Free Vegetable Gardening Seminars – Tips & Techniques to Turn a Weed Patch into the Garden of Eatin!

I am delighted for the opportunity of presenting free ½-day vegetable gardening seminars again this winter and next spring to groups who request them. My availability is necessarily limited, and timing is critical, so get your church, community, or gardening club involved now!

Seminars include 2+ hours of fast-paced video instruction in the classroom, and 2+ hours of demonstration and practice in the garden. Your group will learn the unique world-renowned Mittleider Method of vegetable gardening that’s been called “the best of organic”, “better than organic,” and “the poor man’s hydroponic system,” and that promises you a great garden in any soil and in virtually any climate.

Whatever size garden you have to work with – whether 100 square feet or one acre; whether on a patio, in containers, or in the dirt; and whether it’s organic, or even hydroponic, you will learn to solve your unique problems and improve your gardening success. And you’ll enjoy gardening for a change!

You’ll learn tips and techniques for maximizing your limited space – eliminating weeds – using less water more efficiently – increasing yields – improving quality – extending your growing season – and minimizing problems with bugs and diseases.

Next summer you can eat fresh garden-grown tomatoes almost as soon as others are getting theirs established and growing in the garden! And you can still be enjoying them in December, long after your neighbors are paying top prices for “plastic” store-bought varieties. And you don’t need expensive greenhouses or hydroponic equipment to do it!

Dr. Jacob Mittleider developed these methods specifically for family gardeners all over the world. And we keep the procedures simple and the costs down, so that families, whatever their financial situation, can grow their own food and achieve health, self-sufficiency, and independence, while enjoying the experience.

You’ll want a large group (50-100 minimum) and a tilled garden space near the classroom (2-3 minute drive maximum), to assure the maximum benefit for all participants.

Email the Foundation with the details of your request at jim@growfood.com, or call 801-915-4449 or 888-548-4449. Let’s make 2020 the best, most productive, and most enjoyable gardening year you’ve ever had! i had great results with my husband when i use Tadalista wich i received from http://buymdonline.com/tadalista/ i bought generic tadalafil under brand name Tadalista, guys ship medications from India

Meanwhile, if you live too far away, or can’t get a large group together, you can get most of the benefits of an in-person seminar by ordering the Gardening Seminar DVD , or the Mittleider Gardening Library CD from the Foundation at https://growfood.com/shop. And if you don’t already have it, the latest edition of The Mittleider Gardening Course book is 304 pages – all in color, with 150 great garden pictures and dozens of illustrations – of the best gardening book on the planet. Get yours now!

Mittleider Gardening Magic – Advice and Tips for Your Vegetable Garden

Welcome to Mittleider Gardening Magic advice and tips! I’m excited to be sharing the wisdom of “the world’s greatest vegetable gardener.”

I’ve been a Mittleider gardener ever since the mid 70’s when Jacob Mittleider moved about a mile from my home, and I became his student – patterning my own garden after his prolific backyard masterpiece.

We became friends as I worked with him over the years, and after assisting him on a major teaching project in Russia in 1993, I continued working with him on several other projects. And finally in 1998, after 20 years of study and work under Jacob’s tutelage, I was given the responsibility and privilege of carrying on his work. I accepted this full-time non-paying job with the proviso that he would continue to stay involved and answer any and all questions, to which he readily agreed, since gardening was his life’s greatest love (just ask his wife, Mildred). Sadly, Jacob died just one month after his 88th birthday, on May 23, 2006. Therefore anything you need to know that Jacob hasn’t already taught me, I will research from his prolific writings.

So, just who is Jacob Mittleider, and what’s his Method all about? You may have seen a neighbor’s beautiful and highly productive Mittleider vegetable garden, and wished yours looked and produced like that. Or perhaps you’ve heard of the great work he’s done around the world. Maybe you even have one of his books and have experimented with growing your own vegetable garden this way. If so, then you may know Jacob’s history, but for those who don’t know him let me tell you very briefly why he’s so famous, and why he promises you a “great garden in any soil and in any climate.”.

For the last 43 years of his life Dr. Jacob Mittleider quietly and without fanfare dramatically improved the lives of multiplied thousands of people, and even changed the economies of countries, by teaching people how to better feed their families by growing healthy and highly productive vegetable crops – both personally and commercially. He created 75 teaching and demonstration projects in 27 countries – and documented his experiences and the great lessons he learned in 10 books, 9 manuals, and 86 video lectures.

To help tell the world’s families about this great gardening method, we have established a 501©(3) Public Charitable Foundation, and created a website at http://www.foodforeveryone.org, with a section for free Gardening Techniques and one for frequently asked questions (FAQ’s). The Mittleider Gardening Basics book is there for you free, with Dr. Mittleider’s best wishes for gardening success. There is also a page where you can buy any or all of his books and CD’s, as well as his Mittleider Magic natural mineral Micro-Nutrients, from which you can make his Mittleider Magic Weekly Feed fertilizer mix, also known as “the poor man’s hydroponic mix,” because it is a scientifically balanced and complete plant nutrient mix.

So much for introductions! Let’s get down to learning about growing better vegetable gardens, shall we?

What problems or questions do you have? I will teach you the principles of successful gardening, but I also want to resolve any concerns you may have. There are many conflicting ideas, methods, and procedures out there, and we will do our best to give you factual “works every time” advice and counsel. A few topics we’ll discuss, about which you might have some concern, include:

1. “My soil is terrible, and nothing will grow. What must I do with my soil so that it will grow a good garden?”

2. “I hear that chemicals are poisoning our waterways, and that organic growing is much healthier, how do I grow a healthy, productive garden without hurting the environment?”

3. “It seems like so much labor-intensive work, with little reward. Is there a way to have a garden that makes financial sense?”

4. “Weeds just take over our garden, and the vegetables don’t really have a chance. What’s the answer?”

5. “Bugs, diseases, and critters get most of our produce! It’s hardly worth growing for the little bit we manage to save – what can we do to minimize our losses?”

6. “We want to be self-sufficient in food, but we’ve heard it would take 2 ½ acres in order to be truly self/sufficient. We live on a 1/3-acre lot – what practical chance do we have to accomplish that?”

7. “I hear using hybrid plants will only make us dependent on the big seed companies, and I want to use heirlooms, so I can save the seed and be assured I’ll always be able to have good plants, is this something I can do, and how do I do it?”

Exciting stuff, don’t you agree? Join me for real, practical advice and answers to the hard gardening questions. You may also pose your own questions, and you’ll find many answers by going to http://www.foodforeveryone.org and looking in the Posts or FAQ pages. Until next time – Great Gardening!

Understanding Salinity & Osmosis for a Sustainable Garden

The physical law known as osmosis affects plants and animals alike, and it is important to understand how it works, so your garden can benefit, rather than be harmed by its universal effects. You will also be healthier if you pay attention to salinity and osmosis in your own body.

The principle of osmosis states that where there are two saline solutions separated by a semi-permeable membrane, the solution with the lower salinity will migrate across the membrane to the saltier solution until the two solutions are equal in salinity. I recommend you re-read the foregoing statement and really understand what it means, because it is VERY important.

In humans, animals, and plants mineral salts are essential to life. They are taken into the bloodstream of the body by mouth, or the sap of the plant through the roots, and are then used to build the cell structure and maintain the health of the living organism.

In plants, so long as the salt solution in the plant is stronger than the solution outside of the plant, available water will continue coming into the plant. A plant is more than 80% water by weight, and so plants need water constantly. In hot weather it’s especially important, since as much as 95% of the water that enters a plant is used to perform transpiration – like human sweating – to keep the plant cool.

Most everyone understands that if water is withheld from a plant it will quickly wilt and die. What most folks don’t understand, however, is that even if ample water is available to the plant roots, if it is as salty as the solution inside the plant, the plant CAN NOT absorb any of that water. And if the water being applied is saltier than the water inside the plant, water will LEAVE the plant.

How can something like that happen? Who would be so foolish as to water their plants with salty water? Actually it can happen fairly easily, and it does happen more than people realize. Let me mention two ways that are probably the most common, so that you can avoid having it happen to you.

First, many people apply 2-3″ of manure to their growing beds, in the desire to fertilize the plants and improve the soil structure. The problem is that many times manure – especially feed-lot manure – is quite salty, containing from ½ to 2% each of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, in addition to other elements, even including such things as sodium chloride or common table salt because of salt-licks provided to the animals.

Applying 2+ inches of manure to a 30′-long soil-bed requires 200-300# of manure, and can add several POUNDS of these various salts to your soil. The salinity this creates will often pull water out of your plants, “burning” and even killing them. By contrast, the Mittleider method of feeding your garden adds about 7 ounces of salts to the soil in a 30′ bed a few times over the course of the growing season.

The second way saline water can get into your garden is if you use water that has had some kind of salt added upstream from your garden, or from a well with saline water. This almost happened to me just this morning.

I was watering the Armenia Project’s model garden I’m using to demonstrate and teach the Mittleider Method in Ashtarak, a small city near the Armenian Capital city of Yerevan. The water comes in a small canal, and it was clear when I began, but as I started to water a bed of eggplant, the water suddenly became very cloudy and dirty. Luckily, I noticed what was happening and stopped watering immediately.

If you ever find yourself with saline water in your plants’ root zone, you should flush the salts out as quickly and completely as possible. This requires heavy watering several times with clean water. Sometimes it’s fairly easy, and sometimes it’s difficult or even impossible to accomplish before your plants have died.

As with most everything in life, prevention is much better than cure, so avoid the conditions that can lead to a salinity problem, and you’ll help assure yourself of a sustainable garden with healthy, fast-growing plants.