Big, Bountiful Garden

in One Season

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A beautiful, magical, generous garden is possible to achieve in just a few months here in Heber Valley.

In just a few months, you can have a garden to feed your family…

…that is pesticide-

free…

…highly nutritious,

…and food that is surprisingly delicious.

To create this garden of your dreams you can follow rules of nature that simplify your plan and work.

•  Soil is a living organism with minerals and soil life
• Soil can be "killed" with poor farming practices
• Very poor soil health can be restored

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Soil

• Healthy soil contains organic matter from dead leaves, dead roots, and dead animals, humus
• Humus is the food for soil life and CO2
• Humus is the life-giving force in the soil that process and stores CO2

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Soil

• Dead soil compacts; the farmer has to plow deeper.

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• Dead soil from plowing fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides loses its humus.

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Soil

• Plant health and growth depends on a partnership between plants and specialist bacteria and fungi, based on their trading products.

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Soil

Rhizobacteria

Rhyzobacteria fixes nitrogen for plant use. Biofertilization accounts for about 65% of the nitrogen fertilization in the word

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• Rhyzo Bacteria push out disease causing bacteria

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The other 35% must come from somewhere elsd

Mycorrhiza Creates a Fungal web

A plant root can only grow so far, then it sends out tiny hair-like roots searching for a partner.

Mycorrhiza is Essential

• Plants finest absorption roots are too thick to reach into the tiny spaces of soil to reach the most minerals and nutrients. They will die if they don't find partners.

Mycorrhiza is Essential

There is an exchange of micorrhyza bringing water and minerals to the plant, while the plant brings sugars to the micorrhiza.

Mycorrhiza is Essential

Mycorrhiza is Essential

• Mycorrhizae fungal ​threads can be a kilometer long in one teaspoon of soil.
• Mycorrhizae totally expands the plants nutrient collection area.

• A cloud of fungi means the plant has access to a huge area around it’s roots.

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Mycorrhiza is Essential

• Mycorrhizae fungi, a living connection with the plants, increases absorption  capacity to 7 times more water and nutrients in a larger absorption zone.
• This increases the flavor and nutrition 7 times!

7 Times the Water and Nutrients

• Plowing destroys the old root passageways so new roots struggle to reach through the plow pan, of 25 centimeters, where there is more soil and water.

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Traditional Plowing

Very shallow plowing is less harmful, and can be used to till in nutrient-rich plant stubble after harvest to a depth of 3-5 inches.

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Sometimes, it is only used the first year to level and clear a garden area.

Shallow Plowing is Less Harmful

• "Plants only given chemical fertilizer will ultimately become diseased.

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• Chemical Fertilizer is the direct cause of the use  of most Pesticides."

Chemical Fertilizer

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• Pesticide residues on food lead to between 4,000 and 20,000 new cases of cancer every year.

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• The contamination results in anywhere from 6 million to 14 million fish deaths and 67 million bird deaths.

Pesticides Hurt our World

• Contact Organics is a non-toxic weed killer which is sprayed on the leaves.
• It is made with vinegar and limonene oil, from citrus.
• Within half an hour, the weeds are shriveled and dead. It is best used when the plants are small, so less spray is used.
• We often respray the next day, then plant the following day.

It is mixed to the ratio of one gallon of water to 7 ounces of weed terminator and 7 ounces of Boost. It can then be put in a backpack sprayer and sprayed on weeds. We have used it to spray the holes in our landscape fabric a day before planting.

Organic Weed Killer

•  A Healthy soil food web can:

• Break down organic matter
• Strengthen plant growth
• Provide resilience

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Chemical additives disrupt the balance.

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CHICKEN MANURE AND SHREDDED BARK

Mciorrhizal Fungi wants carbon needs carbon to grow, twigs, leaves,

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supplies tons of water and nutrients to the plant to help them grow so much healthier

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make it for free

fungi matures and spreads for miles

Easily Make Compost Rich in Micorrhiza and Micobacteria

Easy Available Mulches

Mulch and Compost In Your Garden

Find Your Favorite Mixture of Mulch and Compost,

such as grass, leaves or shredded bark, and some type of old manure

Mulch and Compost In Your Garden

Importance Of Nitrogen In Your Garden

• Instead of applying chemical nitrogen, which may kill the biodiversity life in the soil, plant Austrian Winter Peas in fall or early spring. 

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Importance Of Nitrogen In Your Garden

• In Heber Valley and Utah Valley, Austrian Winter Peas can be planted in March. These peas can withstand cold down to 12 degrees Fahrenheit.

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Importance Of Nitrogen In Your Garden

• Plant peas and beans between crops to add the best nitrogen to the soil.

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Importance Of Nitrogen In Your Garden

Alfalfa pellets, dry, aged and fermented, are very rich in plant nitrogen and other minerals

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Importance Of Sulfur In Your Garden

Importance Of Sulfur In Your Garden

Importance Of Sulfur In Your Garden

Importance Of Sulfur In Your Garden

Biochar In Your Garden

• Biochar extends the life of the soil.
• Ancient South American Amazon Basin people added it to their soils, and it is still making them fertile, and will for 10,000 years.
• Biochar boost soil fertility: Helpful bacteria, fungi, and other microbes thrive in its complex habitat and vast surface area.
• Enhances water retention: its porous structure retains water within the soil, keeping beneficial microbes and bacteria alive under harsh conditions.

Biochar In Your Garden

• Increases crop yields: stores beneficial nutrients so incorporating biochar can lead to a significant improvement in crop yields.

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• Crops and plants grown on biochar-rich soil have copious amounts of the nutrients and moisture they need to flourish, resulting in better yields and higher plant density.
• It is activated charcoal.

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Biochar In Your Garden

• Biochar can be made by hammering 2 #10 cans together, crimping the top of one. Put a hole in the top of one so gas and moisture escape.
• Throw into a wood-burning stove or into a covered pit until the fire is out.
• Add biochar to soil or compost without crushing it.

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The Secret of of Garden Deliciousness

Soil rich in minerals, micorryza, and micobacteria make the fruits and vegetables most productive and at their best in nutrition and taste.

Seed Covering Mixture

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• Dark Compost made with wood shavings, rotted manure, hay or grass
• Sulfur pellets
• Alfalfa pellets
• Biochar
• Clay soil
• Real Salt?

Three Easiest Ways to Garden with Nature

1. Professional Landscape Fabric

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• Heavy Organic Mulch

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• Raised Beds

Landscape Fabric for Easiest Gardening

• Nylon professional landscape fabric will save you more work than any other tool you will buy.
• Cost: $ 1.00 per 12 square feet
• Ease: Roll out and pin down 3,600 square feet in an hour.
• Work: A small percentage of weeding needed

Landscape Fabric for Easiest Gardening

• Plant roots are protected and shaded
• Little children can walk on it barefoot without getting muddy or poked feet
• It is always cool to bare feet

Landscape Fabric for Easiest Gardening

• Plants are in a wonderful environment of good soil with living elements, protection, and sufficient moisture between watering.

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Landscape Fabric

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• Lay down compost, biochar, and woodchips under the landscape fabric.
• This creates a warm environment for bacteria to thrive

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Landscape Fabric

• Landscape fabric is woven nylon, not plastic.
• Plastic deteriorates faster and sterilizes the soil
• Plastic doesn’t breathe, so can cause fungal problems and moisture problems

Landscape Fabric

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• Absorbs rain, overhead water as it is permeable.
• The evaporation is much slower, which encourages micorhyzae growth and good bacteria.

Landscape Fabric

• Nylon lasts many years. Ours is 6 years old and still sturdy.
• Landscape fabric allows the soil to breathe and encourages the micorhyzae to flourish within the soil.

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Landscape Fabric

• Plastic causes unwelcome fungus to grow.

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• Silage tarp is very heavy plastic, but It does not work well to suppress weeds in Heber because it doesnt get hot soon enough to burn the weed seeds

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• As soon as the tarp is lifted, the weeds get water and sun and start to grow

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Landscape Fabric

• Landscape fabric allows the soil to breathe and encourages the micorhyzae to flourish within the soil.

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• Lettuce is less likely to be bitter because moisture is more easily retained.

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• Rain and watering, passing through the fabric, allows weeds to start to grow.

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• The weeds die because of lack of sunlight

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Landscape Fabric, a Powerful Tool!

• Water the landscape fabric to kill weeds. The weeds sprout and then die with no light
• The soil life will then clean up all dead plant life under the landscape fabric
• Even with landscape fabric over a lawn or weed patch, in a few months the area will be completely cleared.

Starry Garden

Farm

• This area is about one fourth of our whole garden.

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• We could not get rid of the orchard grass not matter what we tried.

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• Now, when we lift the landscape fabric, the soil is full of earthworms, micorrhyzae but not one weed.

Our Garden is a

Forest Garden

1. Canopy (large fruit and nut trees)​
2. Low tree level (dwarf fruit trees)
3. Shrub layer (currents and berries
4. Herbaceaous layer (squash, greens, herbs, flowers)
5. Soil surface (Ground cover crops)
6. Rhizosphere (Roots, carrots, beets, onions)
7. Vertical layer (climbers and vines)

Plants Help One Another

• Permaculture layers create a natural environment where plants support and help one another.

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Our Starry Garden Farm practices are based on these principles.

Plums and Pears

Currents and Pink Cosmos

Starry Garden

Farm

Starry Garden

Farm

• Our front yard is full of herbs and wildflowers.
• Herbs deter pests.
• Wildflowers bring pollinaters

Starry Garden Farm

• We have tall Gray stripe sunflowers by the fence, two rows of corn in the middle and smaller black oil seed sunflowers in the front row.

• Our cattle panel arches give us more room for beans, small squash, etc.
• Vertical gardening adds beauty to the garden and gives plants plenty of light.
• It provides wind breaks and shade for tender plants.

Starry Garden Farm

• This area seemed to be struggling. Our squash would grow but didn’t produce much squash. Even greens wouldn’t grow well here.
• Four years ago, we grew a covercrop to enrich the soil.
• Now, this area grows huge amounts of greens, squash, and fruit trees.
• At the end of the season, it is difficult to find our wide paths to walk through the garden.

Starry Garden

Farm

• Soil doesn’t freeze under landscape fabric.

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• Ice doesn’t build up.

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• Even under 3 feet of snow this winter, the soil was not frozen under the fabric.

•  A Healthy soil food web can:

• Prevent Disease

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• Attract Beneficial Insects

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• Feed the Plants
• Extend water to the plants

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• Soil becomes a living organism

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•  A Healthy soil food web can:

• Compost can be in containers, hills, or sheets.
• Worms and beneficial microbes should be added.
• Beds are better than rows for plant canopy & loose soil.

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Deep Mulch Gardening

1. Compost can be made in a bin, with much labor.
2. However, sheet composting in wide paths works well with less work.

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1. Rich, aged, layered compost, perhaps from a ranch's clearing corrals or stalls
2. Layered composting can be old manure, composted shredded wood chips, and plant refuse.
3. Start your own compost pile, even a small one. It is "black gold".

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Chicken Farm Hands

Heavy Mulch Gardening

12 to 18 Inches Deep

Garden Design

Make it beautiful

Make it practical

Make it fun

Get Started!

• Young tree roots have deeper roots and need deeper watering.
• We use drip systems for young trees once a week to reach the young, deeper roots.
• The rest of the garden, we overhead water every day.

Trees Need Drip Water

Deep Mulch Gardening

• Creates warm environment for bacteria and micorhyzae to thrive.
• Use straw not grass hay

Deep Mulch Gardening

•  Our hay mulched garden retained the moisture wonderfully and the plants were able to withstand the heat and dryness that was shriveling crops all around us.

Deep Mulch Gardening

• Heavy plant mulch gardening keeps your pathways and garden produce clean.
• If weeds grow through the mulch, they are easy to pull.
• Put down 8 to 12 inches of hay or woodchip mulch.

Deep Mulch Gardening

• Grass clippings make a wonderful mulch.
• Grass clippings are a rich addition to compost.

Composted Manure in Deep Mulch Gardening

• Makes it lighter and easier to haul

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• Gets rid of farm waste that can harm streams and rivers

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• Make its nutrients more accessible to plants

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Materials for Deep Mulch Gardening

• Carbon sources:
• Sawdust
• Leaves
• Cornstalks
• Pine needles
• Peat moss
• Newspaper/cardboard
• Straw/hay
• Wood chips

Deep Mulch Gardening

• These wide rows of plants are planted of beds of compost mulched with straw.
• The channels work well for irrigation.

Deep Mulch Garden

• Can be very beautiful
• Can be made with materials at hand or purchased materials
• Less weeding
• Easily covered with hoops or other protection
• A trellis can be added to one side
• Can be made taller for less stooping
• Between beds can be mowed grass, gravel, or wood chips
• minerals, manure and other amendments can be easily be added with a shovel and wheelbarrow
• Limits the size of your garden
• In beds a tiller or tractor can't be used
• ​All work must be done by hand

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Raised Beds Possibilities

Raised Bed Gardening

Coverings can easily be added to raised beds.

Raised Bed Gardening

• Paul Gauchi

wood chip mulch Pioneer

Deep Mulch Garden

Garden

Design

Garden

Design

Garden

Design

Have fun!

Be efficient!

Get started!

Garden

Design

Garden

Design

Garden

Design

Terracing

Garden

Design

Terracing

Garden

Design

Terracing

Starry Garden Farm

• In an area with poor soil, we planted 3 kinds of beans to enrich the soil.
• All beans and peas enrich the soil with nitrogen.

Strawberry Popcorn, Bush Beans,and Black Oil Sunflower Seeds

Starry Garden Farm

Starry Garden Farm

• We plant flowers near the greenhouse to bring pollinators into the drop-down side walls, to encourage pollinators to enter the greenhouse.
• It also adds beauty.

High Tunnel Greenhouse Grant

• US Department of Agriculture�302 E Lakeview Pkwy, Provo, UT 84606 

This is a wonderful grant! If your application is received, they give you half the cost towards a high-tunnel greenhouse, with sides that roll up for temperature and moisture control.

High Tunnel Greenhouse Grant

• US Department of Agriculture�302 E Lakeview Pkwy, Provo, UT 84606 

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Go to the Provo office of the US Department of Agriculture and apply for a greenhouse grant. It is best to go in person. You have to own your own land and have a garden area.

High Tunnel Greenhouse Grant

• US Department of Agriculture�302 E Lakeview Pkwy, Provo, UT 84606 

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The grant application has to be completed before October of each year. Ask them to help you fill out the grant in their office.

Chicken Farm Workers

• We are experimenting with 100 chickens this year as away to breakdown our compost quicker.
• The compost will also be a source of food as we add food scraps, weeds, and garden leftovers for our chickens.

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• Chickens can be your first line of breaking down your compost and gives your compost a richer and healthier soil.
• Chickens prepare the mulch for worms which is your next line of breaking down of mulch.

Chicken Farm Workers

• Green plants planted inside the chicken run with added greens and food scraps.

Chicken Farm Workers

• Chickens do the “dirty work,” and turn in the cover crop.

Chicken Farm Workers

• They love the green goodness and all the bugs and grubs it brings to the soil.

Chicken Farm Workers

• Today, we would have to eat 3 times as much broccoli to get the same nutrition as you did in 1940.
• You would have to eat 10 carrots from unenriched soil to get the same nutrition as 1 carrot from the best nourished soil.

Deep Mulch Garden

• I wear a fanny pack to hold my phone, and I listen to a book or podcast with secure headphones.

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My grandchildren are bringing me a shade tent.

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I can plant 3 or 4 beds without moving the shade tent.

Keep Cool, Happy, & Safe

• To dig a hole for quick transplanting of seedlings, I wear goggles and use this power nozzle to dig the holes.

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Keep Cool, Happy, & Safe

• To endure the heat, wear a light, cotton jacket and a hat. If overheated, spray the air for cooling rain on your hat and jacket.

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Keep Cool, Happy, & Safe

• I can work for many hours, as needed, on cool mornings and cool evenings.

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Keep Cool, Happy, & Safe

Watering can be complex or simple.

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Simple is often better than complex.

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A series of hoses hooked to sprinklers is fine.

Watering: Keep it Simple

Simple Watering Riser

Use a ¾ inch electrical conduit pipe to raise the sprinkler. Push the pipe into the ground. Push a sprinkler with a spike into the pipe.

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Connect a series of sprinklers with hoses.

For non-stressed posts, dig the hole for the post 2 feet in the ground. Wrap bottom with ice shield tar paper so it will never rot, tamp dirt around post a little at a time.

Putting a Post In for Garden Structures

Doesn’t Have to Be Hard

One hole is fun to dig for an ice cream bar.

Digging a Post Hole for Garden Structures

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Post Hole for Garden Structures and Fences Need Easy Cement

We had so much produce, we started cooking meat, broth, and adding vegetables from the garden. We would eat some then freeze-dry the rest.

Your Garden Food in Your Tummy & Food Storage

Your produce can be so prolific, you can be overwhelmed with food to preserve. This video shows how you can ferment easily in 5 gallon buckets with air locks tubes, then store in jars.

Using 5 Gallon Buckets to Ferment Garden Produce

How to Make Your Own Lacto Fermented Vegetables with Bridget LeFevre (video)

OUR HOPE FOR HEBER VALLEY

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Your Community Working Together

1. We hope no one in Heber goes hungry in hard times. 
2. We hope you all get stronger by gardening outdoors in the sunshine.
3. We hope your children and grandchildren learn to garden alongside you.
4. We hope you all get healthier by eating nutritious and flavorful food out of your own garden.
5. We hope you are able to grow enough food to be able to share with others.

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Your Family, Strong & United