Home gardening offers ways to trim grocery costs [Survival Today, an on going thread]

Dallas News.com ^ | March 14th, 2008 | DEAN FOSDICK

[nw_arizona_granny]

Americans finding soaring food prices hard to stomach can battle back by growing their own food. [Click image for a larger version] Dean Fosdick Dean Fosdick

Home vegetable gardens appear to be booming as a result of the twin movements to eat local and pinch pennies.

At the Southeastern Flower Show in Atlanta this winter, D. Landreth Seed Co. of New Freedom, Pa., sold three to four times more seed packets than last year, says Barb Melera, president. "This is the first time I've ever heard people say, 'I can grow this more cheaply than I can buy it in the supermarket.' That's a 180-degree turn from the norm."

Roger Doiron, a gardener and fresh-food advocate from Scarborough, Maine, said he turned $85 worth of seeds into more than six months of vegetables for his family of five.

A year later, he says, the family still had "several quarts of tomato sauce, bags of mixed vegetables and ice-cube trays of pesto in the freezer; 20 heads of garlic, a five-gallon crock of sauerkraut, more homegrown hot-pepper sauce than one family could comfortably eat in a year and three sorts of squash, which we make into soups, stews and bread."

[snipped]

She compares the current period of market uncertainty with that of the early- to mid-20th century when the concept of victory gardens became popular.

"A lot of companies during the world wars and the Great Depression era encouraged vegetable gardening as a way of addressing layoffs, reduced wages and such," she says. "Some companies, like U.S. Steel, made gardens available at the workplace. Railroads provided easements they'd rent to employees and others for gardening."

[Petruchio]

Back in 1997 I read a book called Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew . Based on what I learned I built 8 - 4' X 4' boxes 1' high, and filled them with quality topsoil.

I grow more than we can eat in a year from just those 8 boxes.

There are a lot of advantages:
1- NO RABBITS! Before rabbits could and did clean out a whole row of beans in a day. In 10 years we have not had any losses from critters.

2- Less water wasted. Because you only water the raised beds and not the whole area you use less water.

3- NO soil compaction. With the size of 4' x 4', the farthest you need to reach is 2'. So there is never a need to walk in the soil compacting it.

4- EZ weeding. With the box being 1' high it is a cinch to sit there and weed. Even in the wheelchair it is no problem to weed once a week.

5- EZ Harvesting. Once again, the size and height makes it a breeze to reach any plant to harvest.

As a side note . . . I looked on Google Earth and the boxes are visible from space. Not real clear, but you can tell what they are if you know about them.

[Cindy]

Around 7 or 8 pm give or take a few minutes.

[chickpundit]

Thanks :)

[nw_arizona_granny]

When I quit laughing, I will tell you why.

Several years ago, there was a lot of talk about using cornmeal in the garden, and as it was a new thought to many of them, they were going wild and ordering it, I think one variety had Orange Essential Oil, added and it was expensive.

Before I said yes, I wanted to check and see if I could find it, LOL, and I did and find that now, it is also used to cure fungus under the toenails...................

Sorry, it strikes my funny bone, as I knew a man with fungus on his hands and face and he was not a nice man, I keep thinking that we can soak his head first.......evil my thoughts are.

http://www.google.com/search?q=cornmeal+to+treat+fungus+in+the+garden&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Keep in mind that my Walton price figures are not up to date, it has been awhile since I ordered.

50# of yellow cornmeal, delivered as part of my larger order of course, cost me something like $15.00.

4 # pounds in the stores here, even 5 years ago, was costing right about $5.00.

So I ordered 50# and have been sharing every since.

Their 25 pound bags of oatmeal is so fresh, that for the first time since I was a kid, I was eating it raw out of the bag.

the brown sugar smells so good, it gets eaten out of the bag.

Lentils, rice, you need lots of salt in storage, as it has other uses, it is cheap in the 25 pound bags.

I buy very little in the cans, the bags are cheaper.

WaltonFeed.com is in Idaho, but they ship all over the country.

I have not used cornmeal in the garden.

I had the fungus problem with big tomatoes in the greenhouse and solved it by going to the old fashioned cherry tomato.

Or at the link for Preservation farm, check his tomato seeds, if not enough sun is the problem, then his “plant does not have a lot of leaves and tomatoes will burn” that did just that in the Arizona desert, for me, should work well for your shade problems and the air would circulate and the fungus might not be there.

I have some doubts about the cornmeal working, in that it will feed the bugs.

I know that some say if you feed them dry things like coffee grounds, that the dry stuff swells up and kills them........well, all I can say is “not here”.

If you are looking at the orange added type, that scares me as in soapmaking one of the first things you learn is to be careful with using the Orange E. Oil, as it is not photosensitive and you will get a bad sunburn..........

LOL, not sure that I used the right word above, another trap for me, I know a little about a lot of things, but never enough to have the whole story and get it right.

To me, if the orange eo will burn my skin, what will it to do a plant?

Essential Oil is the oils that are distilled from certain plants, they are used in healing and I look my doctor in the eye and remind him that I still use them, even if they will not cure my emphysema.

And the final point that makes me laugh at corn meal for the garden, is the American Indian, first of all, they make a hill and then plant the corn in the center of the hill, then comes the beans that will climb the corn stalks and on the outside, the squash, so the big leaves will keep the soil cool and help to keep the moisture from evaporating.

It is called the “Three Sisters”.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=GyX&q=+Three+sisters+planting++for+American+Indian&btnG=Search

And in every Indian Ceremony that I have ever read about, they take a small bowl of corn meal and throw pinches of it into the wind, to give back to Mother Earth, what they have taken from her.

http://www.google.com/search?q=+Corn+Meal+used+in+American+Indian+ceremony&btnG=Search&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial

They also consider corn meal to be a healer.

In the garden group, there was a lady that had been married to an American Indian, for many years, she said he always put corn meal in his garden to [protect it?] or to give back to the earth, what he had taken from it.

I am 3/4 Cherokee, so can understand both worlds, I am a Christian, but also have respect for Mother Earth, as the real Indians say God appointed her to teach us how to use the earth.

NO, not this mangled new age of twisted indian ways that you hear on tv and radio.

[Petruchio]

By the way, the other reason that I opted for small packs over bulk is that bulk goods pose a long-term storage problem, not being packed, usually, in water/moisture-resistant packaging...

I made a one time purchase of a bunch of new 1 gal. paint cans. I buy dry goods like beans and rice in 50# bags. On "canning day" I get a chunk of dry ice. I put a golf ball size piece in the bottom of a paint can. Fill with beans (or whatever). Add 3 Bay Leaves. Set a lid on top. LOOSE!!! If you seal the can now it WILL blow up! Wait about 1 hour, when the bottom of the can gets warm the dry ice is gone and you can seal the lid tight.

What happens is the dry ice fills the can with carbon dioxide, purging all oxygen from it. No bugs can survive to spoil the contents. Stuff will stay fresh for years like this. Also the cans are easy to open and reseal as needed for use.

[Free Vulcan]

I’ve seen some hand ones but they look cheap.

I’ve got a zillion books, that’s the one I usually refer to. It tells you how to do everything, from a real homesteader who’s done it.

I ran a truck gardening operation for about 6 years. The area I live in just isn’t much of a market for home grown produce, but I sure did learn how to grow things. Learned so much I don’t even garden by the books anymore.

This year I’m going to fool around with biochar.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Good, I am glad you found us.

There are so many fine points on survival, that even I don’t have them down pat. or I am plain lazy.

Nothing on the ricin, since the cop tested positive.

I hope you will stick around this thread and join in, we are going in all directions, but that is what it takes to survive, I think.

Time that I take a break, I did not think so many Freepers would want the list and it does my heart good that they do, it is good to know that people are waking up, all I find are higher prices notices.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Thank you for putting your links here.

I will have to wait until later to read them.

Do you have other favorites, that we may not know of? if so
please share them with us here too.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Thank you for the links, the first two I know, but will have to wait until later for the last one.

They are good for ideas, if one is inventive........I am good at dreaming things up, which rarely turn out in real life as they were in my mind.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Thank you for being on my ping list.

[nw_arizona_granny]

I put your frugal link on my list for later.

There just do not make enough hours in a day.

There are several good groups in Google for survival and frugal and also some that have been taken over by the rabble crowd.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks for the kind remarks. I don't really keep lists of links around for gardening topics, but they can easily be turned up with, hmm, this:

Google

[nw_arizona_granny]

Now we are safe, I found the stinkbait recipe:

http://www.google.com/search?q=recipe+for+stinkbait&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

I did not realize that we were going cat fishing, there is no need, to make the stink stuff, just use hot dogs, they love them.

It was all we had in the ice chest and 3 or 4 teens, too young to need a license, they caught some nice ones with hot dogs.

And if you really want to make fishermen unhappy, with all their fancy lures and flies, who are not catching even a nibble.

Then my two year old niece, attempted to get rid of the half eaten baloney sandwich, by dropping it in the stream, and you should have seen the trout that came to dinner.

So there is my recipe for fishing.

Nope, I do not fish, don’t like them.

But will if I get hungry enough.

[nw_arizona_granny]

We have the same problems, in my stored dry foods, I use a double plastic, under the jar lid, and put a half dozen of the Bay leaves on top or even in the jar.

Most of the time it works.

Here, we go over a hundred in the summer, and have about half the summer as humid weather, we call it the monsoon season.

[Doomonyou]

Check.

[Free Vulcan]

I’ve got a big garden, but loved the square foot method so I modified it. Basically went to 24 ft plots separated by 6 ft of grass.

Each plot has a different category. I have five: greens/roots, corn/beans, tomatoes/peppers/eggplant, peas/cabbage/onion family and melons/gourds/cukes/squash which is on a 6 year rotation with one fallow plot for cover crops, and also one permanent plot for herbs and seed saving. I wish I could go the biblical 7 year rotation but don’t have the room right now.

I make 1 or 2 ft wide beds by going over it with a tiller set 3 in deep and then with a broad fork to loosen it to about a foot, and a second pass with three tine fork if necessary. Then hill it up like I’m doing potatoes and flatten off the top to a 3 to 4 in. deep bed. Between that and broadforking it makes for a 1 ft deep bed without the needs for sideboards and gives access to the subsoil.

Then make my rows in the beds or a trench in the case of peas. The deep soil really boosts the crop yield and with creativity have double crops on a number of the beds. Because 24 foot is dividable by 2,3,4,6,8,12, & 24 you can fit several different things in a bed down to a 1X1 ft square. It’s efficient and has worked well for me.

[nw_arizona_granny]

I prefer Organic, if I am growing it, but cannot afford to buy what they stick a label on and call organic....

Is it impossible to raise your own chickens?

When I was hatching eggs in the incubator, I used my old aquariums for them, with a 25 watt light bulb and it worked well.

Mary taught me to feed them cultured buttermilk instead of water, as it puts the good flora in their stomachs, just as it does yours.

How do you feel about rabbits? They are fun and pleasant to raise, altho, we are not all that fond of the meat.

I knew a widow lady, who had about 5 small children, she shot the cottontails, cooked them for making mexican food and canned them in jars, that was her source of meat.

Yes, homegrown beef and pork will spoil you for the store bought meats.

Call the Farm Extension office and ask who will sell you chickens.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Hitler looks like him, she has a black mark, like his mustache and has his nasty personality.

She has beaten and run off the other cats that attempted to be leader of the pack and is happy now.

It is her way or no way.

[Joya]

Thanks! Ongoing prayers for Aunt J. please. The viewing’s today and the funeral tomorrow. That she will have a godly perspective and will yield to the Lord and open her heart to Him.

J.

[nw_arizona_granny]

LOL, yes stinkbait is our secret word...........

And now that I have posted the links to the recipe, via google, they can’t say we did not earn it.....