This is a brief overview of the story of a family who went from limited gardening experience to founding a CSA over the course of 2 years. The presentation was given for a Permaculture class at Kalamazoo First Assembly of God Church in Portage, MI.

1. GARDENING
K First Permaculture Class ~ March 14, 2012

2. Overview
 Our Story
 Successful Beginners, Not Experts
 Our Methods
 Top 5 Excuses for Not Gardening
 Resources

3. Our Story
 2010: Concerns about health & hard times
 How can we thrive in a no/low-energy world?
 Books and online resources
 Square Foot Gardening
 Learned about seed types
 Brainstorming
 Fencing
 Garden Structures
 Soil components

4. Our Story
 Homesteading Research
 Micro-farming and CSAs
 Birth of Arcadia Farms
 www.arcadia-farms.net

5. Types of Seeds
 Open Pollinated
A seed which produces offspring just like
the parent plants. Open-pollinated seed
allows growers to harvest and save seed
for the following year.

6. Types of Seeds
 Hybrid or GMO
A plant resulting from the cross mating of
distinctly different parental types. Many seed
companies are highly motivated by profit and so
they intentionally release unstable hybrids whose
exact parentage are guarded trade secrets. If a
gardener saves the seeds, their resulting crops
will not be true-to-type.

7. Types of Seeds

8. Types of Seeds
 Heirloom
 Heirloom varieties are open-pollinated
varieties with a long history of being cultivated
and saved within a family or group. They have
evolved by natural or human selection over
time.

9. Our Methods: The Basics
 Bought non-hybrid and heirloom seeds
 Jiffy greenhouses in laundry room
 Parent’s greenhouse
 Transplanted in June

10. Our Methods: Square Foot Gardening
 Square Foot Gardening is the practice of
planning small but intensively planted gardens
in raised beds.

11. Our Methods: Raised Beds
 Benefits:
 Easier on the back
 No tilling the ground
 Eliminates need for a lot of gardening know-how
because you don’t have to amend the soil
 Intensive production

12. Our Methods: Soil Mix
 Mel’s Mix
 1/3 Peat Moss
 1/3 Vermiculite
 1/3 Compost
 “The Secret”

13. Our Methods: Intensive Planting
 No waste space
 Ideal for those with limited space
 More efficient production
 Shades out weeds (“living mulch”)
 Bio-diversity mimics God’s planting in nature

14. Our Methods: Pest Control
 6’ Deer Fence
 Chicken wire ($1/linear foot)
 Landscape posts ($2 on sale)
 Post holders ($3 after rebate)
 Marigolds
 Fishing line
 Deer won’t jump a double fence

15. Our Methods: Fertilizer
 Jobes Organics Fertilizer
 Unneeded
 Compost

16. Top 5 Excuses
For Not Gardening
Excuse 1: I don’t have time.
 Average of 30 minutes per day
 You could do less!
 Factors
 How close is the garden to the house?
 How often will you be watering?
 How much weeding will you need to do?
 How much fertilizing will you need to do?
 How badly do you want to save money and eat
healthier?

17. Top 5 Excuses
For Not Gardening
Excuse 2: I hate weeding.
 Intensive planting shades out weeds
 Watch out for compost!
 Address the aisles
 Mulch
 Landscape fabric
 We spent around 3 hours for the year

18. Top 5 Excuses
For Not Gardening
Excuse 3: I don’t have space.
 Intensive planting
 Do you have a 4’ x 4’ sunny space?
 Container gardens
 Look online for inspiration
 We grew over 500 tomatoes in 8 square feet

19. Top 5 Excuses
For Not Gardening
Excuse 4: I don’t know how.
 Neither do we! 
 Abundant resources
 Establish a community of gardeners
 Everyone starts somewhere

20. Top 5 Excuses
For Not Gardening
Excuse 5: It didn’t work last time.
 “The godly may trip seven times, but they will get
up again. But one disaster is enough to overthrow
the wicked. Proverbs 24:16
 I'm convinced that one of the "secrets" to success is
facing the fact that failure is a part of the process. Lots
of people sit around and dream about accomplishing
big things but never move because they're afraid of
failing (and the stigma that comes with it). Great
people see failure as an inevitable opportunity to
improve/re-imagine/try again, instead of a paralyzing
setback.

21. Resources
All New Square Foot Gardening
by Mel Bartholomew
The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible
by Edward C. Smith
Carrots Love Tomatoes
by Louise Riotte
Mother Earth News
www.motherearthnews.com
iVilliage Garden Web Forums
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/
Google
www.google.com
Arcadia Farms
www.arcadia-farms.net