizers.

If you have a large garden or farm you’ll probably want to mix your fertilizers from “scratch”, using the formulas. However, if you have a typical family-sized garden, or even just some containers to grow in, you’ll most likely find it much easier, and probably less expensive, to get a couple of 10 ounce packets of Micro-Nutrients from the Foundation’s website at www.foodforeveryone.org/store and then only have to buy 4 of the main ingredients, N, P, K, and Epsom Salt (magnesium), which are almost always available locally, and fairly inexpensive as well.

It’s easy and hassle-free to mix a packet of micro-nutrients with 25#’s of 16-16-16 and 4# of Epsom Salt to obtain a good Weekly Feed. It’s also very inexpensive, when compared to anything else that’s even close to comparable, such as Miracle Gro.

For those of you who can’t find pre-mixed 16-16-16, 15-15-15, 13-13-13-, or 17-17-17, all of which are usable with the pre-packaged micro-nutrients, then check a farm-supply store for bags of each separately.

For example, you may be able to find 21-0-0 (ammonium sulfate), and 0-45-0 (triple super phosphate), and 0-0-50 (potassium sulfate). If so, mix 15# 21-0-0 with 4# 0-45-0, and 6# 0-0-50. That gives you 25# of a 110-60-110 mix, which is approximately the ratio in which your plants use the three Macro-Nutrients, and is even better than 16-16-16, etc.

Then add 4# of Epsom Salt from your pharmacy – mix it all together and you have the Weekly Feed mix. There are numerous other mixes of the “Big Three” nutrients – sometimes with two of them combined, such as 18-46-0 and 15-0-53. If you find that, just find some nitrogen and mix enough to get the 110-60-110 ratio, and you’re there.

Vegetable Garden or Raising Animals, Which is Best

Sep 19, 11:04 AM

For a vegetable gardening guy to be talking about animals may seem inconsistent to some, but since both provide food they are closely related, so I will discuss the general topic a bit here.

From age 12 until I left home for college I had the full responsibility for a cow, to which were added chickens, rabbits, pigs, and even a goat at various times. These all contributed significantly to and were important to our family’s food supply.

However, I didn’t understand at that time that it requires between 10 and 30 times as much land to produce a pound of protein from an animal source as from a plant source, and looking back I realize that our vegetable garden produced much more with less inputs than did the animals.

Dr. Jacob Mittleider, who taught me almost everything I know about gardening, had a special perspective on this issue, because as a Seventh Day Adventist he was a strict vegetarian. While I am not a vegetarian I also believe that we are healthier when we limit meat in our diets, and our personal family diet is usually less than 10% meat.

And both Dr. Mittleider’s and my own experience around the world confirm that most people have very limited space in which to produce their own food, thus making vegetable gardening the best choice for the greatest return on investment.

I submit that a Mittleider-Method garden, when cared for properly and consistently, is the best use of your time, efforts, space and money, and that excess food grown in your garden can usually be sold or traded for milk, eggs, and meat more efficiently than raising your own animals.

Nevertheless, there are other issues to be considered. Vegetables can’t begin to compete for the special feeling you may get from caring for animals, and those of you who DO have space may still want some animals.

If animals are in your plans, I encourage you to keep their living spaces clean, separate them from your garden so they don’t destroy it, and whenever possible feed them your excess plant residue as soon as the crop is harvested.

Chicken tractors (Google it), can be used for both chickens and rabbits, but must have a wire floor on them if you raise rabbits, because they will dig their way out quickly. If used efficiently chicken tractors can help you keep your yard clean and organized. Each time the tractor is moved remember to till the chicken or rabbit droppings (both of which are excellent fertilizers), etc. into the soil for natural composting without making a mess. And the same goes for all other animal manure. Get it into the soil and let it compost naturally, rather than having it smell bad and attract pests.

For those who have more space – and are willing to accept the responsibility for at least twice daily care (milking, feeding, etc.) – larger animals may also be an option.

Goats are one possible choice, as they are fairly small, don’t take a lot of space to house or graze, and will eat a wide variety of plants, but they don’t give a lot of milk, are not easy to milk, and many people don’t care for the taste of their milk.

My personal preference for a milk-producing animal is one or two Miniature Jersey cows. They are about 1/3 the size of full-size cows; they are very friendly and docile – even the bulls; they produce from 2 to 4 gallons of milk daily when fresh; and they only require a fraction of an acre for grazing.

Many websites have details about the miniature Jerseys. They are a rare breed so far, and will be expensive to buy, but after the initial investment, if you use the best breeding stock, you may be able to recover your initial capital outlays by selling excess calves.

Meanwhile, I will continue to focus on VEGETABLE GARDENING, but encourage those of you who have the interest, the commitment, and the required space for animals to consider the most efficient ways to benefit from them.

Finding and Mixing Mittleider Magic Fertilizers Made Easy

Sep 14, 07:29 AM

Does anyone else have a hard time finding the ingredients in the Mittleider method?

A. We struggled with this issue for many years until Dr. M and I:
(1) simplified the Pre-Plant formula and
(2) decided to buy, mix, package, and sell the Micro-Nutrients ourselves on the Foundation website.

Now for the Weekly Feed Mix all you have to do is:
(1) go to www.foodforeveryone.org, put your cursor on MATERIALS, click on Fertilizer, then order the Micro-Nutrients. One package costs $10.95 at the moment.
(2) Mix with 50# of NPK* and 8# of Epsom Salt (magnesium sulfate) to give you
60# of Weekly Feed Mix.

*You can use any combination of N, P & K from 13-13-13 to 17-17-17 successfully.

For the Pre-Plant Mix just mix calcium, magnesium, and boron in the ratio of 80-4-1, with calcium being lime if you receive more than 20” of annual rainfall and gypsum of you receive less than that.

The easiest source of magnesium is Epsom Salt, which is available at your pharmacy, and boron is available in most stores’ Detergent sections as 20 Mule Team Borax.

It is worth doing! The balanced natural mineral nutrients are SO much better than traditional methods you will be amazed at the difference in your plants’ growth, appearance, and taste.

Recently at the University Del Cauca a professor had his class conduct an experiment comparing the Mittleider fertilizers with other methods and the results were dramatic in favor of Mittleider Magic.

Pictures are in the Photos section of the free gardening group called the MittleiderMethodGardening@yahoogroups.com.

Get 2 Years' Supply of Nutrients NOW!

Aug 31, 07:22 PM

I recommend every serious gardener review your supply of and need for the natural mineral nutrients with which you feed your vegetable garden, and stock up NOW.

You should have at least a two-year supply on hand at all times. There is no loss in strength or availability, so don’t worry about that.

Get them before another round of financial meltdowns – personal or global – make it too expensive, or even unavailable.

We seem to have a lull in the problems right now, and we were able to get the Micro-Nutrient materials in sufficient quantities that we can provide them for the moment at the same cost as in the Spring.

And as extra motivation for you to stock up I will issue a 20% REFUND back on to your credit card for those who order 5 or more packages by September 30, 2009.

Let’s all make sure you’ve got everything you need to grow a healthy, productive garden.

Order Micro’s and other gardening books and materials at www.foodforeveryone.org/store.

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Teachers Virtual Gardening Training Program Humanitarian Project in the Republic of Georgia