The Gardening Category
Considerations for a late season patio garden
If your stocking up on seeds for a patio garden, cold weather garden, or shaded garden, here are some things to take into consideration.
Due to the lack of sunlight, the plants growth might be stunted, the plant may not mature, and if it does mature it might take a lot longer then normal.
Because of the slow growth, plant crops that:
Can be eaten at anytime – do not need to mature
Mature fast
Rich in nutrients
Do not require to be cooked
Grow well in partial shade
Do not require lots of sunlight
Some examples:
Cabbage
Broccoli
Greens – collard, mustard and turnip
Radishes
Rutabaga – root crop, eat the leafy tops
Spinach
Home Grown Onions
Out of all of the crops that I have grown, onions have probably been the easiest. They can be grown from seeds or transplanted as sprouts. Onions are pretty tolerant of soil conditions, pest and diseases. That makes them a perfect choice for a home garden.
One of the more popular onions are the 10-15Y. The 10-15 stands for the date that the onion seed should be planted – October 15th. The “Y” stands for Yellow – as in Yellow Onion.
Local feed and fertilizer stores should get 10-15Y onion sprouts in around December or so. If you do not want to plant from seed, just buy some sprouts and put them in your garden.
Use some organic potting soil, or manure for slow release nitrogen. After the first month, throw some 21-0-0 around the onions and water very good. The nitrogen will promote the growth of green shoots, which will be used by the onion to make the ball.
Somewhere around the middle of summer the tops of the onions will start to die. That is when its time to dig up the onion ball and store in a cool dry place. Or, you can dice the onions up and dehydrate them, or dice them up and store in the freezer.
Question About Acorn Flour
On my “Lets talk about pecan trees” video on Youtube, ArboriusOwns posted an interesting comment.
I would love to see a video on how to make acorn flour if you have that knowledge in you bag of tricks. I kinda know but would love to see it done.
This question got the little wheels in my head to spinning. For a disaster to be so bad that people are eating acorns, there would have to be a total collapse of society.
During outbreaks of the plague in the middle ages, so many farmers and merchants died, that an untold number of people in the cities starved to death. There was nobody to grow the food, there was nobody to transport the food, there was nobody to sell the food. People were eating the grass in the fields. Parents were killing children to eat them, children were killing parents to eat them. There are even stories of people digging up dead bodies to tear the flesh off the bones.
Our modern day food production system is very fragile. Just a couple of events could have a very negative impact of society – but hopefully not as bad as what the Black Death had.
Pecan Trees
Between fall and early spring there is a time period where hardly any crops can be grown. This is where the Pecan Tree comes in.
The Pecans will usually ripen around late October – early November, and when stored in a cool dry place will stay good for months. Unlike fruit trees such as apple, fig and peach, pecans do not have to be canned, preserved or frozen. Just keep them dry, cool and they will stay good for a long time. This makes them an excellent stock for winter storage.
Patio Gardening Project 3rd Update
Patio Gardening Project Episode 4 – The first set of radishes that were planted 3 weeks ago are coming along nicely. The second set of radish leaves have sprouted, and the bigger leaves are about 2 inches across.
The Spinach has not done too much of anything.
The onions have come along nicely with about 6 – 8 inches of growth in 2 weeks.
If you have any comments, please post them in the patio gardening thread of the forums.
Patio Gardening Project – 2nd Update
This is the second update to the Urban Survival Patio Gardening series. In the first video, the 2 tubs were taken, filled with potting soil and were planted with radishes and spinach. The feetilizer that was used was stuff that you might use for flowers.
Episode 1 – the introduction
Episode 2 – the first update
The radish tops are about 1 inch – 1 1/2 inches across. I feel that their growth might be a little stunted due to the cool weather and lack of full sunlight.
The spinach has not done anything worth talking about. Just a few are sprouting and they are not really doing anything.
The green onions are coming along rather nicely with new shoots 1/4 inch – 3 inches tall. The green onions came from a local grocery store, the tops were cut off for a baked potato and the root ball was planted. Within a matter of days new shoots are starting to come out of the onion.
Patio Gardening Project – 1st Update
This is the first update to our patio gardening project. Last week we took 2 tubs – in 1 tub spinach and onions were planted. In the other tub some radishes were planted.
The Radishes were the first ones to sprout. The onions are green onions that my wife and bought from a local grocery store. She cut the tops off to use in a baked potato, and the bottoms were then planted. Once the bottoms are planted, the roots start to sprout new tops, which can then be cut again.
In 7 more days another batch of radishes and spinach will be planted, and the results will be posted. Hopefully, in 2 more weeks we will get our first harvest of radishes.
Urban Survival Patio Gardening – Episode 1
This is the first video in a series on Urban Survival Patio Gardening. The plans are to take a plastic tub and turn it into a small garden. The tubs were used to store canned goods and dried products under beds and out of sight of friends and family members.
Once the food is taken out of the tubs, they are just sitting there not doing anything. So lets take them fill em full of dirt, add some fertilizer, seeds and lets see what happens.
Survival Garden Seeds
Survival Food
Every survivalist should have seeds stockpiled for a survival garden. The first questions is, why would anyone need a “survival garden?” During extended wide spread disasters, food production and shipments might get disrupted. Most grocery stores only have a few days worth of supplies in their warehouse. When the panic buying kicks in, those stocks could be wiped out in a matter of hours.
In the days before a hurricane makes landfall, local grocery stores are cleaned out. There is no reason to think the same thing will not happen if there is an outbreak of some kind of new disease, or some kind of other world wide event.
During outbreaks of the plague in the middle ages, starvation was a serious issue. As farmers were dying off, and the merchants died off, there was nobody to raise the food or ship it to the cities. People who live in an urban environment, and who depend on the grocery store for their food – they especially need to take home gardening very seriously.
Home grown onions
Onions
Home grown onions are an easy item to grow. Even for those gardeners that have a black thumb and kill everything they touch, onions should still be able to live through the touch of death.
The way onions grow, they have several shoots that come off the main root. These shoots develop sugars, which then go into the bulb and help the bulb grow. When the shoots start to die, that is a sign that the sugars are going into the root ball.
When stored properly, most onion root balls can be stored through the winter. In early spring some types of onions will start developing shoots, which is a sign that they should be planted.