It is wonderful how the Earth gives us an abundance of delicious, beneficial, healing plants that we can grow and use to make our lives better. I have so many favorite books, and Healing Spices – How to Use 50 Everyday and Exotic Spices to Boost Health and Beat Disease (by Bharat B. Agarwal, PhD with Debora Yost) is one of my favorites on this topic! It educates and it provides a way to put more spice in your life and maintain your health at the same time. As the book’s information notes:
“Break through scientific research is finding that spices—even more than herbs, fruits and vegetables—are loaded with health-enhancing compounds.” From A to Z — Ajowan the Nature’s Pharmacy to Aniseed the Ultimate Digestif to Bay Leaf Infusion of Antioxidants to Cardamom the Stomach Sentinel to Black Cumin Seed The “Amazing” Cure-All to Sun-Dried Tomatoes Guardian of Men’s Health to Wasabi Hot Ally Against Cancer to so many more — 50 total!”
There are also three special sections: “Special Spice Combos” “Spices as Natural Medicines” and “Resources”.
Reading this book, you’ll find useful information like the fact that rosemary is one of the most powerful antioxidants, black pepper protects brain cells, chilis can relieve symptoms of arthritis, and turmeric has major anti-cancer properties.
Personally, I especially like and use turmeric with coconut milk as a drink to minimize joint pain. According to Healing Spices, “Turmeric the Leading Crusader Against Disease” may help prevent and/or treat: acne, allergies, alzheimer’s disease, osteo- and rheumatoid-arthritis, asthma, blemishes, cancer, chloresterol problems, colitis, cystic fibrosis, depression, dermatitis, diabetes (Type 2), eczema, eye infection, flatulence, gallbladder disease, gout, gum disease, heart disease, high blood pressure, liver disease, macular degeneration (age-related), overweight, pain, Parkinson’s disease, pollution side-effects, psoriasis, rash, reducing wrinkles, scleroderma, stroke and wounds. Healing Spices includes useful “information boxes” with topics such as “Turmeric Pairs Well with These Spices…”; “Turmeric Compliments Recipes Featuring…”; “Recipes Containing Turmeric (including a delicious recipe for Potato Cauliflower Curry)…” and “Make Your Own Turmeric Extract…”.
This book covers the properties and uses of all 50 spices in this same delicious detail. It would be fun to take a year off just to become proficient in all this wisdom and knowledge!
Living in a rural area, it’s not always possible to get to the vet in an emergency, and we must do what we can with what we have. Example: a friend had to google “dog Heimlich maneuver” when her dog started choking – and successfully learned how to save her furry friend. While I’m not advocating going it alone if you don’t absolutely have to, I can say from experience that I’ve found The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Dogs and Cats by the Editors of Prevention Magazine Health Books to be an extremely useful collection of tips, and is the next best thing to having a 24-hour-a-day on-call veterinarian!
Use as a practical reference to more than 100 common illnesses, emergencies and behavior problems. Benefit from the advice and wisdom of more than 200 veterinarians and other animal experts, with recommendations for when a professional will be needed — and what you can do to address the problem until you can get to the vet. Since the health needs of dogs and cats are often entirely different, there are also specific tips for both cats and dogs, along with more than 75 easy-to-follow illustrations. Find out how to come up with the purr-fect solution to:
Fleas
Aging
Arthritis
Aggression
Allergies
Bad Breath
Barking
Birthing
Bleeding
Car Chasing
Chewing
Claw Problems
Dandruff
Ear Mites
Poisoning’
Constipation
Hair Balls
Heart Worm
Hives
House Training
Itching – You might be interested to know what standard breakfast food can help stop this!
Bee-Stings
Lice
Mange
Shedding
Ticks
Worms
And Many Other Challenges
A source of knowledge for your and relief for those fuzzy family members you care so much about!
So, here’s another post about roots. This time, I want to talk about how deep soil preparation (double-digging) works to increase the health and yields of plants by giving them room to spread out.
Did you know that the average carrot puts down an 8-foot-deep root? It’s true – check out the picture on page 19 of the 9th edition of How to Grow More Vegetables! The more root a plant has, the more nutrients it can take up. More nutrients means healthier plants, higher yields, and more nutritious food for you and your family.
And how do you encourage your plants to grow healthy root systems? Give them space to spread out!
Typically, farm soil is only prepared 6-inches deep. However, the Royal Horticultural Society in England performed tests showing that soil prepared 24-inches deep – the same depth that results from the “double-digging” method that Biologically-intensive gardening uses – produced healthier plants and higher yields. When you prepare the soil four times as deep as “normal” (24 inches) you produce four times the root system and four times the nutrient-cycling occurs! See what happens in the soil when it is prepared 10-inches deep (upper image) and 20-inches deep (lower image) in the photographs to the left. These images are from the section “Living Quarters for Plant Roots—A Picture Story of How Soil Conditions Determine Root Development” by Henry C. De Roo. This is from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden out-of-print Handbook on Soils, 1956, which has been reprinted by Ecology Action with its kind permission (also available on Amazon). Which rooting system would you rather have growing your food- and compost-crops?
Now, I know that people can be a little doubtful about double-digging, because it seems like “work”. But Biologically-intensive gardening and farming is not really labor intensive…it is actually skill intensive! You do not need to work harder, you just need to think smarter! See p. 30 in HTGMV. Think of double-digging as an investment, that once made, will continue to repay you and your garden to as long as you maintain it correctly. You do not have to continually double-dig. Once good, deep soil preparation has been established for a sufficient time, you only need to surface cultivate 2- to 4-inches deep with a hula hoe. See pp. 14=32 in HTGMV for the overall process.
Good soil preparation increases the quality and quantity of your gardening and farming result!
Give double digging a try – even if it’s only one bed to start with. You won’t be disappointed, and your plants will love the extra space to sink their roots.
Spring has sprung, and it’s time to get your seedlings in gear for a productive year!
In keeping with the season, I thought that this would be a good time to discuss the benefits of pricking out your seedlings before you transplant them. Many people are in the habit of simply planting their seeds in flats, and then transplanting the resulting seedlings directly in garden beds. Most don’t know that you can greatly increase plant health and yields by including a step in between planting the seeds and transplanting the seedlings, called “pricking out” in which you select the healthiest seedlings and transfer them to a slightly deeper flat to continue to grow to the correct size and hardiness, before finally transplanting them into a growing bed.
In the 1950’s Dr. C.K Snyder of the University of California-Berkeley performed a study, with globally accepted results, showing that an increase in root health of just 2% to 4% enabled field crops to produce 200% to 400% the yield. The photograph above shows the difference pricking out makes to the root systems of the seedlings. Which seedling would you like to have growing your crops?!
Some people are reluctant to take the extra time and effort to prick out seedlings – and I understand that an extra step at an already busy time of year isn’t welcome, but believe me, the results are worth it! Years ago, a GROW BIOINTENSIVE Certified Teacher candidate did not believe that pricking out would make a difference. He had been starting lettuce seedlings in flats and then transplanted them directly into the double-dug growing bed, as most farmers do. After being encouraged for a long time to try pricking the lettuce seedlings into a second flat, allowing them to grow to the right size and then transplanting them into the growing bed, he finally tried it. The result? He found that he reliably received double the yield of lettuce from the pricked-out seedlings, time and time again.
If you want to get the most out of your garden this year, it’s easy to learn for yourself how and when to correctly prick out seedlings for different varieties. See pp. 85-86 in the 9th edition of How to Grow More Vegetables published by Penguin/Random House 2017. Also refer to Columns E through N in the Master Charts on pages 137-187 of HTGMV.
For almost 50 years I have worked to create a form of agriculture that helps all people grow abundant nutritious food and fertile soil, in harmony with this beautiful earth. I know that I have been helped and guided along the way by those who came before me: the original farmer-to-farmer training network, stretching back thousands of years. Time after time, I have seen examples of “primitive” cultures that knew more about their environment and how to keep their land healthy and productive than many of the finest scientists our modern agricultural and educational systems have produced. And now that our civilization is seeing unprecedented challenges in the face of climate change, I find myself looking to the past, to the native people of North America for advice and resources on how to work with our planet to create the solutions we need to survive.
Three books that spring to mind on this theme are:
Written in 1997 by Thomas E Mails, author of the source-book for the epic film Dances with Wolves. According to the Akta Lakota Museum and Cultural Center’s online biography, Mails’ “…spiritual awakening as a minister gave him the insight needed to see the wonder and beauty of the Indian life-way, the center and core of which is man’s relationship to creation. … He spent years writing and illustrating Native American history books. The first book he worked on was titled The Mystic Warrior of the Plains…[which became] a standard reference book worldwide for those interested in the culture of the Plains Indians.”
Mails wrote The Hopi Survival Kit in 1997, at the request of the Elders of Hotevilla, a tiny village on a remote Hopi reservation in Arizona, who for centuries had “…guarded the secrets and prophecies of a thousand-year-old covenant created to ensure the well-being of the earth and its creatures.” Mails was “…chosen by the last surviving elders to reveal to the outside world the sacred Hopi prophecy and instructions at precisely the time in history when they are most urgently needed. The Hopi Survival Kit is the first full revelation of traditional Hopi prophecy. … And though this may be a sobering realization, it is also our best defense. For the Hopi teachings give detailed instructions for survival–our actions can alter the pace and intensity of what will happen and help avoid a cataclysmic end.”
The chapters include:
The Secret of Land and Life
The Ark’s Instructions
The Ark’s Warnings, and
The Twist in the Secret
Much of this book is a historical narrative, and while some have criticized Mails’ writing style, I found it an interesting read and a valuable commentary on our current situation. The primary message of the Hopi prophecy is that humans must embrace peace and work with Mother Earth to achieve survival in harmony with nature. And within the narrative is a nugget of 30 pages or so of practical advice and survival techniques to achieve this goal.
The Medicinal Uses of More Than 3000 Plants by 218 Native American Tribes
An incredible resource! This is one of those books that really provides a link with the past for farmers into the future.
Written by renowned ethnobotanist Daniel Moerman, this 800-page compilation is a wide-ranging and authoritative font of information about medicinal plant usage by the first peoples, far outpacing other books I’ve seen on the subject. Don’t be daunted by its size – it’s an enjoyable read, and a good addition to your reference library, covering “…82 categories of medicinal uses, ranging from analgesics, contraceptives, and gastrointestinal aids to hypotensive medicines, sedatives, and toothache remedies. This book includes extensive indexes arranged by tribe, usage and common name…and is a…starting point for anthropologists, botanists, phytochemists and readers interested in ethnobotany natural healing and the preservation of biodiversity.”
The topics are arranged by tribe, usage, and common name, making it easy to access the richly detailed information. If you are interested in native plants, healing, naturopathy, survival, or botany, this is the book for you!
Another volume on the theme of native plant use, this handbook focuses on varieties used for centuries by people in the desert environments stretching south into Mexico. On an increasingly desertified planet, this epic 971-page treasure trove of useful information by Walter Ebeling is a great place to start learning how to make a proactive difference right where you are, growing food and fiber while conserving water in our gardens!
Contents include:
The First Americans (including wild plant foods of the high plains and bordering mountains)
The Great Basin Wild Food and Fiber Plants
Owens Valley Native Food and Fiber Plants
California Food and Fiber Plants of the Central Valley
Food and Fiber Plants of Cahuilla Territory
The Lower Colorado Basin
The United States Southwest – The principal Useful Wild Plants
Mexico
A Historic Perspective
Pondering the predictions of the Hopi elders, wondering how things will go for our species and the planet, two of my favorite quotes from visionaries of different backgrounds spring to mind:
“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” (Chief Seattle)
and
“The best way to predict your future is to create it.” (Abraham Lincoln).
The plants and perspectives included in these wonderful publications are a link with the past that can make all the difference in the world to each of our futures – if we take the time to understand them and integrate the wisdom of the first peoples into our actions! Why not start taking care of our part of the web of life, and growing a future where all beings can thrive today, with one of these books?
These days, everyone seems to have a slow cooker to make life easier. But guess what? There’s a simpler, less expensive alternative that’s been helping rural people cook food and conserve fuel for at least 200 years!
According to Wikipedia, a haybox is a “…cooker that utilizes the heat of the food being cooked to complete the cooking process. Food items to be cooked are heated to the boiling point, and then insulated. Over a period of time, the food items cook by the heat captured in the insulated container.” Haybox cookery (sometimes called “thermal cookery”) may well be the original “slow food” as it takes about 3x longer to cook the food than when using direct heat, but as long as you’re not in a hurry, it’s an excellent way to conserve energy – up to 80% according to some sources.
First thought to have been practiced by Norwegian peasants and “officially” appearing in publications in the early 19th century, hayboxes were used in WWI and WWII in England to conserve rationed cooking fuel, and were also promoted by the US government during the Great Depression. Fast forward to the 21st century, where the concept is still used by hikers and campers, who heat up food in the morning and then store the heated pot in a sleeping bag or backpack through the day, to provide a hot meal in the evening. True today as in the 1800s, the haybox method saves fuel and labor. No food is overcooked, or burnt. No nourishment is lost. The resulting flavor is exquisite!
There are several books available on the subject, but my favorite is Haybox Cookery by Eleanour Sinclair Bohde, published by George Routledge and Sons, Ltd, London in 1939. Even though this book is out of print and somewhat difficult to find), I recommend getting a copy if you can, because it gives detailed information and is an excellent place to get started. Topics covered:
How to Make a Haybox
For Those on the Lief and Hay Diets.
Advantages.
General Rules for Using a Haybox.
Care of Haybox.
Soups.
Fish.
Vegetables.
Cereals.
Fruits.
An Index.
If you’re interested in trying haybox cooking, and can’t find Haybox Cookery, there is a wealth of information online, including the following:
One note: When using any thermal cooking method, you need to be careful to maintain a high enough temperature to prevent the growth of dangerous bacteria. If the temperature of the food drops below 140°F (60 °C) for any length of time, you risk food poisoning. Therefore, a) it’s important to make sure the food is truly boiling when you place it in the thermal cooker so it stays good and hot and b) it’s best to use a thermometer to make sure the food stays at a safe temperature. There are several digital cooking thermometers with remote sensors that can be used to monitor the temperature of the food in your haybox cooker without opening the lid – a quick internet search will show you several options.
Grab a box, some hay, a covered pot, and your favorite ingredients and start exploring a whole new exciting, delicious, resource-conserving world!
In the 1980s, Ron Whitehurst of ACRES U.S.A. wrote: “Central Florida is being mined down sea level for phosphate clay; and spiraling natural gas prices are making synthetic nitrogen fertilizer exorbitantly priced. Even using all the solid and liquid wastes from the cities, there isn’t enough nutrient value to keep America growing. The answer is to use particular legumes and fast-growing plants as green manure to be turned into the soil to enrich it. This is growing fertilizer and soil conditioners in place; right where they are needed in the field.”
30 years later, Ron’s concerns are still valid, and more urgent than ever: we are seeing peak phosphorus, farm bankruptcies, agricultural pollution from chemical fertilizers and sewage sludge, farm resource shortages, and most dangerous to our food security, a massive decline in the fertility of our soils. And the solution is still the same: we need to regenerate and maintain our soils by growing our fertilizers and soil conditioners right in the field, in a closed-loop system.
Edwin McLeod’s Feed the Soil is a practical volume on nitrogen fixing “green manure” crops to provide an alternative to the increasing costs and environmental damage of chemical fertilizers and is beyond a treasure trove for sustainable farmers and gardeners. In 1982, my good friend and amazing seedsman Lorenz A. Schaller (The Kusa Seed Research Foundation) wrote the following review of the book in East West Journal – I can’t improve on it, so I’m including it whole:
“Feed the Soil is a unique instruction text and resource guide for the practical work needed to lay a foundation for a new order of agriculture on earth. One central premise agreed to by all factions of the organic-growing movement is the necessity to ‘feed the soil’. In turn the soil feeds the plants. This single fact is the most basic and essential key for understanding and practicing natural fertility plant culture. How this approach functions and the benefits it bestows are given in an outstandingly clear and readable manner by Edwin McLeod. Feed the Soil can be used as a resource to understand how natural agriculture works and as a guide to putting this understanding into practice. It serves with equal reward anyone interested in increasing their understanding of soil fertility, gardening, or the farming arts.”
Chapters and other key topics include:
Soil Diet — Plant Health
Cultivated Plant Weed Competitors (p. 70)
Legume Cross-Inoculation Groups and their Rhizobium Species (pp. 78-79)
The Soil-Climate Key for Selection of Legumes
A wonderful Species Description chapter with 129 crops that can assist you in building soil
An extensive Common Name/Latin Name Plant List
References
An Index
Though this publication in great part emphasizes the use of “green manure” Ecology Action and its biologically-intensive GROW BIOINTENSIVE method utilizes a combination of composting and inter-planting with legumes instead. The reason being that when green manuring plants that have high levels of readily available nitrogen are turned into the soil, the nitrogen seeks out carbon in the soil and breaks it down to C02— reducing the soil’s precious organic matter levels and releasing that carbon into the atmosphere. But the topics in Feed the Soil are still just as useful – the varieties described can be used with the interplanting and composting method instead of green-manuring.
Excitingly, Feed the Soil describes key little-known soil-building legumes and other crops, as well as enhanced descriptions of well-known ones.
These include:
Crested Wheatgrass
Kidney Vetch
Cicer Milkvetch
Cowhorn Turnip
Diverse Bromegrass Varieties
The important Pidgeon Pea
The deep-rooting Jack Bean which is important in drier regions
The Sword Bean
Crotolaria
Drought-resistant Guar
Beggarweed
Lablab Bean
Hairy Indigo
Grass Pea
Tangier Pea
Korean Lespedeza
English Ryegrass
Swiss Ryegrass
Succulent Lupine
Small Blue Lupine
Hairy Lupine
Perennial Lupine
Egyptian Lupine
Several Bur Clovers
Several Trefoils
Several Sweet Clovers
Sanfoin – one of Alan Chadwick’s favorites
Serradella
Texas Millet
Pearl Millet
The Moth Bean/Mat Bean, which “covers the ground so completely that there is practically no water evaporation from the soil”
The Adzuki Bean
Timothy
Austrian Winter Pea
Canada Bluegrass
Kudzu
Cereal Rye
Common Sesbania
Hemp Sesbania
Foxtail Millet
Sorghum
Sudangrass
Giant Spurry
Velvet Bean
Egyptian Clover
Strawberry Clover
Rose Clover
Alsike Clover
Red Clover
Ladino Clover
Persian Clover
Subterranean Clover
Arrowleaf Clover
Fenugreek
Tufted Vetch
Woolly Pod Vetch, which has the potential of fixing up to 3 times the nitrogen compared with other Legumes
Hungarian Vetch
Fava Beans
Cow Peas
Corn/Maize
Fertile soil is priceless. Growing it is easy – if you do it right. Feed the Soil (plus the GB method) will help you find the right varieties to put nitrogen and organic matter back into your garden. Give it a try!
John Jeavons was featured as a part of a TUC Radio mini series on Soil,
a response to the devastating forest fires in California in 2018, in this episode called Soul of Soil.
Online: John Jeavons is featured on the Gardenerd Podcast
John Jeavons was featured in an interview on biologically intensive gardening and farming.
“While planning my trip to the Heirloom Expo I contacted some of the world’s top garden experts for interviews, and when John Jeavons of GROW BIOINTENSIVE responded to my email inquiry with a date and time to meet, I jumped out of my chair. What luck!” – Christy, Author at Gardenerd
Each year around this time, following months of freezing cold and heavy rain, Northern California experiences a “false spring” – the sun shines, the temperature is balmy and pleasant, and the grey and wintry landscape is suddenly covered in a bright green veil as the hardy early risers begin to sprout and come awake. It’s not really spring – we’ve got months of cold weather to come – but this is the preview, and the whole world seems bursting at the seams with life. Riotous, juicy, joyful. What could be better?
Well… if you look at the “gardening” aisle of a random box store with the row upon row of poisons and growth inhibitors, you may get the impression that “better” means doing things that limit this juicy exuberance without delay and regardless of the consequences. The industry built around the production and sale of pesticides and herbicides emphasizes an aggressive approach that seeks to “help” nature by killing off the “undesirables” and appeals to an all too popular “person against the world” mythology. This isn’t my imagination – There is a commercial that uses an old-west gunfight theme to sell weed killer! It won’t surprise you that this paradigm doesn’t appeal to me. Having worked for decades to develop farming methods that work in harmony with nature and its life forces – with excellent and productive results! – I believe that we can all benefit from cultivating (literally) a more sensitive and integrative perspective of our place (and our food- and soil-growing place) within the whole and balanced natural system.
Gardening for Health and Nutrition—An introduction to the Method of Biodynamic Gardening by John & Helen Philbrick is one of my favorite books in terms of building this sensitivity and perspective! It introduces gardeners to a fact that is often strangely overlooked in modern farming: that gardening is about living things and the life force that runs through us all. In the book, John Philbrick “… talks about how each morning he was in the habit of visiting his garden at sunrise, meditating and communing, until, gradually, he realized that the important things at work were ‘the forces of life’—‘that life is the key to existence on this planet!’”
The Philbricks realized that most gardeners were concerned not with life and growing things, but with death, and getting rid of things—bugs, weeds, fungi—and that this focus was obscuring the fact that nature is a whole fabric, and that all the threads that make it are interconnected and vital to its (and our) functioning:
“…everything that is alive is dependent upon everything else that’s alive…which are constantly changing…To be healthy, this network of living things must be kept in balance. The gardener must become aware of the network of processes making up the garden and must become familiar with the particularities of the soil, the seasons, and the plants and animals there. Then on this foundation, working with nature, one can make one’s garden a living organism.”
While all the practices and techniques shared in this wonderful publication (it is a garden planning guide for beginners using the biodynamic method) are not the GROW BIOINTENSIVE ones we use, the feeling communicated is enlivening, and I think any farmer or gardener will benefit from reading it. The book is a treasure!
It is wonderful how the Earth gives us an abundance of delicious, beneficial, healing plants that we can grow and use to make our lives better. I have so many favorite books, and Healing Spices – How to Use 50 Everyday and Exotic Spices to Boost Health and Beat Disease (by Bharat B. Agarwal, PhD with Debora Yost) is one of my favorites on this topic! It educates and it provides a way to put more spice in your life and maintain your health at the same time. As the book’s information notes:
Living in a rural area, it’s not always possible to get to the vet in an emergency, and we must do what we can with what we have. Example: a friend had to google “dog Heimlich maneuver” when her dog started choking – and successfully learned how to save her furry friend. While I’m not advocating going it alone if you don’t absolutely have to, I can say from experience that I’ve found The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Dogs and Cats by the Editors of Prevention Magazine Health Books to be an extremely useful collection of tips, and is the next best thing to having a 24-hour-a-day on-call veterinarian!
Edwin McLeod’s Feed the Soil is a practical volume on nitrogen fixing “green manure” crops to provide an alternative to the increasing costs and environmental damage of chemical fertilizers and is beyond a treasure trove for sustainable farmers and gardeners. In 1982, my good friend and amazing seedsman Lorenz A. Schaller (The Kusa Seed Research Foundation) wrote the following review of the book in East West Journal – I can’t improve on it, so I’m including it whole:
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