Goff Organic Garden
Fertility

Goff Organic Garden is 1/2 acre in the southwest schoolyard corner, at the end of the Gilligan Road parking lot. The garden has nine vegetable growing areas, each 1000 square feet. The garden has 14 raised-bed boxes of cut flowers, formal herb garden, and solar-powered red barn.

Each 1000 suare foot area grows a different family of vegetables. They are moved each year from one area to another in a 9-year cycle of rotation.

All produce is organically grown. No synthetic fertilizer, herbicide or pesticide is used. No artificial or toxic chemical is used to grow our produce. Instead, our garden tries to follow nature.

Growing food organically begins with natural methods and materials to build and sustain fully fertile, nutrient-rich, biologically enlivened soil. Healthy soil feeds healthy plants, that don't need artificial chemical interventions to ward off disease and insects. A lot of money and labor was invested to create optimum soil from nutrient-starved, compacted schoolyard.

Soil samples from each growing area were sent to Cornell Cooperative Extension and to NOFA-NY for laboratory analysis of nutrients and other chemical factors. Both tests came back exactly the same regarding the amount of amendments our soil needed, so we began to add those materials.

In the left photo, students spread limestone dust to raise the soil pH (acid-alkaline balance), add calcium (Ca), and increase the Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC).

Creating fully fertile garden soil from a lawn takes a while—most often, three years. It takes more than one season to digest and distribute soil amendments such as rock powders and organic matter, and for stable, diverse communities of micro-organisms to be established.

Fertilizers are purchased, mostly in bags from Fertrell Organics in Bainbridge, Pennsylvania—the oldest producer of organic fertilizer in America. Each bag of Fertrell fertilizer contains bonemeal, bloodmeal, potash, chicken manure, rockdust, and other organic material.

Initially we spread fertilizers over the entire growing area. In this photo, a student applies fertilizer with a mechanical spreader. After the soil becomes fertile with an abundant supply of nutrients, we can apply less fertilizer and target it for specific crops and plants.

We also put greensand on each growing section. Greensand is a rock powder soil conditioner that actually binds sandy soil and loosens clay soils.

In addition, each growing year, students apply fertilizer into the rows as they plant the seeds to provide nutrients as the seeds begin grow and develop roots. We also sidedress each of the plants when they are older in their growth, and when they begin to bear flower or fruit.

Some crops are heavy feeders and require extra fertilizer. Other crops, such as peppers, tomatoes, eggplant and similar fruiting vegetables, require special fertilizers such as phosphorus (P) or nitrogen (N) for maximum yield. This is when we sidedress by applying a band of fertilizer right along the plants' root zone.

Last, we added generous portions of organic compost to each section. Compost is organic matter (carbon = C), which improves air supply, and increases soil's capacity to absorb and hold water. Compost also adds a variety of nutrients, including nitrogen (N) and trace elements. Most important, compost is full of micro-organisms—bacteria, fungi, mycorrhyzae, mold, algae, protozoa, arthropods, actinomycetes, nematodes, and other wee beasts—to make our soil alive.

Compost was donated and purchased from Empire Mulch (formerly Saratoga Organics), and was added to each 1000 square foot section. Nine yards of compost are added to each section once every three years.

Shoveling and spreading compost on 9,000 square feet of garden is a lot of physical labor. We usually do this in the fall, when the weather is cold and there are no crops growing on the beds.

In this photo, students smooth the compost over to apply an even three to four inch layer of compost over the surface of each growing area. Compost gives soil its dark, blackened color which most people iddentify as fertility.