OK. . . . You've never gardened before, you've learned that by planting a kitchen garden you can save a bunch of money (and have fresh produce at your fingertips, thus saving gas to the grocery store), you've been inspired to get moving by Michelle Obama and her new kitchen garden on the White House south lawn and it's just struck you that the time to move on a kitchen garden is NOW (if you live in the northern hemisphere). However, all the practicalities of starting a garden have overwhelmed you. And on top of this, you'd like to work directly with nature in your new garden, but this notion has overwhelmed you as well. If you've looked at the size of the two Perelandra Garden Workbooks, you might be thinking you don't have enough years left in your life to learn all that's in those two books. And then there's that kinesiology thing. Now you are overwhelmed beyond belief.

To help you regain consciousness, get up and start moving during these critical times, I'm introducing Perelandra Gut Gardening! No, you won't be planting guts or even harvesting guts. You will be using guts — your guts, to be precise — to work with nature consciously in your garden. This couldn't be easier. No complicated or long processes to do, no steps to follow, no kinesiology to learn . . . It's just you, your gut and nature. All you have to do is activate your gut garden by doing the simple two-step process, and then get on with starting your garden.

ACTIVATING A GUT GARDEN

1. Write down the goals of your new garden.
For example: A kitchen garden with vegetables and herbs that can provide fresh produce through the late spring, summer and early fall for my family of four (two adults and two children). These are the vegetables my family won't eat: _________, __________, ____________, _____________.

This is just an example to give you an idea of what you need to decide about the garden right up top. You may have more or fewer people you will be feeding. You may want flowers in your kitchen garden, as well. You may want just an herb garden. You define what kind of garden you wish to start. Also, add any information about time constraints. The amount of time you can spend tending and harvesting if you also work full-time and no one else in the family is willing/interested in helping in the garden is different than the garden time a family of four who are all interested in gardening can put in. So don't be afraid to add any time issues to your goals. Remember, gardening should be relaxing and fun, not torture.

2. Find a quiet spot and say the following (aloud or to yourself):
"I want to activate a Perelandra Gut Garden for working consciously with nature in (my kitchen garden)." (If it's not a kitchen garden, insert what your garden is here.) "I ask that all relevant information from nature be shifted to me so that I will pick it up through my intuition and gut instinct."

That's it.

Help for Starting Your New Garden
Now turn your attention to the task of setting up your new kitchen garden. Sense where your intuition and gut instinct are moving you and just step forward in that direction. If it's breaking ground, use your gut connection with nature to locate the garden in the best spot and establish size. What feels right? If you need seeds, sit down with any seed catalogs that seem right to you and go through them picking out the seeds/plants that resonate strongly with your gut. For soil, is your gut telling you to get the soil tested? Is your gut telling you one fertilizer is better than another? All of these questions are typical questions a gardener needs to ask. So for a gut garden, you won't be adding a new layer of questions. You'll simply be adding a new layer of answers to the normal gardener questions, and those answers will be from nature directly.

By the way, if all you have is a balcony in your city apartment, you can still be a gut gardener and set up a few pots for vegetables and/or herbs. Just decide your goals for this and do the two-step process to activate your gut pot/container garden.

There are a bunch of sites on the internet that are offering good and thoughtful information for starting an organic garden. In the interest of not reinventing their wheel, I'm including a couple of links here. From these links you can move to other related links and get information for getting your garden started. A gut garden is an organic garden that includes nature as your conscious partner. So before you start pulling together the organic gardening information from any site or other source, activate your gut garden by going through the two-step process. This will help you move through the organic gardening information and pick out those bits of information that will apply to you and your garden.

Links for starting an organic garden:
Kitchen Garden Tips: Be Like Michelle Obama!
Dear Obamas: Congrats on the Organic Garden

The Gut Gardener Refinement
You're moving along with this gut business and all of a sudden you are faced with a decision or question and don't know what to do. You've said, "Gut don't fail me now," but your gut seems to be taking a coffee break. You've got no instinct, no gut, no nothing. No problem. All you have to do is say, "Nature I need some help here." Then describe the problem/question as fully as possible. (For example: "Insects I've never seen before are eating all of my broccoli plants. What do you want me to do?") Since you are not using kinesiology for getting information from nature you do not have to reduce the situation to a series of simple yes/no questions. Just explain the situation as you would to another gardener. If you do not sense anything right away, step away from the issue (either leave the garden altogether or work on something else in the garden) for 24 to 48 hours. You'll get your clarity or answer from nature within that period of time. It may come at you from several angles: instinct and/or gut and/or a news report on tv on this very issue and/or a conversation with another person and/or your three-year-old child/grandchild coming up to you and saying something nutty that somehow clarifies the whole issue for you. Nature will get the necessary insight to you.

Anytime you have a question, just say, "Nature," and then ask your question and wait for the clarification or answer. By saying "nature" first, you alert your partner that you are speaking to it (and not just mumbling to yourself) and nature will automatically set up the gut gardener refinement for successful communication with you.

The Gut Gardener Learning Curve
If you want to start a garden and function with nature as a conscious partner, you will have your own learning curve to address: That little, itty bitty issue known as control. Your challenge is to stop overriding your gut instincts with what you know about how gardeners have done things traditionally and what others tell you to do. The more you are faithful to your instincts, the stronger your working relationship will be with nature and the more successful your garden will be.

How Does a Gut Gardener Know the Information Is From Nature?
Sometimes you'll wonder if you are just talking to yourself or if you have taken full control of the garden and are making all decisions on your own and just don't realize it. The question will come up, "Is nature really giving me this information?" When this occurs — and it will often — think about what you have done in your garden based on intuition and gut instinct. Would you have come up with this body of information or plan of action on your own? Or was it beyond anything you could have come up with or even imagined? In short, when you see that there have been times when your instinct has been beyond your sense of logic or knowledge, you know nature is working with you. When you've said, "Hmmmm . . . that's interesting," about different bits of insight and instincts, you know nature is working with you. When your new garden is doing better and feels better than your neighbor's five-year-old garden, you know nature is working with you. When that neighbor says to you that your garden looks and feels great and asks you what you are doing, you know nature is working with you.

About those Perelandra Garden Workbooks
While you are working as a gut gardener, you can still do something to get to know your partner better. I suggest that during those hot summer afternoons when you have no desire to work in a garden, you find a nice shady spot and read some of the nature sessions I've included in the Workbooks. They are the italicized sections. This will give you a better idea of the breadth and depth of the body of information nature holds. I suspect that as you become more familiar with nature through the sessions, how you work as a gut gardener with nature will grow as well.

Over time you may want to incorporate some of the Workbook processes into your garden. Whatever you feel like you want to do, be my guest. Gut gardening gives you time and confidence and you can gradually incorporate the processes as you feel more comfortable and confident about working with nature. There's no feeling that you have to jump into the Workbooks all at once. The important thing is that you have started a garden — actually that's a smart thing too — and that you have committed to working with nature in an organized and conscious manner in that garden. This buys you all the time in the world when it comes to the Workbooks. And actually, if you are happy as a gut gardener, you can remain a gut gardener forever and not incorporate any of the Workbook processes. But I suspect once you get comfortable with gut gardening, you'll realize how easy those processes are and you'll instinctively feel incorporating a few of them would be beneficial.

Shifting from a Regular/Organic Gardener to a Gut Gardener
If you already have a functioning garden and want to start working with nature in a gut garden, all you have to do is go through the two-step process and begin functioning as a gut gardener. It doesn't matter if you have already started your new season. The gut garden will commence right at the point you activate it with the two steps. As with a new gut gardener, you'll need to focus on getting out of your own way and releasing control. But this adventure and working with nature will be well worth it as you see changes that improve your already-established garden.

ADDITIONAL EASY ASSISTANCE
FOR GUT GARDENS AND GARDENERS
Incorporating Essence of Perelandra and ETS Plus for Plants/Soil

Essence of Perelandra moves your gut gardening experience way down that sometimes elusive strength-and-balance road. By including EoP you are adding a deep foundation of balance from the Perelandra garden directly to your new gut garden. Rather than taking years of careful, step-by-step progression (see those aforementioned Workbooks) when it comes to building your garden's balance with nature, you can insert the deep Perelandra garden balance right into your full gut garden experience. Your gut garden's progression will take a giant leap forward and its production will take an equal giant leap forward in quantity and quality.

Click the title below for more information on
Essence of Perelandra
ETS Plus for Soil
ETS Plus for Plants

Here are some ideas on how you can incorporate EoP and combine this with ETS Plus for Soil and ETS Plus for Plants:

1. Before beginning any gardening work (preparation, setup or physical labor), prepare yourself by taking one dose of Essence of Perelandra (10 drops) orally. Your ability to feel and sense intuition and gut instinct will be greatly enhanced.

2. Seed starting in flats: If you are also working with ETS Plus for Soil, first mix ETS/Soil water solution (8 drops/pint water, 17 drops/quart water) into the soil when preparing it for starting seeds. Don't moisten the soil fully. By that I mean moisten it by about half. (This is a judgment call on your part but you'll get the feel for it once you do this a couple of times.) Wait 1 hour. Now finish the moistening by adding an EoP mixture (10 drops per quart of water). Let the soil sit over night before planting.

3. Using the NS application process, shift EoP to all of the seeds you'll be using this season. Just gather your seed packets and bags into one big pile and shift one dose of EoP to the whole pile all at one time.

4. For any seeds that need to soak before planting: Soak the seeds in an ETS/Plant water solution: 8 drops/pint water, 17 drops/quart water. (You've already shifted EoP to them in #3.)

5. When the seeds sprout, mist the seedlings with an EoP mixture (10 drops/pint or quart of water). Continue an EoP watering/misting schedule as the plants develop in the flats (10 drops EoP per quart of water). If you need one or more gallons of water to do the job, just multiply 10 (drops) X # of quarts per watering can.

6. When potting up, moisten the new soil with ETS Plus for Soil and EoP as you did in #2. Let it sit overnight, then pot up. Immediately after potting up mist the plants with ETS Plus for Plants and muddy them in their new pots with ETS Plus/Plants. (6 dr/pint, 9 dr/quart, 25 dr/gallon) Then resume the normal watering / misting rhythm with the Essence of Perelandra solution (10 drops per pint or quart).

7. EoP and "foreign imports:" By foreign imports I'm referring to anything that is brought into the garden from outside — like bags of fertilizers, new tools, equipment, and plants from a nursery. As soon as you bring these things home, shift one dose of EoP to them using the NS application steps. For those fertilizers, tools and equipment that have already been part of your garden/farm for years, go ahead and list what you have, set up with nature and shift a dose of EoP to them as a group just to get that part of your garden/farm on an equal EoP plane.

8. Using the NS application, shift a dose of EoP to your garden soil. Do this now before tilling, plowing, fertilizing or planting. Right after tilling, plowing, fertilizing or planting, shift a dose of EoP again to your garden soil. By doing this, you'll keep quickly resettling the soil back to balance.

9. When you plant/seed the garden, muddy in the plants/seeds with an ETS Plus for Plants water mixture (6 dr/pint, 9 dr/quart, 25 dr/gallon).

Then at the end of each planting day, shift a dose of EoP (NS application) to the areas you planted and those plants/seeds.

Trust your guts and nature and enjoy your garden!