Filed under: Gardening
If you are only now beginning to become aware of what looks like a very real food crisis in our country, don’t worry, it’s not too late to plant your family garden. In the news today, food shortage stories are starting to pop up with increasing frequency. With the combination of high gasoline prices and sky-rocketing food prices, many Americans are starting to feel the pinch.
Food prices are now higher than they have been in 20 years. The shortage has hit our country fast and hard without much warning, and while third world countries today are suffering the worst, many are shocked that we too are vulnerable. Today the G8 Summit nations are scheduling emergency meetings in order to prevent malnutrition, starvation, and hunger from the food shortage that is taking the world by storm.
I hope that many of you are thinking that it is time to create a garden of your own to keep your family healthy through this potential crisis. You don’t have to be a gardener of any kind to grow your own fruits, vegetables and grains; it is much easier than you may think. First, you want to survey your back yard and pick a location that has good drainage (no puddles or flooding when it rains) and offers nice top soil to plant your seeds in the spring. Drainage is a very important feature when it comes to planting a garden, because the more the area floods, the less likely it is that you will be able to grow healthy plants and foods.
Protecting the area around your garden is important when it comes to pests as well as for preventing the plants from growing outside the area you have created. Always use natural nutrients as opposed to chemicals for fertilizing your garden, especially when growing foods for storage. This keeps your soil healthy and provides the best nutrient uptake for your plants.
You may be thinking right now that your family may not be able to eat all the vegetables and fruits you grow within the warm months of the year. For this problem, canning is your best storage solution. As an added benefit, this type of storage can be utilized for the long term and will help you and your family outlast any food crisis or price spikes with little to no affect on your diets and health. Food Storage Secrets is a site that can help you learn how easy it is to use this method of food storage.
Vegetable seeds are still incredibly affordable and they can help you grow enough food for an entire year when used properly. Don’t let food shortage get you down, plant your own garden this year and you’ll never be hungry!
To grow fruits and vegetables productively means trying to grow the highest yield of crops possible in the smallest amount of space with the least amount of labor and expense possible. It’s also about showing good stewardship by making sure that you are not dumping chemicals on the earth that will poison future generations. This means avoiding chemical fertilizers that contribute to sterilizing the planet we live on. Natural fertilizers can produce high yields in the garden and can keep your family self-sufficient (in the sense that you can survive by eating what you grow.)
According to several high yield natural gardening methodologies (such as Metilieder method) having a sustainable high yield garden is one that is able to produce generous 
crops over time without depleting or poisoning the soil. It’s also important to be able to grow the food that you want to eat without working at it full time. This means that your garden must be able to sustain itself with minimum time and minimum effort. Let’s face it, if it’s just too much work, you won’t do it. So a true naturally sustainable garden should not cost you a lot of money and should be an enjoyable use of your time.
One of the best ways to avoid chemical fertilizers is to buy high quality seed that is known to produce high yields without the need for chemical dumping. The masters behind the high-yield natural method of gardening are called the Mettilieder method. It’s worth checking out. And when you get started, for maximum fertility, once you have purchased seeds be sure to take good care of them. Be sure to store them in a cool dry place to get the best yields.
Another part of high yield natural gardening is to extend the growing season by starting your seed indoors. You can also save energy and improve the health of your plants by planting your “started” seedlings on a south-facing slope because it warms up rapidly in the spring. And in the fall, the growing season also gets extended receiving more sun even on the shortest of days.
By being conscious of the “little things,” a gardener can not only eliminate the need for dangerous chemical fertilizers, but also make natural fertilizers much more effective.
What can sometimes be determined to be an organic or natural fertilizer can be a bit ambiguous, as some substances are considered to be organic in chemistry but are not considered to be very natural. For instance, folks who are familiar with organic fertilizers in the sense of them being “natural” would not think of substances such as urea and urea formaldehyde as being fully organic but they are defined as such in the field of chemistry.
Nutrient rich natural fertilizers, rather than organic should be the wise consumers choice. “Organic” these days just means a lot of government paper work is involved. What’s worse, an apple for example could be legally labeled organic and yet be devoid of any nutritional qualities. In the future new tools like brix readings will be used to help consumers make intelligent choices when purchasing fruits and vegetables.
The same can be said of natural and organic fertilizers. Always look for ingredients that sustain life. Whether you purchase them or make them yourself, natural fertilizers include seaweed fertilizers, fish fertilizers, manures, slurry, peat, worm castings and guano (bat droppings.) Certainly almost all plant life can be used as natural fertilizers as they degrade.
Mineral fertilizers also exist in the natural world and include limestone, rock phosphate and potash sulfate. Oddly, although rocks are natural, they are not inorganic in terms of the organic standards set by chemists. Still we think of these minerals as organic because we think of rocks that are found in nature as organic. In truth though, what is organic is defined by the definitions known to chemistry.
One of the noted drawbacks of using home made or even purchased natural fertilizer is that the results can sometimes vary because it’s difficult to predict the density of the nutrients in the natural ingredients. However, many of the new generation of natural fertilizers are manufactured in such a manner, the density of the nutritional components and its behavior in terms of enriching the soil and facilitating plant growth can be predicted with certainty.
Components in the existing soil also play an important role when it comes to enriching the garden and crops. One of the key components in good fertile soil is humic acid.
Humic acid is an important as well as very potent natural fertilizer because it is able to assist in the mobilization of soil nutrients so that high yield growth is achieved even though other nutrients in the soil may be low. Humic acid also helps release nutrients in a slower more consistent way. Yet another benefit of humic acid is that it helps to retain moisture in the soil and improves the soil quality and structure.
When shopping for natural fertilizers, always make sure one of the ingredients in the formula is humic acid. It’s one of the key building blocks for nutrient rich soil and lush plant growth.
