16. Mittleider Gardening

As Mentioned above some gardening experts believe that healthier more nutritious plants and vegetables can be produced by the judicious addition of chemical based fertilizers to the garden soil. The Mittleider gardening method, arguably, is the most important of these gardening techniques. The Mittleider method of gardening is similar to hydroponics in that plants are grown in a mixture of chemicals designed to meet the nutritional requirements of plants. In hydroponics the chemicals are provided to the plants in trays of water. Mittleider gardeners feed their garden plants with chemical fertilizers that added to the soil around the plants in their raised bed or dirt gardens on a weekly basis. The rational for growing plants and vegetables in soil enriched by chemically based fertilizers is based on the fact that everything in this world is chemical and plants cannot tell the difference between nitrogen from a dead leaf or pile of manure from that in a fertilizer bag. Mittleider's research revealed that, of the 118 known elements, plants need only 16 for healthy vigorous growth, three of these are oxygen, hydrogen an carbon dioxide which, of course are readily available in the air. The remaining 13 are all soluble minerals that are absorbed through the plants roots. To cover the possibility that his commercial Magic Micro Mix of essential chemical nutrients may be missing one or more important elements, Mittleider recommends that plants be grown in beds of natural soil so that the roots of the plants can extract anything that might be missing from his Magic Micro Mix directly from the soil. The main quarrel I have with the Mittleider method of gardening is that the main component of his magic mix (which includes 10 ounces of Magic Micro Mix and 4 pounds of Epson salt) is 25 pounds of all purpose commercial grade fertilizer. So essentially, I believe, the Mittleider method is nothing more than gardening with a concoction of potentially toxic chemical based fertilizers to which an expensive proprietary mix of trace elements has been added. In this respect, the next time you consider applying an all purpose fertilizer with an NPK value of 15-15-15 to your garden consider this fact. The nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium make up only 45% of the contents in the fertilizer bag. What makes up the other 55% of the bag's content? One study of 29 commercial fertilizes from 22 states revealed the answer, everything but the kitchen sink! Most importantly, these commercial fertilizers contained a significant amount of industrial waste and high levels of toxic metals including lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, nickel, beryllium and dioxin. All of these contaminants are toxic to the human body, even in trace amounts. These toxins have the potential to kill all living things including the beneficial microorganisms in garden soil, as well as your liver and kidneys. In this respect, Mittleider's followers claim the chemical fertilizers they add to their garden soil do not produce a sterile soil free of the beneficial microorganisms that organic gardener's believe are essential for healthy plant growth. Really? To the contrary, I do not believe that you will find an abundance of earthworms in the soil of a Mittleider chemical garden. Other aspects of the Mittleider garden methodology are similar to those of organic gardeners who grow their plants upward rather than outward. For example, tomatoes and other vines are attached to baler twine which is strung from overhead wires suspended from T-Frames. T-frames are expensive to construct, but are a consideration for those who have limited space for a garden. Unfortunately, T-Frames invariably are constructed from wood that has been treated by arsenic based preservatives. I, for one, do not want arsenic treated wood in close proximity to the vegetables that will end up on my kitchen table. For this reason I grow my tomatoes and string beans on eight foot stakes and my peas and cucumbers on 5 foot high wire mesh fences. In summary, I have no doubt that gardeners can grow beautiful plants and vegetables using the chemical based fertilizers recommended by Mr. Mittleider. However, I do question, because their potential toxicity, how suitable vegetables grown from chemical fertilizers and their toxic metal contaminants are for your kitchen table. Finally, I believe it is much cheaper to grow vegetables in one of the dirt-less gardens I describe in this book than it is to grow them in a garden fertilized by all purpose commercial fertilizers and expensive trace element supplements. While it is probably true that the plants can't tell the difference, I'll bet the earthworms will know the difference and most likely your liver and kidneys will too. Don't take the risk, garden the organic way. This is a chapter from my soon to be published book- Gardening The Organic Way.