farming & GARDENING
February 2013 5
Restoring land with...
SEEDBALLS!
our very relationship with Nature. The closer we live to Nature, the more sensitivity we bring to our natural farming or ranching.
BY ANN ADAMS first read Masanobu Fukuoka’s international bestseller, The One-Straw Revolution, back in the late ‘80s. Fukuoka’s work is focused on crops like rice and orchards and vegetables, so I assumed Fukuoka’s work was most relevant to less-brittle areas of the world and small-scale agriculture/landscapes. So it was with great interest that I read the recent book release, Sowing Seeds in the Desert: Natural Farming, Global Restoration, and Ultimate Food Security, and learned how he had been traveling around the world (including the western arid U.S. like New Mexico) exploring ways to take his ideas of natural farming to a global level, particularly in arid environments of the world to help stop desertification. Larry Korn (one of Fukuoka’s students) edits this treatise which was published after Fukuoka’s death in 2008.
I
SOWING seeds
Fukuoka’s focus in this book is to achieve global food security by using the techniques of natural farming across the globe so that the tools for improved land health and growing food are in the hands of all producers and pastoralists. He makes it clear from his early mistrials that natural farming is not about neglect or letting Nature take its course. It is about agricultural production that requires as little intervention as possible so that Nature can do the work. This type of agricultural production requires a profound paradigm shift, or as Fukuoka put it, “a philosophy.” He wrote: “If you do not understand the philosophy, the rest [farming] becomes empty activity.” In other words, we must view Nature as a partner and recognize we are a part of Nature in order to make the effort to change our farming practices and
MUSINGS ON
After reading this book, I decided to experiment with making my own seedballs. The basic recipe for a seedball is to divide in volume: 1 part powdered clay (you can get at a pottery store or harvest your own). 1 part compost 1 part seeds (mix of perennials, annuals, vegetables, flowers—more diversity the better)
WINTER, GARDENS AND
COMMUNITY
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We garden our communities just as we garden our souls. There is the time and the input that we must put forth. Then there is the letting go. Not every crop makes it. Not every relationship comes to fruition. Hopefully we find our best matches and keep working to make the world a better place. The garden changes you. Watch a city being built in a season only to dissolve into dust and shatter after one night of low temperature. A whole summer to grow towers of sunflowers, song birds swinging on their branches, hanging upside down to mine the seeds from their blank faces. And then it is all gone.
It used to be that communities had to depend on each other. We were, by necessity, interdependent. My grandmother rode a horse seven miles to share a sewing needle. The harvest rotated between farms and families so that everyone got their crops in. We shared skills: carpentry, midwifery, blacksmithing, bread making. We shared harvests ensuring every family got the food they needed. If we had to grow food for our families to make it through the winter, could we do it? Could we do it alone? What skills do we have readily honed and what skills do we have left to rekindle?
What sustains us? The hope of another season? That some seeds will drop in the sloppy feast and grow again next year? That we can count on the sun and the worms and the spirit to make the magic happen again in six months? Where are you and what are you doing this winter?
As we layer our soil with compost, we rely on beings and forces to break down the matter and make it into soil. It's a miracle that useless matter can become the force that grows our food. Insects, worms, bacteria,
MONSANTO AND SEMINIS:
CONTROLLI NG TH E
SEED SUPPLY
enue source comes from tomato and peppers seeds, followed by cucumbers and beans.” Many large seed companies source their seeds from Seminis. While not all the seeds Seminis produces are GE seeds, by supporting Seminis, you are supporting Monsanto and the development of GE seed. FROM THE SEMINIS WEBSITE: these brands at right market seed to home gardeners.
SPRING BREAK KIDS Rio Grande Community Farm and the Village of Los Ranchos will host a Spring Break Farm Camp for children in Kindergarten through 5th grade, March 11-15th from 9am to 3pm. Campers will cook food, make crafts, play games, learn about farm animals, and work in the greenhouse, hoop house, and vegetable production fields to learn how food is grown. The activities will focus on soil, sun, water, and pollinators. The camp includes visitors from City of Albuquerque Open Space, Ber-
AT THE
You then spread the seedballs at a rate of 10-20 per square yard (experiment to see what works best). For big projects, they use a cement mixer to mix the balls and then drop them from airplanes. But, I’m starting small with a 100’ X 50’ area. This year I’m experimenting with some buffalograss, grama grass, skyrockets, wild tomato, Indian corn, oats, rye, basil, dill, arugula, Mexican hat, and sunflowers. We’ll find out what does well with the rainfall we get and how they do in an irrigated area. Seedballs are a great project to do with kids and it helps you tune into what plants do well in your area as a vegetable garden or to reclaim that bare batch of vacant lot that is always catching your eye. ANN ADAMS homesteads in the Manzano Mountains with a small herd of goats and a flock of chickens.
micro-flora, heat, condensation, decomposition are all influences in this process. People, with all our ego, just layer the matter and leave the rest to the earth and nature. What a lot of faith! What interdependence we have on the natural world around us. The world is constantly trying to feed us, to help us along—the tomato or bean or squash that lays down its life after producing a sweet fruit for us to eat.
BY AMANDA RICH, ERDA GARDENS t takes time to build community. It takes trust. It takes breaking down all our capitalist conditioning on competition. In the winter we take time to nurture our soil, adding manure, leaves and the dried bits of the garden that have been killed by the first hard frost. In the winter, we also nurture ourselves. This is the quiet inward time that takes us over the edge into the spirit world. The dead come walking in October. They offer us ghost stories; wisdom and the old ways revisited in our dreams.
In 2005, Monsanto purchased Seminis Seed Company. According to an online article published by the Organic Seed Alliance (seedalliance.org), “It is estimated that Seminis controls 40 percent of the U.S. vegetable seed market and 20 percent of the world market—supplying the genetics for 55 percent of the lettuce on U.S. supermarket shelves, 75 percent of the tomatoes, and 85 percent of the peppers, with strong holdings in beans, cucumbers, squash, melons, broccoli, cabbage, spinach and peas. The company’s biggest rev-
Fukuoka’s idea is that you learn over time which seeds take well in your area. The clay protects the seeds from birds and insects until the seeds have enough water to germinate and then they get a little boost from the compost. You throw the seedballs out at the time of year when the plants would naturally be throwing their seed (fall and winter). Once you’ve mixed the 3 parts together dry, slowly add water until the seedballs start to form—about the size of a large marble. You can form them bigger if you want.
CAMP!
nalillo County Master Composters, and Valley Flowers Farm. This affordable camp is available at a reduced price to families who qualify for free or reduced lunch at APS. The camp will be held at Los Ranchos Agri-Nature Center at 4920 Rio Grande Blvd NW. For more info e-mail education@riogrande farm.org, or visit www.rio grandecommu nityfarm.org to enroll your child.
RIO GRANDE COMMUNITY
FARM
THE SEED COMPANIES BELOW BUY THEIR SEEDS FROM SEMINIS
H O W T O AV O I D
MONSANTO SEED American Meadows Anderson’s Seed & Garden, Inc. Audubon Workshop Ball Horticultural Company Breck’s Bulbs Bunton Seed Burpee Cook’s Garden Corona Seeds DeBruyn Seed Company, Inc. Dege Garden Center Dixondale Farms/The Onion Patch Earl May Seed Early’s Farm & Garden Centre E & R Seed Co El Seed Farmer Seed & Nursery Flower of the Month Club Ferry Morse Fukuda Seed Store Gardens Alive Germania Seed Co Garden Trends, Inc. (d/b/a Harris Seeds) Germania Seed Company Grimes Horticulture H.F. Michell Company HPS Jungs Lindenberg Seeds McClure and Zimmerman Quality Bulb Brokers Meyer Seed Co of Baltimore, Inc. Mountain Valley Seed Ontario Seed
Ornamental Edibles Osborne Otis S. Twilley Seed Co., Inc. Park Seed Park Bulbs Park’s Countryside Garden P. L. Rohrer & Bro., Inc. Pinetree R.H. Shumway Rocky Mountain Seed Co. Roots and Rhizomes Rupp Seeds for the World Seminova Seymour’s Selected Seeds Snow Southern States Cooperative, Incorporated Stokes Spring Hill Nurseries Totally Tomato T&T Seeds Tomato Growers Supply The Page Seed Company The Vermont Bean Seed Company Tomato Growers Supply Company Vesey’s Seeds Vis Seed Company, Inc. Wayside Gardens Willhite Seed Co. William Dam Seeds
SAY NO TO MONSANTO
www.garden-of-eatin.com/how-to-avoid-monsanto For more information check out these articles online: Seminis’ home garden dealer list: www.seminis.com/global/us/products/Pages/Home-Garden.aspx Monsanto Purchases World’s Largest Vegetable Seed Company: www.seedalliance.org/seed_news/seminismonsanto