Posts Tagged home garden
Reviewing your seed stockpile
Spring is just a couple of months away. As the warm weather gets closer, some of us are going to be putting seeds in the ground in 6 – 7 weeks.
Over the next few weeks the local feed and fertilizer stores will start getting their shipments in. As the stores start to get their seeds in, now is a good time to review your seed stockpile.
Last year my wife and I planted 1/4 acre of corn and peas. But due to the drought, nothing came up. This year I plan on planting a garden a little smaller and a little closer to home so I can get a water hose to the plants. This year I need to replace the seeds that we pout out last year.
Some of the seeds in my stockpile:
Beans – snap beans and pinto beans
Bell pepper
Broccoli
Are you ready to plant a garden
Are you ready to plant a garden? If not, why not? On Tuesday October 5, 2010 by Time magazine posted an article saying that Wal-mart had to roll back its rollbacks. As a result, food prices have jumped to a 2 year high. Add to that the Russian failed fall wheat crops, that has pushed wheat to a 22 month high.
Producing your own food is one of the easiest ways to off-load some financial strain. If your having problems paying your house note, electric bill, insurance, buying clothes, internet bill, cell phone bill,,,,,,,, something has to give. If you and your family are running on a shoe string budget, sooner or later that string is going to break. When that happens, financial disaster can set in.
Raised bed gardens – do not take any special equipment – just get some landscaping timbers, or old cross ties and build some raised beds. Find someone with rabbits, get some manure, and use that instead of potting soil. Rabbit manure makes great fertilizer and it can be cheaper then potting soil.
Harvesting snap beans
The snap beans are really starting to come in. If we could get some rain, they would be producing a lot more, but you just have to make due with what you have. In all, we probably picked 4 – 5 gallons of snap beans.
Planting potatoes, peas and corn
Potatoes, peas and corn – plant them in that order.
Commercial grade fertilizer has 3 numbers, such as 13-13-13. Those three numbers stand for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (also called Pot Ash).
nitrogen – large leaves, tall growth – greens, spinach, corn, okra
phosphorus – root growth – potatoes, turnips
potassium / pot ash – pod production – peas, beans, corn, okra, squash
Stockpiling food
There is an interesting thread in the Survivalist Forum about Food Preps. Some of the topics being discussed are stockpiling canned goods, stockpiling dried or vacuum sealed foods, buying MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), canning your own food, stockpiling family sized or #10 cans of food, or something else.
Regardless of how much food you stockpile, its impossible to stockpile enough food for a lifetime.
Here is what my food preps look like:
Canned goods bought from local grocery store
Dried foods – dried beans, dried rice, and the such stored in mylar bags
MREs and Eversafe meals
Stockpiling as much seed as possible – beans, peas, corn, squash, okra, radishes,,, only to name a few.
Food stored in #10 cans
Freeze dried food in pouches with a 7 year life span
Survival Garden Seeds
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.
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Home grown 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.
Fruit tree considerations for the urban survivalist
One part of the survivalist preps that is often over looked is the fruit tree. Instead of having to plant a garden every year, just plant a few fruit trees. Take care of the trees, give them some fertilizer, keep the bugs off of them, keep them trimmed and you might just have a food producing machine in your backyard.
Most people have a corner in the backyard where a fruit tree could be planted. If there is not enough room for a full sized tree, look into some miniature fruit trees. Some of miniature types only grow to be 6 – 10 feet tall.
Urban Survival Tips
When the term “Urban Survival” is discussed, thoughts of MREs stacked to the ceiling, closets filled with cases of bottled water, tons of dried beans and rice piled up in every corner of the house – those kinds of thoughts come to mind. The fact is, there is more to urban survival then just stockpiling…
2009 food prices
An article posted on MSN should be great concern to everyone that eats some kind of food. Nothing but worse for Texas drought According to that article, 97% of Texas is in a drought. Some people might be saying “so what?” Well, there is a lot to be worried about. Texas is the 2nd largest…
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