- Soil, the Secret to Success!

Organic vs. Chemicals

My session at the seminar March 24 will cover why it is so important that we follow the example of natures natural system that we literally are fighting with when you use chemicals. Chemicals are intended to bypass what was thought to be needless steps the soil and creatures go through to the same end result: feeding a plant. Well so they thought. In fact several unknown things have occurred since the inception of chemical use in place of feeding and caring for the soil as was the practices prior to the discovery of fertilizer in the 1950’s or so.

The chemicals were deemed a success because the farmers saw a quick response to the application of these petroleum based (yuk!) fertilizers. So as is the human nature we loved that almost instant results and thus began our love affair with buy a bag, sprinkle it around and everything is greener next week… and as it appears to me one of the largest industries in the world was born.

What wasn’t expected and no published research to speak of was done because well, this was a new miraculous product. It meant quick results and less labor. The unknown facts; the damage these chemicals caused to the soil and the creatures underground that they kill and how significant all those billion of little creatures living in the soil are and the role they play in the big picture.

Those billions of creatures in the soil are microorganisms and are made up of many different families-bacteria and fungi and others. They are the worker bees of the underground world. Just their shear activity of moving around gobbling up organic matter (think Pac-Man) creates nutrition for the plants. Their life line is organic matter, the nitrates in synthetic fertilizers has the same result to microorganisms as pouring salt onlug, death, When we kill all the microorganisms in the soil our plants became complete dependent upon us, the soil slayers to provide all that they need: nutrients, moisture, and disease and pest protections.

These incredible underground workers played a far more significant role in plant health, vigor, and abundant production. So began the vicious cycle of chemical dependence of the conventional farmer, lawn warrior and home gardener. After you have killed all the microorganisms, you have to apply more chemicals to keep them going.

By gardening organically and mimicking the perfect system provided we enhance the cycle, not fight it. It is after all the original way to garden. ..

“Nature is not more complicated then we think, it is more complicated than we can think” Thomas Jefferson

Hope to see you at our Organic Workshop March 24, 2012. Buy tickets now!

The Power of Mulch and Healthy Soil

Our garden has just smiled throughout the amazingly high temperatures and drought this summer.  I attribute this to the power of mulch and healthy soil.
Almost every square inch of soil in our gardens is covered by either organic mulch in the pathways or bio-degradable film on the beds that we plant in. This not only makes weeds pretty much non-existent, it keeps the soil cooler and retains moisture much longer than surfaces not mulched. Our pathways are mulched deeply with leaves that are not chopped–we collect bags of leaves set out at the street and dump them in pathways. Walking on leaves all summer does a good job of breaking them down. The added bonus is that all the foliage we strip from the flower stems as we harvest is also dropped in the pathways and this makes a perfect mix of organic material to be worked into the soil at the end of the season. To read more on feeding the soil click here .

The film on our beds looks like plastic but is a bio-degradable film made from a corn by-product, Bio-Telo. At the end of the season, we will remove the stakes and netting from our beds, pull the irrigation tape out from under the film, mow the flowers down and then plow the film, flowers, leaves and other litter in together to make one happy garden. It will rest for a couple of weeks and then we will prepare to plant a fall cover crop. This will protect the soil all winter and create more organic mass to be incorporated come spring. A legume cover crop will add lots of nitrogen to our soil, as well. No wonder our gardens are smiling!

The question I am asked many times, is how often do you water? To be truthful, we do not water on a regular basis. We would like to water each mature garden once every 7-10 days, but it doesn’t often happen on schedule. We do pay closer attention to newly planted beds, but once you are over about 15” tall around here you are pretty much on your own. But again, this is reaping the benefit of putting all of our focus into building our soil.  It lives on without a lot of help from us, thank goodness.

The birds, dragonflies and good bugs have been abundant in the garden this year. The butterflies are so thick around here now you almost bump into them in the garden! We make a special effort to keep lots of water in and around the gardens for everybody mentioned. Steve, my husband, has taken a special interest in making sure everyone around here has water. He does water duty at least once a day, sometimes twice daily. We have many containers of different depths to suit everybody (outdoor trash can lids turned upside down are great). Steve puts rocks in shallow dishes for the bees and wasps to drink from. We also spray our shady bed of foliage plants to wet the foliage because many good bugs will gather to drink, not to mention frogs, rabbits, and squirrels.  Everybody needs water to survive.
 
Although this has been a great season, we have certainly had our share of failures.  Most of those were thirsty plants, and I didn’t water sufficiently to keep them going during the drought. Sweet Peas and Delphiniums were two such victims. On years that we have reasonable rainfall, these two fall-planted flowers do great; in dry years you have to water or say goodbye to them–we said, “See ya!”  With the temperatures that we had this year, I felt like no amount of water could offset the heat.

So drought and heat are good for some and bad for others. During the crazy hot summer days, we started work at 5 am; now, as it is darker later, we start at 6 am. Our aim is to be done with outdoors-in-the-sun work by lunchtime, which is high noon around here and not a minute later! No one is late to lunch here… To read more about a summer week on a flower farm click here.

Happy Fall!

Lisa

Feeding the Soil

The secret of our success in farming
has been the feeding and care of our soil, as opposed to focusing on just
feeding plants. Continually adding organic matter (compost) to our gardens and
using organic fertilizers and minerals have made our soil stronger,
self-sustaining and healthier with each passing year.

You first must know that the reason
I focus my farming efforts around the soil is because of first hand experience.
Our home and garden have been in the Ziegler family since the 1940's, Steve and
I are the 3rd generation to call this home. Steve's grandparents had
established vegetable gardens on most of this property that produced a great
deal of the food for the family. As I like to say "Grandpa Ziegler was
composting and adding organic matter to these gardens long before composting
was cool!" Back in that time they used what was readily produced,
available and free, which typically meant animal manures, leaf mold and compost
from kitchen and garden waste. (The products we actual clamor for today!)

This was all driven home with me one
day when Steve and I had begun going through one of the outbuildings on our
property. In its previous life it had been a large chicken coop and now served
as storage to much of the families farming and orchard equipment no longer in
use. What we discovered helped me to understand why our gardens seem to grow
great stuff without much help from me. We found thousands of used large empty
plastic trash bags. I had no idea why his Grandfather saved these bags and what
had been in them until Steve shared it. His Grandfather had collected bags of
leaves for his garden. And having been raised during the depression times he
saved the empty bags for other uses. I can't tell you how this really made me
scratch my head and think he was on to something. You have to remember that
during this time the buzz wasn't all about going organic and organic matter as
it is today (which is really the way they used to garden before chemicals where
available.) He had added tons of organic matter during his life and the life of my garden.

This also happens to be the time
that I began reading about flower farming. The Flower Farmer book recommended
reading Eliot Coleman's book, The New Organic Grower. Eliot's book
explained in simple terms how the soil is the basis of farming, about soil
fertility, how to create it, and maintain it. 

We have followed his easy to follow
steps through the years and have reaped the benefits. In the first years of
farming I can tell you that ever crop change in a bed, I dumped 12-15 heaping wheel
barrel loads of compost per 70 x 3 beds. A lot of hard work that I can say was worth ever
step and shovel.

The regiment we follow is:

• Annual soil testing in the fall. This is essential to
  monitor the PH of the soil. If your soil is to acidity or alkaline no
  matter what you add the soil will not be able to use it. We never add lime
  unless a soil test tells us we need it. In our experience that has one
  occurred twice in the past 12 years. Always test. Your local Co-op
  Extension office has soil test kits and it is very inexpensive ($8-12
  usually).
• Add 2-3" compost with each crop change out. In the
  spring before we plant, we top dress with compost, and work it into the
  top 3-6" of soil.
• We add minerals per Eliot's book. On year one, two, six
  and every four years thereafter. The minerals used are Rock Phosphate and
  Green Sand. The recommended application depends on the state of your soil.
  He outlines it in easy to follow terms in his book. 
• We also use organic fertilizers when needed for heavy
  feeder crops such as seabird guano, seaweed meal, kelp and fish fertilizers.
  Using organic fertilizers replenishes deplete minerals and makes your soil
  healthier with each use.
• The more we feed our soil, the less it needs it in the
  future. A great example was the spring of 2009, a cold wet spring which
  means we had to wait to plant. Once the day came that it was warm and dry
  enough we just had to go for it and plant the thousands of plants that
  where way over due to be planted. We skipped the topdressing of compost
  and it was OK because our soil is so alive and healthily. We then used
  liquid organic fertilizers as a boost throughout the season and had tremendous
  crop production.
• Here is our initial feeding of the soil broken down per
  100 sq. feet:

1.       
Limestone as needed

2.       
200 lbs of compost

3.       
10lbs Rock Phosphate

4.       
10 lbs Green Sand

·        
Maintenance feeding in year two,
six, and ten:

1.       
Limestone as needed

2.       
100 lbs compost

3.       
2.5lbs Rock Phosphate

4.       
2.5lbs Green Sand

The bottom line is to prepare your
soil initially (see video Rocking will Save your Soil), never step on
the prepared beds which squeezes the life out of the soil, mulch to protect the
most precious gem in the garden, and continue to feed your soil each season or
crop change. Test annually to keep you on track and only use organic fertilizers.

You will be reaping the benefits in
every situation when you follow these steps.

Garden for the love of it!

Lisa Z

Watch TGW TV for more of my tips!

Visit my online Garden Shop for Organic Fertilizers