http://www.organichomegardener.com
TRAILERS TO DVD’s ‘ORGANIC GARDENING MADE EASY’ & ‘THE ORGANIC TOMATO’
Advertisement
OFFICIAL EARTH GARDENING dvds ~ by Lee O’Hara
The URI to TrackBack this entry is: http://lee0hara.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/official-earth-gardening-dvd-by-lee-ohara/trackback/
Lee:
What a great-looking video! This information will become increasingly essential very, very soon and you’re doing a real service by making it available. Most people are defeated before they even begin because they just don’t know how to start, but your presentation removes all the doubt and insecurity. I look forward to seeing more.
Blessings, Burt Kemperer, filmmaker – Florida
I am all for growing your own food! Great blog! ~ Phoenix
And to take this a step further, the medicine that grows nearest you has the closest vibrational match to your body. Wild crafted herbal medicine is related to much of what you’re saying here. I’m a huge fan of the work of herbalist Susun Weed. Thanks for this blog. ~ Janet
Phoenix, I can help you get started whether its 3 feet, a cherry tomato size pot or acres and am thrilled to be your guide…and help your kids learn. Whatever veggie they like, I will tell you where to get the seeds and how to make the soil nutritious.
Janet, Thanks for the Susun Weed link Janet. That does make sense about the closest vibrational match to our bodies…I am going to check it out thoroughlly.
Kathy, thanks and below is for you and the blog from the other day if you want to share.
Somebody asked me the other day what they could do “to show their love for the environment.”
We think of “the environment” in some vague way. We think of the North Slope in Alaska, off-shore drilling, the Polar Bear and other distant tools of distraction used by special interest groups on both sides. The media promotes the tragedy of it all, primarily because the special interest groups on both sides have the advertising dollars to pay them to keep us distracted.
We all have at least some awareness that re-cycling is important. We don’t know exactly how or why that is, or how it all works, but we’re sure of it.
We’re sure the climate is changing, but we don’t honestly know if we caused it, or whether or not we can do anything about it.
It occurred to me that all of us are somewhat aware that we should try to do what we’re advised we should: conserve water, recycle, use less electricity, gas, etc. About 100,000,000 (yes, that’s one hundred million) of us still let the water run twice a day while we brush our teeth. Very few of us can name even 3 of the trees on the street we live on, can name 3 of the birds we’ve seen every day for most of our lives, or have any real understanding of the household chemicals we use around our houses or our yards. If we have gardeners, we don’t want to know what chemicals they’re using on our lawns and shrubs. As long as they look nice everything is fine.
It’s easy to be up in arms, outraged and self-rightously indignant over the issues the media points us toward. (By the way, what ever happened to that media invoked hysteria over the holes in the Ozone Layer?) Of course on the commercial break they advertise home and garden products containing known carcinogens, or drug products that will cure this or that bodily problem. Then they tell us in the fine print that they might also destroy our kidneys or some such. Now we’re finding their drug residues in our drinking water, and telling us they can’t be filtered out.
After the commercial break, we’re taken back to the decline of the Salmon.
It’s easy to be deeply concerned, angry and upset over what they’re doing on the North Slope. To actually know and do something about the environment we walk through on the way to our mail box every day is altogether too much to deal with.
Yes, “they” really should do something to fix the environment.
What can “we” do to show our love for the environment?
The first thing “we” need to do is to become aware of it. ~Lee
Zephyr said: Zephyr said Sep 5, 2:41 AM:
Just a word of encouragement for those who think gardening is costly to start up. It can be as expensive or cheap as you make it. Equipment - I have seen equipment offered for nothing on Freecycle, including cloches and even greenhouses.
Bootsales are another source of cheap secondhand equipment, and be adventurous and imaginative, old goldfish bowls and similar make cheap mini cloches. Tools, quality second hand will last longer than cheap new.
Containers - Keep an eye out for attractive containers, an old hamper lined with moss or plastic can make a very attractive container with herbs or tumbling tomatoes spilling from it, Or an old galvanised bath ot baby bath with holes drilled in the bottom can make useful containers, use your imagination and have fun, just make sure you have the right depth container for your plant, shallow for shallow rooted deep containers for deep rooted.
Seed trays, etc. - Plastic supermarket containers, make holes for drainage then use as seed trays Cardboard rolls from the centre of toilet rolls and kitchen rolls can be filled with compost and planted with beans etc, the cardboard will rot when planted out in the garden and roots will grow through with no disturbance. Seeds - F1 seeds don’t reproduce true, but if you choose Heritage seeds you can save seeds from year to year, choosing seed from your best plants, and they will be accustomed to your local conditions. Last year I purchased a pack of supermarket heritage tomatoes for £1.
I spread out the seeds on a sheet of kitchen paper, one variety on each sheeet labelled with description and allowed them to dry gently and naturally in a sunny spot, kept dry overwinter, they were planted this spring, I had masses of seedlings and picked the best to plant, there were many varieties in the pack, plum for bottling, golden cherry, orange plum cherry, green gold stripe, red gold stripe, giant red, Wow, this year the ones I grew exceeded the commercially grown ones in size, and I have saved seed from the best plants for next year, so for just £1. I now have many varieties that I can save seed from for successive years.
Cape gooseberries, bought from a supermarket, just a few will produce enough seed for a good crop.
Tomatillo seed can be saved in the same way. Pea and bean and squash seeds can be dried and saved from year to year, so the only outlay is the initial packet.
Another way to save money is to make your own compost and fertiliser, comfrey leaves or nettles soaked in a tub of water till liquid makes a better fertiliser for potatoes than commercial ones.
When purchasing a root of comfrey make sure you don’t get the invasive variety. Propagation - Get a little book on propagating and learn to reproduce what you need, some are really simple, for example loganberries reproduce by laying the tip end of the cane onto soil and it will root, then it can be cut from the parent plant to make a new plant. Old wine bottles necks buried in a row can make an attractive edging, use recycled wood for raised beds,
Old broken pottery or tiles for a garden mosaic, there are endless opportunities for recycling that helps keep stuff out of landfill Others will probably have more money saving tips, these are just a few of mine. Much love, Gael
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lee said: This is so special Zephyr! I really appreciate all of your tips and agree with your methods too. One thing I forgot to mention earlier, is that you can attach a drip system to your hose or install one separately. You don’t want to spray or sprinkle your plants because you’re gonna spread diseases from leaf to leaf. You’re also gonna do a little leaf damage. And you’re gonna develop an environment or an atmosphere for funguses and diseases to take root. If you flood irrigate you’re going to force air, again, out of the soil and that’s going to suffocate the roots to some extent. It’s going to drive the air out of the soil which the roots need too for the oxygen, the atmosphere. It’s very important to a healthy plant to have the air circulating. If you can’t put in a drip system the next best thing is to use trenches. So you would do your planting along ridges like this, and you would water in the trenches between. It comes in a box at your gardening store for under $10 & is easy to install.
If my work remains in someone’s mind, and touches someone’s heart and soul, I am grateful for the opportunity to share my work with you. Warmly, Lee
Thank you Lee, grins We have the opposite problem here. The last summer we had heavy rains, a lot of cloudy days and high humidity, great for cucurbits but not for tomatoes. The outsde tomatoes were so wet they split while still green, although in raised beds. This summer sunny spells and rain alternating, with plenty of rain outside and high humus content in the soil I haven’t needed to water outside. However in the greenhouse yes, a drip system is better and we are planning a larger outside greenhouse with a watering system collected from the roof water. I also have a large south facing lean to greenhouse at the back of the house. It needs shading as it gets too hot. At the moment with the weather we get, our tomatoes do better under cover, too many damp and humid days encourage disease as you say. Hoping the summer improves again next year, at the moment the jet stream has shifted and is right above us bringing rains from the west pretty regularly. I would love to have your climate for growing toms!!!
Meenakshi said: Lee, this reminds me of how we water between the vegetables in India – in our home gardens. We have what are called ‘kyaari’ or trenches. There isn’t usually a drip system in homes; and I remember the childhood fun of switching on the hose at one end of a trench, and then outrunning the water as it flowed like a stream down a trench! The gardeners taught us how to put little mud-dams when a particular vegetable bed was filled, and we needed the divert the water to the next one! There is such fun in gardening and that is what’s coming back from this feature. You do trenches or raised beds & a drip system which totally makes sense for all to do… and so simple!
Oh Meenakshi, there is simply nothing like even now like a kid, playing in the mud… Lee