The Heirloom Garden Blog

by David Beart

There are as many def­i­n­i­tions of organic as there are farm­ers in Iowa. So it is up to you to select your own level of purity and focus. You may choose to be absolutely chemical-free or to accept some level of com­mer­cial inter­ven­tion. Much will depend upon your avail­able time as well as your will­ing­ness to get down and dirty with the gross and smelly.Any organic inter­ven­tion in your life is bet­ter than none, so take the infor­ma­tion that fits your needs and begin. Who knows? That first step into the world of inde­pen­dent gar­den­ing may free you enough to cat­a­pult you into full-fledge organic farm­ing at its best.

Com­post­ing What is con­sid­ered one man’s garbage is another man’s trea­sure. For organic purists com­post­ing is almost canon, although not absolutely nec­es­sary for organic gar­den­ing. Because it is messy and aro­matic, some may choose to pur­chase com­posted soil or prod­ucts already com­posted rather than to learn this age-old method.

The process of com­post­ing is the sci­ence of decom­po­si­tion in a con­trolled envi­ron­ment, such as a big garbage can, a 5 ft. x 5 ft. hole in the ground, or an expen­sive pur­chased drum that turns auto­mat­i­cally. It pro­vides a faster process of break­ing down once-living mat­ter into enriched soil and nutri­ents per­fect for the health of your gar­den. The com­post gar­dener does all pos­si­ble to recy­cle appro­pri­ate wastes of any liv­ing mat­ter, along with a healthy sup­ply of bac­te­ria (pur­chased or nat­u­rally avail­able in the soil from hard work and time.)

To com­post, use and accu­mu­late all fruit, veg­etable, and grain scraps through­out the year. Yes, this takes time and might not pro­duce a par­fum de toi­let that tick­les your nose, but you will reap the ben­e­fits by pro­duc­ing fruits and veg­eta­bles that are packed full of the vit­a­mins and min­er­als your body needs. Recy­cling left-over food wastes, leaves, grasses and hay is at the core of organic gar­den­ing at its finest and well worth the effort.

Com­post must be turned faith­fully to oxy­genate the mat­ter. The oxy­gen is required to heat and decom­pose the food into nutri­ents and soil in a timely man­ner. With­out the oxy­gen that is pro­vided by turn­ing, the mate­r­ial will have to take its nat­ural time to change into soil. Although this is accept­able, many gar­den­ers want to use the recy­cled wastes within the next six months and are will­ing to put in the biweekly labor of turn­ing the com­post. Some may roll the drum of “brown gold” around the yard while oth­ers may enjoy turn­ing it by hand with a pitchfork.

Fer­til­iz­ing With­out fer­til­iz­ing addi­tives (nat­ural or chem­i­cal), plants will be stunted and unhealthy. Organic gar­den­ers may use com­post to aug­ment the nutri­ents in the soil and to improve the tex­ture and good bac­te­ria, but most com­post should not totally replace fer­til­iz­ing addi­tives. Cyn­thia Boruff, a gar­dener of fifty years, told us that she annu­ally adds to her gar­den: com­post, chicken manure, alfalfa tea (after the plants are at least six inches tall), and her spe­cial for­mula for fertilizer.

“Since I do not rely on com­mer­cial chem­i­cal fer­til­iz­ers, I vary my organic meth­ods to insure a broader spec­trum of nutri­ents,” states Cyn­thia. “My for­mula that replaces pur­chased fer­til­izer is a com­bi­na­tion of blood meal, bone meal, and dolomite (or agri­cul­ture lime) in equal pro­por­tions. I mix it into the soil at the time of set­ting the young seedlings or plant­ing the seed. It has never failed me yet! My corn is the biggest in the county and my veg­eta­bles are award-winning.”

Gar­den­ers who don’t use chem­i­cal fer­til­iz­ers prac­tice crop rotation–a com­mon tech­nique to lessen the amount of fer­til­izer needed. This will help to pre­vent deple­tion of nutri­ents spe­cific to indi­vid­ual species of plants by rotat­ing veg­etable beds or rows. As an exam­ple, organic gar­den­ers will plant car­rots in a spe­cific row one year and plant a dif­fer­ent veg­etable in that spot the next sea­son. Since dif­fer­ent plants require dif­fer­ent amounts of key nutri­ents, the soil will not be depleted and less organic fer­til­izer is needed.

Seed Selec­tion Depend­ing on your def­i­n­i­tion of “organic,” you may choose to pur­chase seeds from a uni­ver­sal stan­dard seed cat­a­log or from an organic seed farm. The dif­fer­ences vary from multi-generational hybrids and genet­i­cally engi­neered plants/seeds on one end of the spec­trum to her­itage or heir­loom seeds on the other.

Purists on the organic side reli­giously pur­chase only heir­loom seeds because these seeds have had lit­tle change over decades, some­times even cen­turies. Pure high-protein bean seeds used by the Anazasi have man­aged to sur­vive in tact these past cen­turies and have been handed down gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion for hun­dreds of years. Her­itage farms have kept the purity of the bean and offer the seeds by cat­a­log pur­chase. The same is true of a bean vari­ety that the Pil­grims brought over on the Mayflower. The cat­a­logs usu­ally boast seventy-five to one hun­dred dif­fer­ent plant seeds, some­times with very inter­est­ing histories.

Heir­loom seed cat­a­logs are avail­able via the inter­net, but it is more fun to col­lect the seeds or cat­a­logs from other organic gar­den­ers or her­itage seed club mem­bers. Once seed has been acquired, it is nec­es­sary to learn how to har­vest and store the seed prop­erly to main­tain qual­ity con­trol for the next sea­son and to pro­tect the purity of the heir­loom seed. While it is inter­est­ing to think of an entire gar­den of only heir­loom plants, gar­den­ers may find them­selves dis­ap­pointed with the final prod­uct. With­out the sci­ence of hybridiz­ing, some his­toric prod­ucts may be small or not as tasty.

Winifred Mei­dinger, a 90-year old gar­dener, col­lects her heir­loom seeds each year for the fol­low­ing season’s plant­ing. She espe­cially loves her toma­toes and zuc­chini that have been handed down gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion for the last one hun­dred years. Ms. Mei­dinger enjoys the taste and tex­ture of her pro­duce and has a sense of pride in know­ing she is one of the few gar­den­ers hold­ing to the heir­loom phi­los­o­phy. Many find it fas­ci­nat­ing to keep in touch with the past by using the same seeds the pio­neers used–unadulterated by mod­ern science.

Heir­loom seeds are absolutely organic, but not all organic seeds are “heir­loom.” Organic seeds are not genet­i­cally engi­neered and are not chem­i­cally treated prior to pur­chase. Most organic farm­ers pur­chase mainly from organic seed cat­a­logs. But they will also buy seed from stan­dard cat­a­logs if it is the best way to get the desired taste or tex­ture of a par­tic­u­lar fruit.

Stan­dard seeds, from the store and most cat­a­logs, are fre­quently pow­dered with chem­i­cals to pre­vent mold or fun­gus growth and to ward off dete­ri­o­ra­tion in the soil before ger­mi­na­tion. While there are organic meth­ods to do the same pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures with­out chem­i­cals, few gar­den­ers know the tech­niques to pro­tect the seeds. These meth­ods should be researched in organic farm­ing books and mag­a­zines. Such approaches include plant­ing in paper tow­els, or how to prop­erly col­lect and dry seeds.

Bruised Knuck­les The ben­e­fits of organic gar­den­ing far out-weigh the work load. But the amount of time down in the dirt is far greater than stan­dard chem­i­cal gar­den­ing. It requires time pick­ing bugs off of plants, time plac­ing jars of nat­ural attrac­tants and boards on moist ground to trick insects into cap­tiv­ity, time work­ing manure and teas into the soil–all of this instead of the easy chem­i­cal fix. The advan­tage is health from chemical-free pro­duce for you and your fam­ily, as well as phys­i­cal and spir­i­tual bal­ance from the daily phys­i­cal exer­cise required to nur­ture your garden.

In years past the knowl­edge of organic gar­den­ing was handed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, as well as a bas­ket­ful of tricks to make the job eas­ier. Today, it is a risk for good pro­duce the first sea­son or two if you are a begin­ning organic farmer — unless a men­tor is nearby to offer help­ful hints. How­ever, there are hun­dreds of books, arti­cles, and inter­net resources to help the new gar­dener become suc­cess­ful. Even that takes time, though.

Organic farm­ing is a noble pur­suit that requires per­se­ver­ance. This resolve will remind you of your ances­tors and your past each time you pick up a hand­ful of com­posted soil or pre­serve an heir­loom seed. It will keep you look­ing to the future — jump­ing over and around your present day prob­lems — to the seeds that you will pur­chase, the pro­duce that will be picked, the new recipes and uses you will con­coct. For that you won’t mind a few scrapes, an aching back, or bruised knuck­les. It will all be worth it because philo­soph­i­cally, it is where you want to be.

About the Author

David Beart is the owner of www.professorshouse.com . Our site cov­ers fam­ily issues such as gar­den­ing & land­scap­ing, mar­riage, forums and relationships.