DR KNOW

Well it has been a frustrating and interesting week to say the least to watch what an application of 15 pounds of blood mealwill do to two rows of corn after a flood irrigation. First off if you recall I grew two types of corn. I grew Texas Honey June as the information in the catalog said that although it was a short ear, it had extremely tight husks preventing most damage from corn ear worms. Well let me say this: the corn ear worms have this figured out and instead bore holes right about the middle of the husks instead of coming down from the tops. So when I opened this husks up, I found that the entire ears were demolished. So back to the drawing board on finding a non hybrid corn. I have tried quite a few types over the years, but have yet to find one that I feels give me the size and the production of a hybrid which I do not want to plant. Next I did also plant Silver Queen and in one week, the corn has shot up and the stalks have all turned a dark dark green. I was rather shocked at the fast effect that the blood meal had. Now while I have already harvested corn I planted at our parish, I have not harvested here yet. I did have to set three gopher traps yesterday. I had my son show his two nephews how to do it and they had a great time learning. In addition I was able to harvest more of the Granex type onions from my garden. now if any of you have ever heard the term Vandalia Sweet or Arizona Sweet onions, I hope you all realize that it is the same onion that comes from the Granex lines. The taste is mainly from the soil it is grown in, but I often wonder how much of that is hype. I will harvest green beans this weekend. I am waiting for my daughter to come over and let her have first pick. I grow an old variety called Contender. I know there are lots of types out there, but this one has always done very well for me in thisArizona heat. They are about six inches long and have a curvature to them. They are so good. I have harvested a few more Saint Pasquale squash from my patch and decided to plant some yellow zucchinis. Many of you may not know but if you plant squash about every few weeks, you will have a continual supply of squash throughout the summer. As pests destroy the older plants, tear them out as the next ones are just starting to produce. I also harvested my first tomato of the season, a Saint Pierre. It was a mid-size. I planted 12 types this year and only one was a repeat. So it will be fun to take notes and see how each does. I am pleased so far with a type called Liberator; extremely heavy producer. Finally I decided to plant spaghetti squash again this year as my oldest son loves them, but they are such a spreading plant I hate to give up the garden space to them. So I decided to plant them next to the chain link fence and let them climb it like I do my cucumbers. I save the space, and they are easy to see and pick. Finally I found tiny melons on some melons that I planted seeds from that my friend gave me from his home area in Turkey. Garlic harvest is the weekend and I am getting orders ready for the organic coops that I sell to. Please feel so send in your questions to Dr. Know.

Dr. Know

I had a real dilemma last week and was not sure what to do. I had planted my sweet corn and normally pick it around the 18th of May. This year when I went out I saw some of my corn already going to tassel and barely three feet tall and then down the row I saw the rest of the corn was already five feet and had not begun to tassel out. What was this about, and then I remembered that I in my search to find a good open pollinated corn decided to buy some Texas Honey June. Along with this ( because certain family members prefer it), I planted a hybrid white corn called lilver Queen. This is currently the best selling white corn on the market. Well I came to several conclusions, just because the package says it will grow to about 5-6 feet, it is not always the case. I figured that due to the extreme heat in Arizona and the fact that this is a variety from back East that it may not grow so big. In addition I sometimes forget that corn in my opinion is the heaviest feeder of all plants, and no matter how much grass and leaves I put down, it was not going to do the trick. So reluctantly I bought 15 pounds of blood meal in an attempt to give my corn a quick short in the arm to see if it was quick enough to cause the corn to have a healthy growth spurt. So far on the hybrid it seems to be working, but not on the Texas Honey June.

As you know I do not believe in spending a lot of money on a garden in what I consider to be excessive costs. Remember we are trying to save money buy growing our own food, and organic fertilizers can really run up your overhead. So I still stand by what I say and that is ( with the exception of corn of course), to try to fertilize with grass, leaves, even residue from plants you have harvested, kitchen scraps; anything to feed the soil for free. So I will keep you informed. I picked another Saint Pasquale squash this week, some carrots, and some parsnips. The squash grew to 18 inches in one week! I got the seeds from Seeds Of Italy of Massachusetts if you are interested. Happy gardening!

Dr KnoW

I received a call from someone last week and they had started their tomatoes from seeds. When they went to plant them outside the tomatoes were drooping over and looked liked they were ready to die. Why was that? The most common problem that causes that would be that you start your tomatoes inside and fail to slowly acclimate them to the outside. Thus when they are all of a sudden brought outside it is quite shock for them. Well they still live if you fail to harden them off? Well in most cases the answer is yes. What you will see is a tomato plant that gets sunburned and parts of the leaves actually turn white because of this severe trauma. Most will survive, but it will stunt them for awhile and this is something that I think we all need to try to avoid. Some when you get close to planting start taking your plants out once a day for a few hours at a time. Eventually you leave them out all night and by the end of one week, they are ready to plant into the garden with better results. I always water my transplants well before putting them into the ground as this is a bit of a shock and it also helps to keep the soil together around the root. Another thing is that I always pre water the hole before I put the plant down into the ground, because if you do not and your ground is dry, then of course, the dry soil will suck the moisture away from the wet ball of roots. Some people like to put B1 into the water as you fill up the hole which is good and helps stimulate root growth. For me, I take a scoop of blood meal, and a scoop of bone meal, drop it in the soil, cover it up and put the new tomato plant over it so that it has a nice slow release of fertilizer over an extended time. Be careful, as if you have dogs, they may come and dig it up as they smell the bone and the blood. Not all dogs will do this but why chance it. Drop some dried kelp and some liquid fish into the soil instead.

DR KNOW

As I read some of my last posts, I do not want you to think that I am going to write all about heavy duty stuff like soil compositions and so forth. I want to try to jump around a lot and touch on various subjects to try to give a rounded out gardening section. I found much to my surprise that I was getting a lot of questions that I assumed many of you would knw the answers to and I was wrong, so let us talk about a few of these. One that came up was a person was telling me about how their tomatoes would look so good and all of a sudden their tomatoes would have a large black spot on the bottom. So they threw the tomato away. Please do not do that, as the tomato is fine. Just cut the bottom part off and eat the rest. This is commonly referred to as blossom end rot. Now I have heard to conflicting reasons for this and I suspect that there is truth to both. I have read that it is due to a calcium deficiency in the soil that causes this and the other train of thought is that it is due to fluctuations in the heat of the soil and a lack of water to the plant and all of a sudden a sharp influx of moisture to the soil. Another train of thought is that certain varieties are more prone to blossom end rot than others. Quite frankly I think that this is a valid point and I agree on this. The one thing to keep in mind is that once the blossom end rot is starting to happen to your plants, it is already too late to add calcium to your soil. This needs to be done at the start of the season with some good old gypsum. Not only does it add essential calcium but it also helps to aerate your soil and make it much healthier. I am not a big believer in throwing wads of money into something like a garden as we do it mainly to provide food to our families and also as a form of enjoyment. Now to help relieve the stress on a tomato plant when there is a sudden onslaught of water, I mulch around my plants with cut grass and try to keep it at about four inches in height. If you feel under this mulch you will discover two things; it is much cooler, and the soil is still moist. I only water my soil ( irrigate) every two weeks, so you can imagine the shock of the tomato plant to receive 6-8 inches of water. By buffering the tomato like this it also helps keep it from splitting because the sudden hit of that much water will create a growth spurt, and the tomatoes will grow so fast that they will actually outgrow the skin faster than it can grow and cause the splitting. Again along with blossom end rot, you can test a lot of varieties and some are much less prone to splitting that others. So it really does pay to keep notes on you tomato varieties that you grow each year and start to drop those that are prone to splitting and blossom end rot in your particular area that you live in.

Dr. Know

An aerobic soil also means a diminished supply of weeds due to a lower nitrate level in relationship to fungi. Weeds have no desire to grow in the absence of reduced nitrates. The rise in organic materials that you are now working so hard at doing, sets the stage for a reduced vitality of weeds in general. This makes them succumb to disease and insects; nature's garbage collectors. Because of this same increased organic material there is a supply or increased sugars, proteins, and carbohydrates in a form that will exude out for the soil microbes. The benefits of these healthy microbes around the roots is that they also produce healthy natural antibiotics and inhibitory compounds! Amazing stuff to know huh? Also the higher the organic material in your soil, the higher the water holding capacity of the soil itself, which of course buffers the plants against dry periods, allowing then to maximize genetic potential. On the other hand, the benefit of absorbing more water in flooding helps the plant from enduring periods of anaerobic conditions. A higher organic material level also buffers against erratic changes of brix ( sweetness) levels in the plant's growth stages. A higher brix level with a soil foundation of good calcium levels provide the plant with crucial building blocks in the form of higher sugar levels, mineral levels, and oil levels in the food it consumes. These higher levels also provide a revolving food chain of good quality food for the soil food web when recycled back.

Again I want you all to think really hard why it is so important to go organic entirely in your gardens. Recently The California Public Interest Group tested 29 fertilizers from 12 states and found that all of them contained 22 toxic heavy metals linked to human health hazards. Twenty of these same fertilizers even exceeded levels of concern for disposal in landfills! Did you get this; for disposal! This is the stuff going on the foods that we are eating every day. What are we doing to ourselves? Shame on the big chemical and seed companies, and shame on the mega farms that put this crap on the food that they are feeding not only to North America, but to the world. If you do not have an organic garden planted already, then get off you butts and do so! I want to vomit every time I see someone using Miracle Grow! This is about the well being of your families!

Dr. Know.

Dr. Know

As the organic matter rises from you feeding your soil with grass, leaves, and so on,the diversity and numbers of organisms rises in unison to create a cycle and starts to become self producing. A glue-like substance is produced by the bacteria and glomulin from fungal threads adding a structure to the soil. It is essential that you have the presence of good quality food sources for microbes, as it adds depth to the healthy soil breaking down the hard pan that has been created over the years from poor farming and gardening practices. I have a garden at my Parish right now that I am working on and the water is still standing after three days of irrigation. I wonder how many years of my building the soil that it will take before this problem goes away. Earthworms and arthropods form channels in your highly fed soil that allow for easy entry of air, water, and roots. This glue-like substance also helps provide a constant form of nutrient availability.

In unison with rising organic matter levels, the pool of nitrogen begins to rise providing both forms; nitrate and ammonium. this is a direct result of bacterial having a 5:1 C:N ratio at the bottom of the food chain, working its way upward to the higher stages of organisms. these are basically fungi, protozoa, ciliates, flagellates, nematodes ( fungal and bacteria feeding) on up to micro anthropoids, and finally macro-arthropods. As a rule of thumb, 5 percent organic matter gives around 220 pounds of nitrogen.

The key here is that the soil becomes flocculated increasing oxygen availability to the microbes and results in a softer soil, eventually helping to get rid of the hardpans amongst other positive results. So you can see that we often worry about a lot of other things and forget that the real key to having a good crop, is to take care of the soil first as this is what your plants all feed on. For those of you that have advanced past the stage of "Newbie" this should be your next area of concentration. A healthy organic soil means healthy organic crop for you to eat!

DR.KNOW

n my opinion the successful gardener is the one who realizes the importance of constantly building your soils with organic materials. This is a never ending cycle as every year your garden will use up at least ten % of your organic matter. Reduced oxygen conditions set the stage for massage amounts of weeds and for disease, all because of a soil high in nitrates. Weeds do not put a lot of emery back into the soil which is a determent to building up organic materials in the soil. Reduced oxygen in the soil produces materials in the form of three chemicals: alcohol, which solubilizes any membranes at 1pmm, formaldehyde, which acts as a preservative, and phenol, which is toxic. Compacted low oxygen systems cannot hold onto nutrients therefore, there is more leaching in the form of nitrates and phosphates. This contributes to pollution of waterways, and erosion. Calcium helps to form aggregated or compound masses of particles in the soil bringing in oxygen. It also provides a means of nutritional energy for soil microbes. Plowing back into the soil any plant residue will help retain and cycle nutrients into the soil before they oxidize. Many people like to do this and also a mixture of molasses, fish, and sea minerals to feed their soil. I have never done the molasses, but I do use fish ( named Fish and Poop) to start my seeds with, and I do spray my plants with a mixture of minerals to put back into the plants and the soil what has been taken out over the last 200 years of farming this same soil. Keep in mind that soil microbes need to be fed calcium as a source of energy ( I use bagged gypsum), to be beneficial to us. Plants give off sugars, which also feed the microbes which in turn solubize the calcium as a food source for the plants to build cell walls with structure. This increases the structural biomass of the shoots and especially the roots setting the stage for increasing carbon levels. When the organic material level of your soil reaches at least 2%, the whole system of the soil starts to have a multiplying affect in the effects of increasing the organic material levels itself. If you can remember to do this, the next time you are going to plow your crop residue back into the soil, spread or spray a nutritional food source onto the soon to be residue to increase the nutritional status and feed the food web. *******
Post your questions in the comment section!

DR. KNOW: How did we get where we are in this organic movement?

I have been asked this many times, and as I go back to my childhood I recall that chemical farming did not really exist until the 1950's. As a youth I can remember my father using his scrapper on his tractor to pull manure out of the cow pen to stack it into a huge pile to be later loaded into a manure spreader to be spread out over our fields just as my Grandfather had done before him. Of course to the delight of me and my brother we would push each other for hours down the mountain to see who was king of the crap mountain. Of course my mother did not see it that way and made us strip off our clothes before we were allowed inside the house to shower. Yet this was the 50s and I saw many changes on the farm. One was the use of crop dusters that sprayed our various crops. Oh how I remember the days that I would run up and down the cotton field to try to stay up with the airplane as it laid down its lethal dose of DDT. I can remember the fine layer of poison landing all over my shirtless back like a fine mist and thinking nothing of it. Once I left the ranch/farm and moved away I realized that farming and gardening were in my blood. In the 80s I started to notice things and read a lot of materials, and to this day I still do, as education is the key. I started to notice that girls in the seventh and eighth grades suddenly had breasts of a mature woman and not like the girls that I knew in the 60s, I noticed a huge increase in obesity, an alarming rate of cancers of all types, kids of all ethnic groups were now much taller. Children were going through puberty at a much younger age. Something was seriously wrong and we needed to figure it out. As I read more I read of the cover ups of the large chemical companies trying to have their paid scientists and bribed universities say nothing was wrong with all of the chemicals. Then we decided to fool around with genetics such as putting fish genes into corn and cloned cows. Here we had the new Franken food that now was on our shelves. My gosh I thought to myself what are we doing. How can you plant a field of GMO corn and all insets die? How can you plant a field of corn and only the corn lives and the weeds all die? Yet we were eating this same corn. Then the move continued with the chemical companies such as Bayer, Monsanto, and the large seed companies trying to patent seeds, inventing sterile seeds that if you tried to save them you would save money. the only thing was the saved seeds would not germinate. The move next was to buy up all of the small seed companies. Recently in Acres USA magazine it was pointed out that over 200 small companies have been bought up. So now they can control not only the chemicals but all of the GMO and hybrid seeds from start to finish. Have we figured it out yet folks or do we need more proof ? I had an employee who had breast cancer and it was serious. She completely went organic and detoxified herself. Guess what? The cancer stopped growing. Why did I go organic, at least as much as possible? Well I hope my story written above is enough to get you on the right track. God made this world, Some of us are short and some tall, some are fat and some just plain ole skinny, but let it be because that is how God made us, not because of the chemicals that we have ingested. It is time for all of us to make the commitment,. Are you ready to do this?

Dr. Know Answers Your Questions

Happy Mommy said...
I live in Northern Oklahoma and the soil is completely red clay. The pH is perfect (7) but the soil is almost impossible to work with! Any suggestions on natural things to mix with my clay to give better drainage? I've had sand suggested but it seems that would do nothing for the quality of the soil. Thanks!


Happy Mommy: I have heard of people using sand, and whenever I put together a mix to do starter plants from seeds, I use a mix of 1/3 sand, 1/3 soil, and 1/3 organic mix of some sort. The sand really does loosen it up, but since sand really demands a lot more water in a garden I do two things to loosen it up. First as listed below I use gypsum. It does help the soil obtain a better aeration, and along with calcium, it provides it with sulfur. The main thing I do is to constantly mix in organic materials into my soils every chance I get. It is a long process, but building your soil into the rich garden that you want can, and will, take years to get to that point. Sure you can buy a lot of stuff from bags, but remember we are trying to make this a low cost project ( at least I am) that gives you back a large amount of food over the years. It is funny whenever I put a load of grass down in just two or three of my rows, I can really feel the difference when I work it with my rototiller. It is so much easier to work the soil. You will get there before you know it.

Anonymous said...
I have a 3 part question: I want to make an raised organic veggie garden in my backyard. For the last l5 years, however, my husband has used chemicals there (it is all grass) and pesticides. Once I dig out the area I want planted and put in my planter box, I cannot figure out (1) what to use to fill it with that is organic and (2) where do I buy it? Ideally it will be about l2 inches in depth, 6 feet long and 4 feet wide. Also, because the ground around the boxes may contain chemicals, (3) will those old chemicals leach into my "organic" space from below? I have gotten him to agree to not use chemicals on the lawn any more and will only use organic methods of fertilizing but don't want to do all this work only to have the old stuff somehow spoil my organic beds. Thank you for your help in these matters.

Dear Anonymous:

Well unless your husband is using a sterile product which it appears he is not using, you will be fine. You are not going to try to sell organic produce out of this plot, so I think you just need to proceed. If you saw my other post you will notice on something that you are just trying to start growing stuff in, I recommend the old 1/3 sand, 1/3 soil, and 1/3 organic materials. There is a lot of organic made starter mix in large or small bags that you can buy now. So I pretty much read the labels and pick the one I like. Another thing that you may wish to do is start to mix your own components into the bed right away. Why not drop some grass clippings at the bottom of your raised beds first or some old leaves? Drop some worms in there too with some coffee grounds to feed them or some old non colored strips of news papers. The worms love this stuff. Keep it kind of moist as the worms like it cool and moist. I do not know where you live, but it is still probably cold where you are and you are not ready to plant yet. So make the raised bed, drop some goodies in the bottom and a few weeks before you plant bring the rest of your components and mix it all up and plant. Always keep in mind your soil is made up of million of little organisms and they must be fed, fed, fed.

One more thing; please never use old railroad ties to make a raised bed as those creosote logs will allow this stuff to seep into and poison your soil. Also, those ties are roach magnets,

DR KNOW SERIES 2

To continue where we left off, there are what I consider the basics. There are a few more amendments that you should add to your garden. First, I always put in a bag of gypsum. It is cheap and natural. It contains the calcium that is so important to your soil to have and also sulfur. On top of this, it actually helps to aerate your soil. Now something that I have started to do is spray a foliar spray on to my plants. I use something called BioFlora and it contains 72 trace elements and it restores the vitamins and minerals that are no longer in the soil that the plants used to take up. This has been caused by years of farming the same land and now the vegetables are not nearly as nutritious as say 100 years ago. You can use a lot of products such as kelp that will do basically the same thing. A great magazine to subscribe to is called ACRES USA. This is a magazine for organic farmers and has advertisements for all kind of companies. The one problem I found that some of these sprays have particle sizes that are so large that they plugged up my foliar sprayers, so I switched to BioFlora for this reason. I bought a five gallon bucket for about fifty dollars and since you dilute it down, it will last for years. So as you can see. I really try to keep my investment to a minimum as gardening can be really expensive if you let it. People are always amazed at how little I do spend on my crops. Next time let us take a look at insect prevention.

DR KNOW ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS

Anonymous said...
Can you give us some tips on natural pest control? We find the bugs get to our garden before we can! This is our third year gardening and we would love to know what you recommend!
We are located in NC and the soil is mostly clay.


For tips on pest control, You may not be too happy with what I have to say, and that in most cases in my garden I let happen what ever happens. I find that if I apply natural pest control, it not only drives out the bad insects, but the good ones too. So I try to let nature balance things out. A quick story. We all know what tomato hornworms are. We hate them as they can invade our gardens with a vengeance and one morning we come out and half our tomato plants are eaten up. Anyway once I decided to go organic, a funny thing happened. The tomato worms went away and did not come back. Why of course, was because their natural enemies came into the garden and took them out! I would have never believed it if it had not happened to me. I no longer worry about holes in my cabbage or eggplant I accept it, and if someone says something about my organic food when I am selling it, I just say well if there are no pesticides on it, you will see a little insect damage. Now I will admit that the one thing that even I cannot put up with sometimes is a strong invasion of aphids. So I do two things; one is a go down to a local feed store and buy diatomaceous earth and spread it all over my plants that are invaded too much. Normally it is my watermelons and cantaloupes. If you do not know what that is, it is when the seas receded in places like Death Valley in California and left these smaller shelled animals to die and left this layer of these guys called diatomaceous earth. The sharp shells that are minute cut into the soft bodies of the aphids as they crawl all over the plant and it kills them . I is much cheaper in the feed stores than from seed supply companies, as ranchers use it in the stables as a way to control the fly and the larva populations. The other thing that I do is I take garlic and the hottest peppers that I can find and mix them in a blender. I then pour this into a cheesecloth and set that into the top of my sprayer and let it soak into the water. The heat of the peppers and the stink of the garlic will drive the insects ( works on most of them anyway) off of your plants, and after you spray your garden and come back into the house, the smell will mean that you sleep on the couch tonight! The other thing that you should consider is planting bait plants that will attract the bugs that are getting to your main crops. You will see organic farmers do this a lot. So maybe they are trying to save their tomatoes from the horn worm . Well the hornworms will eat peppers also. So you plant these around the tomatoes as a barrier and they go after this crop instead of the tomatoes. It works, but for me I prefer the spray and the earth. I hope this helps but think about what I said of trying not to use even natural pesticides: if you drive out the bad guys, you will drive out the good guys too.

DR KNOW ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS

Mama-cita Whitney said...
Sorry if this is a stupid question but what would you recommend for starting a compost and building up/feeding the soil in a vegetable garden?


Well for the question on compost, I again really think people make it more complex than it is. I mean you can do this and you can do that, but I just start a pile of leaves and keep cutting my grass and throwing it on top of the leaves , or just plain grass if I do not have any leaves and I keep it somewhat moist ( about the moistness of a wet sponge), and let it break down after 3-4 weeks I take a pitchfork and move the pile over and at the very bottom everything has broken down into a compost I take a shovel or the pitchfork and just take that out and spread it into the garden. I normally only do this in the winter when the soil is just too wet to work. In the warmer weather I really do not do a compost pile, I take the leaves and the grass and throw it in the garden every week and rototill it right into the soil. Your soil is alive and needs to eat. So why would you leave it in a pile to break down when you can take the same materials and mix it right in the soil as soon as you cut the grass or rake the leaves? While I could throw my food scraps into the garden ( I do throw the eggshells in for calcium) I give them instead to my chickens. They just lay better with fresh greens to eat , so I have to make a choice. Another thing that I do with the fresh cut grass is I use it to mulch around my plants that either have an issue with water shortages between watering, or with heat/sun issues. So if you see my garden you will notice that I always mulch my tomatoes and my peppers. These two guys really are sensitive to moisture fluctuations, and the peppers have trouble with too much heat. People are always amazed when I tell them I only water every two weeks. Yet the mulch keeps the moisture in, and the plants cooler. Also you will see less problems from tomatoes cracking by controlling the moisture and coolness levels with the mulch. Like I said when I first came on. Gardening should be fun and not a lot of work, We grow them to enjoy and not to become slaves to. People are always amazed when I tell them that I average only about 30 minutes a day in my garden, but it is true. We can buy the composters ( hey I had one), and buy the special chemicals to break it down, and all of that, and yes it works, but you don't really need to, and you will get results without spending all this money.

Dr.KNOW ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS

nonymous said...
How big should my garden be? I am married with one baby (not yet one).


Well that is a great question and one that only you can answer. I think the one thing that I finally figured out after being married forever is what my family likes to eat and does not like to eat. I would plant things like black eyed peas and discover that I was the only one that liked to eat them. Yet I found out that my family loved watermelons and cantaloupes. So by asking, it allowed me to figure out what to plant first of all, then I could figure my footage. Another thing is are you going to can or freeze any of your food. My wife likes to freeze tomatoes for the winter. One of my daughters likes to make tomato sauce and freeze it for use. Also if you are like me, I am forever planting new vegetables or herbs to see if we like them or not . It is fun to try stuff out. Like for me this year it was rutabagas, and last year it was parsnips. I also tried radicchio. Well guess what? Rutabagas and parsnips gained a spot in the garden. Another thing that I also do, and if you have limited space, is that I double crop. So I have a row of bok choy, onions, spinach, and carrots right now. So I planted tomatoes yesterday and as I did, I uprooted some of the vegetables that I had planted in the row already. As the tomatoes get bigger I harvest more of the earlier crop, thereby using less land and harvesting a lot more. You can do a lot of this if you plan it out.
To me if there are the two of you, right now I would think that you could get most of your immediate needs out of three fifty foot rows. I know my brother every year freezes a lot of his vegetables to the point he actually fills out one entire freezer for the winter. So if you are inclined to do this you really can save a lot of money. As you know food is really going up. I hope this helps you in your planning stages.

Sincerely,

Dr. Know

SPECIAL POSTING SERIES: DR KNOW

My father is an avid organic gardener and has volunteered to write a series for my blog. Please ask questions and he will answer them. Here is his first posting:

Starting in the month of February we are adding on a special section for organic and natural gardeners. It will be called Ask Dr. Know. You are welcome to write in at any time with your vegetable gardening or farming questions. I may not know all of the answers but I would do the best to find you an answer. I only have two minor requests: Please no questions on insects as I really do not feel that I can answer a lot of these questions without looking at your plants, and no questions about anything other than vegetables. I cannot eat flowers so I could care less about them. My background: I come from a long line of farmers and although I am not one at the moment, I am what you would call a market gardener. I grow products in an oversized garden and sell it to the end users. I ship into other states at times to customers, to local stores, to produce stands, and at the moment to three different organic cooperatives. I grow all natural and most would refer to me as organic. I do not use any chemicals on my crops nor do I use any chemical insecticides. So when you ask questions, it will be answered from an organic/natural viewpoint. I live in a zone 9 so my answers may differ a little depending on your zone.

I feel that many people ruin gardening for themselves and make more work out of it than it really is. If you are working that hard, then you cannot enjoy what gardening is all about. It is a wonderful hobby, it offends no one, and you can save a lot of money with little money invested in what you are doing. We have a chance to take what God has given us on this earth, and use it wisely to the best of our abilities.

In Arizona as many of you know, we garden year round. So for us we are in the garden weekly except when the ground is too wet to work it. The key here is that you must always remember that the soil is a living thing with all kinds of activity going on. You as the owner of this soil must remember that just like a child, that it must always be fed. Otherwise it will be stunted and not grow properly. It is estimated that roughly 10% of the organic matter that you put onto your soil is used up every year, so it does not take long for that soil to be depleted. For me the winter is a good time to take all of the leaves and put them in the rows of my garden and rototill them in to start to feed the little guys. It rains and it starts to break the leaves down along with the dead grass. Sometimes I will take my mower out and just mow the dead grass and mix that in with the soil. While I am not a big manure fan because of the possible build up of the salts in this alkali soil I do go to my chicken coop and throw in some chicken poop to heat things up a little. Of course the other thing is that when I cut my weeds down if they are not seeding yet, I mix this green fodder back into the soil also and let it break down. If the weeds are too big, I throw them to my goat or the chickens. The girls love the green food and oblige with a spike in their egg laying. Most people do not realize that if they had their way, chickens would prefer a diet of only about 20% of chicken feed of some sort, and the rest would be green fodder and insects.