 |
|
 |
| |
| Departments |
Home
Columns, Special
Topics & Features:
The Columns:
Angels, Guides, &
Loving Spirits:
Angel Blessings:
with Dr. Doreen Virtue
Ask Valerie Morrison,
Internationally
Acclaimed Psychic
Astrologer's Notes:
Ask Carrin Martin,
Astrologer
Basil Fearrington,
Astrology
Diana Stone,
Astrologer &
Huna Shaman
Jeff Jawer
Astrologer
Martin Lass,
Astrologer
Alan Oken,
Astrology
Glenn Perry,
Astrologer
Ray Merriman,
Financial Astrology:
MMA Market Week
Erin Sullivan,
Astrologer
Noel Tyl,
Astrologer
Daily Aspect Calendar
by Care
Monthly Horoscope:
Stellar Scopes
by Daija De Mornay
Creating Bridges:
The Spiritual &
Philosophical
Awakening to the
Miracle of Ordinary Life by Dennis Lewis
Avant-Gardening:
Insights by Frank &
Vicky Giannangelo
Bodymind Integration: A Psychology of Potential
by Kevin Roberts
Breaking Free:
Anne Brewer
Choices: The Art of Conscious Creation:
by Teri Harris Saa
From The Heart:
Alan Cohen
Teachings from the
Western Mystery Traditions: The Esoteric "Paths of Return"
by Jacquelyn Small, Eupsychia
Kabbalah:
"Letters from Heaven:" Spiritual Guidance from
the Hebrew Alphabet
by Avigayil Landsman
Memos From The
First Tabugian
Art Rosengarten, Ph.D.
Spirituality in Daily Life: by Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron
Understanding
Wicca: Ask Fyre
Pathways to the Self
Connie Rodriguez, Ph.D.
Mythology & Legends
Pearls of Wisdom:
with Care
The Practical
Practitioner
Feng Shui:
Wind & Water:
Carole J. Hyder
Parenting:
Living With Your
Intuitive Child:
Sherry Healy
Pet Care:
Dr. Carson's Holistic Animal Care
by Dr. Kathleen Carson, D.V.M.
Tarot:
Soulforest:
Tarot and Spirituality
Rachel Pollack,
Tarot Grand Master
Gateway to Tarot:
by Bonnie Cehovet,
Tarot Master
Unexplained Phenomena:
Paranormal Potpourri:
By Dr. Gerri Leigh, Ph.D
Humor:
Wake Up Laughing.Com:
Swami Beyondananda
Features:
Blessings & Messages
Crystals, Gemstones & Minerals by Mirabai of MoonCave
Event Calendar
Historical Notes & Data
The MetaPersonals
Predictions
Reviews:
Tarot, Cartomancy,
Oracle Decks,
Books, & Software.
by Bonnie Cehovet,
Tarot Master
Symbols, Seals,
Amulets & Talismans
The What in the
World Department
Trivia & Other
Novel Moments
Your Views
Interviews:
Erin Sullivan,
Astrologer
Healing & Alternative
Health:
"The Ancient Way of Chinese Medicine"
by Kevin O'Neil
Flower Essences
by Donna Cunningham
Empower Yourself
to Heal
by Gerri Shapiro
Herbology:
Ron Norwood
Homeopathic Medicine by Deborah Olenev, CCH, RSHom (NA)
Integrated Healing Arts
Living in Harmony-Astrology, Yoga & Ayurveda:
Venkat & Christine Machiraju
"Spirit and Practice
of the Wise Woman
Tradition"
By Susun Weed
Tai Chi & Qigong
by Bill Douglas
The Holistic Mystic,
by Lonny Brown
The Directory
Archives:
Past Issues
General Information:
Synopsis of Contents
Editorial Submission
Information:
Articles
Columns
Editorial Opinions
"Your Views"
General Content
Event Calendars
Graphics & Photos
Editorial Deadlines
Advertising
Information &
Opportunities
About
The Meta Arts
Magazine
Department
Contacts:
Publishers
Editorial
Advertising Sales
Graphic Design
Promotion Dept.
Employment
Contact Us
Legal Notices
|
|
|
|
|
|
Creating Bridges:
The Spiritual & Philosophical: |
|
|
Organic Gardening |
|
|
by Frank and Vicky Giannangelo |
|
|
The Garden Obelisk
For us the garden has been over weeks now. Although others in the area continue to have greens and other tender produce, a week of hard frosts have put down the lettuce, peppers, eggplant, and squash. Still in the ground are carrots, onions, and beets. With weather in the high 80’s during the day, the feeling is that we should be looking back over our shoulder at how the garden is doing and why we aren’t watering. It’s as if there is a crop of memory that needs attention, only to disappear when the gate opens. The brown onions have been harvested, brought inside, eaten or stored. The red onions seem to take forever to fall over and die off, sealing the ends allowing a longer storage period.
It is easy to be lulled into a complacency of warmth, forgetting that the last load of wood needs to be stacked and those three standing dead trees still need to come down, be cut up and stacked, ready for the winter fire. The Chantenay carrots grow even larger with the late warm days adding to their girth. (We like these carrots for keeping over the winter because they contain more moisture and don’t become wibbly like the thinner ones. We cut off all the green and part of their tops, put them in a large cooler after letting them dry for a few days, and keep the lid ajar so moisture can escape, preventing rot. The cooler is in the basement where the temperature remains fairly constant throughout the winter.)
But we know that, in the not too distant future, the really hard, cold weather will be here and before the ground freezes hard we will need to remove and store what’s left in the ground, leaving only memories of last years crop mingling with the also invisible visions of next springs planting. If we wander out to the garden, we get caught in that in-between world that we know once existed and will exist again, yet now is only in evidence like the enigmatic “Gone To Croatan” left by the Roanoke colonists: stems and leaves and other debris that will soon be in the compost bin to be returned to the garden in another season. What we are left with is a condition that will be a “deliberate unseen” that grows clearer as we clean the remnants to avoid mold and hiding places for insects.
The Egyptian obelisk had an infinite point at the top which spread out and downward, ever widening to its base standing on the ground. On the four sides were messages that, when once read by the viewer on the ground, released a consciousness back up to that infinite entry point to be dispersed into an otherworld cosmos, there seeking an expression that one day would reappear, at the most appropriate moment, back in the reality from whence it began.
Each of the Egyptian hieroglyphs represented an image in its ideal form, producing in the viewer or reader, a combined “text/image complex”, much as the Renaissance emblem books were aligned in sequence to procure an edification in the reader. These groupings worked on multi-levels: the picture with the associated words; the readers then translating the word; and finally, the intent of the collection to form within the consciousness a representation of a chosen, desired awareness.
As winter closes in through the heat, fewer of the Veggie-glyphs remain to speak, and soon the garden that was all a babble in spring, will be silent. Those perfect peppers, growing next to and above the lettuce that shared a closeness with carrot tops gently bending over to provide some symbiotic shade, were read by all those who walked by and glancing, absorbed the emblematic green image/text.
Next spring, someone, somewhere, the time and place unknown to us, will form new gardens with hands seeding a personal translation of the reappearing energy that at its base, insists that we should grow.
Copyright (c) 2003
Giannangelo Farms Southwest
New on our website: New Mexico's Wildflowers, Cactus, Grasses, Shrubs, Trees, and Wildlife.
"What is Organic Gardening?"
"Man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”
Rachel Carson
ORGANIC GARDENING starts with good soil. When crops are deprived of basic nutrients they languish. Organic soil amendments and conditioners pay for themselves with increased plant productivity. Healthy plants grow more vigorously, taste better, store longer, and better resist insect attacks. They have greater resistance to the cold, heat, drought, and disease. Successful soil building best addresses the soil’s long-term needs by remedying deficiencies organically. Chemical fertilizers add unwanted nitrates or salts to the soil, as well as leaving chemical residues in the food. Organic gardening is growing without chemical fertilizers, naturally building the soil to support healthy plant life. Chemical fertilizers and additives will, over time, damage the soil's ability to provide what plants need to resist disease, insect attacks, and stress. Soil depletion of organic nutrients is one of the main causes of unhealthy plants and disease.
RECIPE FOR SOIL DEPLEATION:
Pesticides + chemical fertilizers = Infertile soil, stressed plants, and insect attacks.
RECIPE FOR SOIL BUILDING:
Organic fertilizers + microbial activity = Soil fertility, healthy plants, and resistance to insect attacks.
A healthy, organic garden produces strong plants that are able to withstand adverse conditions. The consistent traits and habits needed to make good soil can also help build fertility in our lives. Those things we do to create a healthy garden can become the tools needed to explore, change, and enhance our daily lives through:
Assessment - the plan of action
Decision – the choice to act
Implementation– the act itself, the doing
Success in the garden proves the efficacy of these tools, and as we use them to expand our gardens - the garden of our yard, and the garden of our soul - we expand all the aspects of our lives.
Organic soil amendments and conditioners can renew the life of your soil without adding unwanted chemicals. Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium are the basic providers of nutrients in the soil. Trace minerals provide the rest.
Soil can either be acidic or alkaline, or neutral – the soil’s pH. pH is the symbol for the logarithm of the reciprocal of Hydrogen ion concentration in gram atoms per liter. For example, a pH of 5 indicates a concentration of .00001 or 10-5 gram atoms of hydrogen ions in one liter of solution. Acidic soil has a pH range from 1 to 6.5. Alkaline soils have a pH range from 7.5 to 10. Neutral soil has a pH of 7. Lime, oak leaf mold, peat moss, rotted sawdust, and soil sulfur will lower the pH in an alkaline soil. For acid soil, add dolomite lime, or oyster shell lime. For the best results, add these amendments in the spring when soils are warming and microorganisms are active. Most plants grow well in a pH range of 6, but will tolerate a pH between 5.5 – 7.
Organic soil-building should include the addition of the following organic nutrients:
HUMUS - organic matter in various stages of decay. It increases water-holding capacity, modifies soil structure, stimulates plant growth, permits root penetration, and helps to correct soil imbalances. Some forms of humus are found in compost and animal manures.
NITROGEN - contains proteins and is a food source for compost piles (grass clippings, green vegetable matter), and it stimulates green growth in plants. Sources are blood meal, cottonseed meal, alfalfa meal, fishmeal, and fish emulsion.
PHOSPHORUS - stimulates root growth and promotes fruit and seed maturation. Good sources are soft rock phosphate or bone meal. Deficiencies are indicated by purple leaves, brittle roots, skinny stems and late fruit set and maturity.
POTASSIUM - promotes plant vitality and disease resistance. Sources are Greens and, also known as Glauconite, sulfate of potash, wood ashes, or Sul Po Mag. Deficiencies are indicated by an irregular yellowing of lower leaves, and poor root growth.
CALCIUM - important for plant cell wall integrity, root development and leaf growth. Low levels show up as deformed new leaves and branches, weak stems and roots. A good source for calcium is gypsum, which can also lower the alkalinity of the soil.
MAGNESIUM - essential for chlorophyll and green leaf development. Pale green leaves with green veins are a sign of deficiency. Adding dolomite lime to raise the pH in an acid soil often corrects this deficiency. In an alkaline soil you can add Magnesium Sulfate.
SULPHUR - used to lower pH in alkaline soil, and it is a stimulant for soil microbial life. Use sparingly. A good source is soil sulfur, or calcium sulfate – Gypsum.
TRACE MINERALS - found in compost, kelp meal, algae meal, and seaweed meal. These can provide boron, copper, iron, sulfur and zinc.
OXYGEN - one of the most important fertility components in the soil - it stimulates microbial activity and allows free root growth. Humus, peat moss, compost, and aged manure tilled into the soil help to increase the air spaces in the soil enabling plants to utilize the available nutrients. Soil should be loose and never walked on, which only compacts it. Tilling wet soil too early in the season can also destroy soil structure by compacting it, and squeezing out the pockets for air.
SUSTAINABLE GARDENING - one of the most important things about gardening organically is that the process can become sustainable over time. Sustainable soil building begins after the initial soil testing and the addition of organic fertilizers and conditioners, and continues by organically maintaining and improving the soil over time. Sustaining the soil means being able to replenish nutrients with what you have at hand – organic compost, beneficial microbes, enzymes, and earthworms. Ideally, once the garden is established it can be sustained with garden compost alone, using the microbes in your soil to inoculate your compost, which feed your soil.
WORMS - Vermicomposting uses earthworms to make compost. Worms can eat their body weight daily in organic matter and convert it into dark, soil enriching castings full of live micro organisms, growth hormones, and nutrients, humic acids which condition the soil, and a neutral pH.
COMPOSTING - Billions of decaying organisms (25,000 bacteria placed end to end equal one inch) feed, grow, reproduce and die, recycling garden waste into an organic fertilizer and soil conditioner. Composting is the ultimate recycling process – improving soil structure, increasing the soil’s ability to hold moisture, providing soil aeration, fertilization, and nitrogen storage. It buffers pH, releases nutrients, and provides food for microbial life.
PLANTING COVER CROPS - this "green manure" is grown for the sole purpose of being tilled into the soil to add organic matter. It will help keep moisture from evaporating, regulate the soil temperature, keeping it cooler in summer and warmer in winter. By providing an insulating blanket, microbes and earthworms will thrive. The more worms in your garden, the more they can break up, fertilize, and aerate the soil. Beneficial insects are also attracted by cover crops; alfalfa can attract parasitic wasps, lady beetles, damsel bugs, big-eyed bugs and assassin bugs. White clover can attract Tachnid flies, ground beetles and parasitic wasps that prey on aphids, scales, caterpillars and white flies. Most grains will attract lady beetles. Clovers and vetches can attract minute pirate bugs. Fava beans and buckwheat can attract predatory and parasitic wasps, syrphid flies and bumblebees.
CROP ROTATION - Crop rotation also helps to prevent soil deficiencies. By using different plants in different beds, you can avoid depletion of nutrients because each plant has different needs. Planting a legume after a heavy feeder such as corn, will replenish the nitrogen in the soil. Rotate your root crops, leafy crops, heavy feeders, and cover crops. if you keep a garden journal you can keep track of what you planted, and where and when you planted it.
PROVIDING GOOD DRAINAGE - Good drainage is essential to soil health. Too little drainage makes a soggy soil which prevents root growth, nutrient absorption, and compacts the soil. A perk test is an easy way to determine water drainage through your soil. Dig a hole six inches across by one foot deep. Fill with water and let drain. As soon as the water has drained, fill it again. Time how long it takes for the water to drain. If it takes more than 8 hours, you have a drainage problem. Add sand, gypsum, chopped straw, vermiculite or perlite to increase the drainage. Too much drainage can be determined by a water test. This will tell you if you soil drains too quickly, leaching nutrients and causing plants to be watered more frequently. Water well a small portion of your garden. Two days later, dig a hole 6 inches deep. If the soil is dry to the bottom of the hole, your soil drains too quickly to promote good plant growth. Add peat moss, vermiculite, perlite, composted manure and mulch well to prevent evaporation.
"When the planes still swoop down and aerial spray a field in order to kill a predator insect with pesticides, we are in the Dark Ages of commerce. Maybe one thousandth of this aerial insecticide actually prevents the infestation. The balance goes to the leaves, into the soil, into the water, into all forms of wildlife, into our selves. What is good for the balance sheet is wasteful of resources and harmful to life.”
Paul Hawkin from The Ecology of Commerce
COPYRIGHT (c) 2002 by Frank and Vicky Giannangelo
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Frank & Vicky Giannangelo
Registered Organic Gardeners
|
 |
Frank and Vicky Giannangelo have been gardening organically for 30 years and are New Mexico Registered Organic Gardeners.
Giannangelo Farms began in 1986 on San Juan Island, Washington - an island off the coast of Washington State, 10 miles from the bottom of Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
After creating formal, patterned, raised bed, sustainable organic gardens, starting a business, and expanding as much as we could handle without hiring anyone, we sold our business in 1993 and moved to Arizona, where we spent three years creating and coordinating the building of a large formal herb and vegetable garden for a private community.
Since 1997, we have lived in northwestern New Mexico in an area presenting many challenges, altitude, erratic spring weather, a short growing season, and a 7,300 ft. high desert environment - which is allowing us to use our experience and creativity to establish Giannangelo Farms Southwest.
There are formal gardens, pools, and ponds surrounded by a hay bale stucco wall, garden beds with rock retaining walls, three pergolas for private formal teas, a labyrinth, garden trellises, and greenhouses - all of which are open to the public year around.
We give a series of spring and fall "You Can Grow!" Workshops on how to do basic rockwork, build hay bale stucco walls, and how to create sustainable organic gardens - with an emphasis on the problems of growing in this area.
In the summer we sell organic herbs and vegetables to a coop market in Gallup, and participate in a local Saturday's farmer's market. Sustainable Organic Gardening CD ROMs are available on our website:
NEW on our website:
CREATIVE GARDEN DESIGN:
avant-gardening.com
/design.html
TAKE VIRTUAL PHOTO TOURS:
avant-gardening.com
Our newsletter is now published monthly in a new online magazine:
avant-gardening.com/
grow.html
|
 |
You'll find it in
The
Directory!
|
|
|
|
|
