Super Cropping AUS26 by Garden Culture Magazine

AU ST R A L I A ED I T I O N · I S SU E 26 · 20 22 · F R EE CO P Y

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CONTENTS

BUDGET FRIENDLY WAYS TO GROW FOOD

MARKETpLACE

THE PLANT CANOPY TRAINING DEBATE REBELLIOUS SUPER CROPPING: BREAK THE RULES!

24 SPECIFIC 30 STRAIN NUTRITION

71 PREVENTING AND CURING DREADED APHID INFESTATIONS

I N TH IS ISSU E O F GA R D EN C U LT U R E :

9 Foreword

49 Is 36 Hours of Night Good for Plants?

11 AUTHOR Spotlight

52 Bringing Natural Growing To The World’s Corners

13 MARKETPLACE Spotlights

53 Putting Inactive Oil and Gas Wells To Good Use

16 Don’t Stress Out! Training and Pruning Explained

54 Pruning 101

18 Systems Thinking To Survive

60 Preventing and Curing Dreaded Aphid Infestations

24 Budget Friendly Ways to Grow Food

62 Trending Now

30 Rebellious Super Cropping: Break the Rules!

66 Bountiful Harvests In Your Garden

32 The Biochemistry of Germination

74 Cost-Effective Nuisance Control

Toxic Honeydew Threatens Beneficial Bugs

Strain Specific Nutrition

36 Lactic Acid Fermentation

76 5 Cool Ways To Super Cropping Success

43 Down the Rabbit Hole:The Plant Canopy Training Debate

78 Tissue Culture I: Plants

46 Best of the Blog

82 The Avocado’s Plight 7

Serious Supplies for your Hydroponic Store

WWW.STEALTH-GARDEN.COM

FOREWORD & CREDITS

FOREWORD

What is Super Cropping?

think of it as any man-made stress that positively affects a plant. Bending or cutting branches, removing leaves at specific times, or training branches in certain directions are

examples of getting physical with the plant. But manipulating watering schedules, temperature, extending periods of darkness, and plant nutrition can all cause positive stress and help you create stronger, bigger super plants. It’s a fine line; the difference between good stress and severely damaging plants is slight. One twist too many, one bad snap in the wrong week, and your crop will be anything but super.

Down the Rabbit Hole: The Plant Canopy Training Debate by Joanna Berg, Don’t Stress Out! Training and Pruning Explained by Cody J. Garrett-Tait, and Rebellious Super Cropping: Break the Rules! by Rich Hamilton will answer any questions you may have and indeed help you step up your growing game. There isn’t only one right way to super crop; this growing method encompasses many techniques. Don’t be afraid to play with your plants. Bend, twist, break, pinch; do it all. But don’t do it to all of them, especially the first time around. Become an expert on a couple of plants at a time. Remember, just because it worked on one plant doesn’t mean it will have the same impact on all varieties. There is no doubt in my mind that when properly executed, super cropping can have a positive impact on plant strength, yield, and quality. Every grower should bend a branch and see what happens.

CREDITS SPECI A L TH A N KS TO: Adam Clarke, Albert Mondor, Anne Gibson, Betty Green, Dr. Callie Seaman, Catherine Sherriffs, Cody J. Garrett-Tait, Evan Folds, Joanna Berg, Martyna Krol, Philip McIntosh, Regan Moran, and Rich Hamilton. PRESIDENT Eric Coulombe eric@gardenculturemagazine.com +1-514-233-1539 E XECU T I V E ED I TO R Celia Sayers celia@gardenculturemagazine.com +1-514-754-1539 ED I TO R Catherine Sherriffs cat@gardenculturemagazine.com DESIGN Job Hugenholtz job@gardenculturemagazine.com D I G I TA L & SO CI A L M A R K E T I N G CO O R D I N ATO R Serena Sayers serena@gardenculturemagazine.com +1-514-754-0062 ADVERTISING ads@gardenculturemagazine.com PUBLISHER 325 Media INC 44 Hyde Rd., Mille-Isles QC, Canada J0R 1A0 GardenCultureMagazine.com ISSN 2562-3540 (Print) ISSN 2562-3559 (Online) Garden Culture is published six times a year, both in print and online.

Happy Gardening! Eric 3 @GardenCulture

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D I ST R I B U T I O N PA R T N ER S • WHG • HY-GEN • Stealth Garden Supplies

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AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

I love our indoor vertical microgreens and medicinal plants; however, the outdoor stuff is really fun as well as it’s more prone to the elements

Author Spotlight

Adam Clarke

e introduce you to the newest writer at Garden Culture Magazine, Adam Clarke, from beautiful British Columbia,

Canada. We’re thrilled to add him to our lineup; Adam has a wealth of experience in the world of growing and will be offering us some tips and tricks when it comes to achieving healthy, high-yielding gardens. In this edition, he shares his experience with the hypochlorous acid generator ; in the future, he’ll be talking about perfect growing climates, ventilation, and more! Welcome aboard, Adam! What are some of your favourite plants to grow? Living on a hobby farm, we have lots of plants on the go between flowers, vegetables, microgreens, and hemp so picking a favourite is hard. While I love doing indoor sunflower sprouts for the flavour and crunch, I still think hemp has to be the winner. There is something about walking through the field over the season and watching them grow into trees bigger than me with buds the size of my fist. Do you prefer growing indoors or outdoors? I don’t think I have a preference growing indoors or outdoors. I love our indoor vertical microgreens and medicinal plants; however, the outdoor stuff is really fun as well as it’s more prone to the elements, and in turn, more interesting problems and solutions are able to be used. Do you grow organically? We try our best to use everything organic. However, we don’t go over the top to guarantee everything. Most of our plants are grown in “super soil” custom blended for our applications. We only use natural products, but we do not follow any particular organic guidelines. We just got some Anystis baccarum (Crazee Mites), and they are incredible pest killing machines! Nature does it best.

What kinds of foods are you craving these days? Being dairy-free by necessity for over a decade, pizza is no longer what it once was to me, but cultured cashew cheese on fresh sourdough bread has done a good job filling the void. What tunes have you got on your playlist? The current playlist is all over the place. Recently, I’ve had a throwback to my teens with some Reel Big Fish; the classics like the Beatles and Fleetwood Mac have been on the stereo a lot lately. 3

Are you interested in writing for Garden Culture Magazine? We’d love to hear from you! Send us an email introducing yourself with a sample of your work. editor@gardenculturemagazine.com

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BY CODY J. GARRETT-TAIT

Training and Pruning Explained

runing, shaping, and training plants is an age-old tradition designed to maximise productivity by manipulating and removing growing shoots. All training techniques stress plants to a cer tain extent; how much depends on the method.

How Training Works We’ve all seen the stereotypical plant shaped like a Christmas tree. This condition is brought about through a plant hormonal phenomenon called apical dominance. The very top of the plant hormonally limits the growth of the lower branches, so it maintains its lead. Some cultivars more than others express this in their genetics, so specific training techniques suit particular varieties. The training aims to even out the distribution of hormones within the plant, reducing the dominant lead effect and spreading the wealth amongst other shoots, which forces them to become bigger and stronger, finally resulting in higher yields of a better quality end product. In effect, you are trying to turn the Christmas tree shape upside down, resulting in an inverted triangle. The trick is to train just enough to get the correct response from the plant, but not so much that we overstress it, slowing growth to a crawl and potentially causing hermaphroditic tendencies. The stress effect plants exhibit is due to manipulating and disrupting the

Low-Stress Training

natural hormone flow. The training intensity and individual variety genetics dictate how much and what kind of technique you use. Various methods exist, some low stress and others high.

Low-Stress Training Low-Stress Training, or L.S.T, is a method where we gently manipulate vertical and horizontal shoots rather than remove them. The shoots are simply bent, without kinking the phloem, and secured with wire, rubber bands, or plant tie. Many growers start this when the plant is young to encourage more extensive branching and a broader, flatter canopy early on. It is worth noting that simply bending lower branches sideways has little effect; for the apical dominance to be nullified, the top needs to be brought down at or below the line of the lower shoots.

Scrogging Scrogging is an advanced version of low-stress training, where the plant is trained horizontally against a screen rather than vertically like on an espalier. This method is often combined with high-stress techniques like topping to create a large, flat canopy. For this technique to work correctly, prune all unproductive growth below the canopy height to maximise the productive flowering tops.

Scrogging

TRAINING AND PRUNING

The training aims to even out the distribution of hormones within the plant, reducing the dominant lead effect and spreading the wealth amongst other shoots, Super Cropping Super cropping was a mega-popular technique in the ‘90s and is still used by many today. It is a bit higher stress than L.S.T but doesn’t involve the removal of vegetative material. If done right, this is still a relatively low-stress technique. Super cropping plants involves: • Pinching a branch with your fingers. • Lightly crushing the phloem of the stem. • Allowing it to fold over on itself sideways. The injured site of the stem swells as it callouses, resulting in a “knuckle” that some think brings extra nutrient flow to the plant. The hormonal effect is quite similar to, if not more pronounced than, L.S.T.

which forces them to become bigger and stronger

It is best not to perform high-stress techniques when the plant is too young or in active vegetative growth. Know that these methods extend vegetative timeframes because the plant will take two days to a week to recover and begin rapid growth after undergoing this treatment.

Advanced Topping - Lollipopping

Super cropping

High- Stress Topping and Fimming Topping plants involves pinching out, or snipping off, the very most end of the growing shoot, just above where the next node begins at the end of the branch. Then, the hormones in the end shoot are removed and redirected to the two shoots at the node below. This technique makes the plant much bushier because where you once had one central leader, you now have two end tips. It also seems to have the effect of making the whole tipped branch fuller. Fimming is slightly different; rather than removing the entire growing tip, you cut off around three-quarters of it, producing up to four growing tips once the plant has recovered. The plant’s shape isn’t quite the same as with the topping method, but the two are pretty similar.

This technique is called lollipopping because the plant resembles a ball on a stick. The plant is topped at an early stage, around the fourth node, resulting in two lead shoots, which are again pruned at the next third to fourth node, resulting in another two tops. Once picked, these shoots will be the focus, with the lower growth wholly removed. You will end up with one main stem with four lead shoots to train, and sometimes this is repeated another couple of times if you want huge plants.

Advanced Topping

The plants grow for a period, developing large root systems before being cut back aggressively to the main shoots, and all lower growth is pruned once more. There will be another short recovery period before flowering. This technique is perfect for many high-stretch cultivars because it takes advantage of the rapid elongation phase when plants are first put into force flowering. 3

BIO Cody is the owner of High Powered Organics

and a second-generation Australian grower with more than a decade of experience in the horticulture industry. Cody works closely with growers locally and abroad, creating organic solutions for high output cropping. He achieves maximum results by combining aspects from permaculture, biodynamic farming, and Korean natural farming techniques. Cody’s main focus is finding natural, and sustainable ways to produce high-quality plants with a minimum of input.

High- Stress Topping and Fimming 17

BY EVAN FOLDS

Systems Thinking To Survive 18

SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

the system is not broken; it is working exactly as it was intended...

e are in the midst of a human catastrophe of overwhelming propor tions, a public health crisis so epic and pervasive that being sick has become normalised. In the process of trying to cure ourselves with pharmaceuticals, we are exchanging our freedoms as currency, and, in so doing,

we are crippling our future. If you have not been paying attention, this is all happening now.

The State of Society We have built a civilisation controlled by a few and catalysed by fear, economical extraction, and inflation, which in many ways represents the painful reckoning that the world is experiencing through the Covid Moment. Rather than being offered transparency and genuine human compassion, we have been manipulated and conditioned into supporting tyrannical socioeconomic systems that actively undermine what we would want if we were asked.

The solutions lie in regenerative agriculture, alternative energy, human freedom, healthy waste stream management, world peace, etc

This phenomenon is the root of the riddle that we must solve, and there is no single answer. The solutions lie in regenerative agriculture, alternative energy, human freedom, healthy waste stream management, world peace, etc. Still, an underlying challenge stunts progress - our habits and our systems are not set up for success. We can quickly identify symptoms of sick habits and systems. Three men own as much as the bottom half of Americans, and the wealth of billionaires doubled during Covid. On a typical day, 20% of children do not drink water, and they will see an average of five fast-food advertisements. Autism is now being found in 1 in 54 children, with 50% of people now getting cancer in their lifetimes. The U.S. spends more money on health care per capita than any other country, by far, yet life expectancy is shorter, obesity is higher, and the rate of maternal and infant death is higher as well. On and on. The times we live in are incredibly complex, the solutions are not straight lines, and we have much work to do. As Buckminster Fuller said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

A Broken System? Capitalism is finished, and the corporatism that drives our economy (into the ground) has no conscience other than to make money at all costs. Many who are paying attention are already looking for what’s next. When the ambition of public health is not to improve public health, the intention of the farming system is not to produce the most nutrient-dense crops, and the food system is not designed to grow healthy people, why not?

These scenarios are not cynical; they are simply and objectively true. In other words, the system is not broken; it is working exactly as it was intended. This realisation can be a moment of enlightenment, as we wake up to the fact that the federal government, established to protect our rights, instead serves to deliver corporate benefit. The mechanism by which this happens is regulatory agencies that have been captured by special interests, which facilitates the practices of toxic rescue chemistry and sick care that are the drivers of disease. So round and round we go. Again, this is true. The EPA drags its feet on essential issues like PFAS chemistry and neonicotinoid pesticides. The CDC spends $4.9 billion of its $12 billion annual budget buying and selling vaccines. The NIH owns hundreds of vaccine patents and even profits from the sale of the products it is supposed to regulate. The FDA receives 45% of its annual budget from the pharmaceutical industry; the USDA encourages the growth of commodities by paying approximately 75% of total subsidies to the largest 10% of farming companies.

GA R D EN CU LT U R E M AGA Z I N E.CO M

SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

A Tough Pill

the foundation of a healthy society is healthy people. You can only accomplish healthy people with healthy food

It is a hard truth to swallow that our systems of support, protection and nourishment are set up along corporate lines and that the governmental system that was intended to be of, by, and for the people is parasitic to human potential. Still, decades of performing this sort of corporate race to the bottom line have delivered us to the current moment of catastrophe. So what more is there to say? Can we call a spade a spade?

The catastrophe described above is a serious challenge to our individual and collective humanity. The global balance sheet representing the toxic investments made in the name of these systems, and to the benefit of the powers that be, is forcing destructive decisions upon average people. It compromises social and economic sustainability and, therefore, the health of our species.

Healthy Soil, Healthy People, Healthy Society Despite the complexity of understanding and action required to flip the script of our current paradigm, the foundation of a healthy society is healthy people. You can only accomplish healthy people with healthy food, as Hippocrates said, “Let thy food be medicine, and medicine be thy food”. But we cannot forget that we cannot grow healthy food without healthy soil! It always comes back to healthy soil. It has been my motivation over the last almost 20 years to do the work of growing healthy people, plants, and the planet through regenerative and living soil methods so that we may heal the Earth. I believe that the solutions to the challenges that we face are found in the way we grow and eat food and that

the self-discipline of being able to grow our food and control our diet is power. Like Henry Kissinger said almost 50 years ago, “Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people”.

Biodynamics I have witnessed living foods heal many people. Growing up on the standard American diet (SAD), I have been helped by them myself. It was this quote from Dr Rudolf Steiner’s Agriculture Course lectures in 1924 that first inspired my life’s work: “Nutrition as it is to-day does not supply the strength necessary for manifesting the spirit in physical life. A bridge can no longer be built from thinking to will and action. Food plants no longer contain the forces people need for this”. What a profound recognition that food is our source for the forces of life. In 1924, Steiner lived during the onset of conventional agriculture in Eastern Europe, where farmers were experiencing the repercussions of chemical agriculture developed out of the war machine for the first time - higher yields and sick animals. Farmers asked Dr Steiner how they could regenerate the life force of their farms, and what he came up with is quite extraordinary and now known as “biodynamic agriculture”. The premise of biodynamics is that health is found in how the whole system works together in harmony. The approach of the methods outlined in Steiner’s lectures is to treat the farm as an organism and to recognise that, rather than working from some central point outward, the farm has components that work together and rely on one another like organs in a healthy human body or planets in a solar system.

GA R D EN CU LT U R E M AGA Z I N E.CO M

SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEMS

It is this insight of a healthy organism that can save us. We cannot solve dynamic problems with linear thinking, and we cannot play whack-a-mole and win. It takes recognition that life thrives through diversity and balance and corresponding intention and investment to make it so. The development of cities and neighbourhoods should be approached in such a manner. So should all human endeavours, including social order.

Our humanity’s brilliance, durability, and resilience are being hijacked by special interests and the corporate predators hell-bent on capturing the human spirit

The Threefold Social Organism Rudolf Steiner developed the idea of the Threefold Social Organism between 1917 and 1922 as a spiritual response to World War I on how best to organise human society. The core concept recognises three domains of human social activity - economic, legal, and cultural. Steiner maintained that the health of human society depended on the relative connection, authority, and autonomy of these human spaces. If you apply this logic to the human experience, we see humanity getting sick when church (culture) and state (legal) are mixed, and also in the corporatism that arises from collusion between special interests (economic) and the government (legal). Successful societies of the future will heed this insight and apply power and build their civilisations accordingly.

The power in the concept of the organism is even more directly understood in the workings of the human body. We all take for granted that blood circulation and breathing are automatic. We also take for granted that our recognition of this miracle is only miraculous due to our ability to perceive it through ego-consciousness. Our health is found in how this works together – mind, body, spirit.

Under Attack Our humanity’s brilliance, durability, and resilience are being hijacked by special interests and the corporate predators hell-bent on capturing the human spirit. The unprecedented spirit-suck at play in modern society is being driven by the mainstream media, which is aligned and owned by the very interests that seek profit before people. We must remember that our strength is being preyed upon, not our weakness. The work is to recognise and invest in the regenerative capacity of living whole foods to produce sovereign right thinking and use this thinking to generate habits and systems that allow us to thrive. What we think, we grow. Therefore, we must practice systems thinking to survive. 3

Bio

Evan Folds is a regenerative agricultural consultant with a background across every facet of the farming and gardening spectrum. He has founded and operated many businesses over the years - including a retail hydroponics store he operated for over 14 years, a wholesale company that formulated beyond organic products and vortex-style compost tea brewers, an organic lawn care company, and a commercial organic wheatgrass growing operation. He now works as a consultant in his new project Be Agriculture where he helps new and seasoned growers take their agronomy to the next level.What we think, we grow! Contact Evan at www.BeAgriculture.com or on Facebook and Instagram @beagriculture

GA R D EN CU LT U R E M AGA Z I N E.CO M

BY ANNE GIBSON

BudgetFriendly Ways to Grow Food from your Kitchen

Your most well-lit rooms, with direct sunlight or natural light for several hours of the day, can be enough to grow some plants indoors

GROWING FOOD INDOORS

re your grocery bills getting bigger? You’re not alone. Global food prices are on the rise as producers continue to face

Regrow celery lettuce and Asian greens from the base

ingredient and labour shor tages, as well as increased transpor tation costs. And consumers are paying the price. According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation’s monthly Food Price Index, the cost of food jumped 33% in September 2021 compared to the same time the year before. With no relief in sight, it might be time we all get our kitchen gardens growing. Anne Gibson offers some budget-friendly ways to get star ted. To live more sustainably, save money, and grow edibles for greater food security, look no further than your kitchen! By closing the loop on food waste, we can achieve these goals by regrowing food from leftovers, saving seeds, propagating new plants for free, and making our nutrient-rich fertilisers. I recently moved to a smaller block and need to maximise space indoors and out to grow food. My kitchen bench, several windowsills and rooms are the sunniest, so I’ve utilised these spaces. Your most well-lit rooms, with direct sunlight or natural light for several hours of the day, can be enough to grow some plants indoors.

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Garlic – I use the smaller garlic cloves in meals and sow the largest outer cloves in a container to grow my garlic. These compact plants take up minimal space and love a warm sunny spot while growing. Every clove grows one new bulb.

Use 100% Fresh Food ‘Waste’

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The easiest way to grow food is from your fridge or pantry. When we prepare meals, there are many opportunities to grow new plants from peels, seeds, stems, and leftover parts of our fruit, vegetables, and herbs. These are a few budget-friendly ways I propagate new plants, minimise food waste and recycle scraps.

Onions – If these start to go soft or a green shoot starts to form, put in a pot of compost. While an onion doesn’t regrow itself, it will certainly provide you with onionflavoured shoots similar to spring onions.

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Tomato – Too soft or ripe? Scrape seeds out and save the flesh for cooking in sauces or soups. Soak seeds in water until they ferment (2-3 days). Fermenting naturally removes the germination-inhibiting enzymes around the seeds. Strain off the scum from the water, rinse seeds well, and dry on paper towel strips ready to store or sow. Compost leftovers and use the fermented water as a liquid plant fertiliser.

Vegetables •

Leeks – If buying leeks, pick those with roots still attached so you can eat your leek and grow one too! Cut off the stem 2cm above the roots and put the base in a glass of liquid seaweed to grow new shoots. When green leaves appear from the centre, transplant deeply into a pot and mound up well, then mulch. I’ve regrown dozens of leeks this way! Leeks also produce an abundance of seeds to grow more free plants.

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Spring onions – If you want to start growing them on your kitchen bench, buy a bunch with roots on and snip off the stems at least 5-7cm above the roots. Put in a glass of water or liquid seaweed in a sunny spot, and watch the shoots regrow overnight. You can also plant these in a pot outdoors. When they go to flower and seed, save those to resow. Never buy again!

The easiest way to grow food is from your fridge or pantry

My garden is full of potato plants that sprouted up from peelings with buds that I just buried in the soil to compost!

Grow potatoes from eyes or buds on peels or skin

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Regrow Greens – After harvesting the leaves, I replant the base of celery, lettuce, and Asian greens in moist potting mix, watered with liquid seaweed. New leaves shoot after roots grow from the bottom. This simple planting technique extends the harvest. Potatoes – The ‘eyes’ or buds on the skin develop new shoots and roots. My garden is full of potato plants that sprouted up from peelings with buds that I just buried in the soil to compost! Self-sown spuds don’t get easier than that. Leave potatoes in a well-lit spot until they start to shoot. Then bury in a deep pot, cover with compost as they grow, and enjoy the harvest in a couple of months.

•

Sweet Potatoes – Similarly, the quickest way to encourage new shoots is to bury a healthy organic sweet potato in a large deep container. Keep moist in a warm sunny spot. Once you see the green shoots on young stems (slips), pick the tender leaves and eat as a vegetable (stirfries, soups, or as a spinach substitute). Or be patient while the tubers grow.

•

Pumpkin – I fully utilise its potential! Instead of scraping the seeds out and tossing, eat or sow them. Raise the seed indoors and transplant seedlings, or enjoy these highprotein seeds as a nutritious, tasty snack. Rinse and dry on an oven tray. Lightly season with your favourite flavourings like chilli or garlic powder, and lightly roast. Let cool and store in an airtight jar. Peel the pumpkin skin into bite-sized pieces and lay on an oven tray. Season with salt, pepper, and a little oil. Bake for delicious healthy vegetable ‘chips.’ Add pulp to soups or curries and compost any leftovers. Zero waste!

GROWING FOOD INDOORS

Regrow pineapple tops and compost the skin

Fruit •

Citrus – I’ve grown many fruit trees from seeds including limes, lemons, pomelo, and mandarins. Select the plumpest seeds from ripe fruit and sow immediately into moist seed raising mix. Seeds must be fresh, and they germinate easily in warm weather. Transplant your seedling into a pot. With a little patience, you can grow your own citrus tree.

•

Passionfruit – The easiest way to regrow passion fruit is to cut open a ripe fruit. Leave a few seeds in half the skin and fill with moist compost. Plant into a pot of compost, water well, and you’ll soon have seedlings. These have always been the best fruit in my garden and vines last at least five years, so you get long-term value and kilos of fruit after 12 months. Freeze the pulp in ice cubes when out of season. The peels can be used medicinally by drying and grinding into a powder. Studies have shown the peels have anti-inflammatory agents that may help reduce pain associated with arthritis and relieve asthma. Or, recycle as a compost ingredient.

•

Pineapple – This has to be one of the easiest fruits to grow. Twist the top off of ripe pineapple and sit the base in a glass of water on a sunny windowsill or kitchen bench, so it stays in contact with moisture. You’ll soon see roots growing. Transplant to a pot or the garden in a sunny position. Plants fruit in around 18-24 months.

Propagating Herbs Rosemary, thyme, mint, and basil add flavour and digestive enzymes to meals and are easy to propagate by rooting cuttings in water. Strip off the lower leaves (dry and use in cooking). Snip the base of the stem at an angle and add to water with liquid seaweed. The growth hormones encourage faster root development from leaf nodes underwater. I have several jars on my kitchen bench that photosynthesise in the direct morning sunlight and grow the rest of the day in natural indoor light. I refresh the water regularly until roots have formed and then transplant to pots for year-round herbs.

The easiest way to regrow passion fruit is to cut open a ripe fruit. Leave a few seeds in half the skin and fill with moist compost

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GROWING FOOD INDOORS

Rosemary, thyme, mint, and basil add flavour and digestive enzymes to meals and are easy to propagate by rooting

Rosemary and mint growing in a sunny spot in the kitchen

cuttings in water

Raiding Seeds from the Pantry •

Chia – This high-protein food source is used in many ways for food, but you can also grow your own plants by merely adding water to a few seeds and allowing them to rehydrate. Add the gel to seed raising mix and cover. You’ll soon have baby plants to pot up.

•

Sunflower – These seeds germinate in warm temperatures and can be grown as microgreens on your kitchen bench, ready to eat in as little as a week. Sow on seed raising mix. Snip the stem off above the growing media when two leaves appear and enjoy these proteinrich crunchy sprouts in salads.

Crushed powdered eggshells, coffee grounds, tea leaves, tea bags, cooking water, UFO’s (Unidentified Food Objects) in your fridge crisper, torn moistened egg cartons or paper bags, and pet hair can all be composted. Add to a lidded bucket with holes in the base buried in the garden and worms will turn this organic matter into nutrient-rich free plant food. By fully utilising our food in the kitchen, we can find more creative ways to grow edibles, save money, and minimise household waste. 3

Coriander – These dried seeds are used as a spice from the pantry, but you can also sow them to grow your own herb plants. Pre-soak in water and sow in cool weather.

Recycling Nutrients as Fertiliser

By fully utilising our food in the kitchen, we can find more creative ways to grow edibles, save money, and minimise household waste

BIO

Mint with new roots grown in a glass of liquid seaweed on my kitchen bench

Anne Gibson, The Micro Gardener, is an author, speaker and urban garden community educator on the Sunshine Coast, in Queensland, Australia. Anne is passionate about inspiring people to improve health and wellbeing, by growing nutrient-dense food gardens in creative containers and small spaces. Anne regularly presents workshops, speaks at sustainable living events, coaches private clients and teaches community education classes about organic gardening and ways to live sustainably. She has authored several eBooks and gardening guides. Anne shares organic gardening tips and tutorials to save time, money and energy on her popular website - TheMicroGardener.com.

BY RICH HAMILTON

Break the Rules!

Rebellious S

uper cropping is a high-stress plant training technique. It is used for several reasons, including reducing height, reposi-

tioning branches, encouraging fuller growth, and increasing flowering/fruiting sites.

Intentionally damaging your plants might seem like madness and go against everything you have learned as a grower

SUPER CROPPING

dormant lateral bud

Super cropping involves pinching the stem to soften its internal core and make it pliable without damaging the outer fibres. After this, you can manipulate the plant at the pinch point to reposition the stalks and branches. The plant should heal in its new position. Super cropping is a delicate process that, if done incorrectly, can be disastrous.

Super cropping is a delicate process that, if done incorrectly, can be disastrous

How To Super Crop Many growers claim that bending branches to a nearly 90-degree angle is the best course of action. However, I can’t entirely agree that you should do this every time. You can easily cut off the flow of nutrients and water to branches by bending them so severely. You also risk damaging the outer layer of the plants’ epidermis or breaking the stem altogether.

Why Super Crop? Super cropping is an excellent method for indoor growers with limited space. It is a perfect way to manage canopy growth and keep your plants a uniform distance from the light. Some indoor growers turn to super cropping when they have individual stalks rising higher than the rest of the canopy. Without taking action, these rogue branches will force you to raise the light, reducing the efficiency of the rest of your canopy in harnessing available light energy.

If you intend to super crop or knuckle your plants to this extent, this is how you do it: • •

Super cropping also creates sections of horizontal stem, which often provide additional growth points for stalks and flowering/ fruiting sites. By spreading the plant horizontally, the light can reach all flowers more evenly, creating optimum growth along the entire length of the branches. You can also use super cropping to manoeuvre plants to fill areas in your grow room where light may be underused.

How Super Cropping Works By pinching and twisting the stem, we break the inner part of the plant without damaging the outer part. Breaking the plant’s inner walls will cause it to rebuild, potentially creating better networks. In just one to two days, the plant will use the new junctions with an increased capacity to move water and nutrients. The phenomenon of hormesis can explain this reaction. Hormesis is defined as the beneficial effects of mild stress on an organism. For example, consider a bodybuilder; to get their muscles bigger, they essentially have to stretch, overwork and tear the ones they have. Once the muscle tissue recovers, their muscles are bigger and better than before. The concept is the same in super cropping plants; physically breaking them down makes them stronger and more efficient.

When To Start When growing indoors, the best time to begin super cropping is late veg and within the first couple of weeks of flower for a photo-period plant. After this period, I would not recommend su-

per cropping because the plant is no longer growing vertically, and the stems are too rigid. Likewise, super cropping young plants can damage them beyond repair; wait until the stems are more sturdy.

Locate a point between internodal growth on the main stem. Gently pinch and twist the stalk in opposing directions until you feel the inner fibres break and the branch becomes droopy.

It is best to perform the first initial big bend opposite to how you intend to reposition the plant permanently. Doing so will reduce the chances of snapping the branch when it is put into its new position and prevent it from dropping to more than a 90-degree angle. The areas you twist and pinch will initially be fragile, so you may have to tie or support them to keep them in place while they heal. As the branches recover, the breaks will transform into hard knuckles that look similar to bulging elbows on your plant. An alternative method is to pinch and twist the stem with less force along the same branch at a few different sections. This method allows you to bend the branch safely without cutting off the flow of nutrients or water. Once the stem is flexible, tie it down or weave it through a trellis for support.

Does Super Cropping Boost Yields? Absolutely! Super cropping can produce bigger yields as the plant fights back against the trauma by releasing more growth hormones to heal the damaged areas. Intentionally damaging your plants might seem like madness and go against everything you have learned as a grower. But if you know what you are doing, it is an excellent high-stress technique with tremendous benefits. 3 31

BY DR CALLIE SEAMAN

The Biochemistry

of Germination

What happens when you put the seed in the pot and plant it? Learn about how some may need a frost or fire to get them to germinate and why.

eeds are incredible things; they are a tiny package of energy full of genetic material which allows the next generation of plants to thrive. Seeds are transpor ters of genetic fingerprints, helping to increase the distribution of

the plant and help a species survive through times of unfavourable conditions. They are time capsules ready and waiting to spring into life.

GERMINATION

The Very Beginning We all have laid seeds between a wet paper towel and placed them somewhere warm to germinate, but this technique won’t work with all seeds. Some plants require much more harsh treatment to wake them up from dormancy. For example, plants such as eucalyptus require intense heat in the form of fire. These seeds are known as pyrophiles.

We all have laid seeds between a wet paper towel and placed them somewhere warm to germinate, but this technique won’t work with all seeds

The driving force behind germination varies massively between species. Some are light-sensitive, while others are temperature-sensitive and only sprout when the daily fluctuation is greater than 5°C. The light sensitivity can be related to the need for other plants to be present; the gaps between the larger plants can act as light filters, altering the ratio of particular wavelengths. Nitrate levels can also trigger germination and carbon dioxide in the media, which needs to be slightly higher than in the atmosphere for some species.

The Science Behind Germination Germination is one of the fundamental processes that a plant goes through and is usually one of the first experiences we have as children with growing plants. But how does that dormant seed go from a tiny hard entity to a fruiting plant? It all starts with a signal, which is often the rehydration of the seeds through a process called imbibition. Once the seed has taken up the water, the reserves are mobilised so the embryo can grow. This mobilisation is plant species dependent.

If you look at the cross-section of the germinating bean seed, you can see three elements, starting with an embryo emerging from the end of the seed, which uses the storage reserves in the endosperm. Protecting the endosperm is the aleurone, the layer surrounding the whole seed. The embryo produces gibberellic acid once the seeds imbibe water. Gibberellic acid is diffused to the aleurone, triggering the production of enzymes that will break down the starch of the endosperm and release its energy so the seedling can grow. These enzymes include α-amylase, and the transcription of the α-amylase gene is greatly enhanced by gibberellic acid. Once the starch reserves of the endosperm have been mobilised, they diffuse to the embryo. The embryo starts to grow, and a shoot emerges from the seed. Once the seedling emerges into the light, it can then photosynthesise and produce its energy for rapid growth.

It’s Grow Time To move to the plant’s stage where it can support rapid growth, it must first build solar panels in the form of leaves. This is done in three phases before becoming fully functional. The first set of leaves that emerge are called the coleoptile. They don’t contain chloroplasts (the photosynthetic cells in leaves that capture the sun) but rather precursors called etioplasts which cannot photosynthesise. Within the first phase of the development, the cells in the leaf divide as it grows. Once the cell division stops in the leaf, phase two begins with the plastids (tiny organelles in plants that produce food or pigment). They continue to divide and increase in numbers. Plastids are strange things, as they are almost an entity of their own and are technically considered intracellular endosymbiotic cyanobacteria. We are probably most familiar with

Germination is only the start of the plant’s life, yet, the process faces many challenges

GERMINATION

To move to the plant’s stage where it can support rapid growth, it must first build solar panels in the form of leaves chloroplasts found in chlorophyll, which perform photosynthesis. Others include leucoplasts and chromoplasts. Within phase two, genes are activated that produce enzymes of the Calvin cycle and the generation of the photosynthetic apparatus in its many forms. This, in turn, increases the efficiency of the process of photosynthesis.

cur. The reason for this is there are five different types of phytochromes (to date) that are activated, inhibited, or destroyed by different wavelengths of light. The individual phytochromes also convert from one form to another (Pr to Pfr) depending on the far-red to red light ratio. At the start of the germination process, when the seedling is in the dark of the media, When phytochrome is The third and final phase is all about Phytochrome A is most prevalent exposed to red light, it can maintenance and repairing the existing but is soon destroyed when the hyphotosynthetic equipment. Senesce trigger germination with just pocotyl (embryo stem) is exposed (ageing of the leaves) begins at this to light when it breaks through the a flash required point, and the leaf eventually dies as surface of the soil. Before it breaks more activity occurs higher up the through the surface of the media, plant. there is a high far-red:red light ratio, which initiates a low photon-fluence response. This response is commonly known as shade avoidance and is what causes plants to stretch toLet There Be Light wards the light, increasing internode spacing and reducing We have spoken a lot about how water triggers gerleaf density. With a seedling, this causes the hypocotyl of the mination, but we must not forget the role light plays seeds to remain hooked, and the leaves will not expand. The in this essential process and how the ratio of red to elongation of the stem then occurs until the seedling is out of far-red is vital for different plants. This is all to do with a the ground. A far-red:red ratio drop occurs once the seedphotoreceptor called phytochrome, a blue-green pigment ling has emerged from the media, and the chlorophyll starts that regulates various developmental processes within plants. to form once the leaves have expanded. When phytochrome is exposed to red light, it can trigger germination with just a flash required. This, however, can be reversed if far-red light is immediately exposed to the seed after the initial red-light flash and germination does not oc-

Germination is only the start of the plant’s life, yet the process faces many challenges. Hopefully, this article has shed some light on some of the biochemical changes that occur at the very beginning. 3

BIO Dr Callie Seaman is a leading expert of the UK hydroponic industry and became passionate about medicinal cannabis when she was diagnosed with epilepsy over 20 years ago. After obtaining a Biomedical Sciences degree at Sheffield Hallam University, she completed a PhD titled “Investigating Nutrient Solutions for Hydroponic Growth of Plants”. During her PhD, she became a founding director of Aqua Laboratories Ltd – a formulator and producer of specialist hydroponic nutrients. In October 2018, Callie became a non-executive director of a home office licenced medicinal cannabis facility within the UK. She consults with a wide range of other licensed producers worldwide as they look to set up their facilities.With numerous scientific articles, book chapters and peer-reviewed papers to her name, Callie is an experienced professional in the field of medicinal cannabis, cultivation and fertiliser science. Instagram: @dr.callieseaman · Facebook: @DrCallieSeaman · Twitter: @dr_CallieSeaman · LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dr-callieseaman/ Website: aqualabs-uk.com and cbdhempire.co.uk

BY CATHERINE SHERRIFFS

Toxic Honeydew Threatens Beneficial Bugs

a hoverfly eating from a daisy flower

lant foliage covered in sticky honeydew is an obvious sign that you’ve got aphids, mealybugs, or whiteflies. Attracted to sap-like honeydew, beneficial bugs like hoverflies and wasps will quickly help eradicate the pests on your plants, a seriously satisfying sight to see! But there’s some reason for concern. A recent scientific review

published in Environmental Pollution suggests that neonicotinoids and other chemical insecticides can contaminate honeydew and pose a real threat to beneficial insects and important pollinators.

Chemical insecticides can contaminate honeydew and pose a real threat to beneficial insects and important pollinators The international team of researchers found that honeydew contamination is hugely problematic in large acreage agricultural zones where chemical pesticides are common. A carbohydrate source, honeydew is delicious food for many pollinators, such as bees and flies, and is more easily found than nectar in agroecosystems. The scientific review cites a 2019 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by some co-authors, who discovered honeydew as a point of exposure to neonicotinoids. These powerful insecticides go on as seed coatings that eventually penetrate the growing plant’s sap, killing any insect that feeds on the stem and foliage. The 2019 study found evidence that the honeydew of insects that fed on chemical-treated plants was toxic to beneficial bugs. Wasps and hoverflies, for example, died within days of eating the contaminated honeydew. However, the findings were not well received by everyone; some industry experts did not like that the study took place in a lab where conditions are not the same as out in a field. In this more recent two-year field study, the research team found insecticides in the honeydew excreted by soybean aphids a month after neonicotinoid-coated soybean seeds were sown. Unfortunately, the authors believe the issue is widespread in several different crops. They’re hoping the

Soybean aphids feeding on a soybean leaf

findings raise awareness among IPM programs and environmental protection agencies and recommend restricting systemic insecticides to better protect beneficial insects and the greater environment. 3

Source: •

Honeydew contaminated with systemic insecticides threatens beneficial insects (Pennsylvania State University) bit.ly/338VfOI

BY MARTYNA KROL

Lactic

Acid

Fermentation

a Tasty and Nutritious Science Experiment 36

LACTIC ACID FERMENTATION

ermentation is one of the oldest methods of food preservation. Since the stone age, it has been used worldwide to extend the shelf life of a wide range of foodstuffs. Families around the globe followed fermentation-based recipes; when home refrigeration became common in the 1950s, we forgot knowledge of these ancient methods.

One fermenting method, in particular, is very close to my heart because as a young Pole, I was brought up on a lot of fermented foods, whether I liked them or not. In a country where gherkins and sauerkraut are so popular that you can buy them in any corner shop, you learn to love them. This most common process followed in Poland is called Lacto-fermentation, and recent studies have shown that there’s a lot more to it than just the tangy flavour. With the fermentation craze hitting social media and workshops popping up on all the platforms, let’s get into what the whole fuss is about.

What is Lacto-Fermentation? Lacto-fermentation is a type of fermentation in which lactic-acid-producing bacteria create an unfriendly environment to other kinds of food-rotting organisms, therefore protecting the food from spoiling. Lactic acid is formed when sugar is broken down in an anaerobic environment, leaving behind much simpler compounds. It was first identified in milk that contains sugar and lactose, hence the name lactic acid. Lacto-fermentation often produces carbon dioxide as a side product, making the foods fizzy, hence the bubbles in kefir or a nicely proofed sourdough. Kefir, cheese, yoghurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, and various vegetables are the most popular fermented foods worldwide, but the list doesn’t stop there – far from it. There are also less well-known ones, such as Turkish Shalgam (fermented carrot and turnip juice) or Ethiopian Injera, a fermented sourdough flatbread made from teff, a natural, gluten-free ancient grain.

The Benefits

Lacto-fermentation is a type of fermentation in which lactic-acidproducing bacteria create an unfriendly environment to other kinds of foodrotting organisms, therefore protecting the food from spoiling

Nowadays, there’s much discussion about ‘friendly’ bacteria, which offer health benefits such as better digestive health or decreased anxiety. Officially called probiotics, these bacteria and yeasts dominate our gut and crowd out the ‘bad’ bacteria, which can cause anything from mild bloating to illnesses like IBS or Crohn’s disease. By acting positively on the intestinal microflora, probiotics strengthen the protective barrier and help fight infections. Considering that around 70% of our immune system is based on our gut, digestive health is key to our overall well-being.

Despite humans drinking fermented milk for thousands of years, detailed knowledge of probiotics wasn’t available until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Led by observations of people drinking fermented yoghurt in the Caucasian mountains, Russian scientist Elie Metchnikoff drew some conclusions, followed by studies at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, which contributed to him winning a Nobel prize for immune research in 1908.

LACTIC ACID FERMENTATION

Scientists and health advothe body and reducing cancer Considering that around 70% of cates rave about various benrisks. Contrary to popular beour immune system is based on efits fermented foods offer lief, fermentable foods do not humans, from glowing skin to our gut, digestive health is key to contain more vitamin C than mood improvement. Unfortufresh vegetables and fruits. The our overall well-being nately, gut bacteria can cross process of fermentation stabithe blood-brain barrier and lises vitamin C and prevents it cause brain inflammation - also known as depression. If you from breaking down. Under normal conditions, it is one of have ever tried cutting sugar from your diet then sat down the most sensitive vitamins that perishes under heat treatto relax in the evening, you’ll know the feeling of the sugar ment, light, or oxygen. craving hitting hard. Suddenly, you remember that there’s a stash of biscuits in the cupboard; this is the ‘bad’ gut bacteria It’s worth remembering that not all the bacteria in Lacto-ferscreaming in fear of dying if it’s not fed some sugar, begging mentation are sure to be good ones. Sometimes the ‘baddies,’ you to go and eat that biscuit. It takes two weeks of exchangsuch as lactococcus or leuconostoc, can be harmful or pathoing your gut microflora, so a cold turkey approach to simple genic. These cause bad flavours and smells in dairy products, sugars doesn’t mean eternal torture. sour and cloudy beer (although, if you’re a fan of milky IPAs and sours, you can use this to positive effect), and turn juices slimy. How Lactic Acid Fermentation Works There are a few critical rules to follow, and close observation As the vegetables and fruits are pickled, the initial sugar conof the process is crucial to fermenting success. It’s safe to say tent decreases, lowering the number of calories. In addition, that any signs of mould mean you have to discard and try again. high fibre content increases the feeling of fullness when eaten, and the naturally low pH supports the stomach, which perNow that you know a few of the health benefits, why not try forms better in acidic conditions. All this makes fizzy foods making your own? You can ferment pretty much anything, easier to digest and increases their nutritional value. from tomatoes, cauliflowers, carrots, cabbage, and cucumbers to whole apples and pineapple (yes, I, too, thought that was High levels of vitamins A, C, and E combined with powcrazy until I made a delicious hot sauce with pineapple, garlic, erful antioxidants bring claims of counteracting ageing of onion, and ginger).

Fine Tune Your Room w w w. p l a n t m e c h a n i c s . c o

LACTIC ACID FERMENTATION

The flavour of your kvass will change depending on the herbs you add. I love mine with plenty of garlic and black pepper for a spicier hit, but adding rosemary, allspice, dried dill seeds, or horseradish root will bring out different flavour notes. Front: Kombucha and beer kvass Back: kefir, fermented vegetables, and more mixed veg

Kvass

Kvass Recipe One of the most common ferments in Polish kitchens is traditional beetroot kvass, a healthy probiotic drink rich in vitamins A, C, and E, and exceptionally rich in B-vitamins, potassium, and folic acid. Drinking beet kvass helps with getting over a cold thanks to the natural antibiotic properties of garlic. It is used as a neat drink, served either cold or warm, diluted in some warm water, or turned into a soup called barszcz (pronounced ‘barsh-ch’), traditionally served on Polish Christmas eve. Once ready, you should store it in the fridge; use the leftover beets in various dishes such as potato salad, omelettes, or savoury pancakes, to name a few. As fermented foods are full of life, any heat treatment like cooking will kill them off, so always try them raw or in mildly warm drinks, never boiling water. What You’ll Need: • A clean jar • Salt • Water • Beetroot • Garlic • Herbs of your choice. As with all quality food, ingredients matter. Use rock salt or quality sea salt, filtered water (unless your tap water is excellent quality), and fresh beetroot. The flavour of your kvass will change depending on the herbs you add. I love mine with plenty of garlic and black pepper for a spicier hit, but adding rosemary, allspice, dried dill seeds, or horseradish root will bring out different flavour notes.

Slice, dice, or grate enough beetroot to loosely fill your jar; add the whole garlic cloves (more is better; I like about six cloves per litre of liquid) herbs and spices. Mix one flat tablespoon of salt in a litre of water to create the brine and fill the jar, so the brine completely covers the beets. You can weigh it down with a glass ramekin or check it daily and make sure nothing sticks up above the brine, as this may cause mould and spoil your experiment. You can either close the jar’s lid or cover it with a cloth. You may see a thin film form on top, but as long as it doesn’t have hairy blobs of mould on it, don’t worry. The film you see is Kahm Yeast, which is harmless and indicates that the sugars have depleted. Depending on the size of the jar you’re making, your kvass should be ready in around seven to ten days. The brine will turn a little thicker, and the colour will be a beautiful deep purple. The flavour should be rich and salty-sweet with a slightly fizzy feeling. Enjoy! 3

BIO Martyna Krol is a vegetable grower, natural beekeeper, and edible

spaces designer. She is a lover of all soil and urban farming techniques and is the former head of growing at Incredible Aquagarden.

PLANT CANOPY TRAINING

BY JOANNA BERG

Down the Rabbit Hole:

The Plant Canopy Training Debate S

uper cropping, topping, pinching, screen of green (SCROG), low-stress training (LST); the debate on which canopy training method boasts the most yield-boosting power is unending. I have obser ved different training methods in many indoor rooms, warehouses, garages, greenhouses, hoopies,

shipping containers, forests, and fields. I can honestly say that the host of different plant training methods can fill and maximise canopy space and increase plant vigour and flower production.

I can honestly say that the host of different plant training methods can fill and maximise canopy space and increase plant vigour and flower production

How do you know what to choose? I’ve witnessed many friendly veteran cultivators share their winning combinations, and when people attempt to replicate it, folks don’t get the same results. Does this sound familiar? Or have you gotten lost in the rabbit hole of some thread on some forum and still come up confused? So many options can overburden the decision-making process. So many seemingly minute but critical differences in strain, plant nutrition, and environment can make a huge impact.

If you are just a backyard farmer, maybe learning how to train plant bodies and control the area of flower production could be a huge win. Keeping these successes anecdotal is great; no problem. Try different stuff, have fun, live and learn. For others, improving their training methods is crucial to increasing their output and yields. The heavier you rely on these methods for your success, the more seriously you should take the development of your method.

There are some critical concepts to consider when deciding on a plant training method. I am not here to tell you what to do but rather zoom out your perspective and look at your ultimate objectives and the bandwidth you have to accomplish those goals. All good protocols should start with the end objective in mind.

Know your goal Whether you are the type to dote on your plants like they are a blue-ribbon prize pumpkin, groomed all year, or you run a business and efficiency lands high on the list of priorities, you need to understand how much time you are willing to sink into your garden project. Time is our most valuable resource, and how much time you put into canopy training needs to align with your crop goals.

Super cropping

Low Stress Training (LST) 43

PLANT CANOPY TRAINING

Having a stable environment will allow you to observe the plant trait expression and choose the training method that is most suited to that plant as it grows in your garden

Genetics + Environment = Plant Trait Expression

Data Collection

I will not get deep into a genetics lesson, but let’s all quickly revisit the concept that the same genetics can act differently when exposed to different environments. Sometimes these differences are stunning. Genetic expression (aka phenotype) will always be the single most important known unknown you will have. You can adapt and manage phenotypic expression by dialling in your nutrition, pest management, and climate. Having a stable environment will allow you to observe the plant trait expression and choose the training method that is most suited to that plant as it grows in your garden.

Data collection is often not how a gardener is inclined to spend their time. Perhaps it’s the quasi-clandestine status of your industry or because gardeners are in love with the plant but maybe not so much filled with joy about recording data on paper or an excel spreadsheet. That does not look like gardening for a lot of people.

Comparisons

But I can tell you something certain; our memories are notoriously inaccurate, and then they worsen with age. We think we remember well, but we don’t. Our brains cannot analyse data in the way that a computer can. It cannot compile, compare, and show us the meta-data, which paints a picture of larger patterns and relationships in our data. These results will allow you to fully understand how your energy was reflected in your garden.

Try methods side by side to critically compare the pros and cons of each treatment. It is a better approach to compare the potential plant training methods during the same run. There are too many factors that can change between runs. For instance, if something weird goes down (i.e., your lights go off for 24-hours), both training treatments will have experienced the anomaly. I see cultivators change things from run to run and think they have an honest comparison, but if you drill down on the variables, there are often factors that had changed.

Keep it simple Don’t try many things at once because if you do that, you’ll never know what truly worked. Changing too many things at once confounds your variables and makes it tough to tell the real impact. For example, don’t change your nutrient regimen the same cycle you change your training method. Stepwise changes will enrich your cultivation know-how faster than throwing everything and the kitchen sink at your garden.

Collecting data can be simple. Take pictures to document and log progress. Keep garden notes, record time and materials spent, and the observed effects and final yields. Ask the critical question, how well did this method work? And then prove it to yourself! 3

Bio

Joanna Berg is a Certified Professional Soil Scientist specialising in pest and disease diagnosis and integrated crop management solutions through her firm in Northern California, Dirty Business Soil, LLC.

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An Introduction to Permaculture:

Observing the Land

Permaculture offers a sustainable and holistic approach to farming. Working with nature, one farmer shares his experience and says observing the land is key. Learn all about permaculture and more gardening techniques on our blog at GCMag.co.

PERMACULTURE

BY REGAN MORAN

discovered the world of permaculture in Australia by listening to two wild surfing brothers talk about the Permaculture Design Program they were enrolled in at the local college. Several years later, a friend left a copy of Bill Mollison’s hefty book on my cabin floor; Permaculture, A Practical Guide for a Sustainable Future. I started to dive

deep, having just lucked into a very affordable 2.4-acre piece of Laurentian forest in Quebec, Canada.

One of the biggest takeaway’s from that book was the concept of just being on your land in observation mode for as long as possible before making any major disturbances. Disturbances release energy, and this new energy is noticed by nature. Once this begins, you should be ready with your intentions. You should also be ready with your shovel!

In that uncertainty is where you can fall back on what is free: your intuition, the feeling of your bare feet walking on your land, to the time you spent dreaming and wandering and falling in love with the place. As long as you have that good feeling, that you considered what that particular landscape wants or needs to become more biodiverse, then it can all work out with a little tweaking along the way.

As I think about my experiences with permaculture in the last ten years, I see how important it is to pay attention to your intuition and instinct.

As I think about my experiences with permaculture in the last ten years, I see how important it is to pay attention to your intuition and instinct. At the beginning of a relationship with a piece of land, I put all the big plans aside. If you intend to live your best life while being a steward and protector of the land, begin by first merely getting to know your neighbours. What kind of birds live on your property? When do they arrive and when do they go? What kind of critters come out at night to explore the neighbourhood? What has already happened on the land? One old-timer told me that when he was a kid, my land used to be a family farm and that there were cows all over the hillside. My land now is completely covered with huge old-growth hardwoods. I would never have thought that it used to be pasture.

Maybe it doesn’t need much help. Above all, should be the constant practice of observation, of listening and smelling and dreaming, of caring for the little piece of paradise that you have chosen to inhabit. 3

You will be instinctively drawn to where the water is; the springs, seeps, creeks, natural ponds, vernal pools, Beaver ponds. Thoroughly investigate; walk, sit, and even crawl on your land in all its seasons. It took me two years to decide where to dig my surface well. For some, it might take two minutes. When I see talented land designers shaping incredibly lush landscapes with food forests and ponds and swales and hedgerows, using key-line design and massive machines, I am intimidated by all the technical aspects and intricate drawings.

Bio

Regan Moran

Regan is a gardener, homesteader and ski bum living in the Laurentian mountains of Quebec, Canada and spends his time tending to Porcupine Experimental Forest Farm. gcmag.co.permaculture-101 47

WATTAGE: 680W

PPF: 1919 umol/s

AMPERAGE: 2.75A

PPE: 2.82 umol/ j

SAMSUNG LM301H & OSRAM HYPER-RED LED DIODES

PHOTOPERIODISM

BY RICH HAMILTON

IS HOURS OF NIGHT GOOD FOR PLANTS? P lants undergo massive hormonal and physical changes

when they move from the vegetative growth stage into

flowering. In nature, this transition happens smoothly and

slowly as daylight hours fade naturally throughout the season. In indoor growing, however, we have the power to manipulate our plants and force them into the next stage of their life cycle in a shor ter time frame. The best example of this is when we assume the power of nature and cut the amount of sunlight that the plant receives from 18 hours to 12. This process forces the plant out of the vegetative stage and into flower.

There are ways to take this time-saving strategy further and speed things up even more. For example, some experienced hydroponic growers offer their plants 36 hours of darkness at the end of veg. A prolonged “lights off” period triggers a hormonal change and transitions the plants into flowering mode quicker.

The Science Bit Plants flower in response to several triggers, including the effect of the light known as photoperiodism. Photoperiodism encompasses the plant’s responses to light signals, fundamentally, the quality and duration of the light it receives. The photo-chemical systems within plants can capture specific frequencies of light and harness the energy to perform chemical reactions. The system that plants use to detect light changes is active in receptors in the pigments of their leaves. There are two different receptors; phytochrome red and phytochrome farred. These receptors absorb light in different wavelengths and transmit the information to the plant.

A prolonged “lights off” period triggers a hormonal change and transitions the plants into flowering mode quicker Far-red receptors can be manipulated by the amount of light given to the plant. Light in the far-red spectrum instructs this receptor to send the chemical signal to remain in veg. In times of light, both types of receptors are balanced in number. In the darkness, however, far-red receptors slowly transform into red receptors. During more extended dark periods, the number of farred receptors gradually reduces until there aren’t enough to block the signal from the red receptors, which are telling the plant to go into flower mode. Therefore, to speed up the transition from veg to flower, you can give your plants an uninterrupted 36 hours of darkness before moving to a standard 12-12 flowering light cycle.

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PLANT

PHOTOPERIODISM

to speed up the transition from veg to flower, you can give your plants an uninterrupted 36 hours of darkness before moving to a standard 12-12 flowering light cycle This technique ensures that more far-red receptors change into reds and that the plant understands the time to bloom is now. Traditionally, this transition takes place over a couple of weeks, so by giving them a 36-hour long night, you can speed this process up dramatically. The 36-hour blackout also sets other plant processes into motion. When exposed to an unnaturally long dark period, plants have plenty of time to transfer and digest all the light energy accumulated and stored, using it efficiently and sending it to areas that need it. However, the plant will notice a change and will experience stress when confronted with this shift in conditions. The withdrawal of light moves them into survival mode as they anticipate reaching winter and the end of their life cycle. As a result, they will push everything they have into making themselves stronger.

Post Dark Period Nutrition If shocking a plant with prolonged darkness, be sure to use the correct nutrition after switching the lights back on. The aftercare routine will help you capitalise on this blooming shortcut and ensure that your plant fully recovers from the shock. An early bloom activator will supply the plants with the perfect balance of minerals to help them bloom. High phosphorous and potassium will stimulate the flowering stage, leading to denser, heavier, richer flowers and fruits.

The plant’s activity and energy requirements will radically change by accelerating the veg-bloom transition phase. For enhanced flowering in mid-bloom, use a bloom booster that provides a super-dose of potassium, phosphorous, and a wide range of micronutrients to generate increased sugar levels and intense flowering. A good finisher is also beneficial. Finisher is intended for the unique needs of a plant during its final weeks of flower. With a complex array of phosphorus and potassium sources, the finisher will increase the fruits’ essential oils, weight, density, and flavour. The extended darkness and high-grade plant nutrition will ensure an impressive harvest for growers who want the biggest yields and best quality crops in the shortest time.

Two Schools There will always be two schools of thought when it comes to tips like this. Some will say the sun doesn’t shut itself off for 36 hours at a time, and plants grow just fine outdoors. Others are always looking to experiment and see if they can achieve more from their plants by manipulating the boundaries of nature. It is perfectly fine to be in either camp, as long as you educate yourself and learn from the mistakes made along the way! 3

BIO An industry veteran with over 20 years of experience in a variety of roles, Rich is currently a business development manager for a large UK hydroponics distributor. The author of the Growers Guide book series, Rich also writes on all aspects of indoor gardening. He is also an independent industry consultant, working closely with hydroponic businesses worldwide.

GA R D EN CU LT U R E M AGA Z I N E.CO M

BY CATHERINE SHERRIFFS

“Stepping Up Organics” Bringing Natural Growing To The World’s Corners

n indigenous community village in Santa Marta, Columbia, is embracing organic growing and enjoying a wide variety of nutritious crops unique to the area thanks to an incredible initiative by Biobizz World Wide Organics. “Stepping Up Organics” aims to bring organic gardening to all corners of the world. Throughout 2021, Biobizz

set out to help the Kogi by building organic garden beds and orchards for children. The Kogi indigenous community is about 10,000 members strong. It inhabits the northern side of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the valleys of Don Diego, Palomino, San Miguel, and Rio Ancho. They refer to themselves as ‘big brothers’ who protect the “Heart of the World,” Sierra Nevada, from the ‘younger brothers,’ or Westerners, destroying it. The Kogi believe any imbalance in the Heart of the World affects the entire planet.

Much like their ancestors did, the Kogi typically consume two or three vegetables and wanted to evolve to include new crops in their diet. That’s where Biobizz and “Stepping Up Organics” come into play.

A community steeped in cultural tradition, the Kogi dress in white from head to toe, keep their hair long, live in traditional huts, and speak their native tongue almost exclusively. Much like their ancestors did, they typically consume two or three vegetables and wanted to evolve

to include new crops in their diet. That’s where Biobizz and “Stepping Up Organics” come into play.

Over the last year, the Biobizz team has made several trips to Columbia to help them build soil beds and a new and improved way to bring water from the nearby river. Biobizz also introduced a wide variety of seeds, seedlings, and plant nutrients to the community. Education is a critical piece of this initiative’s puzzle. The Biobizz team worked closely with the Kogi and their local school so that the garden continues to grow and produce nutritious food for years to come. After a hurricane damaged some of the structures in September 2021, Biobizz built another orchard for the nearby Costeño Social, an association working to educate disadvantaged youth in the area. The children learn useful professional skills and healthy lifestyle activities, such as surfing and cooking. With the help of Natxo González and Kepa Acero, two internationally renowned Spanish surfers, Biobizz built some vegetable gardens and taught the kids how to have fun in the waves. The

NATURAL GROWING

ENVIRONMENT

Putting Inactive Oil and Gas Wells To Good Use

consortium of universities and energy companies in the UK are experimenting with an innovative way to bury carbon dioxide. They’re turning 20

former oil and gas wells in the north of England into the first deep test sites this year, hoping they’ll help tackle the current climate crisis. Inactive wells are typically filled with cement; this project, however, will see them hold approximately 1,000 tonnes of carbon instead.

The children learn useful professional skills and healthy lifestyle activities, such as surfing and cooking new orchard means the children can learn how to grow food and cook with it come harvest, and their newly acquired surfing skills ensure they’ll keep their bodies moving! Although no longer physically in Columbia, the Biobizz Team continues to help the Kogi with their new way of living from a distance. Knowledge is power, and the more the community knows about organic agriculture, the more successful it will be long term.

Biobizz World Wide Organics makes 100% organic and certified nutrients and substrates available in more than 65 countries. Its range of products helps gardeners grow top-quality, organic plants from seed to harvest. 3

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK’s Climate Change Committee say capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it is essential to prevent and even reverse global warming. Although massive reservoirs under the North Sea are ideal for capturing CO2 , the current project by Net Zero Rise is using inactive onshore wells as it’s much faster and cheaper to do. Once the carbon is captured, the consortium, which includes the universities of Newcastle, Oxford, Durham, and the fossil fuel companies IGas and Third Energy, will monitor the wells to determine if they are effective storage solutions. Test sites already exist in the US, Canada, and Australia. The UK consortium is also investigating the possibility of storing hydrogen in the wells. 3

Sources: • •

The National News: UK plans to store carbon dioxide in disused oil and gas wells (bit.ly/3fbsi7K) The Guardian: Old UK oilwells could be turned into CO2 burial test sites (bit.ly/3qhiEa7)

Pruning 101 BY BETTY GREEN

PRUNING 101

Wh at is Pru n in g ?

runing and cutting back gives your plants their best display or crop and prevent them from outgrowing their space. Selectively removing branches, buds, leaves and dead flowers refreshes plants, directing all their energy into new growth.

Why Prune Plants? It’s essential to prune plants to maintain good health. Pruning includes clearing dying, dead or damaged wood, removing crossed branches and getting rid of unwanted shoots. Rejuvenation pruning and thinning are excellent for plants suffering from lousy air circulation or a reduced light footprint. Once a year, cut away about a third of a mature shrub’s oldest branches at the base to keep the plant fresh and robust. Not all plants respond well to this technique, so check the specifics about each species before proceeding.

May-June Spring-flowering shrubs and plants that bloom on the prior season’s wood, like ornamental fruit trees, andromeda, azalea, rhododendron, lilac, flowering cherry and plum trees, and some hydrangea should be pruned right after flowering to optimise removing flowering in the following year.

Selectively branches, buds, leaves and dead flowers refreshes plants, directing all their energ y into new grow th

Some flowering plants require deadheading, which involves snipping or pinching dead flowers and encouraging your plant to produce new flowers. Pruning can also control a plant’s size and shape and accentuate ornamental features like flowers or fruit.

June-July This is the best time to thin out deciduous trees, such as birch, crab apple, maples, oaks, flowering cherry, plum, spruces, and willow. Start pruning when the new shoots become woody. It is best to prune hedges as needed to retain and maintain clean lines.

August-December Heavy pruning at this point could stimulate new growth that may not have enough time to mature, resulting in a vulnerability to winter frost and unrepairable damage. Limit pruning during this time to removing dead or damaged branches.

When Should I Prune? This depends on the plant species, the desired outcome, and the level of attention needed. Removing damaged, dead, or diseased plant material can be done at any time of the year.

When and What to Prune? February-April Prune summer flowering shrubs like butterfly bush, roses, crape myrtle, privet, spirea and some hydrangea before bud break in the spring. Fruit trees, including figs, and evergreens such as holly, boxwood and juniper, can also be pruned in this period.

Pruning can also control a plant’s size and shape and accentuate ornamental features like flowers or fruit

PRUNING 101

Tree pruning Rejuvenation pruning and thinning are excellent for plants suffering from lousy air circulation or a reduced light footprint

Pruning Equipment Pruning Shears or secateurs are handhelds and strong enough to prune branches of trees and shrubs of, on average, up to 2cm thick. Loppers are pruning shears with longer handles. They’re primarily used to prune twigs and small branches up to 2” in diameter. The long handles are perfect for reaching higher up or further away and offer the leverage needed to tackle thicker branches. Pruning Saws are perfect for cutting through small to medium branches up to 6cm thick. Pruning saws have tapered blades with either curved or straight edges. They are designed to cut on both the push and pull stroke. As a result, they can cut through tree branches or shrubs quickly but tend to leave a rougher finish.

Pruning Above A Shoot Where buds are visible, prune slightly above them to prevent leaving a snag of a stem that may encourage die-back. Stay 3mm – 4mm clear of the bud itself. Pruning Straight If you have a pair of buds opposite each other and want them to grow, make a straight cut. Otherwise, cut at an angle to eliminate one pair where a single stem only is required. Pruning At An Angle Where buds are alternatively positioned on their stems, cut at a slight angle in the direction the bud is pointing. Rejuvenate Old Shrubs For old or coppice shrubs grown for the colour of their stems, hard prune all stems to 10cm – 15cm above their base in the dormant season. Remove Crossing Stems Stems growing close together or crossing will rub, which can damage bark and cause disease. Cut one out to prevent this.

Basic Techniques

Trimming Back Stems You should cut back flowering stems of herbaceous plants to ground level. Leave the clump of leaves at the base to stop the plants from wasting energy forming seeds.

Cutting Out Dead Wood Cut out dead, damaged, old or diseased wood at the plant base to promote vigorous new shoots. It might be a job for the long-handled loppers if the wood is thick.

Trim Back Thick Stems Thick stems and branches are best removed with a pruning saw to minimise stress and damage. For large branches, leave 1cm – 2cm where the branch meets the main stem so that the tree or plant can heal the wound. 3

Betty Green has two passions in life: plants and food, which is perfect considering the two go hand in hand. Betty is a dedicated gardener and self-taught cook who is big on organic produce and sustainability. With a large family of four children to feed, she has been slowly increasing her portfolio of garden produce for her growing repertoire of delicious recipes. Betty loves writing about plants, cooking, and sustainability.

Bio

BY RICH HAMILTON

Preventing and Curing Dreaded Aphid Infestations A

phids are prevalent garden pests that can spell disaster in the garden. There are more than 4,000 different species of aphids, and they carry hundreds of diseases, making plant epidemics likely once they move into your growing space. The good news? Gardeners can prevent and cure infestations by following a few tips and tricks!

What Are Aphids?

There are more than

Signs of Infestation

Aphids are highly noticeable, as most Aphids are soft-bodied, pear-shaped 4,000 different species (but not all) will be a darker colour that insects that can be up to 10mm long. stands out against the green leaves. of aphids, and they Their colour ranges from black and Aphids generally tend to colonise the green to brown and even pink. The carry hundreds of stems and underside of plant leaves. physiology of aphids differs significantly diseases, making plant Early signs of an infestation include from species to species. While some tiny brown spots and silver track lines have wings, others do not. Some epidemics likely once on the top side of the leaves. Aphids aphids are covered with wax or wool feed by biting through the leaf surface, they move into your that they secrete. However, one sucking out the juices. Much like the feature common to all aphids that help growing space spider mite, they do this by puncturing distinguish them is a pair of cornicles holes in the leaf, which eventually will or little horns that extend like tailpipes turn brown. The track lines appear where the bugs have fed, from their abdomen and excrete a waxy fluid. which ultimately causes the leaf to start yellowing. Leaf curl, wilting, stunting of shoot growth, a general decline in plant health and a delay in flower or fruit production are clear Lifecycle and Reproduction indications of an aphid infestation. Aphids can survive anywhere in the world, but they prefer warmer climates. On average, an aphid lives for 20 to 40 days and produces thousands of eggs. This reproduction How Plant Demise Happens rate allows infestation levels to reach epidemic status Aphids need to suck the juice from the plant for protein. rapidly and helps aphids adapt to preventative pesticide Once digested, they refine the protein and excrete measures. In an indoor environment, aphids can reproduce a concentrated sugar solution known as honeydew. asexually, skipping the egg stage entirely and giving birth Honeydew attracts ants, which protect the aphids on the to live young. The live-birth generation takes only one or plant from predators. The honeydew excrement can also two weeks to emerge, with each aphid producing up to 100 cause issues for the plant, as it is a growth medium for babies at a time. sooty fungus, a condition that causes necrosis of the leaf. Necrosis weakens the plant, making it more susceptible to other diseases. Aphids also leave more destruction in their wake by transferring a host of viruses, bacteria and fungi to other spots in the garden. 60

APHID INFESTATIONS

Make an organic natural insecticide spray containing ingredients such as garlic, capsaicin and cinnamon.

Leaf curl, wilting, stunting of shoot growth, a general decline in plant health and a delay in flower or fruit production are clear indications of an aphid infestation

How To Prevent an Aphid Infestation Outdoors, natural predators can help control the aphid population. These include lady beetles, green lacewing, and predatory flies. Indoors, however, aphids avoid these natural predators, enjoying weather conditions that facilitate a population growth of exponential proportions.

How To Cure an Aphid Infestation Curing an infestation is challenging, as aphids are among the most destructive pests known to cultivated plants. Prevention is, indeed, the best cure. Catch it early, and the suggested measures above may save the plants, but if it goes unnoticed for some time, insecticides will be needed.

Some aphids can fly, so a bug barrier Check your plants for Make an organic natural insecticide spray containing ingredients such as filter over the air intake can help keep aphids at least twice garlic, capsaicin and cinnamon. There them out of an indoor grow room. are many recipes to choose from Check your plants for aphids at least a week, examining online. If you need something with more twice a week, examining the underside the underside of the substance, however, then you can buy of the leaves first. If an infestation is insecticidal soap. The soap kills pests by caught early, there is a better chance leaves first removing the critter’s protective surface of eradicating it. Once their numbers coating. Note that insecticidal soap kills have increased, aphids are tough to all insects present on the plant, whether destructive or control, and when the leaves begin to curl following a heavy beneficial. The soap does not leave any residue behind, so infestation, the bugs can hide from insecticides and natural insects that migrate onto the plant after treatment are not predators. affected. 3 Adding silicon to the feed solution will help the plant form a strong cell structure, making it harder to attack. You can apply neem or horticultural oil to the plant leaves, both of An industry veteran with over 20 years of exwhich act as a protective barrier between the leaf surface perience in a variety of roles, Rich is currently a business and the pest. The pest will struggle to penetrate the leaf development manager for a large UK hydroponics distribsurface, and the oil will soften its body, slowing the aphid utor. The author of the Growers Guide book series, Rich also writes on all aspects of indoor gardening. He is also down and eventually killing it altogether.

BIO

an independent industry consultant, working closely with hydroponic businesses worldwide.

BY CATHERINE SHERRIFFS

No-Till And No-Dig

Gardening Techniques Gaining Ground GardenCultureMagazine.com

Trending now

It all starts with the soil, which is why so many no-till farming and gardening techniques are gaining ground. Achieve beautiful gardens; no digging required! Learn about more gentle growing methods on our blog at GCMag.co.

The most obvious reason in favour of this method is the environment; no-till prevents erosion and compaction while also creating a healthier soil that can better absorb nutrients and water

NO-DIG GARDENING

The most obvious reason in favour of this method is the environment; no-till prevents erosion and compaction while also creating a healthier soil that can better absorb nutrients and water

bought some carrots at my local farmer’s market a couple of weeks ago and the girl I got them from told me they were the world’s best carrots. She was right; they were perfectly sweet and ear thy tasting. When I went back to buy more the following week, I asked her how they turned out so well. She said it’s her soil. Her carrots taste so

darn good because her soil is so darn happy. She practices no-till farming, a movement that is growing in popularity around the world.

The No-Till Movement

The Double-Digging Method

No-till farming involves growing crops without disturbing the soil with tractors or other machinery. Whenever you dig down into your soil, whether it be with a tractor or a simple shovel, you are destroying the work and fertility that microorganisms have already created. Plowing and tillage are major contributing factors to soil erosion, which is a serious environmental concern. Tilling soil also releases CO2 into the atmosphere, causing global warming.

Whether you’re a fan of no-till farming or conventional tillage techniques, we can all agree that preserving the natural balance and fertility of our soil is paramount. There are other methods out there when it comes to farming, whether it be in large-scale productions or in home gardens.

The no-till movement is gaining in popularity. In 2009, about 35% of the USA’s cropland at least partly incorporated the no-till concept. Only 10% of the farmland was strictly no-till. In Canada, conventional tillage has lost its status as the primary option; between 1991 and 2006, the total planting area using no-till practices increased from 7% to 46%.

The double-digging method keeps the soil microbiology intact, while also making your earth loose enough to plant in right away. With the improvement in drainage and aeration, proponents say this gardening technique leads to healthy roots, beautiful blooms, and high yields. You would generally go this route when creating new garden beds.

There are pros and cons to the no-till movement. The most obvious reason in favour of this method is the environment; no-till prevents erosion and compaction while also creating a healthier soil that can better absorb nutrients and water. Yields are just as strong as with conventional tillage, and by eliminating tractors, plows, and other heavy machinery, farmers also gain financially. Beyond the fact that it’s much more work for the farmers, many argue there is one major con to the no-till movement: plows help remove weeds from the fields both before and after planting. Without the machinery, farmers sometimes have no choice but to replace their plows with herbicides.

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NO-DIG GARDENING

It’s hard work, but the good news is you only need to do it once ever y few years if it’s done right the f irst time.

It’s hard work, but the good news is you only need to do it once every few years if it’s done right the first time. Basically, double-digging involves loosening two layers of soil and adding compost to the earth. The first layer of soil is removed with a shovel, while the second is loosened with a pitchfork. There are some great how-to tutorials online, but here’s the main idea: •

•

• •

•

Shovel a foot-wide trench the length of your new garden bed and keep the soil for later. The trench should be about 10” deep. Take a pitchfork and push it down into the bottom of the trench you dug. Don’t turn the soil; just rock it back and forth, gently loosening the ground. Spread some compost into the trench and gently work it into the soil with the fork. Make a new foot-wide trench beside the strip you just completed, taking the soil and using it to fill the previous hole. Be careful not to move the soil around too much. Repeat these steps the entire length of your new bed, using the soil you removed from the first trench to complete the final line. Cover the top layers with compost and gently work it into the bed with a pitchfork. Rake the bed out and get planting!

The No-Dig Garden If you’d like to improve the soil in your existing garden beds without digging it up, there’s an interesting way to do that too. I found this no-dig method in my book, The Guide to Humane Critter Control: Natural, Non-Toxic Pest Solutions to Protect Your Yard and Garden, by Theresa Rooney. Follow this guide, and you’ll keep precious soil bacteria and fungi intact, while also preventing weed seeds from sprouting without the use of herbicides. • •

• •

The double-digging method keeps the soil microbiology intact, while also making your ear th loose enough to plant in right away.

•

Cut back all existing vegetation and leave the scraps in the bed for compost. Water the soil very well, then cover the area with newspaper. You’ll need about 5-10 layers to cover a normal amount of weeds. Hardier varieties will need about 20 layers of coverage. Cover the newspaper with compost, dried leaves or mulch, then water well. Plant right away by peeling back some of the compost and punching a hole in the paper. Or, wait one season and plant later. This is a wonderful process for the fall! The newspaper decomposes after one growing season.

There’s so much more to building gardens than digging around in some dirt. Keep these methods in mind (and your pitchfork handy) for your next garden project! . 3 gcmag.co.no-dig-gardening

Catherine is a Canadian award-winning journalist who worked as a reporter and news anchor in Montreal’s radio and television scene for 10 years. A graduate of Concordia University, she left the hustle and bustle of the business after starting a family. Now, she’s the editor and a writer for Garden Culture Magazine while also enjoying being a mom to her three young kids. Her interests include great food, gardening, fitness, animals, and anything outdoors.

Bio

BY ALBERT MONDOR, HORTICULTURIST AND BIOLOGIST

Plan For Bountiful Harvests In Your Garden

GARDEN PLANNING

re you star ting your first vegetable garden this spring? If you want to achieve bountiful har vests with minimal effor t, here are the

vegetables you need to sow!

Carrots

most productive root vegetables, providing up to 4 kilograms per square metre.

Credit: Albert Mondor

Carrots are one of the easiest veggies to grow, as long as they are grown in rich, light and well-drained soil. Although they tolerate light shade, you should plant carrots in a sunny spot.

Carrots are one of the

Depending on your agricultural zone, sowing carrots can be done outside as early as April or May. Successive sowings in spring and early summer provide harvests into fall. In mid-November, cover the carrots with a thick layer of straw or dead leaves so you can harvest them until January! Plant carrot seeds about 1 cm (1/2 inch) deep. Since carrot seeds are tiny and difficult to distance properly, use seeds sold in ribbons or pelleted seeds enclosed in a layer of fine clay. You can also space your seedlings as much as possible and leave all the plants in place without thinning. However, the carrots you’ll harvest will vary in size. Use agrotextiles and plant carrots with onions to avoid carrot fly infestations. Depending on the cultivar, harvest between 50 and 70 days after sowing. Carrots are one of the most productive root vegetables, providing up to 4 kilograms per square metre.

‘Oak Leaf’ Lettuce ‘Oak Leaf’ lettuce does not form heads, so its leaves are harvested as they grow. After the first leaves are cut, new ones sprout non-stop until the end of July. Flowering marks the end of production. Sow more ‘Oak Leaf’ lettuce in September and October for an extended harvest. This lettuce variety requires light, well-drained soil. Keep the earth around the stem humid and cool at all times by watering frequently.

Sainte-Anne Shallots Grown since the beginning of the 20th century, this perennial plant is closely related to onions and is part of Quebec’s rich agricultural heritage. Sainte-Anne shallots begin to grow early in the spring, so you can start harvesting them in May. The plant reaches full maturity in early summer when its foliage turns yellow and dries. The shallots are more flavourful when harvested in late June or early July.

Skirret credit: terrepromise.ca

Of all the perennial edible plants, skirret is among the most productive. It produces an abundance of elongated sweet white roots similar to parsnip. The only downside is that they are challenging to clean and sometimes a little fibrous. Skirret also has pretty green foliage slightly tinged with blue and produces white flowers in July. Like its roots, you can eat its leaves and flowers. Like carrots and parsnips, skirret prefers humus-rich, light soil and does well in both sun and partial shade. This perennial is hardy up to zone 4.

The Egyptian walking onion is an ideal vegetable for permaculture enthusiasts!

Runner beans climb quickly on trellises or pergolas. This plant easily reaches 3 metres in height or more before the end of the growing season, producing vermilion-coloured flowers that develop into long, edible green beans throughout summer until early fall.

Credit: Albert Mondor

Runner beans are easily propagated by seed. Sow them directly into the ground around mid-May. For faster results, plant seeds indoors in containers in April. Plant outside after the last frost in well-drained soil and in a place with good sun exposure.

Yardlong beans are incredible climbing plants! They produce long, thin fruits reminiscent of beans - sometimes nearly two feet long! The plant reaches almost 3 metres in height in a single season, so yardlong beans must be staked or planted near a trellis. Or, plant with corn, which can serve as a stake. Like runner beans, yardlong beans require light and well-drained soil, exposed to a minimum of six hours of sunlight. Sow yardlong bean seeds indoors four weeks before the last frost date or outdoors in late May or early June after the last frost.

Egyptian Walking Onion A close relative of the common onion, the Egyptian walking onion is hardy in northern climates (zone 4). Year after year, it produces a harvest without any special care. The Egyptian walking onion is an ideal vegetable for permaculture enthusiasts! This perennial edible plant produces stems about two feet tall, with pink flowers appearing in July. The flowers turn into bulbils which can also flower in the same season. This plant is called ‘walking onion’ because if you do not harvest the small onions that form at the end of the stems, they bend and fall to the ground. The bulbils then root, forming new tufts away from the mother plant. Egyptian walking onions seem to move - or even walk from where they were planted. Egyptian walking onions can cope with various light and welldrained soils exposed to full sun. This perennial is hardy up to zone 4, possibly even in zone 3b with a good snow cover.

Credit: Albert Mondor

Runner Beans

Yardlong Beans

credit: popmama.com

Sainte-Anne shallots are perennials, so leave a few bulbs in the ground when harvesting. You can also dig out the bulbs and let them dry in a shady spot, and replant them a few weeks later (by the end of July). Planted in light and well-drained soil, the shallots will grow again in the late summer, hibernate under the snow all winter, and come back the following year. A dozen bulbs planted in the ground will multiply by ten, giving a harvest of more than 100 shallots the next year!

GARDEN PLANNING

The best way to protect potato plants from the Colorado beetle is to grow them under an agrotextile

Potatoes Unlike most vegetable plants, potatoes are not propagated by seed but from tubers. You can, of course, plant potatoes bought from the supermarket, but be careful since these can carry diseases and are sometimes treated with a product that inhibits budding. You can also buy tubers sold by seed companies. About two weeks before planting outdoors, place the tubers in a bright place, such as a kitchen counter, to help them germinate. Then you can plant them in the ground in May or in June when dandelions are blooming. Small tubers don’t have to be cut. However, larger tubers - which include at least one bud - should be sliced into pieces the size of an egg. Smear the wounds with sulfur before planting tubers. Tubers should be placed at a depth of about 10cm and spaced 30cm apart. Leave a little more than 60cm between rows. When potato plants have reached almost 30cm high, make sure to raise the soil at the base of the stems to create a mound that will keep tubers out of the light. If they are exposed to the sun, tubers will turn green. Green parts contain a poisonous substance called solanine.

Avoid planting potatoes in rows or in beds where the scent is very concentrated, making it easily detectable by the Colorado beetle. Instead, dilute the smell by planting potatoes here and there throughout the garden.

Radish Cold-tolerant radishes are among the vegetables that can be sown the earliest outdoors, either in April or the start of May, in light, loose and cool soil exposed to full sun. This plant grows quickly and is ready to harvest after as little as 30 days. Successive sowing means you can gather between 350 and 450 radishes per square metre every month, from April to July. A typical radish has a red peel, thin white flesh, and is somewhat spicy. However, many colourful radishes such as ‘Cherry Belle’, ‘Hailstone’, ‘Helios’ and ‘Purple Plum’ also exist.

Potatoes are relatively easy to grow, but they have one enemy called the Colorado beetle, an insect with a black and yellow striped shell that feeds on the leaves. The best way to protect potato plants from the Colorado beetle is to grow them under an agrotextile. The canvas is very light and lifts as the plants grow, so holding it with stakes or poles is unnecessary.

Jerusalem artichoke produces yellow flowers in the fall on stems up to 2.5 metres tall. However, this plant is cultivated more for its edible tubers than its flowers. With a delicious flavour reminiscent of artichoke, the elongated roots of Jerusalem artichoke are a fantastic substitute for potatoes.

Credit: Albert Mondor

Potatoes like light, deep, fertile soil located in full sun. Before planting, enrich the soil with compost. Avoid using fresh manure or nitrogen fertilisers, which promote the development of common scab, a disease that affects potatoes. Harvesting usually takes place 80 to 90 days after planting. You can harvest up to 3 kilos of potatoes per square metre, depending on the cultivar.

Jerusalem artichoke

Credit: Albert Mondor

This plant is prolific, so it is better to plant it in a location where it can spread as desired. In urban areas, plant Jerusalem artichoke tubers in a large pot buried in the ground or surround them with a metal border to prevent them from invading the entire garden. You can harvest up to 3 kilograms of Jerusalem artichoke tubers per square metre in the fall. 3

BIO Passionate about environmental horticulture, urban agriculture and extreme landscape design, Albert Mondor has practised his craft for over 30 years and created numerous gardens in North America. In addition to teaching courses and lecturing at conferences across Canada, his weekly gardening column has appeared in the Journal de Montréal and the Journal de Québec since 1999. In April 2018, Albert Mondor published Le nouveau potager, his tenth horticultural book. He is a regular guest and contributor to radio and television programs and his hosting The Trendy Gardener spots broadcasted on Météo Média and online. You can also read his blog called Extreme Horticulture at albertmondor.com. Follow Albert on Facebook: fb.com/albert.mondor GA R D EN CU LT U R E M AGA Z I N E.CO M

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STRAIN SPECIFIC NUTRITION

CODY J. GARRETT-TAIT

Strain Specific Nutrition W

hen it comes to optimising the requirements of your favourite strain or cultivar, there isn’t a “one size fits all” solution. In general, most plants will perform with a good, well-fortified organic soil, but there are times when adding a bit more of ‘this’ or a tad more of ‘that’ makes a crucial difference in the harvest outcome.

It’s hard to guide Indica or Sativa, as many plants today are hybridised. Becoming in tune with the wants and needs of the specific variety you are growing is observation and intuition. However, we can follow some general guidelines based purely on how the plant’s genetics are expressed, which offer some clues on what it lacks.

Becoming in tune with the wants and needs of the specific variety you are growing is observation and intuition

Autoflowering Types These varieties are sensitive to setbacks, such as overwatering and overfeeding. When these plants are under stress, they tend to bolt into flower to reproduce and save their genetics. To minimise any feeding issues, begin with a reasonably low initial amount of nutrition. Then, as the plants mature to their second set of true leaves, increase the amount of top dressing, tea applications, and liquid feeding you provide. Finally, stick to general-purpose nutrition where the plant isn’t getting too much of any single macronutrient. This little and often style of feeding means the plants are never overwhelmed by too much at once, and yet, simultaneously, they always have what they need when they need it.

Long Flowering Types

In this group, you will find a great majority of the Haze-based plants, many of the landrace Sativa’s (sans a couple of shorter flowering types), and even some more exotic modern hybrids. These plants are in it for the long haul, often flowering for somewhere between 12 and 20 weeks! Therefore, they need special care to ensure that their journey to harvest is a smooth ride rather than a difficult slog. Overall, long-flowering varieties enjoy a middle-range level of feeding at first but have a pronounced hunger during the rapid elongation phase experienced in the early two to four weeks of the flowering cycle. During this phase, many of these longer maturing types grow so large that it can be challenging to keep up with their requirements, so ramping up watering is necessary, along with providing access to more food, even when using well-fortified soil. An application of fertiliser rich in nitrogen and potassium at the very end of the veg cycle and before bloom will carry the plants a long way. Restricting nitrogen to control height normally stunts yield, so lean into what these varieties want to do; if space is an issue, flip early!

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STRAIN SPECIFIC NUTRITION

This little and often style of feeding means the plants are never overwhelmed by too much at once, and yet, simultaneously, they always have what they need when they need it.

After the plants level out and stop phase. The other spot that makes It can be challenging their rapid upward growth, they a tangible difference is right when move on to a maintenance phase swapping from vegetative growth to figure out precisely through the middle half of the to bloom. Adding extra potassiwhat today’s ultrabloom cycle. This allows the plant um and phosphorous along with to ripen and use what it has left additional calcium and magnesibred strains are nutrition-wise. Centre mid-bloom um keeps these varieties charging feeding around light applications headlong into an excellent harvest. because their genetic of inputs with balanced ratios to give the plant extra P and K where makeups are so required and supply additional N; complex more extended flowering types continue using this in high amounts It can be challenging to figure out into flowering. These plants genprecisely what today’s ultra-bred erally don’t like to be pushed, especially past the halfway strains are because their genetic makeups are so complex. point. The flowers often stall out rather than bulk up if While it’s impossible to go through each strain individuheavy applications happen too long into flowering, so keep ally in this article, we can take elements from the three it moderate and play the waiting game for the best results. different types of plants above to analyse our garden and see which category they may lean toward. There may be elements from all three general plant types that we can experimentally and analytically work through until the most This category includes many landrace Indica plants and optimal outcome is found. those rich in Indica DNA. These plants are over and done with quickly, often completing their bloom cycle in under Does the variety have a long flowering cycle? Then, it’s seven weeks! So, they don’t leave a lot of room for augworth trying tricks that work for similar strains. If the mented feeding regimes. plants are short flowering or even autoflowering varieties, it’s critical to keep a close eye on them; take notes For the most part, short flowering types get along just on what you did and the perceived outcome. Again, this fine on the soil nutrition itself, but there are a couple of sort of ground-level research you conduct will go a great points where adding more can be beneficial. Making extra way toward maximising your successes and eliminating any nitrogen available to the plants early in the vegetative cycle issues over time, giving you the edge that only hours in the is good as many of them are not the fastest growers in this garden can provide you! 3

Highly Bred and Hybridised Varieties

Shorter Flowering Types

BY ADAM CLARKE

Cost-Effective

Nuisance Control For Indoor and Outdoor Crops The generator takes water, salt,

am fortunate to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world for growing plants outdoors, Galiano, a small island off the West

Coast of Canada.We have a great growing season in which we can start early and finish late. However, we still have some common pests and various problems, such as powdery mildew that develop on outdoor plants in an uncontrolled environment. We need a simple solution that we can apply to our plants to help them along. We also need a spray to use until the week before harvest without hurting them.

hypochlorous acid

and vinegar as its inputs. You put all the ingredients into the generator, push the button, and away it goes

NUISANCE CONTROL

After the treatments, we could not find any residue, bad smells, or anything else strange with our plants A Three-Pronged Approach We believe the key to our success is three-fold. An incredible super soil (the add water variety) from a new company on Galiano; plenty of care and attention to spot problems when they first develop; and hypochlorous acid. A few years ago, I had never heard of hypochlorous acid, and after my friend Randy Flemming mentioned it to me, we had to try it. A quick online shopping spree (+-£200), and the next thing you know, we had a hypochlorous acid generator on our doorstep. We dove into this headfirst and never looked back.

Hypochlorous acid works by oxidising the problem areas of the plant

The Hypochlorous Acid Generator The hypochlorous acid generator came assembled and ready to use. It was reasonably affordable to buy and even cheaper to operate. Remember, I’m not a scientist, so I had to lean on a few people to understand this process. The generator takes water, salt, and vinegar as its inputs. You put all the ingredients into the generator, push the button, and away it goes. Through electrolysis, it rearranges the composition of the water and ends up as hypochlorous acid. It is super easy, and man, it works great. Hypochlorous acid works by oxidising the problem areas of the plant. We used this treatment twice a week, and we certainly did not hold back spraying. Of course, a few of the plants weren’t perfect, but for a 100-plant test batch, we were sold.

Growing Pains Our crop suffered from some powdery mildew, aphids, mites, and more. The hypochlorous acid did its job incredibly well. In some cases, the powdery mildew seemed to be completely killed off, and in other cases, it was like a spot treatment. We sprayed the plant, and the next day could see the scar on the leaf where the mildew used to be. Usually, the plant would spend the next one or two weeks free of powdery mildew. The acid did an even better job controlling the aphids and mites. As you spray the plants, you see how much the bugs hate it in real-time. The aphids try to eject themselves off the plant, mites start spinning on the spot, and all the other miscellaneous outdoor pests evacuate just as quickly. After the treatments, we could not find any residue, bad smells, or anything else strange with our plants. I

will never grow outdoors again without having a generator on hand.

A Few Kinks

Of course, not everything is perfect with hypochlorous acid. While our outdoor plants handled it well, you could certainly tell when you oversprayed an indoor plant. The oxidation will affect plant leaves if they are not rinsed. I believe that we didn’t experience over-oxidation on the outdoor leaves as we are located on the ‘WetCoast’ of Canada, and our plants got a regular rinse with rain. Using hypochlorous acid at half strength more often seems to be a much better approach for indoor crops. I should also note that while we killed quite a few indoor leaves, we still finished with gorgeous flower and we would still spot-treat any problems while in that growth stage. We typically spray approximately 500PPM on the outdoor plants and a lower PPM now on the indoor grow. The generator isn’t an exact PPM number, so play with the run time and see how the change in PPM affects each potential problem on your plants. I understand that in Canada, hypochlorous acid is not a registered pesticide. Therefore, a workaround may be needed for any producer that must record their inputs. Perhaps a registered producer may consider calling it a foliar feed and highlight the importance of ‘Cl’ as an essential nutrient for plant growth and health.

Words Of Advice Any home and commercial grower should give a hypochlorous acid a shot. It’s cost-effective, easy, environmentally friendly, and most of all, it works. Remember to walk and not run with it on day one, or you will likely overdo it! 3

Bio

Adam has provided planning and design services for cannabis and hemp cultivation and processing facilities over the last seven years with Stratus. His projects involve outdoor cultivation, indoor cultivation, drying, processing, extraction, storage, bottling and packaging, and more. Living on a hobby farm, Adam loves all plants, including flowers, vegetables, and microgreens, but is most passionate about hemp and is in awe of the fast-growing plant and all of the benefits it offers to humans and the environment alike.

BY CATHERINE SHERRIFFS

WAYS

To Super Cropping Success You did it! You’ve made it to the final pages of Garden Culture’s Super Cropping edition! By now, you likely have a good idea about how to safely stress your plants for optimal growth and better yields. But before you get started, read our refresher and 5 Cool Ways to super cropping success!

Fine Motor Skills

All of that time spent as a kid threading beads onto a pipe cleaner comes into good use when stress training plants. Super cropping involves so much pinching and twisting with your thumbs and index fingers that you’ll need superior fine motor skills! Don’t be overzealous, though; you risk permanently damaging your plant if you pinch too hard. Not hard enough, and you won’t achieve the desired results. So what are you waiting for? Get your fingers in peak condition for super cropping by exercising them with a pair of tweezers and some marbles, then flip to page 44 for Rich Hamilton’s guide on getting the job done right.

Scissors

If you don’t trust your digits to get the job done, consider investing in a good pair of scissors.You don’t necessarily need scissors for super cropping, but they’re handy to have anyway. This tool allows you to gently crimp onto the plant’s stem and bend in the desired direction. Scissors will also help with topping and fimming, two high-stress techniques used for better growth. Whatever you do, make sure all your super cropping gadgets are sterile; dirty tools can lead to total devastation in the grow room. Plenty of excellent options exist on the market; do some research and select the right pair for you.

GREEN ADVICE

SCROG

If you’re looking to maximise your use of space and boost plant productivity, consider Screen of Green (SCROG). Plants like to grow taller than they do wide. SCROG helps growers achieve an even canopy by bringing the lower branches up and the top branches down, stretching the grow horizontally. As a result, plants get an even distribution of light and better aeration, leading to a decreased risk of disease and increased yields. If that sounds good to you, get started by placing a screen about half a foot above the growing medium, tucking and weaving the plant’s branches as they grow. It might sound complicated, but it’s not. Plenty of online resources (and this magazine!) can guide you through the process.

Netting, Trellis, and Ties

You’ve got your fingers, scissors, and screen of green, but what other tools might you need for super cropping success? Netting, stakes, and horticultural trellis are essential to support the plant and help it heal after you’ve stressed it out. Without proper support, super cropping can be disastrous. Choose from plastic or soft mesh options, whichever you prefer.You’ll also need vinyl stretch or soft twist ties to secure the branches to the netting or trellis properly. Some growers like to use a good rooting hormone, and if exposing the plant to prolonged periods of darkness, a suitable aftercare routine is essential. If you don’t know what to look for, head down to your local grow shop and ask for help selecting bloom boosters and finishers.

Good Reads

Garden Culture Magazine is here to help you achieve super cropping success, so be sure to save this issue for future grows. Laminate it if you have to! So many different websites, blogs, and online vids have devoted themselves to helping growers with this advanced technique; don’t be shy to seek them out. Prefer to flip through some pages as they did in the old days? You’re in luck; several books have been written about this growing technique and are available for purchase. The main idea is to educate yourself as best you can; super cropping isn’t for the faint of heart and is recommended for more advanced growers. The more you know, the better you’ll grow, so get studying! Your plants will thank you.

BY PHILIP MCINTOSH

Tissue Culture I

Plants

You’ll never forget your first in vitro plantlet

TISSUE CULTURE

here’s more than one way to propagate a plant. Growing from seeds, cuttings, or grafting are tried and true methods wellknown in the annals of horticulture.Tissue culture, of more recent origin, is a method that can generate a large number of plantlets in a comparatively small space. Although more technically advanced, tissue culture methods can generate more

genetically identical plants in a shorter time than is possible with vegetative propagation of mother plants by cuttings.

In plant tissue culture, as the name Although more technically advanced, tissue culture suggests, plant tissue is disinfected, methods can generate more genetically identical cut up, and placed on a growth medium designed to encourage cell plants in a shorter time than is possible with proliferation. Then the culture is vegetative propagation of mother plants by cuttings induced to promote shoot growth. Once shoots appear, another treatment initiates root development. Rooted shoots are then removed from the tissue culture environstage I medium, sub-samples of callus tissue are plated onto the stage ment and transplanted into the soil or other typical medium. After II medium to induce shoot organogenesis. Sometimes only one or a period of acclimation, the young plants are ready to survive indetwo shoots will form, and other times, a dozen or more may form, pendently. The process is usually divided into three or four stages. depending on the plant species and growth conditions. Although plant tissue culture procedures vary, the following gives a general overview of the technique depending on the lab. During stage II, the real power of tissue culture can be realised. The multiplication step can be done repeatedly until any desired number Stage 1 - The Explant Stage. Begin with a piece of stem, of shoots become available. It takes anywhere from one to several leaf, meristematic tissue, or any other plant part. Exact protocols months for each multiplication cycle, but it is possible to generate vary, but the material is excised from the plant and put through thousands of shoots in a small space relatively quickly. a disinfection sequence involving soaking and rinsing in some combination of isopropanol, bleach solution, and Stage 3 - Preconditioning. One might sterile water. The explants are placed on a mealso call this the “rooting” stage. Once healthy dium containing a carbon source, essential shoots are formed on the multiplication nutrients, and one of the auxin plant medium, they are excised and replanted hormones. The carbon source is ofinto a medium lacking in cytokinin but ten sucrose, and the hormone can once again providing auxin, which is be indole-3-butyric acid (IBA), essential for root organogenesis 4. 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid under these conditions. The Acclimat(2,4 D), or one of several othauxin can be included in the isation 1. er auxins. Explants will often medium, or each shoot can The initiate growth as an undifferbe dipped in rooting hormone Explant Stage entiated mass of cells called before sticking it into the new callus. Sometimes shoots will medium. Once roots apbegin to form from the callus pear, the plants can grow until 3. tissue. The synthetic hormone enough root mass exists to diPre2. 2,4 D is especially good at provide among the shoots. conditioning Multiplication moting the growth of undifferentiated callus tissue.

Tissue Culture

Stage 4 - Acclimatisation.

Stage 2 - Multiplication. In stage II, the goal is to generate shoots either by the branching of existing shoots or by new bud formation. The ratio of cytokinins to auxins is adjusted to encourage the initiation of new shoots from the callus tissue. Cytokinins promote cell division. Although a high auxin concentration is required to initiate and maintain callus growth in the explant stage, increasing the cytokinin to auxin ratio triggers shoot organogenesis in stage II. Any shoots that arise on the stage I medium are dissected and separated. Then they are replanted into a medium containing a low concentration of auxin plus the addition of kinetin, benzylaminopurine (BA), isopentyladenine (2iP) or other cytokinins. If no shoots form on the

Once plantlets with a good shoot and good root development are established in vitro, it is time to get them out of the culture vessels and into the real world. This is an excellent time to be selective by only choosing plants with strong root and shoot development for transfer to the final stage. Often, wild and unruly plants result in the healthiest and most survivable transplants. Well-rooted plantlets are excised, divided, and transplanted into the soil in pots. The young plants are sensitive to light, water stress, and disease since they have led a sheltered life up to this point. The plants must be kept in a humid environment to avoid a high loss rate. We can do this by placing a small humidity dome made from a clear plastic cup or a plastic bag over each potted plant.

TISSUE CULTURE

The test tubes contain stage III rooting medium with Bryophyllum (Kalanchoe) fedtschenkoi plants. The container on the right contains stage I medium with Bryophyllum stem tissue.

Over a few weeks under fluorescent or LED illumination—no direct sun or high powered lights—the humidity chambers are gradually vented to allow a reduction in the humidity until the plants can survive on their own under normal growth conditions.

During stage II, the real power of tissue culture can be realised

are the plants and nothing else. The growth media used in tissue culture are perfect for supporting the growth of not only plants but also bacteria and fungi. Microbes will quickly destroy young tender plants if given the chance. For this reason, a laminar flow hood with a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter is recommended to push sterile air over the work zone during operations when the cultures are exposed. Even a non-filtered plexiglass glove box will decrease contamination by preventing particles from falling onto the plants and into the growth medium from above during processing. Lacking a flow hood, some success can be had by working quickly in a room with low airflow. Thoroughly clean work surfaces and equipment with 70% isopropanol and/or flame all tools and glass culture vessels. Technicians should, of course, wear gloves, wear a clean lab coat (no short sleeves), a hairnet, and a beard cover (if applicable) to reduce the chance of contamination as much as possible.

Like most technical lab procedures involving living things, it takes some practice and experience to succeed

One key to success in plant tissue culture is the maintenance of axenic growth conditions. Axenic means “without a stranger”, meaning the only organisms allowed in the cultures

Expenses So, how much does it cost to get into plant tissue culture? At a minimum, you’ll need a steriliser/pressure cooker, glass or plastic ware (flasks, etc.), measuring equipment (electronic or triple beam balance, graduated cylinders), culture media ingredients and hormones, and a culture shelf with lights. An instant pot and baby food jars can get you started. Unless you already have basic laboratory equipment, expect to spend anywhere from $300-$500 upfront. Like most technical lab procedures involving living things, it takes some practice and experience to succeed. Keep accurate records in a notebook, and don’t give up until it reliably works. You’ll never forget your first in vitro plantlet. 3

Bio

Philip McIntosh holds a B.Sc. in Botany and Chemistry from Texas State University and an MA in Biological Science from the University of Texas at Austin. He has been publishing professionally for over 30 years in magazines, journals, and on the web on topics relating to botany, mycology, general biology, and technology. As a STEM (Science,Technology, Engineering, and Math) educator, Phil enjoys working with students to help them advance their knowledge and skills in relevant fields of learning.

BY CATHERINE SHERRIFFS

The Avocado’s Plight

t’s said that avocados are why millennials can’t afford homes, but all that might be about to change. No, the fruit isn’t getting any cheaper; instead, fewer people might be buying it. Avocados are facing an uphill battle in kitchens worldwide because they’re so damn unsustainable. And in today’s climate, being labelled as unsustainable is about as bad as it gets.

For such a small fruit, avocados carry an enormous carbon footprint. Grown in central and south America, they travel thousands of miles to make it to your dip bowl and dinner plates. There’s no shopping local for these babies. Avocados are monocultures, meaning the same crop grows on the same land every year and an increased need for chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Also, did you know it takes 320 litres of water to produce just one avocado? Guacamole suddenly doesn’t taste as good as it used to! Chefs around the globe are eliminating avocados from their menus, replacing them with eco-friendly alternatives like guacamole dips made with edamame, frozen peas, Jerusalem artichoke, courgettes, and more. A quick online search offers plenty of recipes and a glimpse at just how big the no avocado movement has become. While you mull over whether you can part with the beloved green fruit, consider shopping locally, eating seasonally, and growing your own as often as possible; everything will be ok. 3

Source: •

The Guardian: End of the avocado: why chefs are ditching the unsustainable fruit (bit.ly/3K6XWle)

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For such a small fruit, avocados carry an enormous carbon footprint

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