Avant-Gardening.com offers information on organic, sustainable gardening
Title
Avant-Gardening: Creative Organic Gardening
Description
We started in 1986 on San Juan Island, Washington - an island off the coast of Washington State, 10 miles from the bottom of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. We started with a small vegetable garden plot in our back yard, which was nestled within a 2 acre cleared area surrounded by old growth Western Red cedar, Hemlock, Alder, and Douglas fir. Next, we built a 60 x 80 concentric circular herb garden with interlocking paths, trellises, and a central focal point with a birdbath surrounded by creeping phlox, lilies, and different varieties and colors of creeping thyme.
The beds in between the interlocking circular pathways were filled with many varieties of each herb - sage, thyme, mint, rosemary, oregano, lavender, catnip and catmints, and others - including anise hyssop, hyssop, comfrey, horehound, ornamentals, French sorrel, and a Bay tree. All these herbs were set against a backdrop of bamboo planted behind an old cedar stump.
Local interest prompted building another garden area with fruit trees surrounded by more paths, beds, and trellises. The beds defined by these paths were filled with many varieties of annual and perennial flowers. Assorted berries were espaliered to 8 short trellises, which radiated out from an old red cedar stump. The third area was a terraced hillside and with beds made of red cedar rails. Here we grew raspberries, 34 varieties of garlic, saffron, artichokes, and strawberries, as well as annual vegetables.
All the garden areas were fenced to keep out the deer, which made themselves at home on the grass beside the three ponds below the gardens. Paths leading to the entrances of these gardens were lined with beds made in formal patterns. Soon, it became a business. We started making herbed vinegars, potpourri, dried flower arrangements, and culinary herbs and we sold them out of our converted front porch enclosed "store".
We serviced restaurants and resorts on the island, participated in the farmer's market on Saturdays. We were open to the public every day from 11-5 throughout the year and we sold fresh organic herbs, flowers, and vegetables right out of the gardens.
After expanding as much as we could handle without hiring anyone, we sold our business in 1993 and moved to Arizona, where we spent three years creating and coordinating the building of a large formal herb and vegetable garden for a private community.
GIANNANGELO FARMS SOUTHWEST
We are now living in northwestern New Mexico in an area presenting many challenges, altitude, erratic spring weather, a short growing season, and a 7,300 ft. high desert environment, which is allowing us to use our experience and creativity to establish Giannangelo Farms Southwest. We created formal gardens and a strawbale wall around our first house, built two reflection pools, and established a 1/4 acre organic garden to grow produce for farmers market. We were able to grow enough to keep up with demand, and have plenty left over for ourselves. These gardens were very labor intensive, but grew the best vegetables we have ever tasted. Sun, lots of water, and a sandy soil produced perfect carrots that we could store all winter until the early summer's crop was ready to take their place.
After seven years of participating in farmers market and tending large gardens, we have now moved on to phase three - a new house, smaller perennial herb, flower, and vegetable gardens, a rock lined fish pond, and a 4' x 8' raised bed garden for growing produce which have named the "Greenzbox"™. In the spring we filled this new raised bed with compost made from the years of growing for market, and planted it with 5 varieties of kale, spinach, lettuces, beets, salad greens, and chard. We covered it with shade cloth - another of our "experiments" that has proved to be the key to growing produce in the southwest, protecting the plants from high UV rays and hot mid-day sun. By opening the east side to get the morning sun, we discovered that shade cloth allowed us to harvest more than we could eat - large, tender greens for the entire growing season.
A garden is more than just a means of providing food, it is a model of what is possible in your community - everyone could have a garden, producing healthy, nutritious organic food promoting a more sustainable way of living with an abundance that would encourage local economy - a farmers market, a place to pass on gardening experience, and a sharing of bounty.
We nurture ourselves as we nurture our gardens, renewing our connection with the earth and her beauty, thereby reducing stress on the world's finite resources, and strengthening our community as a whole in the process. Without community we can be overwhelmed by forces that seem outside our control - we can pool our enthusiasm, our resources, our knowledge, and, together, we can grow.
In the spring and fall we give "Greenzbox"™, Sustainable Organic Gardening, Rockwork, Labyrinth, Strawbale Wall, and Permaculture, Workshops.
Languages
English
Address
- PO Box 732
- Ramah NM 87321 US
Contact
- Giannangelo Farms SW
- email us via our website contact form: http://www.avant-gardening.com
Additional Information
PROMOTING A GARDENING COMMUNITY
Thirty-seven years of gardening experience is a pleasure to pass on. Heading into "retirement" we are narrowing our focus to gardening information on our website, a few small gardens around our new Hogan, answering questions, and giving our series of how-to workshops in the spring and early summer.
Gardening near El Morro National Monument in Northwestern New Mexico is a challenging affair with a high altitude (7300') desert environment, a short growing season, erratic spring winds, and a remarkable range of temperatures. These conditions required a great deal of innovation, planning, knowledge, and persistence.
Our perennial gardens are planted in a clay based soil which helps hold water, and with a good layer of mulch, everything thrives. Culinary herbs, hardy succulents, sedums, and rhubarb grow among native wildflowers mixed in with the annual and perennial flowers for bouquets. Pinon pine and juniper trees provide needed shade, and years of dropped needles have broken down and made a rich humus and fertile soil for the plants nestled beneath them. A rock garden is interspersed with artifacts, metal objects, trinkets, objects d'art.
In the spring we plant lettuce, spinach, chard, and kale inside the GreenzBox™, a self-contained raised bed growing box covered with shade cloth, and vegetable beds are planted with Chardonnay carrots, Detroit and Cylindra beets, Evergreen bunching onions, yellow onions, and asparagus. Other beds are for Zuni and summer squash, their long vines trailing down a slope. Tomatoes were grown in containers on our front porch, where the warmth of the Hogan keeps temperatures a bit more consistent. In another raised bed, Cucumbers and butternut squash were trellised on hog wire, keeping them off the ground. Behind them, a coyote fence that supported scarlet runner beans and shelling peas.
Flat rocks stacked 20 inches high make a platform for bird and chipmunk feeders. Spaces left between the rocks allow chipmunks to crawl in and out and hide from our cats. Some of the birds we see are House finches, Nuthatches, Pine Siskins, Sparrows, Eastern and Mountain Bluebirds, Buntings, Mourning Doves, Flickers, Flycatchers, Juncos, Scrub Jays, Pinon Jays, Goldfinches, Mockingbirds, Meadowlarks, Lazuli Buntings, Grosbeaks, and Rufus-sided Towhees.
Chipmunks sit in the feeders shelling black oil sunflower seeds, stuffing their little cheeks. We notice clumps of sunflowers germinating where a chipmunk buried them, and when they have sprouted, they eat them too.
Everything we planted was designed to benefit all wildlife, birds, frogs, toads, chipmunks, squirrels, butterflies, moths, bees, and beneficial insects. Large goldfish live in a rock-lined pond with a built-in waterfall. A small pump re-circulates the water and the sound attracts more birds than the seed we feed them. We watch chipmunks drinking water at the pond and birds bathe beside the waterfall.
A garden is more than just a means of providing food, it is a model of what is possible in your community - everyone could have a garden using our Greenzbox™ - and produce healthy, nutritious organic food - promoting a more sustainable way of living that would encourage their local ecomomy - a farmers market, a place to pass on gardening experience, and a sharing of bounty.
Since most of the nation's food is produced by less than 2% of the population, by using this organic bio-intensive mini-gardening method, everyone could be part of the solution.
We nurture ourselves as we nurture our gardens, renewing our connection with the earth and her beauty, thereby reducing stress on the world's finite resources, and strengthening our community as a whole in the process. Without community we can be overwhelmed by forces that seem ourside our control - we can pool our enthuasiam, our resources, our knowledge, and, together, we can grow.
We hope that you enjoy the gardening information gleaned from years of experience, and we wish you many days of enjoyable, successful, and sustainable organic gardening!
"You Can Grow!"
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- Alexa: Avant-Gardening.com
