1. You need to plan & prepare the soil first if you want maximum productivity. Waiting till you plant is far too late! Ideally you need to prepare the land where you plan to plant fruit or nut trees at least one year before planting. This is because it takes a year to change the soil. You need to put the appropriate fertilizers in the right quantity on the soil a year before planting as it takes the soil life a year to break down into plant food. This means you need a soil test to determine what the mineral deficiencies or excesses are, what your pH is, what the level of organic matter is etc. Once you put the fertilisers on the soil you need to do two other things to complete the preparation: (i) add lots of mulch, preferably wood chips or wood mulch;(ii) add microbes and fungi spores to increase the soil’s wildlife.
2. Two to three months before planting, put in sprinklers in an irrigation system, probably two sprinklers per tree to ensure both sides of the tree will get the essential watering it needs when there is insufficient rain.
3. Once you have acquired the young tree(s) the day you plant there is one more step to do to ensure success. You need to soak the roots in a nutrient-rich solution to promote root growth. There are many suitable solutions available on the market but a good one contains NPK, fulvic acid and a kelp solution.
4. When you plant the tree, you need to dig a hole at least twice the diameter of the container the plant comes in. Do not use a posthole digger for this, as it would compact the soil and make it difficult for the young roots to grow and spread out. When you put the plant in the hole, you only need water and no fertilizer (as you should have all the fertilizer you need from step 1).In the area around the plant you need to put very friable quality soil or peat moss so that the roots can grow outwards easily.
5. The first seven weeks after planting are crucial; you need maximum root growth to achieve the eventual maximum above ground growth and productivity. These 7 weeks determine the eventual size and productivity of the tree. All that is needed in this period if you have prepared properly is water and loving care to ensure it is not harmed by the elements e.g if it is windy, stake the tree. After 7 weeks you can start a monthly program of adding liquid fertilizers. If you want great results, you should do a leaf test after 2 or 3 months and spray on the leaves what is indicated by the leaf test as needed. Once a year do a soil test to determine what granular fertilizers are needed to replace what has been leached out or removed by the trees.
Written by Geoff Buckley, partner in Growing Healthy. For more information go to http://www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com/. (511 words).
Welcome
Welcome to the blog website for Growing Healthy Organic Food. Our blog contains many resources on organic farming and healthy gardening, including stories, videos and other topics. Our blog is completely free.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Maintaining Fruit and Nut Tree Orchards
I have had a couple of emails this past week from people who want to know how to maintain fruit trees when they are growing them in lawn areas. By coincidenge, the next video that will be posted on this site deals with this topic and you can see how we maintain our lime trees. For ease of maintenance we have planted them in groups of 30. They are now 3 years old and are growing well.
Barring accidents, which include such things as untimely hail storms or strong winds, the amount of fruit you will get from your fruit trees will be determined by the amount of food that the tree has available to it to create the fruit. If the soil is nutrient rich, well drained and has a high (10% or greater) level of organic matter, then the tree will produce an absolutele abundance as long as there is plenty of water and sunshine. Unfortunately most soils aren't as good as they should be so you have to make a habit of feeding your trees regularly - at least once every couple of months.
Soils are generally deficient in several minerals, have less than optimal organic matters and may be poorly drained or too sandy. My rule is that if I want my trees to produce, say, 100 kg of fruit per year, I will need to feed them the right amount of the food they need so that they can do this. If I value the tree's production at $4 per kilo, then my tree will give me $400 worth of fruit per year. So that it can do this, I give the tree 1/10 of the value of that fruit in the form of nutrients. This means I need to spend $40 per year on each of my trees. If you give your tree nothing, it will give very little in return.
I think an investment of $40 to get $400 worth of fruit is pretty good value, but the problem is that first you have to believe that the tree will give you the fruit and second you have to be prepared to make your investment before you reap the harvest!! Most people think it is sufficient to plant the tree and let nature look after the rest. Unfortunately, it generally doesn't work this way.
To feed your tree you can give it at least some of the following: blood and bone, lime, a really good all purpose fertilizer, molasses, boron, fish or kelp fertilizer, soft rock phosphate, silicon in the form of diatamaceous earth and lots of organic matter. Trees like to be fed regularly, so the rule is a little, often.
Don't dig around the trees. This damages the root systems. Cover the ground area with mulch keeps the weeds under control. Use cardboard to stop light getting to the weeds. Think of the area around your tree as a mulch pile and keep adding to it, remembering not to pile anything too close to the tree truck. Take your mulched area right out to the drip line of the tree so that you can mow right up to it. Weed the area by hand whenever necessary and pile the weeds back under the tree. Weeds make really good mulch.
The reason for not using weedicides around your fruit trees is that the weedicides kill the soils' micro-organisms. Through their root systems, your fruit and nut tree give out 50% of all the sugar they produce through the process of photosynthesis. The reasons they do this is to attract billions of fungi and bacteria to live around their roots. A tree must consider these microscopic creatures must be pretty important for them to give them so much of the food they create. If the trees consider them to be important, don't you think it might be foolish to use weedicides which kill those micro-organisms? All the orchardists I spoke to when writing my book "Transition Farms" told me that once they realised they had to stop using Roundup to control weeds, their whole farming operation improved significantly.
Growing fruit trees is not difficult but it does require on-going investment to keep the trees healthy and productive.
Written by Bev Buckley
For more information go to www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com
Barring accidents, which include such things as untimely hail storms or strong winds, the amount of fruit you will get from your fruit trees will be determined by the amount of food that the tree has available to it to create the fruit. If the soil is nutrient rich, well drained and has a high (10% or greater) level of organic matter, then the tree will produce an absolutele abundance as long as there is plenty of water and sunshine. Unfortunately most soils aren't as good as they should be so you have to make a habit of feeding your trees regularly - at least once every couple of months.
Soils are generally deficient in several minerals, have less than optimal organic matters and may be poorly drained or too sandy. My rule is that if I want my trees to produce, say, 100 kg of fruit per year, I will need to feed them the right amount of the food they need so that they can do this. If I value the tree's production at $4 per kilo, then my tree will give me $400 worth of fruit per year. So that it can do this, I give the tree 1/10 of the value of that fruit in the form of nutrients. This means I need to spend $40 per year on each of my trees. If you give your tree nothing, it will give very little in return.
I think an investment of $40 to get $400 worth of fruit is pretty good value, but the problem is that first you have to believe that the tree will give you the fruit and second you have to be prepared to make your investment before you reap the harvest!! Most people think it is sufficient to plant the tree and let nature look after the rest. Unfortunately, it generally doesn't work this way.
To feed your tree you can give it at least some of the following: blood and bone, lime, a really good all purpose fertilizer, molasses, boron, fish or kelp fertilizer, soft rock phosphate, silicon in the form of diatamaceous earth and lots of organic matter. Trees like to be fed regularly, so the rule is a little, often.
Don't dig around the trees. This damages the root systems. Cover the ground area with mulch keeps the weeds under control. Use cardboard to stop light getting to the weeds. Think of the area around your tree as a mulch pile and keep adding to it, remembering not to pile anything too close to the tree truck. Take your mulched area right out to the drip line of the tree so that you can mow right up to it. Weed the area by hand whenever necessary and pile the weeds back under the tree. Weeds make really good mulch.
The reason for not using weedicides around your fruit trees is that the weedicides kill the soils' micro-organisms. Through their root systems, your fruit and nut tree give out 50% of all the sugar they produce through the process of photosynthesis. The reasons they do this is to attract billions of fungi and bacteria to live around their roots. A tree must consider these microscopic creatures must be pretty important for them to give them so much of the food they create. If the trees consider them to be important, don't you think it might be foolish to use weedicides which kill those micro-organisms? All the orchardists I spoke to when writing my book "Transition Farms" told me that once they realised they had to stop using Roundup to control weeds, their whole farming operation improved significantly.
Growing fruit trees is not difficult but it does require on-going investment to keep the trees healthy and productive.
Written by Bev Buckley
For more information go to www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
The Importance of Trace Elements
The current situation
Food produced by large-scale, conventional, commercial farming practices generally contains 3 major nutrients (nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous) and 4 minor nutrients (boron, copper, manganese and molybdenum). These elements are generally monitored in agricultural soils. Three other nutrients (iodine, cobalt and selenium) are contained in our food if we eat meat. Iodine and cobalt come from salts licks provided to cattle, selenium is added to fortified chicken feed.
The bad news
The bad news is that living things need 72 biological elements for normal metabolic function, reproduction and maintenance of the immune system. From the studies of Mt Tamborine soils carried out by the Tamborine Mountain Local Producers’ Association, which sponsors the Green Shed Market, we know that calcium is generally deficient. Since calcium is required in every cell in our body it is vitally important. When food is grown on soils, which contain all 72 elements, it is healthy. Because it is healthy, plants grown in this soil are healthy. Insects and diseases do not attack. Insects are nature’s garbage disposal agents. Too often we choose to kill the insects and we eat the garbage. Disease is also nature’s way of eliminating those things that are not healthy, whether they are plants, animals or humans.
The food we eat is severely deficient in over 60 vitally important elements. Many practitioners of alternative medicine and a growing number of doctors believe that this is the cause of large numbers of physiological and mental diseases such as cancer, auto–immune disease, late onset diabetes, degenerative and chronic diseases, allergies and birth defects. Dr Carole Hungerford’s book “Good Health in the 21st Century” provides a sound scientific explanation of the thinking behind this claim. Her book won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award in 2006. Dr Hungerford rejects the routine cocktail of medications with their complicated interactions and side effects, and shows how to provide a chance for minerals, vitamins and essential fatty acids to do their health giving work.
Trace elements are:
• Essential in the assimilation and utilisation of vitamins.
• An aid in digestion.
• A catalyst for hormones and enzymes.
• An aid in replacing electrolytes lost through perspiration.
• A protection against toxic reactions.
Reinstatement of trace elements in our soils eliminates all plant diseases, pest and insect attack. This eliminates the need for use of toxic agricultural chemicals, which are used with frightening frequency on our food.
On Tamborine Mountain we have proved that the claim of adding the full range of trace elements and balancing the major elements is the way to grow healthy crops. Customers at the Green Shed see the evidence and comment regularly on it. If this strategy can make a difference to plants, we ask the question: “Why don’t we use the same strategy to improve human health?”
Most research into trace elements seems to be done with the intention of finding out the effects of having too much of a particular trace element. There seems to be only a little work has been done to identify the beneficial role played by individual trace elements. Research has shown that:
• Chromium shortage may cause heart condition, disruption of the metabolism and diabetes,
• Indium stimulates metabolism,
• Molybdenum functions as a co-factor for a number of enzymes that catalyse important chemical transformations eg xanthine oxidase catalyses the breakdown of nucleotides to form uric acid which contributes to the anti oxidant capacity of the blood,
• Boron promotes bone and joint health. Adequate intake of boron in conjunction with magnesium helps prevent calcium loss and bone demineralisation in post-menopausal women. Anecdotal studies suggest boron may alleviate symptoms of osteoarthritis.
• Zinc deficiency is associated with anaemia, delayed growth, birth defects, spontaneous abortion, impaired sexual maturation, sterility, slow wound healing.
Reference: http://www.truehealth.org/
Some essential trace elements
Silver, aluminium, gold, boron, barium, beryllium, bismuth, bromine, niobium, cadmium, cerium, cobalt, chromium, caesium, copper, gallium, germanium, mercury, iodine, indium, iridium, lanthanum, lithium, molybdenum, osmium, lead, palladium, platinum, radium, rubidium, ruthenium, antimony, selenium, silicon, tin, strontium, tellurium, thorium, titanium, vanadium, zinc, zirconium.
Written by Bev Buckley, Growing Healthy
http://www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com/
Food produced by large-scale, conventional, commercial farming practices generally contains 3 major nutrients (nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous) and 4 minor nutrients (boron, copper, manganese and molybdenum). These elements are generally monitored in agricultural soils. Three other nutrients (iodine, cobalt and selenium) are contained in our food if we eat meat. Iodine and cobalt come from salts licks provided to cattle, selenium is added to fortified chicken feed.
The bad news
The bad news is that living things need 72 biological elements for normal metabolic function, reproduction and maintenance of the immune system. From the studies of Mt Tamborine soils carried out by the Tamborine Mountain Local Producers’ Association, which sponsors the Green Shed Market, we know that calcium is generally deficient. Since calcium is required in every cell in our body it is vitally important. When food is grown on soils, which contain all 72 elements, it is healthy. Because it is healthy, plants grown in this soil are healthy. Insects and diseases do not attack. Insects are nature’s garbage disposal agents. Too often we choose to kill the insects and we eat the garbage. Disease is also nature’s way of eliminating those things that are not healthy, whether they are plants, animals or humans.
The food we eat is severely deficient in over 60 vitally important elements. Many practitioners of alternative medicine and a growing number of doctors believe that this is the cause of large numbers of physiological and mental diseases such as cancer, auto–immune disease, late onset diabetes, degenerative and chronic diseases, allergies and birth defects. Dr Carole Hungerford’s book “Good Health in the 21st Century” provides a sound scientific explanation of the thinking behind this claim. Her book won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award in 2006. Dr Hungerford rejects the routine cocktail of medications with their complicated interactions and side effects, and shows how to provide a chance for minerals, vitamins and essential fatty acids to do their health giving work.
Trace elements are:
• Essential in the assimilation and utilisation of vitamins.
• An aid in digestion.
• A catalyst for hormones and enzymes.
• An aid in replacing electrolytes lost through perspiration.
• A protection against toxic reactions.
Reinstatement of trace elements in our soils eliminates all plant diseases, pest and insect attack. This eliminates the need for use of toxic agricultural chemicals, which are used with frightening frequency on our food.
On Tamborine Mountain we have proved that the claim of adding the full range of trace elements and balancing the major elements is the way to grow healthy crops. Customers at the Green Shed see the evidence and comment regularly on it. If this strategy can make a difference to plants, we ask the question: “Why don’t we use the same strategy to improve human health?”
Most research into trace elements seems to be done with the intention of finding out the effects of having too much of a particular trace element. There seems to be only a little work has been done to identify the beneficial role played by individual trace elements. Research has shown that:
• Chromium shortage may cause heart condition, disruption of the metabolism and diabetes,
• Indium stimulates metabolism,
• Molybdenum functions as a co-factor for a number of enzymes that catalyse important chemical transformations eg xanthine oxidase catalyses the breakdown of nucleotides to form uric acid which contributes to the anti oxidant capacity of the blood,
• Boron promotes bone and joint health. Adequate intake of boron in conjunction with magnesium helps prevent calcium loss and bone demineralisation in post-menopausal women. Anecdotal studies suggest boron may alleviate symptoms of osteoarthritis.
• Zinc deficiency is associated with anaemia, delayed growth, birth defects, spontaneous abortion, impaired sexual maturation, sterility, slow wound healing.
Reference: http://www.truehealth.org/
Some essential trace elements
Silver, aluminium, gold, boron, barium, beryllium, bismuth, bromine, niobium, cadmium, cerium, cobalt, chromium, caesium, copper, gallium, germanium, mercury, iodine, indium, iridium, lanthanum, lithium, molybdenum, osmium, lead, palladium, platinum, radium, rubidium, ruthenium, antimony, selenium, silicon, tin, strontium, tellurium, thorium, titanium, vanadium, zinc, zirconium.
Written by Bev Buckley, Growing Healthy
http://www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com/
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