Dear Vigilant Watchman: Greetings. A tip for your gardening efforts--plant high and dry. Make a raised bed. When you till up your ground, it will already fluff up instead of being packed down. The soil will be loose. If you plant too far down in the ground, your plants and seeds will sit in water and may very well rot. I think that this is what happened to my Egyptian walking onions. I believe that they were planted at the right time, but planted too shallowly which caused them to rot from all the moisture. I lost three trees from this practice--and I thought it would ensure they had enough water. I was right, but it was too much water! I just ordered more onion plants from the Native Seed Search people. I will plant high and dry this time. Native Americans made hills to plant seeds in. I don't live in the desert, but I want the heartiest plants that I can find. If I am coldy, I want to know how to get the most heat. If I am hot, I want to know how to get the most coolness. If I am thirsty I want to know how to get water. I look at extremes. I am not an expert at anything, I am just trying to get a rough idea of how things work so that I can utilize them. The man that I talked to on the Weed Walk told me that I needed a German Garden and sketched it for me. I still have the sketch and want to follow the model. I'll be planting my tomatoes against the fence line and will use our homemade trellis netting. This skill came as a result of our studies as well. We learned about "network" in Exodus in year 2 and the next year we made nets because of the fishermen in the Bible. I was perusing the encylopedia under the topic of "rope" and saw how to do it. It was simple. We used yarn for our early experiment. I tried to find trellis netting, but couldn't so we made our own using a thin acrylic roping from Home Depot. I plow my ground in accordance with Isaiah 28:24-25-- 28:24 Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground? 28:25 When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place? 28:26 For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him. After I've plowed up my ground (my favorite gardening tool is the pick axe), we collect out the stones so our roots can grow freely. I've been double digging so the roots can go down deep. I ordered yards of topsoil/leafgrow mix and just dumped it in the yard. I couldn't get to spreading it out one year, so I planted in it the mound. Not pretty, but it worked. Encyclopedia of Country Living features many of the weeds and plants we have discussed--Lamb's Quarters, Comfrey, potatoes, amaranth, etc. and gives suggestions on how to grow them. What I am finding is now that I've done some experiments and have more of a feel for how these things works I can try my own combinations with some measure of understanding, e.g., a measure of pine soil from the base of some pine trees for acidity, pine needles for mulch for plants that like acidity. I don't know how much is too much, yet. This is my first year testing out my theory. I do not throw away my kitchen scraps and then go to the store and buy fertilizer. I put my scraps on the compost pile (not grease though). I started out with just vegetable scraps, but now I put vegetable water on there and just about anything else. If it would attract "my" feral cats, I'll pour some urine on it, that keeps them away. Urine water (1 part urine, 3 parts water) itself add nutrients and can be added on a regular basis to the plants (weekly) though I have not done this. My daughter put some on a chard plant the other day without my knowledge and I did notice that it greened right up before she told me what she had done. At this point, I do not like the idea of flushing dung into my drinking water which is exactly what happens when we flush the toilet. At the same time I do not want to deal with my own dung either. The Bible refers to the dung of Eglon as "dirt". In the old days, some referred to dung as "night soil". One of the gates of Jerusalem was the dung gate. I do not think that the Jews used man's dung, though for the dunghill. When God told Ezekiel to cook with man's dung, Ezekiel did not want to do it. I can understand that. Yet we live in tough, polluted times. Animal dung is now destroying gardens. The soil I purchased at Home Depot smelled like chemicals and had pieces of metal in it. These types of things drive me to what I can find here. Many poor people have been helped by composting their own dung. I saw picture of how their crops which were once meager and yellow, but after applying composted dung and urine water, they were abundant and green. They are plowing back into the land those excess nutrients that their bodies discarded. In some Asian countries they still put the raw dung on their fields, something highly unsavoury for Americans. As with all things, this is something I must investigate now and not later. The death of America is here and it has come by none other but the Jesuits. I've begun reading "The Black Pope: A History of the Jesuits" (1896) BiblicalScholarship.net/blackpope.pdf. I've heard through the years how Jesuits have been thrown out of dozens of our countries for their political intrigues. I read from a book published around 1909 how they were going to use sports and entertainment and pasttimes to divert the attention of the American people--like the bread and circuses of Rome quelled and sedated the disenfranchiesed masses. King James had plenty to say about them. Jesuits are the machine by which Rome's goals are accomplished. Actually, they set the goals. Popes fear them. One pope may destroy the Jesuit order and the next pope will bring them right back again. They say that the Jesuits are more papal than the pope and more Catholic than the College of Cardinals. Jesuits have made a fine art of lies, deceit, lasciviousness, covetousness, terror, war, and dissumulation. They are the mechanism that turns the wheel to achieve worldwide domination. They are a pestilence. It was illegal for them to be in the United States at all in the beginning. Education may very well be their chiefest tool. In 1896 it was a chief tool according to the book that I am reading. Jesuits in the classroom (as teachers, authors, and writers of educational standards) infiltrate and infect the minds of tomorrow's leaders. I was infected by the Jesuits. I was Jesuit trained. I can see it now. It has taken 44 years, but now I can see it. MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT. Her name is on her forehead, her abuses very public, yet she is MYSTERY. They hide behind a cloak of religion. But once we can identify her, the layers can be peeled off. But only enough to get the truth. She is too abominable to look too far into. The Jesuits have made temptation and seduction an art. By steps, just like in the garden of Eden, they beguile and entice through conversations, books, etc. year after year until they achieve their goals. They actually teach lasciviousness and vices and idolatry in the name of our Lord. I hate to even say it, but it is true. They call themselves, "The Society of Jesus". They study ALL matters ostensibly for "the glory of God" and the Roman Catholic institution. Someone said this, "They try to master every aspect of the intellectual matters around anything they work on. Their priests go to school for years before they get to do anything." Biblical scholarship is untangling all these knots so craftily developed and stuffed into my unwitting head through my Jesuit education. Being Mephibosheth has taken me out of their loop. No more tv, hairdressers, high-heeled shoes, manicures, pedicures, perfume, lipstick, fancy clothes, and you-look-like-a-fool get ups. Now it is the Bible, a long skirt, working hands, dirt under the fingernails (I do try to get it out), a headcovering, a hammer and a tool box, and everything else that goes with living a real sort of life. By the continual application of the word I am escaping the wiles that they worked on me so successfully even into to my Christian life. I want to be able to tell this story so that people can understand it. **** [Mephibosheth response to Vigilant Watchman] > Do you let your trellis hang from the fence, or is it sturdy enough to > support itself? I think I will do this as well with the Rosalie Paste > tomatoes. It will hang from the fence. We'll just loop it over the slats. We used it with our square foot garden when we placed it on the hoops for the beans. > Do you like the pickaxe because it works faster than a smaller tool? When I am digging up new ground. I use the flat end to take up the sod and use the pick to break up the soil 12-18" deep. I swing the pick ax and get the job done quickly. Don't get me wrong, I like my smaller tools as well, but for that initial breaking up of the ground, I use the pick ax. I'll then take a hand tool and break up the clumps. >> I've been double digging so the roots can go down deep. I ordered yards >> of >> topsoil/leafgrow mix and just dumped it in the yard. > > Why did you order topsoil? I remember at our property up north we ordered > soil because the ground was mostly clay. > Our soil is clay. I ordered topsoil because I wanted to get plants in the ground. Now I know that I can keep feeding my clay the mounds of leaves that fall from our trees each fall. We collected quite a few leaves last fall and I plan on us collecting even more this fall plus some forest soil. I am trying to set up my gardens bit by bit. George Washington Carver said that if one keeps plowing in organic material, the soil can grow richer and richer as the years go on. > Thank you for the seeds you sent in September. You are welcome. First thing on the list to > plant here are the peanuts in the next week or so after our last frost. It > seems the little corner I'm in was made for me. It is fenced separately > from everything else to keep out the dogs and animals and has been > undisturbed for a long time. It has dead shrubs and bushes that come right > out of the ground and make perfect compost material, and there are dead > leaves sitting on top of the soil. The area is moist and lush with little > green weeds, grasses, and mosses too. It sounds like a very interesting spot. We started out in a corner too. I had a garden box on the deck that kept moisture on the deck and it was rotting the boards. I took the box, and put it in a dead corner of the yard and told my daughter that she could have it. John 4:5 (Jacob gave Joseph a parcel of ground) came to mind and we had prayer in it (the corner). Next thing you know, it was "the Biblical Garden" and had a lily and a grapevine in it. Then we ate a few potatoes out of it and the rest grew from there...Please keep me up to date on your activities as time goes on. > > I don't know how it could be any better for a beginner. I am looking > forward to spending a good amount of time out here. Being outside working the ground has helped me and refreshed me through the years. We practically live outside when the weather warms up and school is out. >It already seems very > blessed, It sounds like it. Your questions are always welcomed. Now I am going to retire. Mephibosheth