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Agriculture

Gardening 101

Edwin Dysinger

Paul Dysinger

Where to Do It

I'm going to be presenting with my dad, Edwin Dysinger, sharing about Gardening 101.

With practical steps that you can implement, the best thing that we can hand you is tools and practical things that you can do from our experience so that you don't fall into the same pitfalls that we have.

So you can learn from our failures, our mistakes, and get to your goal much faster.

Because we want you to skip all of that and be able to jump right in and start growing successfully right away.

So the way that we're going to format this is if you look at your little handouts, you'll have 1 there that has an outline of the whole session.

And I'm just going to make a quick apology.

Our printer was having a little bit of issues, so some of the pages might have, The text might be a little faded in certain areas, so we're sorry about that.

But hopefully you can still get the gist of it and read it.

This first session is Planting the Garden.

And then in the first part, and we're going to halfway through this first session, we're going to go outside and actually lay out a bed with you all so you can see exactly how we do this hands on and the tools that we use for doing it.

Second session, we'll talk about soil and soil improvement and then direct seeding and transplanting.

We'll have the break for lunch and we'll come back and follow up with the sessions in the afternoon.

Now if you look at your second piece of paper, This is the outline for our first session this morning.

The first little section, my dad is going to share primarily connecting the garden with our lives spiritually.

Because God has, God created agriculture not just for us to grow our own food, but to actually catch a glimpse of who he is as well.

So we're gonna be talking about the spiritual side as well as the practical side.

And we'll really hit up on the practical side because I know that's what you are especially here for.

But we don't want to leave out the spiritual side to what God wants to teach us in the garden as well.

So I'm going to turn it over to dad and we'll kind of jump back and forth but let's start out with talking about.

I just want to say for those of you who came in a little bit late, we are very short on handouts.

We had no idea that so many people were signing up for this.

So we are running out right now, and I'm sorry.

So if you don't have a handout, if you can just kind of share with somebody.

If anyone has an extra handout that they could be sharing 1 with someone else, then just let people know.

If you look at the way that nature is so intricately fit in and put together, I know for a surety that does not just happen.

It was very carefully crafted and planned.

The details are so intricate and so complex.

And everything that God made had a purpose, right?

He's not just speaking frivolous words, right?

So everything that God created had a purpose, a function, and a place.

Now, when you hear biology, I don't know if you remember this word, niche, N-I-C-H, N-I-C-H-E, I think it is.

Do any of you remember hearing that word from biology?

So what it means is that every life form has a particular place where it thrives best.

This isn't the niche for Douglas fir, okay?

Now, You might see some swamp cypress here, but do you see any swamp cypress in the northwest where Douglas fir grow?

So everything I've created has a particular place, and in that place it has roles and functions that connect it to all the, well, to many of the other life forms in that place.

So niche, the idea of niche, considers the plant or animal or man in relationship to everything around him.

He's given some, he's giving in some relationships and he's taking in some relationships and in some relationships it goes both ways.

So when I consider all these relationships, what most awes me about God's creation is the systems and webs.

The planning and design that went into all of these connections is truly amazing to me.

Now, we know that when God created man, God said, let us make man in our image.

And the basic idea is that we are to image or reflect in our sphere what we see God doing in his sphere.

You know, we're not God, but we are the image, the reflection, the picture of God.

So God is our Father and we are his children, and it says, be imitators of God as beloved children in Ephesians 5.1.

So 1 of the primary roles of a parent is teaching, right?

We need to train our children in what works and what doesn't work, and what's good and what's bad, and all kinds of things.

And so, how does that learning take place?

We have a granddaughter who just loves to play cooking and She she has her own her own look She just loves to cook and she likes To cook with her and she always wants to fix me oatmeal Where does she get that idea from Yes, she's she's been observing right she's been watching listening Life And so that's 1 of the key ways that we learn is by observation.

The other 1 is by practice, by engagement, by actually doing.

And this last spring we got our 2 grandsons involved with us planting potatoes.

And so they have a much better idea what it takes now to plant potatoes because they actually did it with us.

1 of them was was measuring the distance, you know, 1 foot between each 1.

The other 1 was was I was digging a hole but the other 1 would come along and cover the potatoes back up.

Whatever we are sharing, we got by observation and engagement.

So when you're gardening, This is how you're going to learn is by observation and engagement.

Okay, so planning a garden We've put down here a number of different things that you'll need to think about when you're choosing a garden site.

There's the soil, and we don't have time to go in depth on each of these things, but just to give you an idea, almost any soil can be redeemed.

It represents our hearts doesn't it so some soils are definitely going to take more work than others but Can be redeemed just Full of that is we have a friend, his name is Elliot Coleman, and he is a farmer up in Maine.

He grows year-round on the coast of Maine without any supplemental heat for using some really simple methods.

It's really an amazing farm, but he got there and he had absolutely terrible soil.

He said it was the worst that he has ever seen.

There were so many rocks and we saw a new piece of ground that he was breaking up and it really was, you know, there was just huge, not just little rocks, but they were pulling huge boulders out of this field.

But not just that, the soil had a pH level.

So the soil had a pH level of like 4 point something.

And it's supposed to have, a garden thrives best at around 6 and a half to 7.

How to Do It

I encourage you all in these breaks to go outside and stretch a little bit.

It's actually scientifically proven that if you sit for over, I think it's over 45 minutes or an hour straight without any exercise and then continue on to sit for like 2 hours or whatever, that it takes like 15 seconds off your life or something like that.

So get up and move around between breaks.

I'll just give another little, well first of all, was there a question?

Okay, to begin, I'm gonna go ahead and give a little introduction.

I know that many of you all weren't here when we started the last session.

My name is Paul Deisinger, and I invited my dad, Edwin Deisinger, to come and to do this seminar with me.

I love working with my dad, and I have the privilege of living right next door to my dad and my mom.

We live in Tennessee on Bountiful Blessings Farm.

My dad and my uncle John were partners in Bountiful Blessings Farm where they grow a huge variety of vegetables, herbs, and berries.

And I actually worked with the commercial family farm for many years.

And then in 2013, started my own business, Born to Grow.

Just curious, how many of you are on the Born to Grow email list?

Alright, so if you're not, then you should get on our email list.

We send out free garden training and information, as well as we have some paid gardening courses and membership.

And we can share with you more about that in a little bit, or if you're listening to this later, you can go to born2grow.net.

We're talking about gardening 101 and giving you the practical steps to jumpstart you in your garden as if you were starting from scratch and really giving you tools and tips from our experience in growing because we've been growing for many years, and we want you to learn from our mistakes so that you can get there faster, get to your goal of growing your own food that is healthy, that's vibrant, that doesn't take all of your time, and so you can do it in a way that it has a lot less stress, less work, but grow more and better quality produce with less pests and diseases.

Today's, well this session this morning is the second 1 and it's called soil and soil improvement.

Soil is really the foundation of your garden.

If you think about it, this is where your plant is actually living and drawing its nutrients, or a lot of its nutrients, from, is from in the soil.

And so the quality of your soil is really important for the quality of your garden.

And we'll be sharing with you more about that in just a second.

But I'm going to turn it over to dad real quick to talk a little bit about some of the spiritual connections between the soil and the garden in our lives.

Father in heaven, we thank you that we get to study and learn about the garden and the things that you intend to teach us from it.

We pray that you would bless now in Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, so what was man made out of when God made man?

Okay, and so that's what we originated from, and when we die, what happens?

There are some people that live between the Philippines and Vietnam.

So there are a few people that don't, but most, I mean, as people we were made to live on the soil and and unfortunately some people live surrounded by concrete yes and so anyways there's something very special about our connection to the soil.

You know, we tend to, if you have had the blessing and the opportunity of living in 1 place for some time, I think chances are very good that you have an affection for that place.

And, you know, it's not just something as individuals we develop an affection for our particular place, but we do that as groups of people.

You know, we have, you've heard of people that traveled overseas and when they got back they wanted to kiss the soil because they were home again.

So there's something very special about place, and place is connected to soil.

And 1 of the special things about place is that it determines who your neighbors are.

And it gets back to this idea of niche that we talked about earlier.

But where you choose to live, it not only determines who your friends are and the places that you do business with, it also determines the kind of natural environment you live in, what plant species are, you know, grow well in your area, what kind of animals live in your area, what kind of bugs live in your area.

It determines a lot of things, your choice of where you're going to live.

And it's through these relationships with people, with businesses, with the natural environment around us, the plants and the animals, it's through all of those relationships that we get our life, right?

And the way God created us, you know, and for many, many years this was true on the earth, that we actually obtained our life, our physical life, from a particular piece of land.

It comes from land scattered all over the world.

But we got to go to the Space Center a few years ago and in 1 of the displays there was a little video playing, and it showed 1 of the astronauts eating a burrito, you know, up in the space station.

And it just hit me, that thing that he's eating was grown in some farmer's field on this earth.

You know, our life is connected to the earth.

So When God made Adam and Eve, he gave them a particular place, right?

He gave, he made them to be, have dominion over the whole earth, but he wasn't expecting that of them by themselves.

He gave them a particular place on the earth that was theirs to manage.

And then the ideal was that their children would manage their place and their children would manage their places and eventually the whole earth would be managed by Adam and his descendants, each managing a particular part of it.

So the land and soil is at the heart of our existence.

Our relationships and our life come from it and we go back to it.

Now, also in the Bible, it makes a special connection between our soil, the soil and our hearts.

Can you think of any verses that make that connection?

When the sower went out to sow, the soil represented hearts, right?

And in Jeremiah 4, 3, and 4, God says, "'Break up your fallow ground and sow not among thorns.

"'Circumcise yourselves to the Lord "'and remove the foreskin of your hearts.'" It's making a connection between soil and our hearts.

And in Hosea 10, 12, it says, "...so righteousness for yourselves reap the fruit of unfailing love And break up your unplowed ground for it's time to seek the Lord until he comes and showers righteousness on you.

So again, and these are just a couple of examples, but this is a theme all through scripture.

The soil or the land is representing our hearts.

And so I firmly believe that God created the physical world that we see or that we experience with our senses, that you're working with when you work in the garden, God created that world to teach us lessons about the spiritual world that we cannot see and the realm of our hearts that we cannot see.

To me, that's a very significant thing, and I did not really believe that until I started working in my garden, and then I started seeing all the connections, and I'm certain that it has to be that way.

So, well, another place, just read the first chapter of Christ Object Lessons.

So, God makes a connection between the state of the heart and the state of the land.

In other word, our land, our garden mirrors our hearts.

So, for example, when Adam and Eve fell, what happened?

The land was cursed, yes, because of what they had done.

When at the time of the flood, what happened?

Yeah, because God cursed the land because the land was a reflection of the people's hearts.

How to Water It

We're going to be talking about the difference between direct seeding and transplanting, why we prefer 1 over the other, which plants you should direct seed versus transplant, and other than that, we had a couple questions.

You know, Unfortunately, there's only so much that you can cover in 6 hours of training and gardening has so much deeper than that.

And so if you're interested in learning more about any of these topics, we have training that's available.

In fact, we have a whole gardening course that has over 18 hours of training going over each of the different topics from planning your garden all the way through simple ways that you can extend your season over the winter, dealing with weeds, pests, and diseases.

So that home, we call our home gardening course, and that gardening course is available.

We have it on sale for the conference at 50 percent off.

So if you're interested in that, make sure to come and connect with us at our table in the main room later on.

And we have some other smaller gardening courses and material as well.

And if you're listening to this later, you can go to our website born2grow.net or you can write that down as well, born2grow.net.

But let's jump in and talk about direct seeding versus transplanting and talk a little bit about the spiritual connections with our lives as well.

We're going to talk about different kinds of seeds.

We're also going to talk about different kinds of seeds because you may have heard of different kinds of seeds like genetically modified seeds Hybrid seeds open pollinated seeds.

And how does that affect you with your garden so we'll touch on that as well?

All right, so in in Genesis 1 29 and 30 I want to have a prayer again.

Our Father in heaven, we thank you that you have given us seeds.

They are so special, and we pray that you would bless as we learn and understand about seeds now.

So in Genesis 1, 29-30, God said to Adam and Eve, Behold, I have given you every plant-yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed and its fruit, you shall have them for food.

And every beast of the earth, and every bird of the heavens, and everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so.

So what I want to ask you is what's the difference between what God gave us for food and and what God gave the rest of the the creatures.

Okay I mean I think that's that's pretty much true but in the way God said it, I think there is a distinction.

If you notice that when he's talking to Adam and Eve and what he's giving them for food, he's saying, I give you every plant yielding seed, and every tree with seed and its fruit, and then for the creatures it's just every plant.

So for some reason God is emphasizing the seed.

And if you think about it, I'm thinking that that is a distinction between human beings and the rest of all the animal creation.

Because as far as I know, only man actually manages seeds.

You know, we save seeds, we purposefully plant seeds, and grow them.

And I don't know any other creature that does that.

You know, squirrels might accidentally bury an acorn and forget that it was there, and it will sprout and grow.

But I don't know of anything that purposefully grows, saves and grows and then plants seeds.

So I think that's the seeds are, they were the key resource that God gave to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

They were the prime resource that he gave them.

And second is they provide us something to plant for future nourishment.

And so in Isaiah 55.10, for example, it says, where's the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return there, but water the earth Making it bring forth and sprout giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater Okay Double purpose for us And there's something very special about seeds because God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply.

He blessed them and told them to be fruitful and multiply.

And so, the seed is the result of relationships.

It's always the result of relationships and it's usually the result of some sort of labor that goes into the relationships.

And so God has given us fruit, seeds to eat, but it takes a relationship, us working with those plants to get the produce, and it takes labor to get it.

And that is true about any fruit of life.

You know, if we're talking about any outcome of our labor, It's true of fruit of the Spirit.

It's true of souls, if we're looking at souls as the fruit for the kingdom.

It's always a result of relationships and labor.

So in John 15 8, Jesus says, By this is my Father glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

And I think that means both literally and figuratively, and in a spiritual sense.

Alright, so you have to have seeds to have a garden.

Good seeds and good soil are really the 2 pillars of a successful garden.

You have to have the seeds, you also have to have the soil.

Without high quality seed, all other activities are moot.

So what about GMO seeds, hybrid, open pollinated, or heirloom seeds?

What should you be purchasing when you're purchasing seeds?

Here's a few definitions of the different types.

GMO, or genetically modified organisms, is the mechanical or biological transfer of genetic material outside of natural methods.

This is happening outside of natural methods between genera, families, or kingdoms.

So for example, an extreme example of this is they have genetically modified goats' milk glands to produce spider silk with the milk.

Well they have genetically modified salmon, but there was another thing that they have done.

Just it's just weird cross genetics from totally different genera It's like you know Plants and animals to think it was putting a fish gene in plants so that the plants could could endure a cold better Couldn't do it.

There you there we go So, you know, it's going cross cross kingdoms even and it's it's it's very interesting, the way they do it.

They have a gene gun, they call it, where they shoot the gene into the cells that they're trying to insert the gene into.

And it's not very precise, and it's a lot of trial and error until they finally get 1 that works.

But that is what are called genetically modified organisms.

Now, there aren't that many genetically modified seeds on the market.

The main ones are corn, soybeans, beets, and alfalfa, peanuts.

I've not heard of peanuts being genetically modified.

But we'll, in California they're doing it.

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Series

Gardening 101

When and How to Grow It

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Level 1 Homesteading and Home Gardening

Garden Maintenance Tricks for the Backyard Gardener

56m

Home Gardening

Discouraging Thorns and Thistles

53m

Berry Bounty: A Guide to Growing Your Own Delicious Berries

01 The Why of Gardening

52m

Full Circle Garden

Full Circle Garden #4

1h 17m

Session 5

Pardon Me, Your Weeds are Showing

1h 8m

Level 1 Homesteading and Home Gardening

How to Start Plants that Thrive

1h 14m

Track 4 Seminars

Home Grown Nutrition, Part 4

1h 53m

Home Gardening

03 The Backyard Garden Blueprint

1h 2m

Home Gardening

Soil Preparation & Weed Management

58m

Sound Doctrine