Organic Gardening 101

These are the notes used during the HPCG demonstration on Saturday May 29th.

One question that was recently asked was, “Who owns the land?” Technically, the HPCG land is owned by Dekalb County but “ownership” is a bit of a fallacy and any steward is temporary. Right now we are the stewards. And luckily, Dekalb County had the insight to mandate that we use organic methods. So that’s really our first step today – bringing clarity to Organic.

What is Organic Gardening?

In a nutshell organic gardening is the process of gardening that uses only natural inputs and does not use synthetic and chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

A few qualities of Organic Gardening include:
Improved Soil health – building up the life of the soil helps sustain plants.
Organic methods build soil health rather than destroy the life of the soil.
Organic gardens improve over time and require fewer and fewer fertilizer and pest control inputs over the years.
Organic materials biodegrade easily into the environment.

Organic does NOT mean that NO fertilizers are used or that NO pest control is used. Organic means using plant and animal based substances instead of petroleum based products or harsh chemicals that are harmful to soil health. Most importantly, Organic agriculture does not use the famous “nitrate fertilizers” that also double as explosives.

A Brief History of Chemical Agriculture

All agriculture was organic until the last century. Large scale use of chemical fertilizers didn’t come online until after WWII. The 1st battles of WWI were off the coast of Chile for sea gull poop (ammonium nitrate). Germany sought out this supply of nitrates as it was key to making bombs. Because the Allies put up a blockade and wouldn’t let the Germans through, the Germans went to the lab and began synthesizing ammonium nitrate.

WWII was possible because the Germans created the process to synthesize ammonium nitrate in the laboratory. Oddly enough, it turns out that ammonium nitrate, this critical component for making bombs – it is actually bad for the soil and kills soil microbes at least as good, if not better, than it kills people.

During WW2, the United States also made quite a bit of ammonium nitrate in the attempt to keep up with the Germans. After the war, there was a push to find a use for this stuff in case we needed to keep the factories that produced it readily online in preparation for more war.

It was discovered that ammonium nitrate was easily absorbed by plants to create rapid growth (kinda like what we see with Barry Bonds when using steroids) and its use became widespread and touted as a way to solve world hunger. The concept of using ammonium nitrate fertilizers became so popular in the 50s that it was taught to developing nations. It was called the “Green Revolution”. So that name is already taken.

Applying Organic Fertilizers – the NPK Ratio

NPK – what does it mean? Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium. These 3 elements are the 3 critical components for plant growth and fertilizers sold in the United States must post the NPK ratio on the package. In chemical agriculture, NPK is ONLY NPK – there are no other elements or nutrients in chemical mixtures. With organic ingredients, NPK comes with dozens of micro nutrients that won’t be available in the “miracle” chemical fertilizers.

N is for Nitrogen and is essential for the green growth of plants. We used bloodmeal as a nitrogen supplement at the HPCG demonstration. Bloodmeal has a 11-0-0 NPK ratio and should be applied at a rate of 1-3 pounds per 100 square feet. For the HPCG food pantry beds, we took a plant-by-plant approach to fertilization. We used a couple of rounded teaspoons of bloodmeal under each plant. Another option for nitrogen would have been fish emulsion. Alfalfa meal, chicken feather meal and cottonseed meal are also good organic nitrogen options.

P is for Phosphorus and helps plants in the production of flowers and seeds. For HPCG, we utilized Bonemeal in our demonstration, which is also a good source of calcium. The application rate is about the same rate as Bloodmeal. In our case, we used a couple of rounded teaspoons under each plant.

K – Potassium which helps plants produce strong stems. We used greensand which is a great source of potash and trace minerals. Greensand helps retain soil moisture, improves clay soils dramatically and is said to provide up to 30 different micro nutrients. Greensand is much more dense than bloodmeal or bonemeal but we used similar application rates at 2-3 rounded teaspoons per plant.

Transplanting:

For the transplanting demonstration, we planted a tomato plant and an eggplant. Several volunteers helped prepare and transplant the remaining food pantry gardens.

For the tomato demonstration, we dug a hole as deep as the first “true leaves”. The lower leaves of the plant were removed and the tomato was planted much deeper than it was in the 4″ pot. Tomato stems can readily product roots so planting deeply is a great way to get a tomato established quickly. A second demonstration showed that tall transplants can be buried in a trough where the plant is placed in a semi-horizontal position to allow quicker deep root development.

The eggplant was planted so that the dirt line was about 1/2 way between the root ball and the first true leaves of the plant. Although eggplant roots will not develop along the stem like the tomato, a deeper plant allows for better deep-root development.

After transplanting, the plants were watered deeply and a layer of wheat straw mulch was applied. The leaves were sprayed with a liquid kelp mixture.

About my discovery of Organic Gardening

I started my first garden in 1993 and, at the time, had a keen interest in hydroponics and believed that it was a way that populations in Africa could be fed. I was actually a founding board member of Sister Cities International in Memphis and our sister city in Kaolack, Senegal was very interested in having a hydroponics facility. I was managing a greenhouse and studying hydroponics in Memphis so that I could install the hydroponics facility in Africa and otherwise save the world.

As a one-time chemistry major, chemical fertilizers were fascinating to me. I believed that they were a MIRACLE that made plants GROW. And I was applying some of these miracle products to my garden when my next door neighbor marched over and said that my actions were harmful to her rabbits (she had a backyard full of rabbits and a roof full of pigeons).

She handed me a Garden’s Alive magazine and urged me to use organic products on my garden. So I gave them a try. And in the process of reading about and ordering these products, I became fascinated with how organic gardening worked and less convinced about the miracle of chemical agriculture. The more I learned, the more I realized that the current state of chemical agriculture was not sustainable and was actually causing harm. I have been an organic gardening enthusiast ever since.

John