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 ...
Sounds like you need to get out some o' that canned bacon and vegetables and make some of that old fashioned comfort food tomorrow!!! That's the ticket.
I got a question. Have you ever made jelly or jam from cantaloupe? You were listing a lot on a previous post and I'm wondering because I'm about to do it without a recipe but ya never know that outcome of those things. I found recipes on the 'net but they all start with a cantaloupe. Well, I juiced my cantaloupes when I had them so I've got a gallon of cantaloupe juice. I think I'm just going to add sugar, pectin and a bit o' lemon juice, cook and wait for the jell on the spoon like other fruits. But, it would be nice if I knew somebody else had tried it successfully.
I guess we could horde seeds which may become more valuable than gold when times get really tough.<<<
People are hoarding seeds, and I consider it to be a good idea.
If kept cool and dry, they last 5 to 10 years, you won’t get a 100% germination, as they age, but I have used 10 year old seeds.
They have found some of the grains from the time of Christ that will still grow.
With the major seed companies owned by the likes of Soros and few private owners, they are definitely an item that we could not afford to buy, or find to buy.
Plus in a world war, all the young men are in the military and there is no one to grow the seeds, there were great shortages of seeds during WW2.
In WW2, we shipped cabbage seeds to Russia by the ton and little was for sale here, this from a Gov publication about seeds in the war years.
With the plant shipping the peanut products, knowing they were bad, it makes me ask who owns the plant?
I have a hard time, believing this was all a big accident.
ROFL!!! Ain't that the truth! We need a sign for the kitchen door.
I occasionally had the same problem. I moved my radios to a high shelf, just below the ceiling. I suspect that might not work for you either. If you don't get a good answer in the next few days I know someone I can ask who is something of an expert on such things but will have to wait a few days to make the call.
“Hard to guess how large the crowd was, at least 20 ducks and 10 or 15 geese.”
What a cute story!<<<
It was fun, of course I already knew they could talk.
One of the geese that we raised from the incubator, was Bill’s pet, he would come running to Bill, and loved to drink water from the end of the hose, as Bill held it.
I have seen him nip and taste Bill, he would start at the hand holding the hose and gently close his beak, every inch or so, up the arm, shirt, collar, around the edge of the hat and back down to get another drink.
It was hot and he might have been tasting the salt on the skin or was it his way of kissing?
We didn’t have the jewel toned Humming Birds here, and I haven’t seen one of the drab ones in years.
They are fun to watch.
And they have done and are doing a bucket load of things to keep farmers and everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving of NORMAL seeds.<<<
This has worried me for years.
One of the Florida Universities had a group, it was Agricultural professors from all over the world, I got their mail for a couple years and followed some of the trials of the farmers.
This scares me and it is what pushed the growing of the old style plants, so they could save the seeds.
I think that it’s got to do with sticking to old standby’s for your garden. Things that our grandparents grew and ate because it kept well.
I’m looking into getting the Roma Italian Plum tomatoes and seeing how those seeds do. I hear they are non-hybridized.
Turnips are as well, as far as I know. Potatoes are easy.
I just got a catalog from Territorial Seed Company and I think they sell non-hybridized seeds. They’ve certainly added a lot of new merchandise this year. A lot of stuff like grain mills and yogurt makers. Things that I thought would be good for people interested in doing everything on their own.
http://www.territorialseed.com/
Well, you said a mouthfull there. I get tired of being lumped with those folks just because I want to garden “my way” and use old fashioned means of pest control and fertilization. *WE* preceeded the greenies and the gores in this! ~grin~ We are the frontrunners. ~wink<<<
LOL, in full agreement, I was doing it before most of there parents even thought of them.
I have had to laugh, when I posted from a ‘that kind of site’ and felt the need, on here, to say out loud that I was not a tree hugger, but rather, would call me a plant lover.
And I have a select few friends who are either fellow planners or close enough friends that I would take them in because I know they work and do their part.<<<
That says it all and you are lucky that you have friends who will pull their own weight.
Dr. Bill has said several times to use laundry soap, most of the girl type products have extra oils in them, which will bind the nuclear particles to you, rather than washing them away.
I don’t know about later planting for the malabar, I always planted it when I thought of it and it will need to be started in the summer warmth, to have over winter months.
Good grief! And it just dawned on me that I forgot to mention the pennies again! DOH!!!! <<<
Well there is an excuse for another visit.
Thank you for being so special and helping folks, they are blessed for knowing you.
Glad the dinner went well, it sounded so good, in your other post.
Have you thought of making pickles out of the veggies that are extra, maybe with a hot pepper in them?
I am still taking jars of the sweet green tomato pickles and chow chow to my friend every time she runs out, so she’s still eating a bit of produce from her husband’s efforts. <<<
I am smiling.
There is so much to learn about people and we never know it all.
If a man is not from the south, he would have no idea of all the recipes that we make from green tomatoes, I even like them cooked like fried squash, dipped in corn meal or flour first.
LOL, how well I remember.
Bill had few requirements for his food, but he did not like to eat a sandwich and for dinner, it was rare that I served them.
He never understood, how I could be in the kitchen all day, canning or stocking the freezer, and not have something for him to eat.
Once when I was pretty sick, my mother came to help.
She was a pie baker, so fine we liked pies, but Bill really was needing real food and he was a hard worker and his body wanted it.
He had been doing the best that he could for a couple weeks and the kids were not really old enough to cook.
Mom cooked all day.....several kind of pies and then fed him hot dogs for dinner.
When I bought my first 10 cent packs of seeds at the dollar store, I did some digging in my old books and the current lists, as a friend and I had agreed that if we were to have a garden in this valley, it had to be the old varieties, maybe not the heirloom seeds, but at least a type that they saved seeds from and had grown enough years to survive.
I found many of the 10 cent seeds listed as ‘old varieties’, even read on one forum a person’s advice to not buy the old varieties at the dollar store, as there were so many wonderful hybrids out now.....LOL
To me new is not better, except, my bread machine pleases me, LOL, it is 10 years old.
I moved my radios to a high shelf, just below the ceiling. <<<
You are right, it won’t work for me.
I will consider any advise that you get.
http://www.territorialseed.com/
I had one of their catalogs and used it as a reference book, it is amazing the information in it.
I don’t think that I ever ordered from them.
Another use for diamotaceous earth is to kill intestinal worms. I give it to my cats mixed in their food, cured one fellow of a big ole worm that was making him very sick. Took about two weeks of giving him the DE. Now I mix it in their food most every day. It can be eaten by people as well, for worms. The place I learned it from - http://www.wolfcreekranch.net/ - is an animal rescue place, and the people who work there take DE since they’re working around and cleaning up animals all the time, sick and well.
I took it for a few months “just in case” when we purchased it. No change in my health, so I must not have had any worms!
It can also be rubbed into the animals’ coats to kill fleas, my cats have no fleas now, and also put in their bedding. It’s not good to breathe the dust, that’s all.
Philippines Executive Order! Rolling Out The Backyard Food Production Programs In The Urban Areas
Friday, February 6, 2009 7:00 AM
From:
“Michael Levenston”
I, Gloria M. Arroyo, President of the Philippines, by the power vested in me by
law, do hereby order - Rolling Out The Backyard Food Production Programs In The
Urban Areas - January 16, 2009
Malacañang, Manila
By The President Of The Philippines
Executive Order No. 776
Rolling Out The Backyard Food Production Programs In The Urban Areas
WHEREAS, two-thirds of the world is in recession, though the Philippines is not;
WHEREAS, it is not business as usual; government agencies must hit the round running;
WHEREAS, the government should take advantage of the window of opportunity, i.e.
declining inflation and interest rates and good weather;
WHEREAS, the government has committed Three Hundred Billion Pesos (P300,000,000,000.00)
to economic stimulus programs, including comprehensive livelihood and emergency
employment program (CLEEP), that will save or create millions of new jobs.
WHEREAS, part of CLEEP consists of backyard food production programs like Gulayan
ng Masa and the Integrated Services for Livelihood Advancement (ISLA) for subsistence
fisherfolk.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GLORIA M. ARROYO,
President of the Philippines, by the power
vested in me by law, do hereby order:
See the complete document on our web site.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Our web site here:
City Farmer News [http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1102446665543&e=001DRRlJ2YTqjesyMjUZBeLuht9yWY_JOYOw6pC9rN374lyPaRNIH2HIsKyQKrgtavXOJ7wKwFzvMlOqhguZAUXfKrF9hpFMTfbKrKuTQMHpNkjx0FKAFQ4Z8ifP-3ZxpcZ]
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