Abridged version: A Comprehensive Guide to Growing Vegetables.

A comprehensive guide to growing vegetables

Published by Tess Michaels & David Reed at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Tess Michaels and David Reed

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only .This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people .If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient .If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy .Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

We have not inherited the earth from our parents; we have borrowed it from our children..Lester R.Brown, Founder of the Worldwatch Institute and founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute

He plants to benefit another generation. Caecilius Statius, Roman slave/playright from his play Synephebi.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead, anthropologist

"Six companies hope to have control of our food, forests, fuels, animals and fish,..It's now time to declare war on these companies ..otherwise they will own the carbon that makes up our savannah grasslands, the ocean algae, all our cultivated plants, animals and plantations of trees.It is effectively 6 billion of us about to lose control to 6 or more multi-national corporations unless we speak up.No other animal has divorced itself from its food supplies and its environment and survived, and neither will we.From a talk by Pat Mooney, Executive Director of Director of ETC Group

We would like to thank the following people for their timely advice, professional perspectives, field testing and general all around encouragement.In alphabetical order;

Brenda Cavanagh, from in Commonsense in Early Childhood Education, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

Kierna Corr, from Learning for Life, Dungannon, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Lindsay Logsdon, from Trinity Acres Farm Harrow, Ontario, Canada,

Catherine Morgan, from The Point Preschool, Oyster Bay, Sydney, Australia,

Dr Steve Scally, Parkes, New South Wales, Australia, for his encouragement and metaphysical insights.

About

Tessa Rose Playspace and Landscape Design

Tessa Rose Landscapes is a naturalistic playspace design company focused on creating natural, sustainable and inspiring play environments.Tess also has a comprehensive Australian blog site focused on design, children's play and development with heaps of links to resources, literature, audio and visual downloads and presentations.

Tess Michaels

Tess Michaels is a natural playspace and landscape designer, early childhood teacher and workshop presenter with a passion for natural play and sustainable outdoor environments for children of all ages.

Tess has a background in early childhood education initially as a teacher then as a director and is a member of Early Childhood Australia.She has worked in an assortment of centres, both private and commercial, community and religious based; she has also worked in varying capacities in Local, State and Federal government Childcare organisations.Tess has a Diploma in Horticulture & Landscape design and is a member of The Australian Institute of Horticulture.

Her experience in all these positions led her to believe that it is essential for children in early childhood to have access to natural, stimulating and aesthetic outdoor environments.

David Reed

David has a background in Early childhood and Before and after care, working with ages 0-15 whilst studying to obtain an Associate Diploma in Child studies and a Certificate lll in Horticulture & Landscape construction.David operates his own garden maintenance business specialising in the construction and maintenance of naturalistic playspaces.

Disclaimer: Any products referenced in this guide are mentioned because they have been used in the construction of playspaces designed by Tessa Rose or in the maintenance of the same.The products were chosen on the basis that they’re functional, durable, low maintenance and child friendly.No consideration financial or otherwise was provided to mention them.Any chemical product mentioned should be used in accordance with the manufacturer’s directions and a MSDS should be obtained and read prior to their application.Links to international Safety and MSDS providers can be found here, for Australia here .If you have any doubt whatsoever about the use of any product within a children’s service DO NOT USE IT and seek professional advice for alternatives.Any photos used in this publication are either Property of Tessa Rose, derived from a Creative Commons photographic database (where commercial use is allowed providing attribution is provided) or if derived from a blog or website they are used in the form of a pictorial hyperlink to the original site (all property, intellectual and copyrights are retained by those sites)

Copyright © David Reed and Tess Michaels, 2012.

This work is copyright.All rights reserved.Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process, nor may any other exclusive right be exercised, without the permission of the authors.No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, by any person without the written permission of the authors.The views expressed in this book are those of the authors.Sydney, Australia, 2012.

Given that this is the first printing of this type of document I’m certain I have forgotten something, probably a number of something’s.

I welcome your constructive criticism, constructive advice and specific information about maintenance practices that you perform that are geographically and culturally specific.Acknowledgement of the author of the information will be detailed in any subsequent printing.

Please feel free to contact us at tess@tessaroselandscapes.com.au or david@tessaroselandscapes.com.au or drop by and say G’Day at http://tessaroselandscapes.blogspot.com/.

WHY?

Possibly you’re wondering ‘Why create another series of books on growing vegetables, herbs and fruit when there are so many similar projects in existence for children already? My answer is myriad.

New doesn’t always mean better

Up until about a hundred years ago most people grew their own vegetables, fruit and herbs.About this time, the idea of specialised farms growing and supplying their produce to markets, who in turn supplied them to green grocers, was introduced and ran in parallel with home gardening.The ongoing increase in population in metropolitan centres, the demise of home and allotment gardening (and the subsequent loss of knowledge) was gradually bartered for the belief that quality produce could be obtained consistently and cheaply from the new system.Over the last forty to fifty years a large number of farmers have changed their production methods to suit the system rather than the customer.They began to utilise chemical fertilisers to produce more frequent, bigger, prettier more saleable crops whilst at the same time growing only those species that matured quickly and had more durable fruit.

A great number of children attending early childhood institutions these days come from multigenerational family environments where neither they, their siblings, nor their parents have ever grown or raised foodstuffs or tasted the difference between home grown and commercial produce.Not only has there been a loss of basic self sustainability and a commercially institutionalised sensory deprivation, but we have also lost the crucial awareness of Where things come from.A common reason given in the media for these unregarded forfeitures is that increased urbanisation provides little or no space for self sustaining practices, however, in most cases even if the space is available the process is given very low or no priority.

Rationales frequently provided for this strange precedence include the idea that anything we want we can always buy, we don’t have the time (because we want what we want now), we don’t have the knowledge ( I want to do it now, I want it to be easy and I want to get it right the first time) or that we have more important things to do (seriously what’s more important than knowing how to feed ourselves, developing a respect for our environment, regaining control over the production, quality, taste and composition of what we eat and cease to be blindly dependant on a small number of multi-national companies for our basic sustenance?).

‘Today, as never before in history, the meals of many children (and their parents) are often cooked by strangers and are likely to consist of highly processed foods that are produced anywhere in the world.Meals are often eaten casually, hungrily, in haste and even at times, alone.' (Alice Waters, 2002).

It’s the convenience that ails you

More and more studies have concluded that the epidemic of childhood obesity, ADHD, asthma (Sodium Sulfite – E221 and Sulfur dioxide – E220), allergies and a sharp increase in children affected by autism (78 % in the last ten years), can be laid squarely at the feet of hyper palatable commercially grown, commercially processed, commercially packaged (the packaging can be just as harmful as the processing) foods.It’s mighty convenient but it’s altering your DNA and killing you by millimetres (or 10ths of inches).

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should

In the last few years there has been a shift in the structure of early childhood programmes caused by a trickle down demand from schools.As the schools become more corporatized in their structure, caught up in exchanging test scores for funding, their rigour demands more structured, quantifiable, rote preschool syllabi be implemented to prove educational readiness .This new demand calls on educators to account for each moment in care and comes at the expenses of unstructured creative play, social and emotional development opportunities and more often than not, nature based play.

Whilst there are similar school based projects that introduce older children to concepts of nature through gardening, these projects have an educator/child ratio of 1:30 rather than the 1:10 available at pre-school institutions, are often treated more as distraction from real education activity and often don’t cover the full gamut of growing, harvesting, preserving and eating.

Although great inroads have been made into implementing these programmes throughout the US there is still a separate view that they hinder children obtaining a proper education, and calls for them to be abolished.

Cultivating Failure - How school gardens are cheating our most vulnerable students

School Gardeners Strike Back

Is Alice Waters Cultivating Failure with Edible Schoolyard Program?

Alice Waters and school gardens are evil

So much magic around the garden

Beyond a garden in every school

My suggestion would be that these programmes are not meant to replace literacy, numeracy or computer skills; we live in a world that requires these things as a basic vehicle for material success .Nature based programmes teach totally different lessons and ideologies and are intended to enhance and extend learning experiences.

A simple activity offers so much

The process of introducing children to natural concepts and extending these concepts with the practical exercise of growing their own vegetables can provide numerous teachable moments in an emergent curriculum.

What opportunities can emerge when these seeds are planted?

* Direct exposure to nature benefits physical and emotional health,

* Proximity to, views of and daily exposure to natural settings increases children’s ability to focus, increasing attention span and enhancing cognitive skills, fostering brain development(1),

* Multisensory experiences in nature help to build the cognitive constructs necessary for sustained intellectual development(2),

* They integrate children by age, ability, and ethnic background.They help children feel good about themselves.They enhance self-esteem and offer children a peaceful feeling.They focus the perceptions of children on the region of the Earth where they actually live.They help children understand the realities of natural systems through primary experience.They demonstrate natural principles such as networks, cycles, and evolutionary processes.They teach that nature is a uniquely regenerative process.They support interdisciplinary, environmental education curricula.They provide microclimatic comfort and flexible, forgiving settings that are aesthetically appealing to all people.By implication, these are some of the advantages to children that are becoming lost as their use of the outdoors diminishes(3),

* Creative play is increased – natural spaces and materials stimulate children’s limitless imaginations and serve as the medium of inventiveness and creativity observable in almost any group of children playing in a natural environment Children