The Marines and Iraqi's need your help

Friends:

We leave today for Armenia and the Republic of Georgia to work on
projects in those countries. We expect to return to the States by the
middle of June, unless something extends our work.

Such as: I received a note from a father of a marine in Iraq
yesterday, whose unit is trying to assist a village of 25,000 Iraqi's
grow fresh food for their sustenance. It's a desert community in the
SouthEast of the country, they are in extreme poverty, and all fresh
food is imported from Jordan.

The Marines are asking for our assistance, and they obviously have no
money but what the guys can give out of their own pockets. We want to
help them as much as possible, and will be donating our materials and
time. If they could get me there I'd even assist them on the ground,
with such things as building and growing in a greenhouse, etc.

If any of you feel like sharing your own means toward helping these
Iraqi villagers grow their own food I invite you to go to the website,
www.growfood. com, click on Donate, and give what you can.

Any donations will be used for this project unless you tell us
otherwise. And all donations received ALWAYS go to projects - not to
salaries and overhead, as there are no salaries and little overhead,
which is covered by the sale of books, etc.

Remember us in your prayers, will you?

Jim & Araksya Kennard

__._,_._

Why using Poo in a garden is a bad idea

highly recommend you consider carefully before using manure and compost in your raised-bed garden. It is believed that more than 90% of the composted materials available to the family gardener have NOT been sterilized in the composting process.

To be sure you have clean materials you would have to know that they had been composted at 140 degrees for 3 weeks. That's what it takes to produce compost using aerobic processes, and that's the only sure way I know of to remove diseases, weed seeds, and bugs.

I recommend you use a mix of three ingredients, including sand (30%) and any of these: sawdust, perlite, peat moss, or vermiculite - in that order of preference. Do not use top soil in the mix, as that is heavy, difficult to work with, and also often contains the 3 "badies".

In addition to the great potential for problems with the above, using manure and compost leave you guessing as to what you are giving your plants by way of nutrition.

And the third reason you need to be careful is that using manure and compost can often lead to a salinity problem with your tiny plants. Plants need small amounts of 13 mineral nutrients over the entire course of their growing cycle, rather than one large application of fertilizer salts (which manure and compost have) at one time.

We teach and demonstrate the best growing principles and procedures, which allow us to promise the world "a great garden in any soil, in any climate" with no record of a successful challenge in the past 40+ years.

We use small measured amounts of natural mineral nutrients to give plants exactly what they need for sustained healthy growth, and we teach you exactly how to to the same.

I invite you to visit the Foundation's website at www.foodforeveryone.org, specifically the FAQ section, where you'll find many worthwhile short articles on growing organically. And the Learn section will teach you everything you need to know to have a highly successful garden - without buying anything from us.

Best wishes,

Jim Kennard, President
Food For Everyone Foundation
"Teaching the world to grow food one family at a time."

Stopping powdery mildew

You can buy a gallon of skim milk(non fat) and just spray it from the
bottle. No dilution necessary.
Or, you can buy non fat dry milk and mix it as follows
one part dry non fat milk
nine parts water.
A good schedule is every two weeks or oftener if you see a problem sooner
than the two week period.

It is really important to spray in the cool of the day, I do it in the
evening after leaves have cooled down.
It is really important to keep all bad looking leaves trimmed off of plants
so that spores don't continue to infect healthy leaves.

It is very hot in Florida. I used to live there. Have you thought of using
some 50 per cent shade cloth to cool down your plants when temps rise into
the 90's?

Always water at ground level, do not wet the leaves. Always water in the
morning in case the leaves do get wet, they have a chance to dry before night
fall.

Hot days and cool, moist nights are a perfect media for powdery mildew.
That is exactly what we are dealing with here in Long Beach, California. Our
plants are simply dripping with dew each and every morning.

Growboxes how and when

My husband has been a member of the group for about 2 years, and I
joined more recently. We have the Garden Master program, and books, and
have followed these quite carefully. We have 3 boxes that are 18" x 30'
and 3 boxes 4' x 30'.

A local company mixed the fertilizer to 16-16-16 and we used this to
make up the weekly feed using that and your Mittleider Magic micro Mix
which we ordered from your website.

We used this, plus the pre-plant formula for the grow boxes. In the
process, we noticed that the weekly feed was absorbing moisture. The
next day the remaining mixture was extremely wet and congealing into a
soupy mix. It will be very difficult to spread it evenly. We put it in
our dehydrator overnight but it is not drying out, it's still very sticky.

Would it be possible to dissolve the mixture and apply it as a liquid?
Also, has anyone had a similar experience with the mix turning wet, and
any suggestions as to how to deal with it?

Thank you,
Steve and Kathrynne

Steve & Kathrynne - And Group:

Epsom Salt has 7 parts water to one part MgSO4, which makes it very susceptible to turning wet. The materials used in making the 16-16-16 may have also had water in the compounds. Many compounds have hydrogen, and all have oxygen.

Mixing gently and keeping cool and dry help avoid it. Also, in the future, add 2% (by volume) of Perlite to your Weekly Feed Mix. Perlite absorbs something like 20 times its own weight in water, so it usually solves the problem.

As to how to best use your materials now that they are wet. My first choice is usually to continue using them in the same way - a 16 ounce can distributed evenly over a 30'-long row (2 in a 4'-wide bed).

You CAN dissolve the fertilizers in water and then apply it to the beds, but if you dissolve a week's supply of fertilizer and then apply it all at once you are very likely to create a salinity problem and hurt your garden.

If you feel you must dissolve the materials I recommend you first dissolve 5 ounces WF in 5 gallons of water, apply that evenly the length of the bed, and then water normally, until water comes out the bottom of the beds. Repeat that process on two other waterings throughout the week.

And by the way, you need to dissolve the WEekly Feed fertilizer ahead of time, as it is not instantly water-soluble. The previous day is best. What a hassle, huh!. That's why I prefer to apply the materials directly to the soil and then water them in, even when they're set and sticky.

Also by the way, getting wet doesn't affect the usefulness of the fertilizer - only the ease of use.

Jim Kennard