Great tips and instruction on vegetable

gardening - for the best garden possible

We’ll cover a few hot topics here, and you can also go to our frequently asked questions (FAQ) section to get tips and answers to ALL your vegetable gardening questions.

Let’s start by answering your questions and concerns about:

. Trying to grow a garden in soil so hard you can’t even dig into it.

· Trying to grow in Soil so worn out and bad that it won’t grow ANYTHING.

· Using chemicals on plants that you plan on eating.

· Adding toxic wastes to your water supply.

· New seedlings that die almost as soon as they’re placed in the garden.

· Starting early enough to get a decent crop in your cool climate.

· Dealing With Weeds that overpower the vegetables every year.

· Bugs and Diseases that ruin everything that manages to get the best of the weeds.

And if your question still hasn’t been answered just ask, and one of our best and most experienced vegetable gardening experts will answer your questions.

Then we’ll help you focus on some POSITIVES,  with vegetable gardening tips on how to:

• Grow 5 times as much tasty produce in ½ the space you’ve used in the past.
• Use half the water traditional methods require.
• Eliminate losses from rodents & other animal pests.
• Have fun gardening for a change, because you see success quickly!
• Grow a sustainable high-yield garden in any soil – with no soil amendments.
• Extend the growing season by 4 to 8 weeks both spring and fall.

Whether you’re into container gardening, organic gardening, traditional or hydroponic gardening, by following these vegetable gardening tips you’ll have success like never before.

We’ve included a free Gardening Techniques ebook on the Foundation’s website in the Learn section, which includes the complete Mittleider Method Gardening Basics Course.

These are Food For Everyone Foundation’s gift to you, and part of our mission to help families world-wide learn to grow their own food inexpensively in sustainable gardens, in any soil.

Any soil you say?! While many folks think the richness of the soil is the single most important factor in gardening success, you’re about to discover that highly productive gardens can be grown in any non-toxic soil.

And for those of you who have no soil custom soils for containers, which we call Grow-Boxes, can be made easily and inexpensively.

Mittleider vegetable gardens are even healthier and more productive than traditional organic gardens.  The method has often been called “the best of organic”. Why?

• You don’t invite problems by bringing animal excrement or by-products into your garden
• You never guess what your plants need or what they’re getting. Instead you feed your soil with a balanced supply of natural mineral nutrients that guarantee healthy plants
• You care for the environment, never adding toxic materials to the soil or the groundwater.

The Mittleider vegetable gardening books described below will teach you true gardening principles and procedures, and give you all the tips and techniques you need to be the best gardener in your community.

You can become a back-yard Master Gardener on any gardening subject you want.

• Learn to grow your own seedlings, and how to grow in containers, with Gardening by the Foot.

• Learn “the poor man’s hydroponic system”, with its intensive high-yield methods of producing tomatoes and other vegetables with Let’s Grow Tomatoes

• Learn how organic gardening is supposed to be done, and how to produce great yields of healthy vegetables in ANY SOIL with NO soil amendments, or how to
• Build your own greenhouse and extend both your Spring & Fall growing seasons with Grow-Bed Gardening

• Multiply your garden yield many times by growing vertically, as taught in several of the books, including The Mittleider Gardening Course

These principles are taught clearly and simply in a step-by-step straight-forward how-to format, with hundreds of graphic illustrations, and pictures of actual productive gardens that show you the best techniques for vegetable gardening success no matter where you live.

You’ll love the vegetable gardening books written by Dr. Mittleider! Created from his 60 years of world-wide vegetable gardening experience, these richly illustrated books will also show you how to have fun while growing a great garden.

NEW - - - Mittleider Gardening Books Now Available for Download! Save 40%!!

For the first time ever several of the Mittleider Method vegetable gardening books, plus all 9 subject-specific manuals, are available in digital format for immediate download.

You can now get the best of Dr. Mittleider’s great gardening books instantly, and at a cost at least 40% lower than the paper copies – as digital downloads.

Do you want to grow in containers? Three great books show you the way graphically and with hundreds of pictures. They include:

• Gardening By The Foot
• Let’s Grow Tomatoes, and
• The Mittleider Gardening Course (Grow-Box section)

Growing right in the soil is no problem either, no matter how bad your soil is, and these three books make it so easy and enjoyable, you will have fun growing the best garden in town!

* Grow Bed Gardening

* 6 Steps to Successful Gardening, and

* The Mittleider Gardening Course (Grow-Bed section)

All of the digital books & the manuals are available in either PDF or word format.

Simply go to www.howtoorganicgarden.com, click on Digital Products, and have a great gardening experience today!

Can I grow successfully in Hard Clay or in

Worn-out Soils?

What Can I do to Grow In My Heavy Clay Soil?

You do NOT have to replace your heavy clay soil with something better, nor do you need to add tons and tons of sand and/or compost.

To start off you simply eliminate all weeds, dig or till the soil, measure and stake your garden area into 18”-wide beds with at least 3’-wide aisles, and make raised, level, ridged beds, as described in the FREE ebook, in the Learn section of the Food For Everyone Foundation website at www.foodforeveryone.org, and in all the vegetable gardening books by Dr. Jacob R. Mittleider at www/growfood.com.

That and just a little bit more. Just add three simple steps beyond the above procedures that apply to ANY soil, you can have excellent success with your clay soil - without amending it!

1) When you plant seed, use the handle of your hoe or rake to make a straight shallow furrow along the inside edge of the ridges.  For small seeds the furrow should be only ½” deep, and for large seeds it should be 1” deep.

Mix the seed you’re planting with 100 parts sand and apply evenly and sparingly in the furrow. This greatly minimizes the inevitable thinning that is otherwise necessary.

2) Then, instead of covering the seed with clay soil, cover it with a shallow layer (1/8″ for small seed and ¼” for large seed) of clean sand.  You will have much better germination and emergence of your seeds if they don’t have to fight their way through that heavy clay.

3) After planting and after you water your soil-beds, when the soil begins to crack as it loses moisture, apply just a few pounds of sand per 30’-long bed to the cracks in the planting area of each grow-bed and water the sand into the cracks.  The sand will fill the cracks and eliminate the cracking. You may need to do it a second time, but this will stop the drying and breaking of your plant roots that cracking clay soil usually causes.

What type or condition of soil must I have to

produce the best results?

All types of soil will produce the same healthy, high quality and heavy yield in food crops except land with standing water on it or toxic substances in it.

How is it done? Simply by restoring the essential plant nutrients to the soil.

The water-soluble minerals in soils, which plants use for food, have been leached by rainfall and irrigation, out of the soil for thousands of years into creeks, rivers and oceans. This has greatly reduced the water-soluble minerals available in the soil, and thus soils everywhere are less fertile. The floor of every ocean and sea in the world contains these solidified minerals, which were once on dry land.

These same minerals, from rocks mined from the earth, are packaged, inexpensive, and available worldwide for use in your gardens. Their nutrient content is high and accurately determined - almost always far greater than comparably priced “organic” nutrients.

The quality of your soil will not keep you from having an excellent garden if you follow the procedures outlined on the website and in Dr. Mittleider’s books and videos, and if you feed your plants properly. A little natural mineral nutrient fertilizer goes a long way toward solving the worst soil problems.

And here’s the simplest way to do it. Get two packets of pre-mixed micro-nutrients from the Food For Everyone Foundation, so that you don’t have to search for them individually. We ship two 8 ½ ounce packets, each of which is mixed with 20# of 16-16-16, or whatever similar mix is available at your nursery or farm supply store, plus 3# of Epsom Salt (magnesium sulfate) that you can get at any drug store. The Micro Mix is $13.95 for two packets plus shipping. It is the surest and easiest way to assure you have the nutrients you need.

Hard-Pan Clay Soil That Doesn’t Drain Usable

for Garden?

Are you like this person? “We are living in a very bad hard-pan soil area.  When I dig a hole and add water, the water will stay for days.”

Many families only have heavy, clay soil in which to grow gardens, and some have asked how to drain the soil so it isn’t too wet to grow in.  Following is a little history of commercial clay soil gardening in the USA and Russia, along with some suggestions.

The Imperial valley of California grows some of the most prolific and healthy vegetable crops anywhere in the world.  The soil is hard, heavy clay, and before it was drained it was so saturated with salt the crops were very poor.

This condition existed because the Colorado River had for centuries deposited salty water on the land, which evaporated leaving the salt residue.  At first the farmers tried applying large amounts of water in attempts to drive the salt down, but the benefits were short-lived.

Finally in the 40’s, the farmers put underground tile drainage systems in, consisting of 4″ drainage pipes buried more than 4′ in the ground at intervals of about 100′, which all led to larger drainage ditches and etc.  Today they produce over $1 billion in vegetables per year.

You can also grow great gardens in your clay soil, but if it’s wet or saline you may need to drain it.  In Russia Dr. Mittleider’s students dug drainage ditches 10-12″ wide and 2′ deep to drain a small parcel of “waste” ground loaned to them by the Soviet authorities.  It quickly became so prolific and beautiful the authorities gave them 23 acres!

That ground is now the site for the most famous and productive family-based gardening agriculture school in all of the Russian Commonwealth Countries.  http://www.ipmce.su/~vk/mm/mm_intro.html.   And millions of Russian families, themselves growing in clay soil, credit the Mittleider Method for giving them self-sufficiency in their food production.  http://www.ipmce.su/~vk/mm/images/g_i1a.jpg

The Mittleider Grow-Beds consisting of level, raised, ridged soil-beds themselves assist in the drainage process on clay soil.  But if you have very high rain-fall, you may need to leave the ends open during the rainy season.  Beyond that, either open drainage ditches, or buried drain pipes, as described above, will solve your wet-soil problems.

So long as you have plenty of sunshine and access to water, the soil is no problem!

We promise “a great garden in any soil, and in almost any climate.”   And we mean it.

If you feel the clay soil is just too hard to work with, and you’d rather not fight it, then build Grow-Boxes and grow your food above-ground.  Several Mittleider gardening books show you how, including Gardening By the Foot and Lets Grow Tomatoes.  And The Mittleider Gardening Course has a section devoted just to Grow-Box gardening.

Concerned about using “chemicals” on plants you

plan on eating?

Two typical areas of concern – contamination of food & the ground water.

A natural concern of many people is the use of mineral nutrients from commercial sources in their vegetable gardens.

They want to know if minerals would, or even could 1) contaminate the food they eat or cause other problems, or 2) cause a toxic build-up in the soil and leach into the groundwater, eventually adding to the problems we have in our streams, rivers, and oceans.

We have an answer to those concerns.

1) Plants fed with mineral nutrients constitute 90+% of our food supply in the United States, and higher than that in the Netherlands, which has the healthiest population in the world. Rather than minerals being a potential health problem, using organic materials to feed plants has several drawbacks and hazards.

Most manure and compost has not been sterilized, and therefore can have diseases, bugs, and weed seeds in it, which will flourish in your garden and substantially reduce your yield.  In addition, there is some risk of people getting infected from something that’s toxic to humans as well, such as Mad Cow Disease.

Unless the organic material HAS been composted very efficiently in an aerobic process, which is very rare and requires sustained temperatures of 140+ for several weeks, you run the risk of the aforementioned problems.

In addition to the foregoing, you may get much lower nutritional value in your vegetables. This is because

you do not know what or how much you are feeding your plants, since every batch of manure or compost is different, and because none of them have been analyzed to determine their nutrient content.  You can expect the manure to have much LESS nutrition than the original plant contained because of going through the cow, then sitting in a compost pile for months in the rain and snow.

2) In 1998 Dr. Mittleider and I hired two highly respected soil labs to perform extensive tests for us regarding this very question.  The two labs were Stukenholtz Labs, in Twin Falls, Idaho, and the Brigham Young University Soil Testing Lab, in Provo, Utah.

Under supervision, and according to specific instructions from the labs, we drilled holes for 45 tests.  Three gardens were tested for build-up of fertilizer salts.  Test cores were used at 1′, 2′, and 3′ depths in each hole.

One garden was Dr. Mittleider’s own backyard garden, which had been used for 21 years at that time; the second location was my garden at Utah’s Hogle Zoo, which had been used for 9 years; and the third garden was a very visible large garden 20 miles South of Salt Lake City at a place called Thanksgiving Point, which had been in use for 4 years.

There was NO toxic build-up of salts in ANY of the test sites.  There was NO indication of ANY fertilizer being flushed into waste-water systems.  And some of the test holes even had LOWER salt levels than the controls, which were taken from non-fertilized aisles and garden periphery.

This did not surprise us (although it surely did surprise a couple of people who had suggested we were polluting the ground water), because we use very little mineral salts, and we spread their application over the growing season, instead of applying them all at once, as those who apply manure often do.

We only apply 7+ ounces of fertilizer salts to about 3,300# of soil, and do it every 7 days, but for most crops we only apply it 4 or 5 times.  Ever-bearing crops might get 8 to 12 applications, spread over several months.

Compare this to the many POUNDS of fertilizer salts organic growers apply to their gardens ALL AT ONCE before planting.  That concentrated one-time application is much more likely to cause run-off or seepage into the groundwater than the small amounts the Mittleider gardener applies.

Our vegetables are healthier, because they receive their nutrition throughout the season, as they need it.  And being very healthy, they are less susceptible to problems from diseases and pests as well.

Controlling pests in the garden

Pest control is very important to the successful gardener! Cultural practices, such as eliminating all weeds and grass from your garden, including the outside edges, is very important. This will minimize their opportunity to migrate in from other places. Also, maintaining dry wide aisles will reduce their opportunities for spreading. And growing healthy, vigorous plants will reduce pests’ effectiveness more than anything else. This is one of the great benefits of The Mittleider Method, since plants are not in the ground long enough for pest populations to become a serious problem.

In order to learn the various types of bugs, and be able to distinguish which are harmful and how to attack them, I recommend you study chapter 20 in The Mittleider Gardening Course or Lecture #22 in the Video Lecture Series (available directly from jim@growfood.com), for specific information.

Also, there is good information available on the internet. Two articles I particularly like are one by the University of Florida at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/VH036, and one by Oklahoma State U at http://www.okstate.edu/OSU_Ag/agedcm4h/pearl/insects/grdnbugs/f7313.htm.

Diseases - Prevention and Control

Food For Everyone, a college-level textbook by Dr. Jacob R. Mittleider, has important chapters on both pest and disease control. For the serious grower this book is highly recommended.

As with controlling pests in the garden, we recommend that your first line of defense against disease is the use of several important “cultural practices” that include:

1) Maintaining a totally weed-free garden with wide, dry aisles,

2) Pruning leaves off the ground,

3) Watering only at the soil level (never sprinkle) and only in the actual root area,

4) Growing seedlings in a protected environment and transplanting stocky, healthy seedlings into the garden,

5) Feeding plants a complete, balanced natural mineral nutrient mix that encourages healthy, rapid growth,

6) Harvesting when crops are mature, and

7) If using row covers or “mini greenhouses,” open the ends on cool days (50+), and set the covers to one side on warm days (65+), to maximize sunlight and circulation, and reduce excess humidity build-up.  By following these procedures your problems with pests and disease will be rare.

You may have been doing all of these things, and only the increased humidity and warmth of the row covers could give disease an opening.  If you are experiencing Downy Mildew, a fungus disease, general symptoms for all affected vegetable crops, which usually happen under high-humidity conditions, include spots appearing on leaves and a downy white or gray mold developing in these spots or on the undersides of the leaves opposite these spots.

With broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts, dark spots may develop on the heads as well as the leaves. Black streaks may be visible on stems and a white fuzzy growth may develop. Seedlings are especially affected.

The best solutions are preventative, and constitute physical controls, such as I have described above. Also, it’s important to remove and burn all old leaves.

If you have the problem, if it is not too widespread, I recommend you remove all affected plants immediately and improve the physical conditions as much as possible.

Biological control is your last option, short of removing the entire crop.

“Wettable sulfur, sprayed on tomatoes every two weeks at a rate of 2 tablespoons per gallon will absolutely prevent mildew. And….it is cheap.

“One tablespoon of wettable sulfur to one gallon of water sprayed on squash leaves AFTER you have removed all infected leaves will control mildew on your squash.

“Preventive spraying is the best way to control mildew and only spray in the evening when the leaves of your plants have had a chance to cool down. Spraying on hot leaves will burn them. Ditto with tomatoes.

Cucumbers are a problem and they do not like sulfur. Skim milk seems to do well on cukes.

Keeping all leaves that do not look perfect removed daily from your plants, tomatoes, cukes, squash, goes a long way in preventing the spread of the mildew. Mildew, after all, is a fungus and spreads via spores that blow in the wind.” Contributed by Joanne “pathaj” from Southern California

Several chemicals are sold to control downy mildew, including Benomyl, Copper, Folpet, Lime Sulfur, Sulfur and chlorothalonil.  Counsel with the store from which you obtain any of these materials, and always, when using pesticides, read the entire label on the container and follow the directions.  Because mildew will built up a resistance to fungicides over time, especially Benomyl, if the problem persists you will need to consider changing the materials used occasionally.