Posted on 03/23/2008 11:36:40 PM PDT by 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."
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
White Tea sounds interesting, I will have to see if it has reached Arizona stores.
LOL, we are always behind on the good stuff.
Thank you for the info.
Is the garden growing well?
The past week or so, I have been posting wildly, so you have a wide variety to read, all the subjects that I can find.
It is your turn to post for awhile.
Thanks for reading the thread.
Granny
Granny - every thing on this thread is being printed for future reference! I’ve got a BOOK going, darlin’! (And, I THANK you so much!)
A hard freeze (22 degrees at 3 AM) got the tomatoes. The straw and buckets weren’t enough.
But I have back ups and put SOME of those in. Tonight is supposed to be just a frost, but I decided to try those cheap styrofoam coolers placed upside down over the plants.
Man, I hate finding more reasons to justify keeping junk.
However, the peas and some unprotected, by accident, lettuce came through the freeze in fine shape. I would have thought that kind of cold would have got them, too.
I haven’t heard about the local fruit crops, though. I hope they’re OK. That could be a real set back for those guys.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2011224/posts
Food Riots Made in the USA
The Weekly Standard ^ | 04/28/2008 | William Tucker
Posted on Sunday, May 04, 2008 4:53:59 PM by Delacon
Bookmark
I live in La. We usually have had our air conditioners running danged near non stop for over a month by now. I’ve probably had them on only a couple of times during the day this year. I woke up about 4:00 this morning and reached over by hubby and grabbed my share of our heavy comforter, (I was covering the bed with a light Chenille this time last year) and mumbled, ‘global warming my ass” as I tucked it up under my chin. It woke him up and he laughed.
LOL! Love your post! (And I know what you mean!) ALGORE - tell us again about Global Warming! LOL
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2011269/posts
British MP hits out at EU over basmati rice shortage [tariff]
Times of India ^ | 5 May 2008
Posted on Sunday, May 04, 2008 7:21:59 PM by DeaconBenjamin
LONDON: Growing unease in the Indian restaurant industry over the shortage and rising prices of basmati rice has reached the House of Commons with an early day motion condemning the European Union for imposing tariffs on the grain.
He's getting rich off these morons and their carbon credit buying. That idiots really fall for it is scary.
It's May, and I haven't turned on our BR air conditioner once, don't need too. The house got hot a couple of times while I was cooking supper so I turned the LR and kitchen air on so I didn't stroke out. As soon as we're finished eating, they go off again.
Hubby loves this global warming and wants it to continue, we're saving a small fortune on the electric bill. lol
Welcome to the thread, join in and help with the posting, if you like.
Thank you for coming to read.
I have had lettuce with snow on it for a couple days and it was fine.
Yes, we are all praying for the fruit crop, I am tired of imported fake fruit.
Keep planting, and then stand back and laugh, when it all takes off..........
cheap styrofoam coolers placed upside down over the plants.<<<
But my hobby has always been finding a use for junk, there was a time, back in the 1960’s when my family swore they were afraid to stand still, as they were in danger of being spray painted with gold paint and called an art object.
LOL, then we went to black for the wrought iron effect.
What I did not spray paint, I covered in paper mache or cloth mache...........which is simple and lasts longer.
Strips of cloth, dipped in a mixture of about half Elmer’s white glue, half water and smoothed down with a regular sponge.
LOL, now with that formula, you can cover anything.
On your picnic coolers........why not save the milk and large soda bottles, fill them with hot water and put them under the cooler with the plants......
It would not be a total waste, as the water gets dumped on the ground and irrigates and you refill again.
I kept them in my garden area, to warm in the sunlight and give off heat at night..........
Those fancy “Wall of Water”, things that they make to protect plants, are nothing more than a bottle of water, that sit in a circle around the plant, heat in the sun and give off the heat as they cool.
The fancy name would be ‘passive solar heating’.
If you circle the plants with bottles of water and covered them with plastic, you would have the same thing for free.
These tomatoes will grow...
Laughing and thinking you have been reading my mind.
I have not figured out how to sort this mess, and if I got involved in trying, then there would not be time to post.
So I post and try to make a note of the important to me posts on paper, which I then do dumb things like knock off the desk and watch go into the “you will never get me out of here” space behind the desk.............with some others that have collected over the years.
My index for the first half of the thread gone.
It pleases me that you are finding things to keep..
I'm thinking of starting a garden and am finding many good tips here.
I have always thought that God had a sense of humor.
Gore and his crowd, this year have felt God’s laughter, as we feel the cold.
I do not have my air cooler connected as yet either.
It is chilly here, now.
It is always easy to welcome Freepers, and my pleasure.
Good for you, you will be glad that you are starting a garden.
It appears that 2008 is going to be the year of “not enough food” in the world.
In digging up some of the survival information last night, I was a little surprised to find all the details of the coming food shortages, were posted there 6 months ago. And they were right.
Join in, if you have questions, there are many on this thread that have more knowledge than I do on gardens.
Where are you located?
I agree, Granny. God does have a sense of humor. I have seen examples through so many of the scriptures - especially Paul’s.
I’m in So. California. A good place to have a garden, I think. We have lots of sunshine.
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