Raw Food Explained: Life Science
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12. No Space For A Garden?
If you live in an apartment or condominium and don’t have space for a regular garden, you can still grow some of your own food on your porch or patio. You can use boxes, barrels, or make a wall garden. Small plants like lettuce, squash, cucumbers, or strawberries need boxes only four to six inches high. Tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower, and cabbage need more space for their roots, and these boxes should be at least ten or twelve inches high.
Vine branching plants (cucumbers, squash, melons) can be trained to spread over the patio floor (concrete or whatever). They require little box space. Grapevines can be planted along a building wall or fence.
You can build a wall garden anywhere you have a little space. Annie Silvan describes a wall garden and how to build it. She says that it is like a large block or wall of soil with plants growing out of all sides. “You will need four one-by-six boards two feet long, four one-by-six boards five feet long and at least 14 two-by-two poles four feet long.” Make two bottomless boxes out of the one-by-sixes —a frame for the top and one for the bottom. Nail the two-by-twos to these frames, one foot apart. It will look something like a cage with vertical bars. Leave the bottom and the top open, but line all sides (inside) with open mesh wire and then black plastic. Secure the mesh with wire. Place the wall in its permanent position, fill with soil, and water from the top so the soil will settle. Use tomatoes and root vegetables at the top; lettuce, strawberries, cabbage, cauliflower, or any leafy greens on the sides. Make little holes in the plastic to insert the plants. Water all around and on top.
Patio tomatoes (in pots) are easy to grow. Leaf structure is easy to grow. I once grew some in several large flower pots. You can grow sunflower seeds to the green leaf stage in flats by pressing unhulled seeds into the soil and keeping them moist. They are ready for harvesting in a week. Buckwheat, adzuki beans, lentils, mung beans, or any other seeds or beans can be grown the same way, and will produce a product which is superior nutritionally to seeds sprouted with only water, since they will have the benefit of the earth, sun and outside air.
When no other way is possible, sprout your seeds on your kitchen counter in jars or other containers. We use alfalfa sprouts almost daily. Alfalfa is known to contain trace minerals which may be lacking in other plants. The root system of field-grown alfalfa reaches down as deeply as fifteen feet into the subsoil, picking up minerals not present higher up, and these minerals are, of course, present in the seeds in the sprouts.
12.1 Do The Best You Can
Grow as much organic food as you possibly can. Seek out and share with other organic growers. Import organically-grown nuts, seeds, and dried fruits from other areas. Keep trying to produce or obtain fresh organically-grown produce.
For the rest (if any) some compromises may be necessary. Get the best-quality food obtainable, wash in plain water, peel waxed fruits and vegetables, and do the best you can. Try to obtain foods grown on different soils, in different parts of the country, to insure obtaining a variety of trace minerals which may have been damaged or destroyed in certain areas: If you eat most of your food uncooked, you will still attain a higher degree of health than conventional eaters.
- 1. Organic Gardening Is The Counter-Part Of Natural Hygiene
- 2. What Exactly Is Organically-Grown Food?
- 3. Soil Analysis
- 4. Basic Steps To Establish A Successful Garden
- 5. Gardening The Magic Way-With Mulch, Compost, Sea Weed Spray
- 6. Soil Requirements For A Successful Organic Garden
- 7. Approximate Amounts Of Compost, Mulch And Water
- 8. Planting Your Garden
- 9. Insects: Friends And Foes
- 10. The Case Against Commercially-Grown Foods
- 11. Four Methods
- 12. No Space For A Garden?
- 13. Harvest Of Pleasure And Health
- 14. Questions & Answers
- Article #1: Vegetable Preferences
- Article #2: Companion Plants
- Article #3: Nitrogen Fixation By John Tobe
- Article #4: pH Preferences Of Some Plants
- Article #5: Dirt Cheap? Nonsense! It’s Vital to Garden
- Article #6: Soil Test Secret To Success By Gene Austin
- Article #7: Pesticides—They’re Killing Bugs—and the Land By Ronald Kotulak
- Article #8: Pesticides—There Are Workable Alternatives To the Dusts, Sprays, and Oils By Joan Jackson
- Article #9: Containing Inhibits ‘Raiders’ By Gene Austin
Raw Food Explained: Life Science
Today only $37 (discounted from $197)