Grow Superfoods – For Pennies – In Tiny Spaces!

Vegetables, especially greens – the darker the better – are arguably the healthiest foods on the planet, and you can grow enough to feed your family in a very small space, with costs literally only pennies for a family meal.

What are superfoods, and why are they so important – Dark green leafy vegetables such as kale, Swiss chard, spinach, collards, bok choy, mustard, romaine lettuce, turnip and beet greens, arugula, carrots, including the tops, watercress, and microgreens are important as:

1. Great sources of nutrition, including vitamins A, B, C, E, & K, as well as iron, magnesium, potassium, and calcium.
2. High in antioxidants, thus helpful in preventing cancers and heart disease.
3. Low in calories and fat, and low glycemic index, helping with weight control and type 2 diabetes.

A good article by the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center details the nutrition they provide and the many health benefits of dark greens here – https://www.ars.usda.gov/plains-area/gfnd/gfhnrc/docs/news-articles/2013/dark-green-leafy-vegetables

Where and when to grow your superfoods – Because these vegetables are hardy or semi-hardy they can be started in the garden 2-3 weeks before the average date of last frost in the spring, and harvesting can continue for several weeks after the first fall frost as well.  Combined, these factors can increase your harvest time by as much as 2 months as compared to warm-season crops! 

In addition, they all grow to harvestable size quickly, so that you can be eating them within 3 to 5 weeks of planting.  And by removing one or two outer leaves every week they will provide a continuous harvest for many months throughout the growing season (more about this below).

And for fresh greens in the winter months, or if you have no garden space at all, you can grow microgreens on a countertop in your kitchen in only 2 weeks!  A good source of sprout and microgreen seeds is True Leaf Market in Salt Lake City, Utah – https://trueleafmarket.com/collections/microgreens-kits-and-supplies

How much space is needed, and how many plants do you need to grow – An important feature that makes these vegetables so valuable is that with most of them a single plant – if harvested timely and properly – will continue to produce throughout the growing season. Just remove one or two outer leaves each week from the plant and it will grow new leaves for months!  If you neglect to remove leaves as described the plants will produce a seed stalk and seeds, and your harvest will soon be finished.

This means that just a few plants can feed you for the entire growing season.  For example, 6 each of kale, chard, collards, and romaine lettuce plants, and 16 each of turnips and beets need just 24 square feet of garden space. Do-able?  That’s only 1/1,815 of an acre!

Recommendations for the best sustainable way to grow your superfoods –

Buying six-packs of seedlings from a reputable nursery will save you time and effort, but get them early, before they get root-bound and leggy!  Those plants are NOT what you want, and will lead to crop failure.  Producing your own seedlings can be done on your own schedule, and allows for choice in varieties, but requires some time, effort, knowledge, and a small investment in facilities and materials.

I have prepared a presentation to teach you what you need to know in order to grow your own seedlings.  It’s free and it’s located at – https://growfood.com/learn/

I recommend everyone take advantage of the substantial health benefits, and the financial savings to be gained from growing and eating the healthiest foods on the planet.

Healthy Eating!

Jim Kennard

© Copyright 2025 – Food For Everyone Foundation

Self Reliance – Grow Your Own Market Garden

Market Gardening – Smaller Gardens

Can a family be totally self-sustaining by using between 1 and 2 acres to grow, eat, and sell food?  Yes!  As a matter of fact, families in many countries are doing it, and they often have gardens much smaller than 1 acre.  However, you should consider carefully what you are getting into.  I’ll paint a picture of the problems first, then show you how blessed you are to be using the best possible growing methods for a family garden, and finally I’ll give you some ideas as to what and how to grow your market garden.

1. Considerations Before Beginning

Your income depends on what you choose to grow, and how well you follow through in the growing process.  It also depends on how well you learn the financial and marketing aspects of the job.  Growing corn is easy, but doesn’t produce much for the amount of space used, or pay well, unless you like to eat corn stalks.  And someone has to sell the produce and pay the bills, which take substantial time and effort by themselves!

“Self-sustaining” requires very different amounts of food and money, depending on the family size, the standard of living expected, and the debt load you expect the garden to carry.  Debt of $3,000-5,000 per month requires a much greater effort to cover than a debt-free situation.

Location is also a factor.  People in warm climates can often grow into or even right through the winter, while colder climates have a shorter season.  Both locations can improve your production by using the Mittleider Gardening Method.  Warm climates may require lots of water and even a little shade at the hottest times, while cold climates often require more greenhouse seedling production and covering garden crops in spring and fall to extend the season.

Before getting seriously into market gardening you need to understand the commitment involved, and be willing to do it right.  Our grandparents grew gardens, and also often owned animals.  They understood the necessity of working every day to feed, water, and care for their animals and plants.  Regrettably, we’ve forgotten this requirement, as 99% of us have chosen other ways to make a living, and become dependent on the 1% who are highly competent farmers to feed all of us.

You must understand and accept that there is very little respite for vacations, etc. during the growing season.  A good garden requires your attention on a daily basis!

On the other hand you, and especially your children, will benefit greatly by having a fixed and important responsibility that requires daily commitment and real effort to accomplish.  Think of it as a paper route without the 2:30 A.M hours, the driving, the danger, barking dogs, etc.

And one last consideration:  A hundred years ago, everyone used manure and compost, and it was a fairly level playing field between the family gardener and the market farmer.  Not so today!   Your competition includes hydroponic growers who have invested over a million dollars per acre in buildings and equipment, as well as dozens of employees doing the work.  And by feeding and watering their plants accurately many times each day, they’re growing 330 TONS of tomatoes per acre each year!

1. You have a big advantage over others

Is all of this daunting?  Have you decided to just give up and forget about growing your own food?  I certainly hope NOT, because it’s important for you and your family to grow a garden for many very valid reasons, which we can’t address in this article.

Understand this.  You can produce much more in less space, using the Mittleider Gardening Method, than other small market growers are doing, so GO FOR IT!

The website at www.growfood.com, the books, CD’s and videos will teach you the gardening principles and procedures by which you will grow your successful market garden.  In studying these things, remember that this unique gardening method has been proven highly effective in thousands of situations, in dozens of countries all around the world.  It’s a recipe!  It WILL work to give you a great garden – in any soil and in virtually any climate.  But you MUST follow the recipe.

III.  Creating Your Own Successful Market Garden

How do you prepare?  

1. The best gardening book you can have is essential!  I recommend The Mittleider Gardening Course, by Jacob R. Mittleider, as the RECIPE for a great garden of any size.  It is available in digital or paper at www.growfood.com/shop.
2. START SMALL! Don’t plant more than you can care for properly, and sell, share or use.
3. Determine the market or markets you will sell to: a) Wholesalers, b) small grocery stores, c) restaurants, d) farmers’ market, e) roadside stand, or f) home delivery.
4. Learn what vegetables you should grow by determining those that: a) sell well, b) at a good price, c) that you can grow readily.
5. Build proper facilities including a) a seedling greenhouse with tables, b) T-Frames and c) a good watering system. These are essential for success at this level.
6. Set up a formal accounting system, including account names and numbers for every category of asset, liability, equity, income, and expense. Get help from your CPA.
7. Stock up on tools, seeds, and fertilizers, and be sure to include all those costs, as well as your labor, in figuring your market prices.

You’ll have to meet or beat the competition to sell your produce at the beginning.  However, by growing more, bigger, fresher, tastier, and healthier produce than others, you will develop a loyal customer base, and then you can adjust your prices as needed.

In choosing what to grow, consider a) the ease of growing, b) cost and risk of loss, c) the value of the crop, and d) varieties that are popular in your area.  Cabbage is quite easy to grow; it can be started in early spring when many other crops would die; and it only requires about 60 days to mature, so you may get 2 or even 3 crops in a year.  However, it doesn’t bring a very high price in the market, so you must decide if it’s worth it or not.

Let’s look at some scenarios of what could be grown and sold from one acre of ground, with good care and decent weather, and without losses from bugs and diseases (by strictly following the Mittleider Method you will minimize your crops’ susceptibility to those things):

Soil-Bed Garden – 250 30’-long Beds (as if all planted to one crop)

Beans-pole – 120 plants per bed, 1.5# per plant, $.50 per pound – – – $22,500

Corn – 92 plants per bed, 1 ear per plant, $.10 per ear – – – – – – – – –       2,300

Cucumbers – 45 plants per bed, 8# per plant, $.25 per pound – – – – –   22,500

Potatoes – 92 plants per bed, 2.5# per plant, $.10 per pound – – – – – –    5,750

Tomatoes – 40 plants per bed, 10# per plant, $.50 per pound – – – – –   50,000

The above examples are estimates only, and the actual results could be – and have been – much higher or lower, depending on many factors, including experience & care, weather, direct retail marketing vs. wholesale sales, etc.

If you are growing for the retail market using a roadside stand or farmers’ market booth, you will probably want a fairly wide variety of produce, to attract customers.  While corn has low value in terms of yield for a given amount of space, it is VERY popular with customers when it’s fresh, so you may well treat it as a “Loss Leader” and have it available.  But don’t try to plant too many vegetable varieties.  Ten or twelve key types are far easier to handle than twenty to thirty.  And three varieties of tomatoes are usually plenty.  I would plant Big Beef, Italia Mia, and Grape tomatoes.  One planting of Blue Lake pole beans will allow you to sell beans all season long, but bush varieties come on much sooner, and are harvested in just a few weeks.

If your customers are restaurants, you will need to grow the specific things they use, such as specialty lettuces, tomatoes, Ichiban eggplant, small red potatoes, etc.  And you may need to plant a few beds of the single-crop things every couple of weeks, to have them maturing throughout the season.

If your primary market is the large grocery store or wholesale suppliers, they will usually want a large steady supply of a few things, so you may be able to plant everything to the “money” crops of beans, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes, or multiple plantings of lettuces and other quick-growing crops.

I recommend you consider this material seriously, because the day may come (and much sooner than any of us want) when your garden will be the only way you can feed your family.

Prepare NOW, and be successful no matter what the future brings!

Jim Kennard

Introducing “the Best Gardening Method on the Planet”

Introducing “the Best Gardening Method on the Planet”

The Food For Everyone Foundation’s recent 5-month humanitarian gardening training project in Armenia was a great success in helping people learn to grow their own food, and it is evidence that the Mittleider Gardening Method (MGM) is “the best gardening method on the planet” for the home vegetable gardener.

The Mittleider Gardening Method helps people in several ways.  Of greatest interest to the American home gardener may be our policy of providing free vegetable gardening information, training, tips, and advice on the internet at www.growfood.com.   People from all over the world visit the website to receive free training and advice, as well as to obtain the great gardening books, CDs and software written by Dr. Jacob R. Mittleider. 

The Mittleider Soil-Bed Gardening Basics Course ebook is free on the website at https://growfood.com/learn/.  The free FAQ section also has 365 short gardening articles that answer people’s questions and give advice on many important vegetable gardening subjects.  

In addition, the Foundation’s website provides free greenhouse plans, free plans to automate a garden watering system, and a free gardening group where people share tips and experience with thousands of other successful gardeners – .

Important distinguishing features of the MGM set it apart from other methods and make it “even better than organic” as I will explain below.

Most of the time our gardens are grown right in the soil, with no soil amendments.  We promise ‘a great garden in any soil, in almost any climate’.  From straight sand to the worst clay, we show people how to have success growing healthy, delicious vegetables the first time and every time.”

We learned that “Grow-Boxes” or containers are sometimes needed for people in urban settings.  I assure you that container gardening can be just as effective as growing in the soil, and that 3 of Dr. Mittleider’s 10 books are dedicated to the unique features of the container gardening process.

Because the costs are very low, the Mittleider Method is sometimes called “the poor man’s hydroponic method”, because it borrows from greenhouse growers such things as vertical growing, feeding plants accurately with natural mineral nutrients, and extending the growing season in both spring and fall, all of which greatly reduce costs and increase gardening yields.

The Second major element in the Foundation’s mission is teaching, training, and assisting people directly.  One way we do this in America is by conducting free ½-day group gardening seminars.  These can be arranged by contacting me by email at jim@growfood.com.

The third leg of FFEF’s global mission is conducting humanitarian projects, such as the above mentioned training project in Armenia.  From February to mid July we created a gardening training center in the village of Getk, with housing, classroom, greenhouse, and a 3/4 acre garden. We taught a concentrated college-level gardening course to several students, who became the gardening experts in their own villages, and then we assisted those student graduates in working with 200 families in their villages.  The training center and garden were left in the able hands of an Armenian couple, and we expect the work there will continue.

In Armenia, as in other places we’ve worked, we grew many kinds of vegetables the locals thought couldn’t possibly be grown in “their region”, and often have many non-participating village families coming to our garden for advice, coaching, and free produce”.

Humanitarian projects sometimes take the form of training others who are becoming missionaries for their churches.  One example is Howard (a retired dentist with little previous experience in gardening) and Glenice Morgan, from Southern California, who completed a 2-year mission to Zimbabwe.  They were sent to teach Mittleider gardening to their church members throughout the country, and they did a fabulous job. 

After some study and nominal training in FFEF’s garden at Utah’s Hogle Zoo, the Morgans “had the time of their lives” as they created 84 large gardens and taught over 10,500 people throughout Zimbabwe and three other countries to feed themselves by growing their own healthy vegetables.   And the only teaching material they used was the simplest and most basic of Mittleider’s books, called 6 Steps to Successful Gardening.

I promise that whatever level you are currently on, you too can experience this kind of success – whether it’s in your own home garden, a community effort, or as a humanitarian missionary in some distant country.

The foundation welcomes tax-deductible donations to help extend our efforts.  Gifts can be made at https://growfood.com/non-profit-organization-donate/

Jim Kennard, President

Sustainable Gardening – Propagation Can Be Simple And Fun

3Propagation Can Be Simple and Fun – AND Give You VALUABLE Plants! 

Have you ever wished you could grow sweet, fresh pineapples like those great Del Monte ones you can sometimes find in the stores?  How about bananas or other tropical delights – wouldn’t it be fun to grow your own, right in your back yard?

There are certainly some limitations, but not as severe as most people think.  Let me give you a few ideas to get your imagination going:

Traditionally, pineapple is grown from cuttings from old growth.  The crown or growing tip is left in the field until it dries out, then it’s harvested and stuck in newly prepared soil to grow again.  This method requires 18-24 months to produce new fruit from the old material.

How about trying a different approach, which you can do with the pineapple you buy at your local store?  Just break off the top and prepare it for immediate planting in your greenhouse or other warm space with ample sunlight.  Here’s how:

With your fingers, take off the green fronds nearest the broken end for about one inch (2 1/2 cm), leaving the stalk exposed.  Place in a 4″ pot or tray of pre-moistened sawdust/sand mixture that has been prepared for planting seedlings, with Pre-Plant and Weekly Feed mixes included at 1 1/2 ounces and 3/4 ounces per 1/2 cubic foot of soil.

Water regularly to maintain soil moisture with clean water until roots appear, then use the constant feed solution of 1 ounce Weekly Feed for 3 gallons of water for every watering until plants are placed in the garden – about 4-8 weeks, depending on your growing conditions inside and in your garden.  You should have a strong, healthy root structure by the time they are planted into the garden. 

Transplant into the garden only after all danger of frost is past and the soil is warm.  Apply Pre-Plant and Weekly Feed to the soil before transplanting into the garden.  Feed weekly with Weekly Feed until 8 weeks before harvest.

If nights get cold before the plants reach maturity, cover them with greenhouse plastic using the “mini-greenhouse” frames shown in the Mittleider Gardening Course book – https://growfood.com/shop/the-mittleider-gardening-course/.    Apply heat as needed to avoid any possibility of frost, and keep the plants from going dormant.

This simple process changes the time needed to grow mature pineapples from 18+ months to 8 months!  Sweet potatoes’ growing times can be reduced from 10 1/2 months to 6 months or less, and other crops see similar improvement.

With those numbers, I hope some of you – especially in the warmer climates – will have the courage to try your hand at propagating plants.  It can be both fun and rewarding.

Just remember that these plants are grown in the tropics for a reason, and make sure they have ample heat and sunlight, along with plenty of water.  And always start with healthy propagation stock!  Never expect or even hope to get healthy seedlings from diseased or weak plant materials.

What about propagating the plants in your traditional vegetable garden?  Most vegetables mature so fast that propagating isn’t very practical.  However, some folks like to propagate new plants from their tomatoes, and that’s easy to do by removing the sucker stems – gently to avoid bruising the root hairs that grow along the stem – and placing the stem in a tray or pot as described above.  The problem with doing this is that the new plants will be substantially behind the parent plants, so unless you were planning on a later planting anyway, don’t bother. 

Remember that tomato plants that are fed and cared for will continue to produce for more than a year if there is no frost, so you don’t need to plant a new set of plants for a second crop. 

Budding and grafting trees is also very interesting, and can help you improve your orchards, however that article needs more space than we have here, and will have to wait for another day.

Enjoy!

Jim Kennard

Feed Your Family In 64 Square Feet Of Garden Space

Tiny Gardens – Plant Across the Width to Maximize Choice & Yield

Many people have only a small space in which to grow, such as a porch, patio, or driveway, and want to plant so as to get the greatest possible yield in the least space. Here’s an idea on how to do that.

You can plant across the width of a box or soil-bed, rather than the traditional lengthwise, if you’re willing to do the extra work of feeding, watering, weeding, and pruning that it requires. Remember the first law of plant growth – direct sunlight all day long – and that applies to all of your plants, for optimum harvest.  Therefore, planting close together as I’ll suggest here requires that you prune your plants so that they do NOT shade or overlap each other.

You’ll also need to water by hand, to assure even coverage to all plants.  And if you’re in the soil, weeding will not be as easy because of the close proximity of plants to each other. The two-way hoe is still the best tool for the job.

And remember to quit feeding the single-crop varieties three weeks before they reach maturity, and ever-bearing crops 8 weeks before hard frost, so as not to waste fertilizers. Multiple crops are certainly an option for several of these, especially carrots, kale, lettuce, and green onions.

Here’s what you could grow in a 2” X 8” box 4’ wide by 16’ long

Rows are from North to South OR East to West (Yields are in parentheses):

ROW    LOC   CROP – (No. Plants & Yield)

1 – – – –   0’ 1” – Tomatoes (2 = 30#), Cucumber (2 = 40#) and Vining Squash (1 = 10#)

 2 – – –    2’ 6” – Zucchini (3 = 45#)

 3 – – –    5’ 0” – Peppers (5 = 15#)

 4 – – –    7’ 0” – Broccoli (5 = 5# + 10# from leaves)

5 –  – –    9’ 0” – Cauliflower (5 = 10# + 10# from leaves)

6 – – –   10’ 6” – Kale (9 = 30# Note: keep leaves picked and harvest can be 9 months!)

7 – – –   11’ 0” – Carrots (45 = 15# + 5# from leaves – YES they’re edible and tasty!)

8 – – –   12’ 6” – Red leaf lettuce (9 = 18# – keep outer leaves picked and yield increases result)

9 – – –   13’ 0” – Romaine lettuce (9 = 18# – same as above)

10 – – – 14’ 6” – Green onions (48 = 5# + 8# from 12 bulbs)

11 – – – 15’ 0” – Italian parsley (16 = 10# – again, harvest can be season-long)

12 – – – 16’ 0” – Sweet potatoes (5 = 25# + 10# from leaves) at opposite end of box

TOTAL YIELD – Plants = 164 – – – – Production = 314#

Tomatoes, cucumber, squash, and zucchini all must be grown on 2” X 2” stakes and pruned to one stem – tomatoes right at the crotch, cucumber and squash cut sucker stems after first female blossom. Zucchini – older leaves pruned as they touch the ground or interfere with adjacent plants

Broccoli and cauliflower leaves should be pruned to keep them off the ground and away from adjacent plants (eat them, they’re edible!).

Sweet potatoes will only work in the space describes above if you can let them run outside the box. You’ll need to prune and train them so they don’t cover your onions and lettuce.   These leaves are also edible – use them.

For more information visit www.growfood.com

Jim Kennard.                  

No Equipment to Nano-Size Your Fertilizer? DISSOLVE It and It’s Molecule Size!

 

Feed Your Family On 1/50th of an Acre

Instructions for Growing The Sustainable Family Garden Heirloom Bugout Seed Bag  By Following The Recipe Below, You’ll Eat Healthier, Save Money, And Maybe Even Save Your Life!

 

Our bodies were designed to be herbivores, and as you eat primarily a whole food, plant-based diet you will be healthier, need less volume of food, avoid many chronic health problems, and live a longer, happier life! Follow the Sample Garden Plan included at the link at the end of this article and you can eat fresh, healthy and tasty vegetables from your own garden – even one as small as 1/50th of an acre. By planting a spring garden, a summer garden, and a fall garden (using the same beds over again) you can harvest as much as 1,600# of 24 different vegetables. That’s 4 1/3# per day of fresh home-grown food!! You will make a very wise choice by starting with fresh seeds with a high germination rate. Good seeds are very inexpensive but SO important! We suggest you consider a multi-year storage pouch containing over 22,000 of the best Heirloom Seeds you can buy. True Leaf Market calls it the Emergency Heirloom Bugout Seed Bag, and you can get it here: https://www.trueleafmarket.com/products/bug-out-seed-bag The Sample Garden Plan shows that your spring garden has only 7 plant varieties, with only 101 seeds that need to be grown beforehand and transplanted into the garden. Of the 1,104 seeds to plant 1,003 can be planted directly into the garden!  Follow the Garden Planting Details Schedule at the link below for pretty much everything you need to know about when, where, and how to plant everything in your garden. Growing your own seedlings is simple and straight forward. If you don’t know how to do this, consider getting the complete Mittleider Gardening Course book (www.growfood.com/shop), and just follow the instructions in Lesson 22. We’re only talking about 7 plant varieties, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, kale, and the two lettuce, and most of them grow at about the same rate, so they can all be grown in a single 10″ X 20″ or 18″ X 18″ seedling flat, Place the celery on an outside row, as it is slower growing. And for the plants you’ll put directly into the garden maximize yield and minimize thinning by mixing 1 part seeds with 100 parts sand, and distribute that mixture to give  seeds the separation desired. Then give your plants protection in cold weather with PVC “mini a-frames” covered with 6 mil plastic, and a little heat on cold nights.  Lesson 23 of the Mittleider gardening course book includes detailed instructions for this as well.   For your summer garden 151 seeds go directly into the garden, and only 52 seeds, including broccoli, cabbage, cucumbers, peppers, and tomatoes are best transplanted as seedlings into the garden. Again, one seedling flat is ample. Just start your tomatoes and peppers about 8 weeks before you expect to put them in the garden, and the others – broccoli, cabbage and cucumbers – start 3-4 weeks before they go into the garden. For the fall garden carrots and potatoes are planted directly in the garden. That’s 368 seeds, and 168 seeds of 5 others we recommend transplanting.  Broccoli, cabbage and lettuce are best transplanted, and onions and turnips benefit from an early start in the seedling flat to allow them time to mature in the garden Prune your plant leaves at least weekly, and EAT the edible leaves daily (listed as R/T)!  Eating the outer leaves and celery stalks regularly keeps your plants producing for MANY MONTHS, increases your harvest substantially, and keeps them from going to seed.  Notice that Kale, chard, and celery only need one planting for the entire growing season! You are now on your way to getting more than 3/4 of a TON of vegetables, pretty much every variety you need and want, in order  to sustain a healthy eating lifestyle. https://growfood.com/SampleGardenPlan-50th-Acre https://growfood.com/GardenPlantingDetails  www.growfood.com

Making Mittleider Weekly Feed Into NANO+ Liquid Fertilizer

Turn Mittleider Weekly Feed Into Mittleider Super-Natural Nano Nutrients ™

1. Before planting your garden apply and mix into the soil both the Mittleider Pre-plant mix (1 oz/ft) and the Mittleider Weekly Feed mix (1/2 oz/ft).
2. Begin applying foliar spray as soon as leaves appear. Do not wait until plants have true leaves.
3. Place 8 ounces of Weekly Feed Mix into a good, strong blender, such as a Blendtec or Vitamix.
4. Blend Weekly Feed at high speed until it is as fine as cake flour (“micronized” powder – no granules).
5. Add 1/2 Tablespoon of granular Humic Acid (com/shop) and 1 pint of boiling distilled or reverse osmosis (RO) water to blender (pure water dissolves maximum amount of Weekly Feed and does not introduce other minerals).
6. Blend at high speed for up to 2 minutes, adding water as possible without causing spillage.
7. Add liquid to 3 ½ quarts of distilled water in a gallon-size plastic jug. Yields 1 gallon of Weekly Feed “NANO+” or Mittleider Super-Natural Nano Nutrients ™ concentrate.
8. Cap and store in a safe place until needed.
9. Shake thoroughly before each use.
10. Add 8 ounces of this Weekly Feed NANO+ concentrate and 1/2 teaspoon High Yield Sticker Spreader (Walmart, etc.) or other Non-Ionic Surfactant to 1 gallon of water in spray equipment.
11. Alternatively, you can use an electrostatic sprayer, which produces much smaller droplets and adds a tiny positive electrical charge, making the material cling to the leaf surface. Spraying is quicker, you do not have to continually pump to keep air pressure, less material is used, and better coverage is achieved, especially on the under-side of the leaves, where the stomata are located. I am using the Victory Innovations Backpack Sprayer with good success.
12. Preferred spraying time is morning, before the temperatures rise (below 80 degrees), or late afternoon after extreme temperatures are reduced, but at least an hour before sundown, because the stomata close around sundown.
13. Water plants before applying foliar feed, and wait to spray nutrients until leaves are dry.
14. Spray upper and lower leaves. Nutrients enter plants primarily through the stomata on the underside of the leaf.
15. Observe plants carefully for scorch or wilting (will not happen unless much higher dosage is used). If either of these occur flush the plant leaves and soil with plain water and reduce concentration of the foliar feed by half.
16. Nutrition enters plant leaves in as little as 1 hour, and is generally completed within 24 hours. Effects are often observed within a day or two.
17. Repeat every 3-7 days, depending on growing conditions and observed results, throughout crop growing cycle. Spraying twice each week is a good place to start.
18. Adjust frequency of foliar spraying as needed to maintain rapid growth of your plants.
19. Not seeing desired growth and vigor? Increase the amount of Weekly Feed concentrate you are using per gallon of spray solution. Also, consider supplementing with an application of Mittleider Weekly Feed in the soil, and document your progress and findings.
20. For lawns, feeding just 3 times at 3 to 4 week intervals is usually sufficient for a temperate climate growing season..

Since you are not watering the plants, but rather just wetting the leaves (continue watering the soil as normal – see Watering Lessons in The Mittleider Gardening Course book), a great deal less fertilizer is applied, thus saving greatly on fertilizer costs. 

As an example, during the warm months my garden of 524’ of soil-beds & Grow-Boxes requires 3  gallons of foliar spray per feeding.  So, even if you have to feed twice per week to grow healthy plants, that’s 6 gallons of spray, or just 2.2 ounces of Weekly Feed per week on a very big garden.  Traditional feeding by applying ½ ounce per foot of Weekly Feed to the soil per week requires 262 ounces or 16.5 pounds per week.  So, you will be using 1/89th as much Mittleider Weekly Feed with foliar spraying the NANO+!

 Worth doing?  I KNOW it is!

Jim Kennard – 12/9/23

Prepare Now For Next Spring’s Garden

Winter’s the time to get ready to grow your own seedlings!  It’s not really difficult, and can extend your growing season by many weeks.  For example, by planting cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower in February in your basement under grow-lights, you can put large, sturdy transplants into your garden by the end of March or early April, and be eating them when others are just seeing them come up!  

Remember that photosynthesis, using light, heat and moisture causes plant growth.  Therefore you must follow a few key natural principles very carefully, or you will be disappointed.

First, seeds must have moisture to germinate and grow.  And the soil mix must be moist, but not soggy, or you’ll drown the new plant, since it must also have oxygen!

Second, while heat is essential, temperatures must be maintained in a narrow range for ideal germination to occur.  Most vegetable seeds germinate quickly between 75 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit.  After plants are up, many of them will grow in cooler temperatures, but most all will become dormant (stop growing) at temperatures below 50 degrees.

Third, light is not necessary for seed germination, but as soon as your seedlings begin to emerge from the soil, maximum light is required immediately for proper development. Therefore, to grow in your house, make sure your plants have a strong (but not hot!) light source directly on the plants, for up to 16 hours per day.  Note the pictures of two grow-light shelves in the Gallery Section.  The metal one is 6-shelf Commercial Chrome Shelving, from Sam’s Club costing only $70, and will hold 20 flats of plants.  Suspend shop lights with 2 cool and 2 warm 40-watt tubes 4 to 6″ above the plants, or use more efficient LED grow-lights .

The fourth principle relates to feeding.  A balanced nutrient mix of 13 minerals is essential to plants immediately after germination.  Those nutrients are mineral salts and must be very dilute in the soil moisture, otherwise osmosis will cause the salt to draw the life-giving moisture out of the plants, and they will die.  To ensure you never burn your plants, water seedlings daily using the “Constant Feed Solution” of one scant ounce (2 almost level tablespoons) of Weekly Feed dissolved in 3 gallons of water.  To make the Weekly Feed Mix simply add one small packet of the Micro-Mix, which is available on the Foundation’s website listed below, with 4# of Epsom Salt and 25# of 16-16-16.

Next, it is important to separate your small plants before their leaves begin to overlap with others’, or the tiny stems will become very weak and spindly as the plants all stretch – looking for more light.  By the time the plants have their first or second true leaf this step should be completed.  Failure to act for even a few hours can result in spindly, weak plants, which sometimes never recover.  Transplanting seedlings into 2″ 6-paks or pots will provide adequate space for them to grow an additional 2-3 weeks, depending on variety.  If it’s still too early to put them out into the garden by the time plant leaves are again beginning to overlap, prune the leaves, transplant again into larger pots, or separate pots, so the plant leaves always have maximum light.

Before transplanting into the garden, “harden-off” your plants outside, off the ground for 2 to3 days, to acclimate them to direct sunlight, temperature, wind, etc.  This is important so the plant doesn’t have the shock of a new environment added to the shock to its root system caused by transplanting.  If the weather turns cold at night, bring the plants back in the house.  The temperature adjustment needs to be gradual.

For many of your plants, the pruning process does double duty.  In addition to assuring maximum light, it shocks the plant mildly, causing it to pause in its growth and produce a thicker, sturdier stem. This process makes the plant much better able to endure the vicissitudes of the outside environment, such as cutworms, ants, etc. that often quickly decimate plants with weak, spindly stems.

For tall-growing plants, like tomatoes, be sure to provide small stakes tied to the plant stem, to prevent them from falling over.  And with tomatoes, begin immediately to remove all sucker stems as soon as possible, to assure a single, strong stem and maximum production from your plant.

Great growing instructions can be found in the book Let’s Grow Tomatoes, available as a digital download and as a part of the Mittleider Gardening Library CD.  It’s  available at www.growfood.com/shop.

Prepared – Got Your Wheat, Beans & Rice? So What Are You Going To Eat?!

As we try and stay warm during this cominf cold winter season probably very few of us are thinking of gardens or growing our own food – but maybe we should be!  When God cursed the ground it was for our sake, so when He said we were to eat our bread by the sweat of our brow perhaps He was pronouncing a blessing on us.  At the very least it was instruction on how we were to live, but today too many of us , if we exercise at all, pay to “work out” in the gym instead of working out in the garden. 

It is time to change that!

Great and wise men have said every family should have a garden, and that we should “Grow all the food that you possibly can on your own property…grow vegetables and eat those grown in your own yard.  Even those residing in apartments or condominiums can generally grow a little food in pots and planters.”    Spencer W. Kimball

Evidence all around us points to the wisdom of those words.  Today much of what we eat comes from places we know not and contains things that sometimes harm us.  And a diet of fresh vegetables and fruits would eliminate many of the chronic health problems plaguing our society

I suggest now is a good time to begin preparing for your own garden next spring.   Why?  Because it makes sense to follow wise counsel at any time, but also because like someone recently said, when times get tough you’re not going to want to live just on rice and beans and wheat.

In talking with a motivated Mittleider gardener I asked how he became interested in gardening as an important component of his family’s preparedness regimen, and his answer was both humorous and instructive:

“Years ago my wife and I were going over our Preparedness list, basically taking an inventory of where we were in the process, and I asked her “what are we going to eat”, to which she replied “well, we’ve got wheat, beans, and rice . . . “.  I thought about that for a few seconds and then said “so what are we going to eat”?  She repeated “we’ve got wheat, beans, and rice”, and I responded again “so, what are we going to eat!”

“As we talked about this we decided that we really needed to have an on-going, fresh and sustainable source of nutritious food if we hoped to maintain any degree of long-term health and activity, and so we determined that we had to get serious about growing a garden.”

And here’s “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey would say.  His wife became a Certified Master Gardener, and for 30 years she worked diligently at trying to grow food for their family.  However, until recently their success was very limited, even though they tried every method they could find.   Their amazing success sfter finding the Mittleider Method of gardening is truly inspiring, and it is documented in some excellent short instructional videos at http://www.ldsprepper.com.  I recommend you go there and see for yourself what they’ve done (and what you can do) in the back yard of a small lot in a gated community, with homeowners’ association rules dictating what your yard can look like.

So, what CAN we do in the winter in order to be prepared when it comes time to plant our gardens?  Let me describe several important things you can begin doing immediately:

Certainly, planning next spring’s garden is important.  And the Garden Planting Details Schedule lists most all of the common garden vegetables and then gives you valuable information in 14 categories including when to plant, where to plant, how far apart to plant, whether to plant seeds or seedlings, how long you can harvest, how much yield to expect, and 8 other important categories of information to guide your decisions.  This is available free in the Files section of the gardening groups listed below, as well as in appendix B of The Mittleider Gardening Course book.

Other important areas of planning you should be covering this winter include ways to lengthen your harvest time, and this can be accomplished by growing your own seedlings, and by protecting your plants in the garden. 

Seedling production is surprisingly simple, but requires following closely the basic laws of plant growth.  Soil temperatures must be in the 70-85 degree range for optimum germination and growth; maximum light must be applied immediately upon emergence; soil must be damp but not soaking wet; and plants must be fed a balanced nutrient mix on a regular schedule – preferably with every watering.

Protecting your plants from the cold (and heat in mid-summer) can be done simply with hoops and clear greenhouse plastic immediately over the plants (low tunnel), or using something larger, again with hoops and plastic sometimes called high tunnels.  A third way, costing more but allowing you to grow crops vertically and increasing yields by 4-6 times in a given space, is what I call the in-the-garden greenhouse.  These are built using a set of T-Frames tied together by 2 X 4’s and again covered by clear greenhouse plastic, and they can be used to grow seedlings in late winter/early spring and then to grow ever-bearing crops clear into the next winter.  Gardeners in southern-tier states even use them to grow successfully year-round.

A family of 4 can live out of a garden of less than 1/20^th of an acre!  So start planning and preparing now, and expect to have your highly productive sustainable garden in place and growing by the time your neighbors begin even thinking about their gardens.

Short videos demonstrating many steps in the gardening process are available free at. Start there, and if you feel you want to join one of the Food For Everyone Foundation’s free gardening groups to learn more and share with others, simply go to either https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/MittleiderMethodGardening/info or https://www.facebook.com/groups/2304852529528161/

So, what are YOU going to eat when the stores are all closed?  If you’re serious I will give you some very exciting and important details next time.

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