So you have decided to make a change in your lifestyle and start growing some or all of your own vegetables and fruit. Some careful planning now will save you money and effort in the future.

Many new gardeners begin in the springtime with a hiss and a roar. They plants lots of seeds and seedlings and enthusiastically set to weeding, hoeing, and digging.

The first time a garden is weeded the sense of achievement is palpable. New gardeners know they are getting more fit and their aching muscles are helping to improve their health. By the third weeding, caring for the garden has become another chore. Many give up. By harvest time, their weed choked beds and tiny harvest convince them they just don’t have a green thumb and perhaps growing food just isn’t for them.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

With a little planning, anyone can enjoy growing at least some of their own food. Planning a garden can be divided into three categories: where, what, and how much.

Where?

For some reason many people seem to find the sight of their vegetables to be less than aesthetically pleasing. We have been conditioned to believe ideal beauty is a “clean” lawn surrounded by geometric beds of perfect flowers, no matter how unproductive and ultimately pointless it is. Too often vegetable beds are stuck up at the end of the yard, away from the house and the water supply. These gardens are usually ignored, infested with weeds, and full of slugs, spiders, and snails.
To make the most out of your garden you need to position it with three things in mind: sun, water, and access.

Plants need at least six hours of sun per day; many types will need more than that. Watch your garden and work out which areas get the most sun. Many houses are built to take advantage of the sun so that the best place for your garden may well be right next to the house. This is ideal as you will then have a close supply of water for your plants. You’ll find weeding is much easier. Just stop and remove a couple of weeds each time you pass by and you won’t even notice the aches and pains. And come harvest time, you will spot the ripe fruits before the birds do.

What?

I grew zucchini in my first year of gardening. I realised about halfway through the summer as the first fruits were coming ripe that no-one else in the family would eat them. The compost pile did very well that year. A little planning would have saved me the wasted effort. Have a look at what vegetables and fruit your family eats regularly. In terms of saving money, it may well be that your favourites will be cheapest in the shops at the same time as you harvest at home. Never mind. Home grown will always taste better.

If you are a complete beginner, start with the easier plants. Carrots, radishes, tomatoes and potatoes do well for many beginners. Of course, it will depend on your climate. If there is a little bit of shade, lettuces and salad greens will probably be good for you. You have to realise, though, that for most of us gardening is not an exact science. You will go through a bit of trial and error before you get things right for your patch. It is probably best to concentrate on doing a few things well at first rather than spreading yourself too thin and growing lots of things poorly. Build your skill set one step at a time.

How Much?

This part of the planning can be further divided into two parts: how much food do I want to grow, and how much time can I spend in the garden? If your lifestyle is frantically busy and you really don’t think that you can commit too much time to your garden, it may be best to grow a few herbs and maybe a tomato plant or two in pots.

I am a firm believer in the nudge form of change when it comes to lifestyles. So, if you are too busy to run a full garden, start small. Those few pots will almost certainly grow into more and more. Gardening is like that—it’s addictive. If you try to make huge changes all at once, you are less likely to succeed. A few herbs and a tomato this year, some salad greens next year to go with them. Make the changes small and you can live with them more easily. Set yourself smart goals for each year.

How much produce you actually grow is a little more complicated. It is likely that you will have at least one crop that does much better than expected and provides quite a surplus of food. Once you have been through every recipe for cooking and preserving and find that you still have some left, it’s time to appreciate the community of gardeners. Give some away to friends and family. The fine flavour of home grown food may wellencourage them to take up growing their own, too. Swap some with other gardeners. Don’t forget to swap your tales of success and failure too. Most gardeners love a good chat over the fence.

Look at your garden. What do you eat? How much can you grow? How much time do you have? Plan for your success.

Further Reading:

• DIY Solutions for the Garden
• How to Start a Vegetable Garden – How to Grow Vegetables
• 5 Natural Pest Remedies for Your Garden
• Medicinal Herb Garden – What To Grow and How To Keep It Growing All Winter
• Ten Great Gardening Tips
• How to Make Your Own Compost Tea

EasyBloom is a great tool for the gardener—especially one born with a black thumb. This little device tells you if your plants need water, diagnoses ailing plants, and makes plant recommendations (based on real conditions) as to which plants will thrive at a particular site.

To begin using EasyBloom, plug the device into one of your computer’s USB ports and choose which of the three functions you want to use: recommend mode, monitor mode, or water mode.

• Recommend mode—provides plant recommendations for a particular site, indoors or outside.
• Monitor mode—gives expert advice in caring for an existing plant.
• Water mode—provides immediate feedback on whether a plant needs water.

Once the mode is set, unplug the device from your computer and connect it to the sensor base. I chose the recommend mode and stuck the EasyBloom into a shady site in my back yard. Twenty-four hours later I plugged the device into my computer to receive my recommendations.

EasyBloom analyzed the site, providing the relative humidity, average temperature, and sunlight, then recommended a list of plants that should thrive in that location. To my surprise, it also gave me the opportunity to add pictures, take notes, and store the information in an archive section called “my readings.”

I also tried EasyBloom in its water mode. In this mode the device beeps when your plants need water. Unfortunately, none of the pots were dry at the time. I have not yet tried the monitor mode, which is designed to aid in diagnosing the problems plaguing an ailing plant.

I loved the design of the battery casing. A band encircles the battery which allows for easy removal and a means to easily disengage the battery when the device is not in use.

The EasyBloom website is user friendly, offering videos to help you learn to use the device and contact information for customer service. It also contains a database of more than 5000 plants with planting and care instructions and a feature that allows you to choose and store a listing of your favorite plants.

EasyBloom is a great device. Even though it does not analyze soil (I do so wish it would at least give me the ph), it is an excellent gardening aid, especially for the novice gardener. Coupled with the online resources, it is well worth its $60.00 price tag.

http://easybloom.com

As a brand new farmer, I farmed conventionally for two years and broke even both years on one quarter section. Not so good. No profit. Farming has to make money or there is no point in doing it, right?

I decided I could make a little more money if I converted to organic, plus I didn’t like spraying all those chemicals. So I began the next year with a crop of oats, and I didn’t spray. Well, in the spring, what popped out of the ground was a beautiful field of wild mustard weed. Again not so good. The oats did grow, but they suffered under the canopy of the wild mustard.

From a distance, the field looked like a canola field. I hung my head in shame thinking that once again, I would not make a profit. Some farmers laughed. Some jokingly commented on how beautiful my canola crop looked. And some probably thought I was one bale short of a hay stack! In desperation I searched the web for a solution, but could find nothing. I resigned myself to just let it grow and harvest whatever I could in the fall instead of plowing it under.

That summer I spoke to many farmers and eventually met up with an old timer who used to farm organically. Over coffee at his place, I told him about my field and all the things that went wrong. To my surprise, in one hour he gave me more info on how to farm organically than I had learned in months of searching on the net.

With this new-found knowledge, I purchased a few more pieces of old farm equipment to help me out. Fall came, and the oats, wild mustard, wild buckwheat, and all the other weeds that offered me their seed were pouring into the combine. It was a mess that looked like a dog’s breakfast, but, thanks to my friend, the old timer, I used an old-fashioned screening system I had found for $400.00 at a local farm auction to separate the small weeds from the larger oats . It worked so well, I was able to remove 99% of all the junk from the oats.

With this new found hope, I felt confident I could farm organically. But what was I to do with all these weed seeds like wild mustard? Most farmers just dig a hole in the field and bury them four feet under. I did some brainstorming and research, and then it came to me. I could crush them like they crush canola seeds to make my own fuel.

Since then, I have designed and built my own bio-diesel reactor, purchased a grain burning stove, and purchased a small canola crusher. My tractors and trucks run on my homemade bio-diesel, a major reduction of my fuel farming costs. I also heat my home on weed seeds, saving even more money.

The second year I planted wheat and was able to keep the weeds to a minimum. During the summer, I noticed I had a wheat midge problem. (A midge is a little bug that eats the wheat.) It wasn’t an all out devastating infestation, but I asked around to a few farmers who all told me I should spray to get rid of the pest. However, I knew if I sprayed, I would no longer qualify to be organic. So I went back to the web in hopes of an answer. I found nothing but chemicals used to kill the bugs.

I once again resigned myself to just letting the crop grow and harvesting in the fall if the bugs left anything to harvest.

I once read a quote by Ambrose Bierce, “Patience: A minor form of despair disguised as a virtue.” That sort of summed it up for me. But this story gets better. Much better! I have to tell you! Are you sitting down in your chair?

A miracle happened. About a week later, I noticed a new critter in the field. Lady bugs. Lady bugs and more lady bugs. What seemed like millions of them. Everywhere I looked and everywhere I walked, lady bugs would land on my arms, hands, and hair. I wondered what in the world they were doing in the field because I had not seen them there before. To my amazement, they were eating the pesky wheat midge. Just when I thought all hope was lost, the small seemingly insignificant lady bug came to my rescue.

Every day I would walk through the field and marvel at the tiny creatures that were now living in my field creating balance the way it was designed to work. You know the best thing I ever did was choose not to follow the conventional wisdom. Had I sprayed the first year for weeds, I wouldn’t have all this free bio-diesel. Had I sprayed the second year for the bugs, I would have killed the wheat midge, but I also would have indiscriminately killed many other critters like the amazing lady bug. I wouldn’t have let the natural cycle of the field follow its course. I would have missed out on a major blessing.

Organic agriculture is sustainable. I can’t help but wonder what we as a people could accomplish if we were just a little more patient.

The first step in creating your organic garden is to determine its best placement. The closer it is to your house, the more attention it will receive. Make sure water is readily available, and it is in an area that is fully exposed to the sun.

Soil preparation is the single most important factor in creating a successful garden. I call it “dirt making.” You begin by gently turning the soil. If this is the first time the land is being used to grow food, a tiller may prove helpful. Subsequent soil preparation can be done with a spade or garden fork. Too much tillage destroys soil structure.

After opening the soil, add copious amounts of organic material such as compost, leaf mold, well rotted sawdust, or decomposed animal manure. You can make your own compost or purchase it from most garden supply stores. If you create good healthy soil, you will grow healthy, disease-resistant plants. Nutrient rich soil grows nutrient rich food.

Compost added to gardens improves soil structure, texture, aeration, and water retention. When mixed with compost, clay soils are lightened and sandy soils are better able to retain water. Mixing compost with soil also contributes to erosion control, soil fertility, proper pH balance, and healthy root development in plants.

Separate garden beds with walkways. You should not walk in the area where you plant your vegetables. The weight from walking on a vegetable bed compacts the soil and retards plant growth.

Utilize the garden space wisely. Select crops you will eat and enjoy or your garden space and the food you grow will both be wasted. Decide what you want to plant and where you will plant it. Know what you will plant after the spring season crop is harvested.

Southern exposure has the most light (if you live in the northern hemisphere). Plant your tall crops on the north and west sides of the garden to prevent shading of smaller plants.

Use known or recommended cultivars for your main planting. Always buy good quality open-pollinated or heirloom seed from a reputable company rather than hybrid seed, or buy transplant seedlings to save time.

Watch the moon and learn its phases. My own experience has taught me that things grown above the ground should be planted during the waxing moon, and things grown below the ground should be planted on the waning moon.

Water your garden as often as needed to maintain a uniform moisture supply. In the absence of rain, an inch of water once a week probably will be adequate for heavier soils. Light sandy soils might require more frequent watering. It is best to water early in the morning so foliage dries quickly. This helps prevent diseases.

Good luck with your garden! Growing food can be a rewarding, spiritual experience. Not only will you benefit from consuming the healthful food you produce, but you will also bring yourself closer to the ultimate realities of creation.

In the future we will delve deeper into some of the items discussed in this piece. Feel free to send any questions you might want us to address.

K. Rashid Nuri is a farmer. If this statement conjures an image of a white two-story farmhouse situated at the top of a rise, overlooking acre upon acre of planted fields that have been handed down through six generations, put a pin in it. Nuri is not that kind of farmer. A city boy, he grew up in Boston. His father had been an educator, his step-father a Navy man, and his mother a community activist. Nuri enrolled in Harvard to pursue a life in politics. He graduated with a degree in political science and enough math and science under his belt to pursue medicine if he was so inclined. But Rashid was a child of the ‘60s who dedicated his life to making a difference. He understood the fundamentals behind nation building—it doesn’t start from the top down; it starts from the bottom up. A nation’s first need is to clothe, shelter, and feed its people. Nuri chose food. “I set out to learn all about food from the seed to the table, and wanted to do this through practical experience.”

He started with a Masters in Plant and Soil Science from the University of Massachusetts. Practical experience began when his first job after college took him to San Diego County, California, where he installed organic gardens. Since that time he has worked in more than 35 countries around the world. “I have built farms, managed farms, worked with government, managed a 30,000 rose bush garden, taught organic farming, and spent years in agribusiness working with feed, seed, poultry, cotton and oilseed processing, and commodity trading.” He also served four years as a senior executive in the Clinton Administration, which included time served as the Deputy Administrator of the Farm Service Agency and Foreign Agricultural Service for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In 2006, Nuri brought his 40 years of experience to the creation of Truly Living Well Natural Urban Farms. This community supported agricultural project grows food on four sites in the Metropolitan Atlanta Area, providing nutritionally-rich, fresh-picked, organic produce to the community. Organic, urban food production minimizes the carbon footprint. Crops are not stored and shipped over great distances. Food does not lose its nutritional value. Crops are not contaminated by unwashed trucks or storage bins.

Most of the food produced by the farm is sold through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscriptions, which are sold on a revolving basis. Each subscription punch card is good for 13 boxes of food, to be redeemed at the buyer’s convenience. Member subscription fees provide capital to purchase supplies and fund the operations. Truly Living Well also sells produce to local restaurants and to the community at large.

Yes, K. Rashid Nuri is a farmer. He is also a social activist. He fights hunger through his outreach efforts to help students, organizations, and individuals plant sustainable, organic gardens and through teaching opportunities at his farm. He serves on the board of Georgia Organics and is a member of the Atlanta Local Food Initiative. He is also OLM’s newest contributor and advisor.

Check out Nuri’s article on How to Start Your Own Organic Garden in the next issue.

In the simplest terms, any food grown without chemical fertilizers or pesticides can be labeled organic. People who do not understand the organic food movement often argue that there is no significant difference between organic and so-called conventional food. There is however, a lot more to the argument than meets the eye.

For most of humankind’s history, food crops grew utilizing natural fertilizers such as animal manure, dung and decomposed plant materials, otherwise called compost. Creating good soil was the focus. Crops took nutrients from the soil and all crop refuse was returned to replenish the nutrients removed. Adding these natural elements back to the earth feeds not only the plants, but also the micro-flora and micro-fauna that provide micro-nutrients for the soil, which are subsequently extracted from the soil by the plants.

Pesticides were not necessary because strong, healthy plants, grown in healthy soil, were disease resistant. Predators attack the weak and ill formed. Plants grown in soil that is complete with all the nutrients nature provides grow strong, healthy, and are resistant to disease.

This changed in the mid 1800’s when Justus von Liebig, a German scientist, discovered nitrogen as an essential plant nutrient. This led to the invention of nitrogen-based fertilizer and the propagation of plants utilizing Liebigs’s “Law of the Minimum”. This principle states that the one essential mineral which is in the relatively shortest supply, limits a plant’s development. This concept determines the amount of fertilizer to apply in modern agriculture. Plant growth in conventional agriculture is controlled not by the total resources available, but by the scarcest resource. Minimal plant nutrient requirements are chemically synthesized and added to the dirt. The soil is no longer the source of plant nutrition, but only a receptacle for holding plant roots.

Subsequently, the plants themselves are weak and must be protected against attack from insects, funguses and other pests by the application of synthetic chemical insecticides and other toxic poisons. These poisons get into the food and cannot be removed. The toxins then enter our bodies through ingestion of the food and may lead to other health problems.

Food grown by conventional methods conforms to specific standards designed to meet a consumer demand subliminally created. Much of it is genetically altered or hybridized through genetic modification. All of the food looks the same. It is often picked unripe to aid storage and ease shipping, and then gassed with more chemicals to ripen the fruit before it is presented to buyers. The food is unblemished in appearance, but bland and tasteless. The nutrient content of conventionally grown food is limited and must be supplemented by vitamin and mineral tablets in order to maintain consumer health.

Organic growers use natural materials that are available in the environment around them to grow high quality food. The food is higher in quality because it contains all of the nutrients available from soil enriched by inclusion of natural materials. Equally important, organic food has no synthetic chemicals added as nutrients, to control pests or aid harvesting. This produces food that is better tasting with higher nutritional content. Sometimes organic food is not as pretty to look at like as “steroid food’ found at the local grocery store. However, to clearly know the difference, just eat some food grown organically. The absolute, unequivocal proof that organic food is superior to conventional food is simple. The proof is in the tasting!