No Till Gardening - Organic Gardening
Dec
22
Posted by Adina
In my In The Garden articles about the Lasagna Layer Mounds the garden amendments straw, manure, and alfalfa hay are frequently mentioned. They are the ingredients for the garden mounds, but they are something else as well. Of course we know manure is a waste product from livestock farming or ranching, and we know straw, Continue reading →
Tags: Alfalfa Hay, Lasagna Layer Mound, Manure, No Till Gardening, No Till Growing, Peanut Hay, Straw, Sustainable Organic Gardening
Oct
11
Posted by Adina
Fall is the beginning of our cold crop planting season in South and Central Florida. Tomatoes, Peppers, Eggplant, Basil and Beans that were started in August may be getting ready to fruit, and may ripen fruit before our first frost. If you are starting those plants now you will have to protect them from the Continue reading →
Tags: Grow Food At Home, Growing Organic Vegetables, Lasagna Garden, No Till Gardening, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
Aug
05
Posted by Adina
I made a new friend who is not yet gardening and was rather intimidated by it and quite sure it would take him a long time to learn how to grow food. He mentioned to me that he thought he should take a Gardening for Dummies Class, and that what I had to offer was Continue reading →
Tags: Grow Food At Home, Growing Organic Vegetables, Heathcote Botanical Garden, Heathcote's No Till Organic Garden, No Dig Garden, No Till Gardening, Seminole Pumpkin, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
Jun
28
Posted by Adina
My garden grows beautifully. All I do is feed the soil with lots of organic wastes. I don’t dig, I don’t worry, I don’t fertilize plants and I don’t spray plants. All in all I would say that growing the No Till No Dig Way is an easier, more successful way to nurture a food garden.
Tags: Composting, Fungal Hyphae, Growing Organic Vegetables, Mycorrizae, No Dig Garden, No Till Gardening, Phosphorus Solubilizing Bacteria, Plant nutrients, Soil Organisms, Soil Tilth
May
10
Posted by Adina
For many years I let my gardens fallow over the summer all the while feeling quite sure that there were crops that we could grow here in South Florida in the summer time, but I couldn’t figure out what they were, and I didn’t know who to ask. In order to save you the same Continue reading →
Tags: Bitter Gourd, Grow Food At Home, No Dig Garden, No Till Gardening, South Florida Vegetable Gardens, Summer Crops For South Florida
Jan
02
Posted by Adina
The conventional approach to composting is that we should turn our compost piles. I have already discarded the conventional approach to gardening: I won’t turn the soil. It occurs to me that it is past time to re-examine my approach to composting.
Tags: Compost, Composting, No Dig Garden, No Till Gardening, Soil Organisms, The Compost Pile
Oct
02
Posted by Adina
This summer has been a whirlwind for me. I picked up some part time work at a local organic farm last winter and the job lasted way into the summer. A couple of months before the farm job started I began volunteering at the Community Vegetable Garden at Heathcote Botanical Gardens. Just as the farm Continue reading →
Tags: Growing Organic Vegetables, Home Garden, Home Grown Vegetables, Long Beans, Malabar Spinach, No Till Gardening, Okra, Peanuts, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
Sep
25
Posted by Adina
“I prepared my bed, just as you instructed when we discussed preparing my garden. The soil was in pretty good shape already so I simply raked-out compost I prepared over the winter and then spread straw on top of that to keep down the weeds. When I planted my vegetables, I sprinkled the bunny and Continue reading →
Tags: Compost, Grow Food At Home, Home Grown Vegetables, No Till Gardening
Aug
17
Posted by Adina
Photos by Nan and Adina Heathcote Botanical Garden recently decided to create a community garden. I was fortunate to be at the first meeting about a year ago, and I was able to get involved with this project at the beginning. This community garden is currently focused on growing for a Sarah’s Kitchen in Port Continue reading →
Tags: Community Garden, Compost, Composting, Grow Food At Home, Growing Organic Vegetables, Heathcote Botanical Garden, Home Grown Vegetables, No Dig Garden, No Till Gardening, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
Jun
21
Posted by Adina
After I wrote the article Garden Pests: Nematodes I received a comment from Naomi. She wrote “Wow, mind boggling how many things can go wrong in a vegetable garden!” Her comment made me realize that I did not bring home the point of my article very well. While there are lots of potential problems [...]
Tags: backyard ecosystems, Balance In The Organic Garden, Composting, Grow Food At Home, Growing Organic Vegetables, Home Garden, No Till Gardening, organic insect control, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
Jun
16
Posted by Adina
My neighbors grow in compost not because it is the organic or no till or healthy thing to do. They grow this way because it fosters the most vigorous plant growth and the most flavorful vegetables, in a place that once seemed much less hospitable for growing food.
Tags: Compost, Grow Food At Home, Growing Food In Leaf Compost, Growing Organic Vegetables, Home Garden, Home Grown Vegetables, Mound Gardens, No Till Gardening, Soil Organisms, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
Jun
13
Posted by Adina
Many growers have forgotten about legumes as nitrogen fixers, or have forgotten how to use them to help build garden soil. This would be unforgettable information except that it is easier to buy a bag of fertilizer. The bag of fertilizer method is easier for sure, but it is more expensive, hard on soil, and is a potential pollution threat to our water ways. Legumes lock up nitrogen for future use. Plants know how to tease nutrients out of soil, and how to attract and make deals with bacteria, fungi, and protozoa for the nutrients they hold in their bodies. Growing legumes enriches the soil and the microbes in the soil with nitrogen that plants are able to use.
Tags: Feeding Soil, Grow Food At Home, Home Grown Vegetables, Legumes, Nitrogen Fixing Plants, No Till Gardening, Soil Building, Soil Organisms
May
19
Posted by Adina
To grow in an organic manner in such a way as to decrease the cost of your inputs, increase the health and disease resistance in the garden, and increase garden yields, a grower must focus on the soil. This focus must be on maintaining optimum populations of the microbes and the invertebrates that are present in healthy soils.
Tags: Composting, Growing Organic Vegetables, Microbes and Invertebrates of the Soil, No Dig Garden, No Till Gardening, Soil Food Web, Soil Organisms, South Florida Vegetable Gardens, Sustainability
Apr
26
Posted by Adina
The concept of this no dig bed is simple. You don’t till or disturb the soil below, and you create a mound that roughly approximates a balanced pile of stable scrapings. This is a great way to start quickly and these mounds feed the soil below as the growing season progresses attracting beneficial insects and microbes to your growing area, and you won’t have to fertilize the plants growing in these mounds.
Tags: Growing Organic Vegetables, Home Garden, Home Grown Vegetables, No Dig Garden, No Till Gardening, Preparing for Planting, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
Jul
14
Posted by Adina
I intended to write about what I am doing this summer to prepare my no dig garden boxes for the winter growing season, but this blog has taken it’s own direction instead. Today I write about Synergistic Agriculture and my evolving garden practices. This summer I have been growing in gardens I would have left Continue reading →
Tags: Lasagna Garden, No Dig Garden, No Till Gardening, Preparing for Planting, South Florida Vegetable Gardens
Jul
06
Posted by Adina
South Florida in the garden: It is July now and you have decided that you want to be ready to grow vegetables for your family when our first planting time comes NEXT MONTH!?! Yes, some of us will start putting seeds in as soon as August. Don’t worry you don’t have to. September and October Continue reading →
Tags: Grow Food At Home, Home Garden, Lasagna Garden, No Dig Garden, No Till Gardening
Feb
04
Posted by Adina
In my last post Traditional And Conventional Growing I wrote a little about growing in sustainable ways and The Great Dust Bowl of the 1930′s. I want to write about what happened to the farms and ranches on the great plains states of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and New Mexico in the 1930′s and how that Continue reading →
Tags: Dust Bowl of the 1930's, no till farming, No Till Gardening, Sustainability, uppening soil
Oct
27
Posted by Adina
I killed the Seminole Pumpkin vine. It had taken over three 50 sq. ft. sections of my garden and ran around the fence blocking five sections and two out of three gates. It was cathartic to get that thing out of my garden. I am working quickly now to prepare those sections for replanting. I Continue reading →
Tags: Compost, Nematodes, No Till Gardening, Preparing for Planting, Seminole Pumpkin
