Ten Tips for a Problem-Free, Super Productive Home Garden

[itchybromusic]

Part one http://blog.nutri-tech.com.au/ten-tips-home-garden-1/

 

There is nothing more satisfying than producing your own flavorsome, chemical-free, nutrient dense food in your own garden. In fact, your food garden is your ultimate wellness tool.

There are several problems associated with supermarket fruit and vegetables. There is no sense of personal responsibility from suppliers when all fresh food is bundled together. Faceless farmers have less motivation to deliver quality food. There is no personal connection with consumers and less motivation to do the right thing. Part of the reason for the rise and rise of farmers markets, relates to a growing desire for consumers to put a face to their food.

I have met some supermarket suppliers in my travels who will not eat their own produce. They have a separate patch out back, where they produce clean food for their family.

 

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We are assured that regulations related to minimum residue levels will protect us from chemical contaminants. However, there are two things we are not told. The first of these relates to something called the cocktail effect. What happens when we eat a tomato containing residues of the ten chemicals commonly used in the production of this vegetable? If you understand chemistry, you will recognise that when we combine two chemicals, we very often get a third.

The ten residues on your tomato can involve thousands of chemical combinations. Unfortunately, there has been no research into the safety of these combinations. In a rare study, funded by a US billionaire who had lost two wives to cancer, the researcher looked at just 100 combinations of ten chemicals found on food. He identified three new Class 3 carcinogens in the cocktail, which means the combinations were proven to give cancer to animals, but it is much less ethical to prove the same outcome in humans.

 

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The second issue relating to the inadequacy of the minimum residue concept involves something called bio-accumulation. How does our body manage the removal of these multiple chemical residues, even if they are present at just parts per million? The liver is the organ charged with this task. The liver orchestrates a two-phase detoxification process. It is designed to neutralise all natural contaminants, including snake venom, mercury and arsenic. However, this overworked organ is often not equipped to manage our man-made chemical constructs. The liver scans the offending chemical, recognises a problem and, rather than risk organ damage, the "foreign" contaminant is shunted off to the fat cells. Here, the residues accumulate and can become time bombs for trouble.

Animals are equipped with the same protective mechanism and, hence, it is never a wise plan to chew the fat on the bacon rind or to savour the fat of any confinement animal. It is a little like karma. We poison the desperate creatures with drugs and antibiotics to enable their existence in an overcrowded hell, then we are poisoned with the same accumulated chemicals while enjoying the fruits of our labours.

So perhaps you are now thinking it might be a good idea to produce your own food, and you could not be more correct. If you can feed your body with at least 50% clean, nutrient dense food, research has shown that these inputs can effectively help neutralise the negatives in a crazy world with 74,000 registered chemicals and countless other toxins.

Here are some productive strategies for the home food garden:

 

Ten Productive Strategies

 

1) Harvest immediately before consumption

Come home from work and harvest your potatoes, corn, broccoli and salad vegetables directly before dinner. Arise in the morning and harvest your fresh fruit or smoothie greens, immediately before they become breakfast. There is a major loss of nutrition associated with storage. A snow pea, for example, loses 50% of its vitamin C content within 12 hours of harvest. Most fresh food from the supermarket is several days old by the time of purchase. There is no comparison between this compromised produce and your freshly picked ‘champagne food’. If you have surplus, then snap freeze the extras as soon as they are harvested. There is only 5% of nutrition lost though freezing, so it a great way to capture your fresh food at its best, to savour at a later stage.

 

 

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2) Interplant lucerne with everything

Buy a packet of lucerne seed and grow a host of seedlings in trays or pots. Liberally plant those lucerne seedlings throughout your food garden. Legumes like lucerne offer three distinct benefits:

1 , They fix nitrogen from the atmosphere to help supplement the nitrogen requirements of all other inhabitants of your garden

2 ,They constantly release acid exudates from their roots to break the bond between calcium and phosphate in your soil. These two minerals form insoluble bonds due to their opposing electrical charges. The biological acids from legumes serve to release this bond and to trickle-feed both of these liberated minerals into the surrounding soil. Calcium and phosphate are the two of the most important minerals for photosynthesis, the most important process on the planet

3 , The acid exudates of legumes like lucerne encourage the proliferation of beneficial fungi, the creatures most missing in many of our soils.

 

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Inter-plantings of lucerne actually offer more than the trio of benefits I have just described. The lucerne leaves can be harvested as a super-alkalising, nutrient-rich inclusion in your salads or green smoothies. The flowers are a sweet delicacy to die for. However, it is the chop-and-drop benefit of this plant that is most notable. When you regularly trim your lucerne interplanting with a whipper snipper, you are constantly creating the best fertilising mulchavailable. Lucerne mulch has no compare. It has a 30:1 carbon to nitrogen ratio that makes it a superfood in the soil. The very best compost features this same 30:1, C:N ratio.

Lucerne mulch attracts a thriving population of protozoa, chasing the high protein in this food. Protozoa, in turn, attract the mighty earthworm. In fact, protozoa is the favorite food of earthworms. They arrive from nowhere and begin aerating, fertilising and generally regenerating your garden. Lucerne also contains triacontanol in its outer waxy coating. This fatty alcohol is the first recognised plant growth promoter linked to a fat. If you were to water a Lactobacillus-based inoculum like Nutri-Life BAM™ onto your chop-and-drop lucerne mulch, there can be great gain. There is evidence that the lactic acid produced by these organisms can release triacontanol from your lucerne mulch. You will be delighted when you witness the outcome of this release.

 

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3) Use worm juice liberally

 

Worm juice is the liquid that you have passed through your worm farm – often two or three times, to increase concentration. The liquid contains billions of beneficial organisms that are unique to the earthworm. The digestion of the worm involves no enzymes. It is conducted by a diverse group of organisms that are incubated in the earthworm gut and can not be found anywhere else. If your soil is lacking in earthworms, then you are not enjoying the wonderful benefits bestowed by this unique microbial community. Worm juice lets you reclaim that concert. In fact, you can take 200 mL of this remarkable liquid and expand it out to 20 L of a liquid biofertiliser treat, through "brewing" it in a 20 L bucket for 24 hours.

 

 

 

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4) Correct your soil pH

 

There are two reasons for this strategy.

 

1 , Nutrient uptake is pH-dependent. An ideal soil pH of 6.4 ensures that you will be accessing the optimum amount of mineral nutrition for the fresh food you are producing. You can test your pH with an inexpensive kit from NTS (the Eco pH Meter Kit™). You simply mix soil and water in a 1:5 ratio and then dip the pH meter into the muddy solution.

 

2 , The second reason for correcting soil pH relates to all-important calcium. This is the most important mineral in your garden because it determines the uptake of other minerals, while opening up your soil (flocculating). Flocculation allows easy entry for oxygen, the most important of all elements for healthy, resilient plants. Calcium also facilitates ease of exit for CO2, a byproduct of the "breathing" of plant roots and the army of organisms that surround them. In a calcium-enriched garden, CO2 freely diffuses from the soil and is captured by the tiny pores beneath the leaves, called stomata. Within the leaf, it is combined with water and sunlight to facilitate photosynthesis.

 

 

 

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If your soil is acidic (below 6.4), you might typically require 2 kg of lime per 10 m2 in a clay soil, or half that in a light soil. Check your pH 12 months later to see if further adjustment is needed. You may also need to include dolomite with the lime in light sandy soils. Dolomite contains magnesium, which also helps alkalise your soil, while greening up your crop. Magnesium is the centrepiece of the green pigment, chlorophyll, which houses the sugar factories, so it is of paramount importance for photosynthesis and plant health.

 

In Part 2, we will look at the six remaining strategies to maximise production, minimise problems and optimise quality.

 

[AussieBogan]

You are a walking and talking encyclopedia to gardening!...

 

Will definitely hook in have a read when I get the time!

[micmac]

Yeah bogan had two goes to get through it all, now I know why the dolomite is in the line!

[AussieBogan]

Oyster shells for the win[emoji16]

[sunseeker]

Thanks Itchy, that's a good read

[itchybromusic]

thanks guys but Graeme Saitnt of NTS is the writer & has some cool things to say me thinks , while selling the odd item or 2 along the way 

[AussieBogan]

I was just zapping through their site the other night...

[GREENQUEEN]

A good informative read,thanks for sharing itchy

 

Posted from the OZ Stoners mobile app

[itchybromusic]

I was just zapping through their site the other night...

he has something about canna on there site or maybe it's hemp 

A good informative read,thanks for sharing itchy

 

Posted from the OZ Stoners mobile app

no worries 

[itchybromusic]

http://blog.nutri-tech.com.au/ten-tips-home-garden-2/

 

 

 

Ten Tips for a Problem-Free, Super Productive Home Garden (Part 2)

 

In the second part of this three-part feature, we will look at more strategies to maximise the nutrient density and production of your home grown food,

while optimising your gardening fun. Newcomers are often discouraged by a spindly, pest-prone first crop. This article is designed to ensure the opposite.

 

 

5) Direct inject your nutrition

We literally are what we eat, and what we eat comes from soils that are often sadly depleted. However, the issue of growing our own nutrition is not just

about addressing what is missing from the soil. Sometimes it is about compensating for our excesses.

There is a powerful interplay between minerals, where one mineral can affect the uptake of several others, either positively or negatively. Excesses of one

mineral in your garden, for example, can negatively affect the uptake of several others. Phosphate is a great example, as it is so often oversupplied in the

home garden. When we overdo this mineral with too much pelletised chicken manure, we inadvertently shut down the uptake of calcium, potassium, zinc,

iron and copper. Calcium and copper are critical for disease resistance in plants and all five minerals are important for the resilience of your family.

The solution here is to ensure optimum plant nutrition by bypassing the soil and injecting complete nutrition directly into the leaf. In much the same way

that transdermal magnesium is ten times more efficient than oral supplementation for our bodies, foliar fertilising is 12 times more efficient than mineral

delivery via the soil.

Applying nutrition to the leaf might seem like another job in our time starved worlds, but the secret is to make it easy. Your wrists will soon burn when

squeezing a 1 L spray bottle to foliar feed your food crops, so choose something more efficient and less tiresome, right from the start. A good quality backpack

with a lever pump is one good option, but you might also consider a motorised spray mister to seriously fast-track this direct inject approach.

This is one time when cost should not be your limiting factor. Your garden is your ultimate wellness tool. Consider the cost of the degenerative illness you

may be sidestepping, and you will soon appreciate this protective perspective.

 

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Choose Complete Foliar Nutrition – Don't be Lost Without a Trace

The most constructive approach in the production of nutrient dense, medicinal food with forgotten flavors, involves covering all bases. You need the full

spectrum of minerals in your food, including a complete range of trace minerals. Trace minerals are spark plugs that trigger multiple processes related to

plant health, including plant immunity. They are equally important in our own wellness and resilience, and the plant is infinitely superior to the supplement

bottle as a pathway to improved health and longevity. Plant-derived minerals are 98% bioavailable, while those from the bottle have less than half that efficiency.

We were simply supposed to derive our nutrition from our food, as the founder of modern medicine, Hippocrates, so eloquently suggested 

"Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food".

Choose a foliar fertiliser that covers as many bases as possible. Unfortunately, it is not possible to include all minerals in a single formula, because of incompatibilities

between major minerals like calcium and phosphate. However, two foliar fertilisers, alternated each week or two, can deliver total nutrition.

Life Force® Total Cover™, from NTS, is part one of this twin-pack approach. This revolutionary foliar fertiliser will make you a direct-inject convert after the very

first application because the visual response is so pronounced. This complex formula comprises over 30 ingredients, including major minerals, chelated micronutrients,

natural plant growth promoters, humates, vitamins, amino acids and kelp. The only minerals missing are calcium and magnesium, as they are incompatible with the

phosphorus found in Total Cover™.

 

Life Force® Trio™ is the second component of this powerful twin-pack. This foliar fertiliser features the chelated calcium and magnesium missing in Total Cover™,

and it also contains a little extra boron (a mineral seriously deficient in most home gardens). Both fertilisers are diluted at 1 part to 150 parts of water so a 500 mL bottle

of concentrate produces 75 L of useable foliar fertiliser. This is usually sufficient for a full crop cycle.

 

 

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6) Measure for mastery

When you understand the importance of wholesome home food production, it becomes clear that mastery of this process can be a priceless asset. Just as you

can benefit from the precision nutrition that comes from testing your blood, hair, saliva or urine to determine your requirements, you should not drive blind in

your food garden. You can measure for mastery in your garden crops with two simple, inexpensive monitoring tools.

 

 

The Refractometer

 

This 15 cm tube-like viewing device measures nutrient density. It is literally measuring your skills as a food producer. You simply squeeze some juice from

the leaf of your food crop with a garlic press, and place a few drops of juice on the sloping screen of this sawn-off telescope. Close the hinged flap over the

juice-covered screen and look through the lens, while aiming the device toward the sun.

Sunlight refracts off the dissolved solids in the plant sap and you are measuring something called degrees of brix. Brix levels are a direct guide of food value.

The higher the brix levels, the more flavorsome the food, the greater the medicinal value and the longer the shelf-life. This simple, easy-to-use tool offers direct

feedback as to your growing skills. It can also be a great way to monitor the success or effectiveness of whatever you apply to your garden, i.e., you will usually

see a marked rise in brix levels following an application of a complete fertiliser like Life Force® Total Cover™. This invaluable tool can also reduce the stress

associated with battling bad bugs. The higher the brix levels, the lower the pest pressure, as insects and disease generally arrive when nutrition is substandard.

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The refractometer can also be used as a meter to monitor the most important of all minerals, calcium. When you look through the eyepiece, you are looking

at something similar to an old school fuel gauge (see picture). If the brix levels are low, you are literally lacking the fuel to optimise your crop. However, you

can observe more than this. If the line that intersects the two hemispheres is stark and distinct, then you are lacking calcium, the trucker of all minerals.

The intersecting line should always be indistinct. In fact, you are trying to fuel the fuzz. There's a t-shirt phrase with a difference! A fuzzy line spells good

calcium and good mineralisation and, as such, it will also herald a problem-free crop and a smile on your face.

 

Sap pH as a Problem Solver

 

Brilliant American Scientist, Bruce Tainio, discovered that the pH of plant sap can be an invaluable guideline as to crop quality, resilience and productivity.

There is a specialist meter developed to measure plant sap pH in agriculture, but it is too expensive for all but the most avid of home garden enthusiasts.

However, there is an incredibly cheap option to monitor sap pH from upper and lower leaves. This involves purchasing a set of NTS pH Test Strips for $4.95 (AUD).

These are a little different from the common pH strips used to monitor swimming pools, because they measure in finer gradients (i.e., increments of 0.1).

Here, you simply squeeze sap from the top and bottom leaves with a garlic crusher and then separately drip this sap onto the two pH strips. The colour

change on the strips will indicate relative pH. If the bottom leaves have a lower pH than the top leaves (according to the chart supplied), then you have,

in all likelihood, identified a potassium deficiency and it is time to act.

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You will not believe how productive this simple test may prove, because you are achieving fingertip control of a major mineral.

For example, the brown spot that so often appears on the lower leaves of your tomato, capsicum, eggplant and potato plants, is a

classic symptom of potassium deficiency. This super mobile mineral has departed the lower leaves, dropped the sap pH and called

in the disease organisms. You can foliar spray Life Force® Organic Blooms™, or a similar potassium based fertiliser to address this shortage.

 

In Part 3 of this article, we will look at why it is so critical to avoid naked soil. We will also consider the importance of plant

selection and rotation, and we will discuss strategies to feed the workforce beneath your feet.