Second Seminar a Success!

Thanks to Sage A. and Jim R. for a great organic gardening seminar today. Sage gave a very informative presentation on starting seeds indoors, potting up, hardening off, and transplanting into the garden.

In her system, seed flats are cleaned in a 5% bleach solution to sterilize them. They are then filled with seed starter potting soil (fine texture) and placed in a shallow pan so that water is wicked up from the bottom.

When the soil is moist, the seeds are planted. In this way seedlings get just the right amount of water and are not displaced by watering from above. She pointed out that plastic coverings (humidity domes that often come with the trays, plastic bags, etc.) should not be used to cover the seed flats. A fan of some sort in the room will help prevent "damp off", which is a fungus that makes your seedlings keel over.

A heating pad is placed under the pans to keep the soil warm enough for germination. You can buy an expensive heat mat with a thermostat made for this, but most veggies germinate on the medium setting of the heating pad. Sage also adds a small amount of Medina Plus to the water to give the seedlings a boost.

Shop lights with full spectrum flourescent "grow light" bulbs are suspended over the flats. After germination the first two leaves to open are the seed leaves, and next the true leaves appear. Plants should not be potted up to a larger pot until they have true leaves. After plants have been potted up and kept under the grow lights for a few more days, they are "hardened off" by gradually increasing the amount of exposure to outside air and sunlight. Finally they are ready to be transplanted into the garden.

Sage also passed out copies of the Kerr County Vegetable Garden Planting Guide from Texas A & M. This guide works well for our conditions here in the Frio Canyon. This guide indicates which plants can be seeded directly into the garden and which should be started indoors, and gives the window of planting time for each vegetable.

Next up was Jim R. who talked about using colliodal phosphate (also called rock phosphate) to help make tomato plants sturdier. A handful of this powder, available at most nurseries, should be placed under the plant at planting time.

Trudy F. pointed out that tomato plants can be planted with more of the stem below ground level to encourage root growth. Joe M. mentioned mycorrhiza root fungus and how important it is in a healthy soil. Jim said that Tums or Epsom salts are a good source of calcium for tomatoes.

He passed around two books - Malcolm Beck's Lessons in Nature, and The New Square Foot Gardening Book by Mel Bartholomew. Jim described square foot gardening, in which plants are grown in a mixture of compost, peat moss, and vermiculite. His handouts included information on square foot gardening and Fanick's chart on planting by the phases of the moon.

Trudy F. won a cardoon plant given and grown by Sage A.


This seminar was informative and well received. Stay tuned to this blog for information on our next seminar!

Water Troughs--Not Just for Water!

Healthy Harvesters Don & Pat W. have found livestock water troughs a good solution for raised bed gardening.

If you look closely in the middle of the photo you can see their very FIRST asparagus spear coming up -- it is from the crowns they got from Jim R. who recently divided his bed and gave away his surplus.


This photo shows their onions & radishes.

Don used fencing material that was left over from when they built their chain link fence to form a climbing structure so they can plant cucumbers, sweet potatoes, etc. Recycling feels so good! We'll look for some more photos as the garden grows!

Another item of interest -- Don is the proud owner of a worm farm. Pat promises to get some pictures of it later to share with everyone. Worms are a good way to quickly compost your garden scraps (chickens and fishermen like them too!) So we'll stay tuned for a story to come on the worms! Maybe even a worm seminar!

Do you have photos and/or a garden story to share? Be sure to let us know!

Successful Organic Gardening Seminar

Twenty seven Healthy Harvesters attended today's Organic Gardening Seminar at the Garden Club in Leakey, Texas. We were excited to see such a nice group of folks interested in learning about and growing local food.

We ran out of raised bed construction handouts, however, Mi Mi H. will make copies for the Garden Club members, and Rick A. will post the information on the blog. We hope Jim R. will blog about soil fertility in case you didn't take notes.

While the presenters got ready, Sage A. reminded everyone to frequently check the new blog at www.friocanyonhealthyharvest.blogspot.com for current information on Healthy Harvest. She explained that while blogs may be unfamiliar territory for many, you can learn all you need to know in about 10 minutes. Jim suggested we hold a computer session at the library soon for Sage to show us how to get the most out of the blog. Everyone agreed the blog was a helpful technology we need to learn more about.

The first speaker was Jim R., who discussed soil fertility and making compost. His show and tell included three buckets of soil in various stages of fertility. Don W. examines a sample of local "soil" to which many of us could relate: hard, compacted and not much different than rocks.

Because we live in an area with highly alkaline soil, we need to get as much natural matter back into it to help neutralize the pH, add nitrogen, retain and conserve water, and allow for air pockets which encourage root growth and microbial action.

One of the best ways to do that is to add compost. If you have soil that is as hard as the above sample, you can spread a 2 inch layer of compost and water it in and in a year--or less-- you won't recognize the ground under it. During that time the nitrogen leaches down and microbial action begins to break up the soil so that you can actually get a spading fork into it. He's all for making gardening easier!

Although you can buy organic compost at nursery centers, such as Plant Haus in Kerrville and Country Garden and Seed in Uvalde, it is easy to make at home. Jim makes his compost bins out of a circle of hog panel reinforced with chicken wire so that the contents stay inside. Rick A. uses pallets to make the sides of his.

To make compost you layer brown (wood shavings, dead leaves, twigs) with something "green" as in either green plant parts or manures that are fresh (grass clippings, green leaves, kitchen vegetable waste, manure, seed meal) with dirt, watering each layer as you go. Build many layers like this until it is about 3-4 feet high and turn it with a pitch fork every three days. This part is the not-so-easy part but he says it builds six-pack abs and keeps him out of pool halls!


He also recommends Medina Agricultural's all natural line of products for use on compost and garden soils. Medina is a local company, in Hondo, Texas (out Hwy. 90 west, the big blue buildings north of the highway), that specializes in products that increase microbial action. They have been around for decades, and actually make microbial solutions for things like the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Stuart and Elaine Franke are great folks, always helpful, encouraging, generous and with a serving, appreciative attitude. Please let them how much you like what they are doing when you go by there. You can find out more about them here.

They offer a Compost Starter, Compost Nutrients, Hasta Grow, Soil Activator, Medina Plus, and Biological Odor Control products. These products are available at most local nurseries. Sage A. uses their products in growing vegetable starts. They also have an online shop.

Next, the group moved outside and Rick A. demonstrated how he builds raised beds using old, damaged pallets. You can build them out of many different materials, but don't use rail road ties or treated lumber, as those chemicals will leach into the soil.

Many businesses such as feed stores, lumber yards, newspapers, hardware, and paint stores, etc. receive their products on wooden pallets. They reuse them until they begin to break down, and are usually willing to part with the damaged ones for little or nothing.


Rick shows a damaged pallet. He cuts these to the height, filling the gaps with boards removed from the side that will be inside the bed. Pallets come in many sizes, and he chooses two nice ones the same size to be the ends. He uses his favorite tool--a sharpshooter shovel--to dig a rectangular trench and buries the bottom 3 inches of the cut pallet for stability. Corner Simpson ties and strap ties and screws are used to hold the pallets together. He uses a 4 foot level to make sure they are level before attaching a pine board on top. This gives a nice place to sit while seeding and weeding, and gives the bed a finished look. You can see some of his raised beds under this post.


After the raised bed demonstration Joan R. drew numbers and attendees signed in on the roster under those numbers won a bottle of Medina's Hasta Grow. Many thanks to Mr. Franke and Jim for providing the product samples for today's seminar. There were many winners, and Jim said he will make sure the others get some samples soon. Here's just a few of the winners' pics.

Pat W.

Paula P.

Scott K.

MiMi H.

Oh my gosh--me!!

Trudy F.

Thanks to Jim, Rick, and all the participants for a really great seminar!!

Look for the flyer around town!

Raised Beds and Onions

At our Saturday meeting (which Rick will soon be blogging about) the subject of raised beds came up. There are as many ways of raising vegetables as there are gardeners, all of them being a matter of choice.

One reason to choose raised beds is better drainage and less bending (which we appreciate the older we get!) Paula P. sent a photo of her raised bed, saying it's been a while since it looked this good and that she's interested in getting started with chickens (& their manure) and drip irrigation.


Looks like Paula used cedar to build her boxes. (Comment Paula?) Cedar is a good choice because it's fairly rot resistant. For those of you considering raised beds, you don't want to use any type of treated lumber because of the chemicals, or railroad ties because of the creosote. These substances leach out and would be harmful, and contrary to the idea of eating healthy!

Since our garden is pretty large we've opted for using scrap pine we get from damaged pallets and helping others tear down old stuff. It won't last as long as cedar, but we can't complain about the cost. We are the ultimate scavengers. At first, we feared our garden would look like a hobo encampment, but don't you think Rick has done a wonderful job putting it all together? Using free stuff takes longer than working with dimensional lumber, mostly because of the disassembling first required, but you are doing the Earth a big favor when you recycle materials otherwise destined for the landfill.


To neaten things up a bit, and to provide a nice sitting edge from which to do our seeding and weeding, we do add new pine boards on top. We will seal these with something like Thompson's water seal. You can see the strap ties holding some of the sections together. This is the onion bed Rick built the last two days and we planted this morning. You can see the drip irrigation spigot poking up in the right hand side of the bed. Drip irrigation soaker lines will be run off the multi-head spigot.

January is time to plant onion sets. Last year we bought our onions from Brown's Omaha Onions located in east Texas and had a very good crop. Although the adorable Brown daughters are so cute, this year we opted to purchase our onions closer to home, from Dixondale Farms in Carrizo Springs. They claim to be the oldest onion plant grower in the nation, starting their family business in 1913. We have been pleased with both of them.

If you are going to order onion sets, one thing you need to know is you will need to order "short day" plants. (It seems to me our days are very long, but apparently this is not so). This is fairly well explained on both their websites. We always order the short day mix of yellow-red-white because we like variety.

Do any of you have something to add about raised beds or onions? If so, please comment!