AdAgrA 2022: Sharing the Blessings

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Basic Gardening

Paul Dysinger

Help! How do I Start My First Garden?

So just encourage anyone in the back to come find a seat.

We're going to go ahead and get started here very shortly.

So if you are interested in starting your first garden or if you just want tips on planning a garden, then you are in the right place here.

My name, for those of you who don't know me, my name is Paul Deisinger.

And just a very quick little background, My family, dash extended family, have a farm in Tennessee.

And after high school I came home and worked on the farm for many years doing commercial agriculture, selling to the community.

We did like subscription boxes of produce, as well as selling at farmers' markets.

We sold to restaurants and we tried a bunch of different things.

Then after working with the family business for many years I branched off and started teaching people gardening.

Specifically focused on home gardening and people that were homesteading, you know, wanted to grow their own food but not necessarily interested in market gardening.

And then multiple of my students went on and started market gardening anyways.

So, so our, what, what we do and my business is called Born to Grow, and then just recently we have started a garden planning software called Seed Time, and we'll tell you about that in a little bit.

But, Our main focus is still on home gardeners and getting you set up for success in a very simple and easy way.

So to begin with let's just bow our heads for a quick word of prayer and then we'll jump in.

Heavenly Father we thank you for this opportunity to come together and to share, to think about our gardens and think about planning and growing food.

You know, it's the 1 of the, it is the first place that you put man in the world and what a amazing thing that we continue it so many years later.

And we just pray that you would guide and that you would speak to us this morning in Jesus name.

OK, so in getting started, the topic of this morning is help, how do I start my first garden?

And I'm just curious, how many of you, is it really your first garden?

And for those of you who it isn't, we're going to be covering principles of planning a garden.

But 1 of our goals, 1 of my goals in teaching home gardeners is to try and make things as simple as possible.

So we're going to be going over some basics.

And 1 of the first things that we want to do is to talk about what I call our game plan.

So this is kind of something that I came up with as I was teaching people how to plan their gardens and just think about their gardens.

So the first thing that I want to do is just give you a little bit of a framework of there's kind of different stages of a garden plan.

They're a little hard to read here, but On the next slide, we'll see it.

I divided the growing experience of your garden into 4 stages.

And you can kind of think of this a little bit like a rocket that is getting up off of the ground, right?

So the first thing is you're getting everything ready.

You're getting the rocket on the launch pad.

This is when your rocket is just getting started, launching off of the launch pad, right?

And we'll go into a little bit more detail soon.

This is as your rocket is flying up into the sky.

And then the last 1 is extend and that is where you send your rocket of a garden orbiting around the earth right so basically the idea here is how many of you like the idea the concept of being able to go out into your garden every single week of the year and have a fresh harvest that you could be pulling out of your garden, right?

What happens with a lot of people though is gardening kind of becomes a one-time experience scenario each year where, oh, you get excited, you seed something in the spring, you have a glut of a harvest, if you have a harvest in the summer, right?

And then, well, that was my garden for the year and now I have to wait all winter until the next 1.

So there are very simple ways that you can extend that season and we'll talk about that a little bit more because it ties into your planning.

So we're going to just at this high level look very briefly at what falls into each of these categories.

And here you're going to be planning your garden and there's several of these here so we'll just go ahead and just click through.

Yeah, you're gonna be choosing what to grow, choosing where to grow it.

If you do a soil test, this would be the time that you do that.

In the next class we're going to talk to you about simple ways that you can build the health of your soil, even if you don't do a soil test.

So we're going to be talking about some of that.

The next 1 is ordering any soil amendments, any nutrients that you want for your garden.

And so this is basically, this is, we call this ignition because this is where you're getting everything ready, right?

You're choosing what and where you're gonna grow it, getting your soil amendments and you'll also be ordering your seeds during this stage.

By the way, at the end of this class I'll give you a link where you can download these slides.

So you're welcome to take pictures of the slides, I don't care, okay?

So you're welcome to take pictures, but you can download them later So if that helps you with your note-taking and all that, all right Number 2 is Launch.

This is when you're gonna be preparing your beds, right?

This is when you're actually starting those seeds, starting those starts.

And yeah, starting your plants, transplanting your plants out into the garden and composting.

Composting is something that you basically incorporate into your whole gardening process.

But we just throw this here into launch because you wanna get a good compost pile started early on in your experience.

This is the stage of your garden where you're watering it, you are weeding it, trellising, any plants that need to be trellised.

This is probably where you're gonna be dealing with most of your pest control if you have pest problems, disease control, and the fun part, right?

So this is where you take that, the knowledge that you've learned.

By the way, those first 3 stages, we really encourage you to learn those stages.

And then As you get experienced with your garden, I mean, you can go into extending your season right away if you want to, but this is kind of like the next level up.

You're gonna extend timing for winter growing, gardening, protecting your veggies.

And that picture right there is some a harvest that we had on Bountiful Blessings Farm.

I'm pretty sure that that was harvested in January.

Your First Soil Test

Alright, so in this class we are going to be talking about healthy soil building for beginners and kind of the concept behind this class is what if you want to build healthy soil in your garden but the concept of getting a soil test and and looking at all of the chemistry of the soil is just a little overwhelming and you just want okay what is the basics that I can do from home right now to build up a healthier soil in my garden, okay?

So that's the concept that we're coming behind in this class here.

Let's have a quick little word of prayer before we jump in.

Heavenly Father, as we talk about building healthy soil, you are the creator.

You're the 1 who created soil and these principles.

And just pray that you would guide our minds and our hearts and give us wisdom in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, so very quickly, very like 30-second introduction.

For those of you who may not know me, my name is Paul Deisinger and for many years I worked with my family on organic commercial small-scale family farm in Tennessee And then I branched off and started teaching people how to grow their own food more on a home-scale level homestead level and so This this comes from that context and 1 of the things with home gardeners is this question about how do I build soil without, I mean I've literally had people come up to me that have gone through soil classes and they're like, wait do I have to be like a soil chemist to be able to grow my garden, Right?

Honestly, I don't believe that God created.

Soil labs and soil tests, obviously they have not been around that long.

You know, we're talking, I actually don't even know when the first 1 were.

And I don't know, you know, I haven't done research into the past of, maybe there were ways that people tested their soil back in the day but I know that they did not do it through the same methods that we do soil testing today and how long have people been growing food?

So there are principles in nature to build healthy soil that do not require a chemistry degree or even, you know, just the intricate knowledge of doing a soil test.

And just a quick background even to soil tests, you know, You get a soil test back and it has all these specific numbers.

Like you have 1.375 parts per million of nitrogen or phosphorus or whatever it is.

Your soil test is not exact for your garden.

You've taken a sample and it's giving you a ballpark of what you have for different things, but there's more depth than I can go into here.

You may have some nutrients that are tied up that don't reflect in the soil test because they're tied up in ways that it doesn't come out in the soil testing process.

There's no standardized soil testing process, by the way.

Different labs do it differently, so there's no...

Okay, so all of that to say, let's talk about the basics.

Let's talk about what you can do If you don't do a soil test, so in this class, we're going to talk about the basics of soil We're going to talk about soil and plant nutrition Nutrition basics because that's 1 of the big things with soil tests, right, is how do I make sure that my plants are getting the nutrients that they need?

And number 3, we're gonna cover 6 soil health principles.

And I'm gonna give credit here to an organization called Understanding Ag.

I would encourage you to write that down and look up their organization.

They are a Christian organization and they specialize more in large scale farming.

But My dad and I went to 1 of their soil health conferences.

They had a class specifically on soil health.

And you're going to see some slides in here.

They gave us permission to share the slides in a setting like this here.

The slides that I'm showing you are going to be available for download.

I'll give you a link at the end of where you can download them.

So for those of you who are taking notes, that will just be a little extra Perk, except that I can't share with you the slides specifically from Understanding Ag.

And you'll see the difference between them.

So if you're taking notes and you want to take a specific note on any of those other slides, just make sure to not jot it down.

So let's talk about the basics real quick.

Okay, you all saw a preview already, but What is soil made up of?

Okay, minerals, dirt, Clay, Sand, Okay, minerals, dirt, clay, sand, bacteria, microbes, leaves, anything else?

Alright, So you all gave me about half of what a healthy soil is made up of.

And I mean, it's kind of a little bit of a trick question, but let's go to the next slide here.

To have a truly healthy soil, you're gonna have about half minerals and organic matter, which is a lot of what you guys said, but then notice on the left-hand side here you want your soil to be about 25% water and 25% air.

And I know that we don't normally think of air and water as being part of the soil, but we're when we're talking about soil and soil composition We're not just talking about the minerals and organic matter We're going to be talking about your soil structure and how your soil is structured gives it the ability to have air and water.

By the way, somebody said microbes, like, you know, there's a lot of life in the soil, and we'll touch on that, but those microbes need air and they need water to live, right, and thrive, just like you and I.

They need air and water and by the way your plants roots need air and water.

So if you have a compact clay soil, Does it have much air or water in it?

No, because those particles are so small.

By the way, did you know that a clay particle, you have to have an electron microscope to see an individual clay particle?

If you take a, I believe it's a teaspoon.

It's either a teaspoon or a tablespoon, but I think it's a teaspoon of clay, and you spread it out 1 particle deep, it would cover an entire basket, a tennis ball court.

So each component plays a significant role in your soil.

Soil health and fertility is a function of all these components in relationship and much more.

So we're gonna go through this and we're gonna try and keep it as simple as possible, but also give you like a basic understanding, especially when we get into the 6 soil health principles.

These are things that you can practically go back and say, how can I apply this in my garden?

This is where traditional soil science has focused on is the minerals in your garden.

Okay, so this is where you're gonna look at, okay, do I have nitrogen and phosphorus and potassium and magnesium and you know all these trace minerals in my garden etc.

A lot of these, Now the minerals in your garden, this is going to be a lot of it, you know, it's crushed up rock particulate.

These are, and then mineral soil nutrients as well.

So this right here is basically what composes up your minerals.

Actually I think there's...no, go back to the other side.

I don't have a clicker so my friend here is doing a really good job at clicking through here.

So this is like your basic minerals in your soil.

If you see on the right hand side here, there's a very simple little test.

You can kind of get an idea of how much sand to clay that you have in your soil.

You take a sample of soil, you put it in some water, put a water softener in it and shake it up and then let it all settle in the water.

And you'll notice at the bottom here, this is gonna be your sand, it's larger particulates.

This is going to be your silt here, it's kind of your medium particulates, and then this is going to be your clay here at the top, those very small particulates.

And it's a very simple way that you can just get an idea of your soil structure.

Steve Wohlberg

Growing Microgreens in Your Kitchen

My topic today is called Growing Microgreens in Your Kitchen, which is an unusual 1 for those that listen to me on our White Horse Media YouTube channel and other programs that I've done which mostly focus on Bible prophecy.

Most people know me as a prophecy guy, and that's really my focus of my life is serving Jesus and spreading God's word.

But many don't know that I have another hat that I wear.

In addition to being a family man, I have a family hat, and I also have my White Horse Media hat, and I also have a health hat, which especially focuses on growing sprouts and microgreens, which I've been doing for over 40 years.

So let's have a prayer and pray that God will bless this simple presentation.

Dear Father, in the name of Jesus, thank you for another opportunity to share your word.

The health message has a lot to do with the Bible and our ability to serve you.

And we just pray that you will bless, as I talk about growing sprouts and microgreens in people's kitchens and in their, even their bathrooms and in their laundry rooms in a simple way to supercharge and boost our health.

Okay, well, I think I'll just start with giving you a little bit of background.

How did Steve Wolper get into growing sprouts and microgreens?

I'm 62 years old now, and It's been a long time since I was a teenager, but I still remember those days.

Just to give you a little more background, I grew up in a Jewish home in the Hollywood Hills in Southern California.

There was no prayer, no Bible study in my family at all.

And so as I grew up just surrounded by the world and the entertainment industry, unfortunately I was sucked into the wildlife.

When I was 14 I started smoking marijuana and then it didn't take long until I got into snorting cocaine and using other drugs, going to the to the rock and roll concerts and the discos and dancing until 3 or 4 in the morning when I was 16 or 17 and I just became lost, just a lost.

Sometimes I tell people I was pot smoking, disco dancing, cocaine snorting, lost Jew.

And somehow when I got into my late teens, 17 or 18, as I was doing so many bad things for my body, I started thinking that I need to do something good, something healthy.

I did play a lot of basketball, and I was also dancing a lot on the dance floors.

And so the good thing about that was it gave me a good workout.

But as far as my health, outside of exercise, I knew I needed to do something.

And where I lived in North Hollywood and Studio City, that whole area, there were a lot of health food stores in the area.

And so I started going to these health food stores with my friend, and we would buy, we'd go through the buffet line and we would buy sandwiches.

We would compile sandwiches with avocado and veggie meat and sprouts and microgreens.

And somewhere along the line, I just started thinking about, I need to learn how to grow these myself.

And so I started buying books as a teenager, probably 18 or 19 years old, that I was buying books on how to sprout.

And this had nothing to do in my mind with the Lord, it was just I was interested in learning how to do this and building my health.

So I was living in North Hollywood and then I moved with my dad when he remarried into Studio City and in our condominium downstairs in my room, I started growing microgreens and sprouts.

I learned how to grow different kinds of sprouts like buckwheat and sunflower and peas and arugula and purple Rambo radish and various kinds of sprouts and microgreens.

And I really, I just, I enjoyed eating these live salads.

So I would smoke pot and I would eat live microgreen salads, which is pretty funny, but that's what I did.

And I think maybe the Lord used the nutrition that I was getting in all of these microgreens and these sprouts, he used the nutrition that was coming into my brain and my body to help me to survive those days.

And then when I was 20 years old, when I turned 20, it's a long story and I won't tell you the whole story here, but I started reading the Bible.

I met Christians in strange places and I started reading God's Word.

Eventually somebody gave me a copy of the book The Desire of Ages.

I read that book and it changed my whole life.

I accepted his love and his forgiveness and His grace and it completely changed me and I gave up the bad habits I had.

I stopped running around looking for girls.

I stopped using alcohol and all the drugs.

And I transferred to a Christian college, to La Sierra College, and began studying for the ministry.

But as when I left the bad things, I continued.

I knew that sprouting was still good for me, and so I kept on growing sprouts and growing microgreens.

And as I mentioned, I've been doing this for over 40 years.

And finally, as this has become such a big part of my life, and now I'm in a media ministry with Whitehorse Media, and we produce programs, we have radio shows, I've also become a teacher on how to grow sprouts and microgreens in your home.

I actually have developed an entire course on this, which I'll tell you about when we get to the end of this.

But before we do that, let me share a quote here from Councils on Health, page 450.

Ellen White wrote that, "...again and again I have been shown that God is trying to lead us back, step by step, to His original design that man should subsist upon the natural products of the earth." So God's plan is to lead us back step by step to eating healthy food that comes from the earth, natural products.

And if you really think about it, there's hardly anything that is more natural than a seed.

In Genesis chapter 1 verse 29 the Bible says that God said, Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed and to you it shall be for food.

So seeds were part of God's program at the very beginning of the world when he made this planet in 6 days and rested on the seventh.

All of the plants that we eat and that we live on, originally they go back to 1 little tiny seed.

That's how plants grow, is through seeds.

And if you do some homework on this, you'll discover that seeds are actually quite miraculous.

They're small, but they are loaded and packed with all kinds of nutrients and different things in them to help the seed grow into a full plant.

Now what many people don't know is that when a seed begins to germinate, when you put it in water or in in the ground and it begins to become active and it starts growing and the little root starts coming out, what's happening is the nutrients within the seed begin to just multiply like a factory.

They just increase and increase and increase.

So it's a little bit like there's a parallel to when a baby's born in a woman's body.

When the male sperm meets the female egg and then they join, there's a new cell that's formed which is called a zygote.

And that 1 single cell is loaded with all kinds of different chemicals and nutrients, and there's the DNA.

And then what happens is that 1 cell divides and it becomes 2, and then 2 become 4, and 4 become 8, et cetera, et cetera, until the whole body is formed.

And what's happening is these nutrients are being doubled, and they're quadrupling, and they're just multiplying.

And it's amazing what happens inside a seed to the nutritional profile.

Now there's a website that I've been to many times and I recommend it if you want to learn more about growing sprouts and microgreens and if you want to learn the the real health benefits of eating these foods and it's the International Sprout Growers Association website, ISGA for short, International Sprout Growers Association.

And if you go on their website, and this is a site that connects growers of microgreens and sprouts from around the world.

Series

Basic Gardening

Planting a No-Till Garden

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Home Gardening

04 The Backyard Garden Blueprint

1h 7m

Home Gardening

The Original Garden “Tool”: Seeds - Their Significance, GMO/Hybrid/Heirloom/Open Pollinated?

1h 9m

Level 1 Homesteading and Home Gardening

Garden Maintenance Tricks for the Backyard Gardener

56m

Level 1 Homesteading and Home Gardening

How to Start Plants that Thrive

1h 14m

Home Gardening

The Perpetual Harvest Hack: How to Grow a Continual Harvest All Year Round

1h

Intensive: Market Gardening

Market Gardening Part 3

1h 23m

Session 5

Eat Your Greens!

1h 9m

Home Gardening

Seed Starting Tricks: How to Start Seedlings That Thrive

58m

Home Gardening

The Sower Went Out to Sow: Direct Seeding and Transplanting

1h 1m

Market Gardening

The Market Gardening Model: Size/Location/Infrastructure/Tools

54m

Special Interests

Cover Cropping: A Tool to Rebuild and Restore Your Soil

1h 12m

Sound Doctrine