In this issue

Greetings to All,

Here at GrowingWISE the pace of activities has been fast and furious.  Like the old saying goes:  “You got to make hay while the sun shines.”  And that is exactly what we tried to do with the record number of consecutive sunny days we had this summer.  The yield of the garden was greater than ever before.  The new design features of the garden and poly tunnels were a great success.  The raised beds we installed for a portion of the garden produced exceptionally well after the late start from the construction process.  Another poly tunnel was constructed and tests using fresh manure to grow tomatoes and peppers proved conclusively positive.  Probably the biggest test for the Alaska Bountea was the dozen or so different varieties of heirloom tomatoes we tried.  All of them produced very well and I’m still learning what to do with several of them.  It has been an incredibly educational and entertaining summer.

On the educational end of things, we were pleased to see that our children have been learning with us.  Our oldest daughter, Hannah, impressed us with her ability to visualize the full spectrum of the environment around us with a poster she drew.  It was entered into a contest sponsored by the local Soil Conservation district and to date she has been awarded first place at both the district and state levels for her age group.  So keep in mind it’s never to early to get the children involved.  Just remember to make it fun and let the Alaska Bountea parties provide the entertainment.   As proud parents we provided our children with the double bladed lawn mower/composter seen in the photo below.

The entertainment came in waves.  It started with garden tours for a couple of local tour groups.  They would come by and take a walk through the gardens.  Inevitably, we would hear comments like; "Wow!!! Is that a cabbage?", “I didn’t think you could grow artichokes in Alaska!”, “I’ve never seen so many huge and brilliant blossoms on a geranium” or “I can’t believe there are that many tomatoes on one plant!”.  The expressions on peoples’ faces were entertainment for us all.  It had a lot of similarities to the expressions I had when I first witnessed John’s garden a few years ago.  The Alaska Bounty Soil Stimulant System has put us head and shoulders above the yield of the average garden using regular seeds.  The best part came when we could pick ripe fruit and vegetables from the vine and give it to the visitors.  The taste test is always the most convincing aspect to any food.  Everyone loved the taste and in some cases it was said, “If they tasted like this in the store I’d eat them all the time!”.

Another exciting event occurred around the same time as the Alaska State Fair.  John had visited our garden a few times over the summer and was telling me that he thought we had some real contenders for awards at the fair.  I didn’t think too much about it and just kept throwing tea parties in the garden on the normal schedule. But I knew that John had been there many times before and has many records to show for it.  About a week before the entries were to be taken to the fair, John called and said he had a film crew from Japan coming in to do a film segment on “Biggest Things”.  He explained that because of all the hot weather, he had harvested most of his garden already and was wondering if we minded if the film crew could come over and film the harvest of the vegetables and fruits we were going to take to the fair.  Since I wasn’t going to be available, my lovely wife – and your Customer Service Rep - Debbie, agreed to participate in the activities.  To make a long story shorter Debbie, with Johns assistance, harvested and entered two new state records in the large vegetable category for tomatoes and green peppers.  The film crew documented it all in great detail and Debbie now holds a couple places in the Alaska State Record book.  The tomato weighed in at 2.522 pounds and the pepper weighed 1.203 pounds.  That's Hannah holding Debbie's state record pepper in the photo.  How's that for a giant vegetable??  And the taste is Oh! SoOOO! Good!  Bring on the fajitas.

So join the GrowingWISE team in celebrating the incredible results and benefits that nature has provided to those who choose to use the Alaska Bounty products.  The feature article in this edition of GrowingWISE shares more about the mineral rich and diverse aspects of the humisoil in replenishing your soils.

Sid Richards
The GrowingWISE Team.

Nature's Mineral Mining Process - Part 2

My summer fishing trips have a way of just immersing me into nature.  I am able to take the time to recognize the subtle changing and fascinating world around us.  I have time to think while I’m at my favorite fishing hole.  The awesome power of the millions of gallons of silty water in the Copper River as it passes by me only a few feet away, coupled by the 40 ft high vertical rock wall that we tie off to heightens the intensity of my awareness.  Only a narrow rock ledge and the back eddy, a giant whirlpool that constantly changes in size, separates the rock wall and river. The back eddy changes the direction of flow 180 degrees to the main river current.  At the interface between the back eddy current and the main river current, the water virtually stops.  A friend and I fish from the boat as the river surges. The water level may change as much as 8 inches in only a few seconds.  I’ve seen fish actually come out of the water as it subsides.  The ride resembles the Merry-go-Round at the fair with jerks of changing direction as we hit the end of the rope or bump the rock wall.  All the while holding a 15 lb net from 2 to 12 ft down into the nearly still water where the net has the least resistance.  The anticipation of a jerk from a 6 to 60 lb salmon holds our curiosity.  As the time lingers on, each bump on the net is analyzed as to whether it’s a fish or the whirling current changing the direction the net is hanging from the hoop.  As the temperature and humidity change, I find the environment is just full of energy.  Even the daydreaming has a way of getting pretty ambitious.

From this vantage point, I tried to look deeper into the big picture of what nature is really doing.  The west flank of the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountain range form broad mountains with gentle slopes.  In a macro sense the geology is exposed at the middle elevations above tree line but below the snow line.  The mountains are covered with lush vegetation to about the 2,500 ft elevation and covered with snow or glaciers where it reaches above 6,000 to 8,000 ft elevation.  This is typical of most mountain areas in Alaska.  Much of the exposed areas show the various colors of the different rock types, which adds to the beauty of this unique landscape.  This alone should be sufficient to calm my curiosity, but the heightened sense of energy sends me even deeper into this natural process that keeps Alaska so pristine.

As I researched the formation of these mountains I found that they are made up largely of thousands of lava flows that have erupted mostly from broad volcanoes.  This extensive volcanic terrain, called the Wrangell volcanic field, includes about 4,000 square miles.  This is an area slightly smaller than the State of Connecticut which extends eastward from the Copper River Basin through the Wrangell Mountains into the St. Elias Mountains of Alaska and the Yukon Territory of Canada.  The Wrangell volcanoes are among the highest mountains in North America and some of the largest (by volume) in the world.

Most volcanoes in the Western Wrangell Mountains are unlike other volcanoes located around the Pacific Rim. They are the product of the accumulation of hundreds of relatively fluid lava flows to create broad flanked mountains with gentle slopes, typical of shield volcanoes, rather than erupting explosive lavas forming steep-sided cones. But today only youthful Mount Wrangell still displays a shield-like form.  The other, generally older volcanoes have had much of their superstructure removed by glacial and other erosion processes. 

This helps to explain even more about the make up of the Alaska Humisoil that provides the basis for the diversified biological life.  The minerals that feed our plants are some of the same minerals that are brought to the earth’s surface in this area by the lava flows.  From there it is eroded and crushed by the weight of the glaciers and transported by the waters from the ice melt which we looked at in the last newsletter.  Finally, the minerals are deposited when the velocity of the rivers current diminishes enough to settle the mineral filled sediment out of the solution.

In a similar way, minerals in the form of ash erupt from the volcanoes from all around Alaska and are transported by the wind for many miles until they are deposited to the grounds surface.  The mineral content varies based on where in the earths' core the magma (molten rock and gases) come from.  This aspect of the volcanoes provide a diverse range of minerals that accumulate over time.

So again we find more unique aspects of the humisoil that are very beneficial to soils which have been depleted of their original minerals.  Ash layering as well as lava flow sediment brings the minerals from the earth’s core to the surface of our Alaska environment.  The layers deposited by ash from nearby mountain ranges provide additional benefits that give it an extraordinarily wide range of minerals.  The minerals lay dormant or become covered by more sediment until they are contacted by a soil food web living in an organic decaying biomass.  But when they do - Watch out!  What happens is that the biological activity in the soil food web processes the minerals to become immediately available for the plants roots to use.  And, as we know, a little goes a long way.  This incredible natural compost has a very diverse range of soil food web characters present to process the wide range of minerals.  Does it get any better or is this the crème de la crème of soil amendments?

So, on top of our garden looking the best that it ever has and catching our limit in fish, I think I can honestly say, “A good day fishing is worth a bounty of soil wealth."

Minimizing Losses

In our garden, as well as many gardens I’ve visited, the vegetables and fruit are often scarred and bruised from one of many reasons.  Just as with the flesh on our bodies, the flesh of the vegetables and fruit start to decompose (die) and this is attractive to mold and fungus.  I often find a tomato that is in perfectly good condition except for a split in the skin where some fuzzy mold has started to grow.  Instead of discarding the whole tomato I just cut out the part that is growing the mold and eat the remaining portion.  If this type of thing is happening to a large amount of produce, here is a great way to stop the mold or fungus and preserve the remaining portion of the produce.  First, dilute 3% hydrogen peroxide with cold water at a rate of ½ pint hydrogen peroxide to 5 gallons of water.  Next, submerge the produce in the solution for 10 minutes and rinse under cold water.  The oxygen in the hydrogen peroxide kills the mold or fungus and stops the growth.  After rinsing there are no residual harmful effects to humans.  Refrigerate for short term storage and cut out the scarred area prior to using.  This method has saved a lot of fruit and vegetables from being discarded prematurely.