Replies

THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY

Before I start on this week’s gardening saga, after last week’s thread, an FR gardener from my town sent me a Freepmail. My town! I thought I was the only Freeper in my town. I won’t reveal his identity, he can do that if he wishes, but I saw pictures of his garden. Maybe I can coax him to put that link on our thread – how about it fellow gardener Freeper? He said he enjoyed my posts on the gardening thread. I think I know why – I think he was laughing his head off at my attempts to grow something.

My week was filled with gardening as I learn to do this stuff. I wrote this yesterday because it’s long and I wanted all of you to know the details of how I’m getting my act together. Maybe there will be some new people reading and they will know it’s not impossible to do this.

:o) THE GOOD: If you recall, I had planted various veggie seeds in six bags of potting soil mix and put them in blank spots in the garden. No seeds were up as of yesterday. Yesterday it rained and it’s raining again today. During a stop in the rain today, I went out and two bags have plants growing. One bag’s plants are over two inches high – how does that happen in one night? I know plants do their growing at night, but plants growing that tall in one night is magic. The other bag with plants are at least an inch. No plants have appeared in the other four bags. I also know the wild tomato plants are up, planted in the ground, but they are tiny and that soil may not allow them to grow and produce. I have Roma tomatoes and cherry tomatoes growing, all are still green at this time. I think all the lettuce is a bust – that soil in those two planters may not be good enough to support them. New potting soil will go in those next spring. I have Little Gem Lettuce seed coming and I’ll plant that in potting soil mix. Maybe I’ll get fabric growing bags for that as I’m out of pots. The bags are inexpensive and I also have some sweet peppers and basil in tiny pots that need to be transplanted. Picked those up weeks ago at Lowes – they are not heirloom.

:o( THE BAD: I ordered plastic tags to stick in containers and the ground so I would know what is planted there. Yesterday, I wrote all the names on tags with the included pen full of paint (not ink, paint). Had to use throw away surgical gloves because the paint leaked out of the pen and that paint is supposed to stay on the tags even in rain – I would have had black hands with paint that didn’t want to come off. So, when I went out a short time ago, guess what? All the writing on the bags was gone due to the rain. I’ve got tags but don’t know what’s in the individual bags. Rats.

:o( THE BAD: My little Yorkie, Prissy, started barking at the glass door that leads to the garden. She knows if anything moves outside and always tells me by barking and jumping on my chair and hitting me in the chest with her two front feet if I don’t respond immediately to her barks. I looked out there and there was a YOUNG SQUIRREL in my garden. I picked Prissy up, opened the door, came out and squirrel left. A damn squirrel, I knew it would happen. I knew several days ago, one was coming in the garden because there are footprints in some of the bags. Johnny said the squirrel may have eaten the seeds out of the bags. Damn.

:o( THE UGLY: I had to face facts – squirrels are in those trees behind my garden in another person’s yard. I have to figure a way to fix this and there are the birds in those trees, too, with their houses in the trees and they are going to come into my garden and eat my stuff. When I was out there today and plants had come up, I put a sheet of row cover over those bags with the exposed plants. Maybe that will deter the squirrel or maybe not.

:o) THE GOOD: I have figured a way to defeat this problem in the future. Somewhere in my outside storage building, I have an unopened very, very large bird net to keep birds out – and squirrels if it’s done right. I have to give up planting in the dirt as I can’t provide security for that area. Now, if this was a SHTF time and I had to have this food, I would kill (with my pellet gun as that’s why I got it) every squirrel that came around, and I may do it to this one if I have proof he is eating my stuff instead of just walking across the bags. I will give the squirrel a fair hearing but those footprints are evidence he’s been there. Maybe he’ll take the SODDI defense (some other dude did it), blame it on another squirrel. (I worked with a lawyer on a case choosing a jury for him and he said his client was going to take the SODDI defense (I had to ask what that was).

My solution to fix this by next spring is this: Plant all the food in containers I put on the deck. I’ve already gotten the two big containers to plant tomatoes and I will get more for more tomatoes and other foods before next spring. I also bought a very large fabric container in which to plant heirloom sweet potatoes and I read how to keep sweet potatoes until the next season so I would have my own slips to plant if TSHTF and couldn’t get slips from a company. Everything will grow in containers on the deck and the huge bird net will go over all of it. The net will stay up off the plants due to the tall lattice that’s on the big tomato containers.

I have a new garden hose as the very old one was heavy and went into kinks multiple times when I tried to water and I spent time fighting with that thing. Fixed that.

I ordered a flower mix that attracts hummingbirds and butterflies to plant at the border of the dirt in the garden. Another one is the Sesame flower to go in a big pot in the garden and it attracts pollinating flying critters. It does produce Sesame seed to eat so I’m sending some of those seeds to Johnny so he will have flowers that produce food. I don’t have that order yet.

:o( THE BAD: I don’t have enough space to grow all types of veggies. Thinking of when TSHTF, what foods do I need to sustain life, not what would be nice to have? Johnny says I need beans, corn, squash, tomatoes, peppers and that will keep one alive – I would add sweet potatoes to that as they are very high in nutrients.

:o) THE GOOD: I’ve been researching and I can grow corn on my deck which I thought I couldn’t. Each container will have corn, bean, squash in it. The beans use the corn stalk to grow up and that also strengthens the corn plant. The corn plant shades the squash plant. If I have 8 of these or more, clumped together, wind will pollinate the corn plants and if there isn’t any wind due to my high brick walls, I’ve got an outdoor fan that will do it. I don’t know how many containers I’ll have but I’ll stagger plantings so I’ll have food growing for as long as possible. I have to come up with a fall garden plan, too.

I’ll have to do the research to know when each of those plants can be planted and others planted later (staggered planning) to keep producing food month after month. I have a folder to keep all this information on paper.

:o((( THE FINAL UGLY: Johnny. I ask questions and he keeps telling me facts, then I have to come up with solutions to get around those facts that would stop me from carrying out my plan. He is the factual messenger of bad news regarding gardening and you know what has happened to bad news messengers throughout history. I love Johnny, he is one of a kind.

LOL. Love your posts too. The row covers have worked for me with the squirrels. Some people claim that you can put dog hair or even human hair around the plants to discourage these critters.

With respect to your lettuce or spinach. So far the mushroom compost is beating the tar out of top soil and mel’s mix, so I would advise to get some and at least combine it with whatever type of soil you decide to use. Also the black seeded simpson lettuce did well for me in the heat of summer in a pot where it got shade from a tree during the hottest part of the day/afternoon.

I use Milk cartons cut into strips to write on with permanent markers for labels. I addition, I also have a gardening plot drawn on graph paper. I write down what is planted in each spot, in case the marker gets lost or too faded to read.

Somewhere on a gardening thread, I recently typed in one of the complete diets from biointensive method booklet I bought from bountiful gardens. They actually list the foods and the nutritional values, and daily requirements. I think that was a couple of weeks ago when I was talking about Amaranth.

If you were going to grow your own food, and had no meat available, Grains and beans would be your main source of protein: Red Wheat, White Wheat, Rice, oats, etc. Amaranth is higher in protein and you can eat a few of the leaves while waiting for the grain to mature. It is also low gluten.

Many of the grains do not have the omega 3 fatty acids. Flax seed has a substance that the body can use to convert to omega threes. Walnuts also have the omega threes covered. You could stock pile some krill oil I guess, but I tend to look beyond the stockpiling to long term homesteading, because that’s kinda the life I want.

In addition to nutrients, you also want things that have high caloric value such as potatoes. Tree collards can substitute for dairy calcium requirements.

Gardens Alive ranks Veggies 1-5 with 5 being the most nutrient dense foods:

Tomatoes - 5
Edamame - 4
Green Beans - 5
Cucumbers - 5
Cabbage - 5
Broccoli or Cauliflower - 5
Peppers - 5
lettuce or greens - 5
Peas - 4
Corn - 3
Potatoes - 3
Asparagus - 5
Garlic - 3
Squash - 4
beets - 3
Carrots - 4

Now, if I am going to exist on mostly beans, then I have got to have some onions, taters, and a slice of cornbread to be happy. A slice of tomato is icing on the cake if ya know what I mean. So even though Potatoes and Corn are only 3’s, they are high on my list, besides they provide the calories for fuel to get out and do all this gardening stuff.

I’ll dig out my books and post some more on this later.