Cold Frames

Now that our gardens are at rest for the winter, we have time for additional garden-related projects, such as building some cold frames. These are transparent-topped, low enclosures that are used to protect plants from cold and wet conditions, like miniature greenhouses. The sides reduce the effects of cooling from wind, the top lets in light, and the whole thing limits heat loss through convection, especially at night.

Cold frames were traditionally built out from the walls of full greenhouses, and were used as part of the acclimatization of plants from the protected environment of the greenhouse to being fully outdoors. Seeds would be started in the greenhouse, and when big enough they would be moved to the cold frames, then finally to the garden. This gradual change improved survival rates considerably.

In addition to transitioning young plants in spring, cold boxes can also protect plants from early frosts or other weather conditions throughout the growing season.

A commercial cold frame

Construction of these handy structures can be fairly simple. Although kits that only need basic assembly are available, cold frames sit at the lower end of complexity as DIY projects. They can even be made entirely out of recovered materials, such as pallets and plastic sheeting.

The sides are slanted and joined to a higher back and a lower front,  ensuring the top is angled to help with water runoff. Any clear or translucent panel can be used as a lid, making this a great way to repurpose old windows, or glass doors for larger frames. The top can be hinged for easy opening, or simply latched in place. 

A cold frame can even be converted into a hot frame with the addition of a heat source, such as an outdoor rated heating blanket or heating coil.

A variety of crops respond well to containment in a cold frame, including lettuce, parsley, onions, spinach, radishes, turnips, and so forth. Depending on the size of the cold frame, one type of crop can fill the entire space, or multiple plants can be grown so they produce in sequence to ensure a more constant flow of vegetables.

When placing a cold frame, make sure the top is facing south to get as much sun as possible. If high winds are a concern, having a way to stake the frame to the ground is helpful; a few large U-Nails set into each side allow a plant stake to be run through them and into the ground.

Whether starting young plants or protecting mature ones, cold frames are a cool project for the home gardener.

Putting the Garden to Bed

Now that mid-October is upon us, most gardeners will be looking to prepare their beds for winter. At this point in time, many areas of the country will have a frost coming soon if it hasn’t already occurred. A hard frost, also called a killing frost, is generally the beginning of the end for outdoor plants for the growing season. 

A light frost means temperatures fall only a few degrees below freezing and just for a few hours. Hardier plants may not be damaged by this, but more delicate ones will. In contrast, a hard or killing frost is when the temperature drops below 28 degrees Fahrenheit for a longer time, such as overnight, which will kill pretty much all perennials and root crops. Some plants, such as garlic, can benefit from a hard frost as I mentioned in a previous post. Most don't, however, so there are some precautions that we should take. 

One of the easiest and most common ways to protect plants from frost is to cover them to help retain heat and moisture. The most frequently used material for this purpose is burlap, though for smaller, low-growing plants a cardboard box can suffice.

Placing covers over the plants at night and removing them during the day, assuming the temperature allows, can extend their productivity slightly. However, eventually most areas will get too cold for this to work; at that point, we can tuck our beds in for their long winter's nap. 

We start by removing any plants still in the ground (especially weeds) and turning the soil. This is also a good time to mix in any natural fertilizers, such as manure or home-made mulch, so they can break down over the winter.

Once the soil is prepared, we cover our raised beds for the winter to keep seeds and debris out and our leaf mulch top cover in. We typically use the same burlap we covered the plants with before we pulled them, but we've also used layered newspaper or sheets of cardboard. Make sure that whatever is used, the edges are weighted down against the wind.

When spring rolls around again, all we have to do is pull off the covers, give the soil a light turn, and start planting.

Good luck, and may your garden sleep well.

Weed Killers, Maaaaaan

Anyone who has a yard, whether there's a garden present or not, has to deal with weeds. On our property, the driveway is long and gravel, so during the high growth months, nature tries to reclaim it for her own.

Because of the size of our property, we have a lawn service and they do have some serious chemical weed killers they can use. However, we don't want anything like that near our vegetable garden, so other solutions are necessary. 

Fabric

The easiest but most time-consuming is pulling weeds as they appear in the garden. Less simple, much faster, but also somewhat less effective, is using weed-resistant fabric on top of the soil before planting. While it should be covered with a layer of mulch, weed-blocking fabric can also be used on its own, though it won't stop as many weeds, nor last as long, due to UV breakdown. We can usually get two years out of ours without mulch, and three to four with mulch.

(Speaking of mulch, it's available in natural wood and rubber forms, both shredded. Rubber lasts considerably longer, but isn't always best for food-bearing plants due to possible chemical contamination.)

You can also use layers of newspaper in the same way as weed blocking fabric. The concern here, like with rubber mulch, is with chemicals leaching into edible plants; many printers use soy-based ink, so there are safe (or at least, safer) alternatives. Newspaper will generally last one season at best.

Spray

For plants trying to get into the raised gardens from outside, I use a home-made weed killing spray:

• 1 gallon of white vinegar
• 1 cup of table salt
• 1 tablespoon of liquid dishwashing soap

Mix these ingredients together and put in a sprayer. I use a large pump sprayer, but a simple spray bottle can work as well.

The vinegar and salt both work to dehydrate the plants, and the dish soap both helps them stick and reduces surface tension on the mixture so that it flows better.

For smaller applications, a mixture of one quart of water per two tablespoons of 91% rubbing alcohol sprayed directly on the plant can be effective. It works to kill plants pretty much the same way, by dehydrating them.

For both of these compounds, the best application time is early on a sunny day. Be very careful not to get any inside the garden area, as these concoctions will damage or kill any plant with which it comes in contact!

If you are fighting weeds with deeper roots, one of the simplest methods is just pouring boiling water onto the plant. Use enough to saturate the soil and burn the roots.

FIRE!!!

Speaking of burning, the classic propane weed burner can also work well. Two things to keep in mind:

1. The charred remains of burned plants can make for excellent fertilizer, nourishing any follow-on plants, so quick follow-up will be necessary to prevent rapid regrowth.
2. Never, ever, ever use this method on something like poison ivy. The itching and blistering on our skin is bad enough; it's much worse if it gets into our lungs.

Hopefully, these options will help the gardeners among our readers keep those pesky weeds at bay without risking their health or the health of their produce.

Good luck, and good harvest.

Food as Barter

Growing food is always a good thing: if you grow more than you can eat or store, you can barter or gift the surplus. I've mentioned that when I was growing up my family grew lots of tomatoes, while the neighbor to the north grew sweetcorn along the edge of his corn field, and others grew cucumbers, peppers, onions, or something else. We all traded freely, since we were friends as well as neighbors. Mom and Dad always had chickens for fresh eggs and the surplus were taken to church every Sunday for anyone who wanted them to take home. 

Food as a barter item is nothing new, and when TSHTF it will probably come back into use. World supply lines are already under stress, causing localized shortages of some items, and prices for what is available are climbing fast; if our economy takes a serious dive, or we get involved in another war, things will get even harder to find at the supermarket. Having a secondary source of the basics would qualify as a good prepping idea.

Not all of us are going to have the room to set up a garden large enough to sustain our family, but even a few window planters or a vertical garden made of PVC pipe can grow enough to help. If you have neighbors or tribe that can grow food, maybe you should look at growing the herbs and spices that make meals more enjoyable. There are many options that aren't exactly food but would make good barter items.

Sugar

Modern people are addicted to sugar as a result of marketing strategies developed after WW2. Think about how much sugary crap the average person consumes daily and you'll see that having a supply of sweetener to trade could be worth its weight in gold.

Sugar comes from two main sources: cane and beets. Sugar cane is a tropical plant that is easy to grow if you have the climate; sugar beets will grow in much colder climates, and once harvested can be left on the ground, frozen, until they're processed. Sugar cane is a perennial grass similar to bamboo that regrows from the roots every year; sugar beets have to be planted from seed every year. Sugar cane is grown in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas; sugar beets are grown in North Dakota and Minnesota, where they'll stay frozen after harvest and can be processed over the winter.

High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is a cheap sugar replacement that takes some chemistry and equipment to produce. Having spent several years working in a plant that produced it by the railcar load, I know how it's made and don't think many preppers would be able to make it on a small scale. 

Spices

Black pepper is a tropical plant, but Cayenne and various other peppers can be used as replacements. With the modern American palate being accustomed to spicy food, peppers are a low-maintenance plant that could be used as a barter item.

Garlic and onions are root crops that take up little room to grow and are easy to store. Most of the other spices like curry, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves are all native to small areas of the world and don't grow well in other areas, hence the trade routes of ancient times. If you can produce enough to trade, there will be a market if our current system fails.

Herbs

The list of herbs used to season and enhance the flavors of food is too long for me to list here. Mints and herbs are easy to grow in a space even as small as a single pot for use in the kitchen. Growing and storing a few varieties of seasoning for trade purposes wouldn't take much room or time.

Caffeine

Somewhere around 85% of Americans start their day with a caffeinated drink of some sort. Be it coffee, tea, soda, or energy drink, caffeine is an addiction that has its claws in a lot of people. 

There's only one native North American plant that contains caffeine: Yaupon, a variety of holly native to northern Florida and southern Georgia. The leaves make a smooth tea that is richer in caffeine than Asian teas.

We have some cold-hardy tea plants that will grow in colder regions, I'll cover them in a separate article along with how they are processed.

Arabica coffee can be grown in a greenhouse in the USA, but it takes a lot of care and processing to make into something fit to drink.

Tobacco

This one is controversial; I've mentioned growing tobacco before and gotten negative feedback. Feeding this addiction is not supporting a healthy lifestyle, but if a grown adult chooses to partake of it, that's their choice. It's a powerful addiction; I've been hooked on it since I was about 18 years old. I've quit several times, but keep coming back to it. 

I switched from smoking to vaping a few years back to reduce the health effects, but I know it's not good for me. My brain is now wired to expect the nicotine and life is not pleasant without it. This makes it a valuable trade item, but I know nothing about its cultivation and processing.

The nicotine in tobacco has other uses, mainly as a pesticide. It's a powerful poison, so painting a light coating on seeds or stems will kill most insects that touch it. Since I work with pesticides for a living, I'm aware of how dangerous it can be. 

If you find yourself in a community, no matter how small, sometimes specializing in producing one thing can open up lines of barter with others for the things you can't make yourself. This is one of the basics of civilization and shouldn't be lost, no matter how bad things get.

Growing Zones

Winter is over, so it's time to get into the fields and gardens and start growing things. 

I've been seeing a lot of interest in growing food as a result of increases in food prices and reductions in availability in stores. The reasons for inflated prices and shortages are varied and get into the arena of politics, which we don't enter. This is not a blog that places blame; we're here to help people get through tough times no matter who or what is the cause. Believe what you want and blame whomever you want, the methods of surviving bad times are the same.

History

When food is being rationed, and it can happen again, being able and willing to grow at least some of your own can make life more bearable and might open up lines of barter with neighbors. 

Growing your own food isn't anything new. As little as 80 years ago "victory gardens" were encouraged during WW2 in order to free up food production for the soldiers, sailors, and marines fighting overseas, and they were common practice for everyone who had the space. If you look back more than 100 years, growing your own food was essential for anyone living outside of cities. Go back even further, or look at other areas of the world, and you'll see that growing food is a personal responsibility that we've seemingly grown beyond. This reliance on industrial food production is an aberration in human history, a temporary pause in the way things normally work. It can change rapidly, and history shows that is has happened before. 

Does the Irish potato blight ring a bell? A system of tenant-farmers with no control over what they planted led to a monoculture agricultural scheme (nothing but potatoes, which meant high profits for the landowners) ripe for a plant disease outbreak. Millions starved, or were forced to move in order to stay alive.

Early settlers in North America ran into the same issue with tobacco: the profit margin was so great that they grew tobacco rather than food and ended up starving in early Virginia history*.  The prevailing land grant system didn't help matters, and ended up being one of the causes of chattel slavery in US history.

Even today, a crop failure can mean the loss of everything to a farmer. It only takes one bad year to wipe out savings and force the sale of the land they rely on to make a living. The "500 year" floods that we've seen three times in the last 20 years have pushed many families off of land that has been in their families for generations. Reports of farmers on food stamps are real, even if they are hard to believe.

Grow Your Own

Growing your own food can be a major part of your everyday preps if you have the space. Land is nice to own, and I'd rather tend a garden than mow grass. If you made the mistake of buying into a HOA-controlled area, you may have limits on how big your garden can be and where it can be placed, so check your by-laws. 

The next step is to find out what will grow in your area. The USDA has produced a "Hardiness Zone" map that most seed and plant sellers will use to determine is a specific variety is suitable for your location. Even though it's called a "Hardiness" map, it also serves as a good representation of the growing seasons for each region. Here's the map, courtesy of the USDA so it's in the public domain:

As you can see from the legend, each zone is designated by the minimum low temperature for each location. I'm in the middle of Zone 5, which means that it will get down to -10 to -20 °F in the dead of winter. This limits what perennial plants will survive a normal winter to the more hardy plants. I can forget about the bananas and papaya, at least if I want to grow them outdoors. 

Seed sellers will also use this map for annual plants, usually printing a range of zones that a specific variety is suitable to grow in. If I see "suitable for zones 4-7", I can be reasonably certain that I will have good results in zone 5.

Find your zone and memorize it. You'll need it when you go shopping for seeds and plants.

* The last paragraph mentions lack of food because it was more profitable to grow tobacco. 

The Agricultural Extension Office

Last week I mentioned local Agricultural Extension Offices as a source of information about renting land to garden on, but that's not all they're good for: most states with a significant agricultural market will have some form of Extension Office to assist farmers and gardeners, one of the few uses of our tax dollars that can directly benefit us.

A little history first, since I like to explain where things come from. Back in 1862, Congress passed the Morrill Act that established land-grant colleges and universities to promote better opportunities in the areas of agriculture and the mechanical arts. The politics get a bit sticky since this was right at the start of the Civil War, and it was one of the federal vs. state control issues that brought about that conflict. Basically, the 1862 Act sold off federal land and granted the proceeds to the states to fund the creation of public colleges and universities. Each state received 30,000 acres per federal Senator and Congressman from that state, with the Confederate states being exempted until after the war. 69 public colleges and universities were founded this way, creating an alternative to private schools. After the war in 1890, a further Act established colleges and universities for the newly-freed black population (things were still segregated), and in 1994 it was expanded further to create advanced schools for native Americans. A list of all such colleges can be found on Wikipedia.

Land-grant colleges exist to teach agricultural best practices and other things, so they're a source of information and assistance that we're already paying for. Most of them have some form of Agricultural Extension Office system with offices scattered about the state; ours is at the county level with a physical office in every county. With over 150 years of study and research in their archives, they are a great resource for information about your local soils, crops, pests, and animals. If you find an unidentified bug eating all of your plants, taking a specimen to the local office (in a jar, please) is a good way to find out what it is and how to eliminate it.

Identifying weeds and invasive animals are also part of their job. Many of them publish hard-copy identification guides for local pests along with other books, maps, and documents that can help you grow food. Hardcopy is my preferred method of storing information, since it doesn't rely on electricity and can't be remotely altered or deleted.

Iowa was the first state to accept the land-grant college system, but Kansas was the first to establish one. Iowa State University is not known for its sports teams, but is well-known for graduating veterinarians and agricultural managers. They run our state Extension services, and the web page gives you a clue as to how much that covers. Expanding local markets and encouraging local production of foods is a part of their focus right now, so if you're looking to grow food in quantity, they have helpful information and they will share it with out-of-staters. Here's an example of what they offer just to commercial vegetable producers. This can become a rabbit-hole of research, so set yourself limits before diving in.

Reach out to your local Extension Office and see what they have to offer. It's going to vary by state and personnel, so I can't guarantee a good response, but you should be able to get something useful out of them.

Gardening Space

Spring is fast approaching, and many of us are thinking about gardening as the days get longer. As I write this in early March, many of the local farmers are fine-tuning their field equipment and gearing up for planting. Local gardeners are raking the leaves and winter debris off of their plots and getting the tillers ready for when the frost is out and they can start another season of growing food and flowers.

Growing your own food can be a good way to supplement or replace what is available in the stores, and it doesn't rely on a stressed supply chain that has recently left some shelves bare or with limited choices. Controlling your own food supply is always a good idea for preppers, and working in the dirt with your own hands to produce it will reinforce an appreciation for the food you eat. Most of us take food for granted in our daily lives, and missing a meal is unusual unless we're fasting for one reason or another. Gardening can also be a relaxing way to take time off from daily stress and enjoy a bit of nature.

However, problems arise when we don't have easy access to a suitable piece of land to grow food on. Apartment dwellers, renters that can't tear up a yard, prisoners to Home Owners Associations (HOAs) with strict rules about the appearance of properties, owners of lots too small to provide room, and those who live in arid or rocky regions unsuitable to gardening can't easily grow their own food. There are options like hydroponics and vertical gardening that can grow small amounts of food, but if you're looking to replace a large portion of what you normally buy, you're going to need to find a plot of dirt.

Land is expensive. Good quality farmland around me is currently selling for $12-15,000 per acre, and it usually comes in parcels that are too large for a simple garden. Since an acre of land is 43,560 square feet and a large garden is about 1,000 square feet (20' x 50'), it doesn't make sense to be looking at land just for a garden. Farmland is broken down roughly by the square mile (a “section”) that is further divided into quarters of 160 acres each. Each quarter-section is then divided into four, 40-acre plots for most cases. Geography and waterways will always complicate where lines are drawn, but this is the “standard” way land is divided in rural areas. At $15,000 per acre, that 40 acre plot is $600,000, and a quarter-section is close to $2.5 million. We have a lot of “paper millionaires” around here --farmers that are “worth” several million because of their land, but their annual income is closer to a factory worker than a stock broker.

Since most of us don't need and can't afford a farm-sized plot of land, we have to look at other options if we want to have a garden. Friends and family are my first choice; if you know someone with extra space; it wouldn't hurt to ask about renting or using some of it for your garden. If that doesn't work for you, there are other ways to find garden space:

• Shared Earth is a service for matching land owners and renters for gardening. Type in your address and it will find available space near you. I had a few problems with their website, but the concept is solid.
• Yard-Yum has a decent webpage. Their FAQ states that a 20' x 20' (400 sq ft) garden plot rents for $30-100 per year depending on area and amenities; raised beds and paved paths generally cost more.
• Your local extension office. Most states have an agricultural extension service run by one of the state universities, and they exist to help farmers and gardeners. The amount of information they can provide varies by state, but since it's your tax dollars that have paid for it, you should look into what they offer.
• Online services like Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist are another option for finding local space for rent. Your local area may have other online markets, look around.

Most garden landlords will want rent in cash, but some are willing to accept a portion of your crop as payment (share-cropping is the old term). Contracts vary by location and owner, so make sure you read and understand what you're signing up for:

• Expect clauses that cover chemical use, since the person growing organic foods in the plot next to you may not want your over-spray.
• I've not heard of anyone requiring a deposit like a house rental, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it.
• Check for the availability of a compost pile for organic debris and a dumpster for trash. Waste has to go somewhere.
• Hours of availability will vary. Weekends and daylight hours should be open, but don't be upset if a landlord doesn't want people wandering around his property in the middle of the night.

Good luck growing this year! Fresh food always tastes better, and producing your own makes you a little less dependent on others.

Companion Gardening: the Three Sisters System

As we head into fall and the harvest season, now is a good time to start planning our gardens for next year. These plans can include:

• Clearing more ground for planting
• Prepping existing beds for winter
• Adding slow fertilizing agents such as manure or leaves
• Planting crops that benefit from cold weather like garlic or winter wheat or rye

However, another item to consider when planning for spring is planting arrangements. Most people who garden are familiar with the concept of crop rotation; simply put, this is the practice of not planting the same crops in the same soil multiple years in a row so as not to exhaust the soil. Companion gardening, the next logical step after crop rotation, is the practice of using of certain aspects and requirements of one plant in order to benefit another plant. 

The most traditional version of this concept is called The Three Sisters Garden utilizing corn, beans, and squash, and this technique was used by American Indians to increase production and protect their crops for many hundreds of years prior to the arrival of Europeans. The corn stalks would provide support for the beans, the squash would shade the roots of the corn, and they would all protect each other from certain pests.

Two garden layouts for a Three Sisters garden

As a variation on this concept, in our gardens we plant marigolds around the tomato beds to help keep the bugs off, and pungent herbs such as basil and oregano in the same bed as the tomatoes to dissuade rabbits.

There are of course many more combinations of plants that benefit each other than these. I have an old book on the subject that, unfortunately, has lost its covers over time and the title is not printed on the pages, so I can’t pass that information on here. However, a multitude of other resources are available either online, such as Companion Planting: Three Sisters Garden Plans or The Old Farmer’s Almanac Companion Planting Guide For Vegetables as well as in print books, such as Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening by Louise Riotte or Veg in One Bed: How to Grow an Abundance of Food in One Raised Bed, Month by Month by Huw Richards.

These techniques, ancient on the one hand and proven by western science on the other, can both improve your yield and prevent disease and other damage when applied correctly. 

Good luck, and good gardening.

Container Gardening

With spring fast approaching, I thought I’d get back to the topic of growing our own food. In a previous post I mentioned raised bedgardens, which are great if you have a yard, but not so helpful for urban or close in suburban dwellers. This is where container gardening can come to the rescue.

Container gardening is exactly what is sounds like: a garden grown in various size containers. At the very basic level is the window sill herb garden, going all the way up to pots of vegetables so large they have to be moved on dollies or rollers.

There are some pros and cons, of course. On the one hand, indoor plants need just as much sunlight as their outdoor cousins, and if your house or apartment has limited window space, it will likely reduce your yield; on the other hand, indoor plants are much more insulated from weather, allowing us to grow fresh produce year round. On the gripping hand, house pets, especially cats, can spell doom to any attempt at having an indoor vegetable garden. Sorry kitties.

The author's cat Arya.

For the beginner container gardener, I recommend starting with basic herbs. Parsley, oregano, and dill are all good choices, assuming you like them. These generally don’t grow too large, and it’s easy to snip a few leaves or stems for a specific dish, leaving the rest of the plant to continue growing.

Image property of www.hgtv.com

As with all the plants in this article, these can be grown from seed or young plants can be purchased locally in early spring.

If that works out well, or you’re already beyond that level, a good next step is onions. In fact, you can grow onions from onions. If you cut off the root end of an onion and leave about an inch of body, you can get the onion cutting to take root simply by suspending the cutting, roots down, in a container of water. I’ve done this with toothpicks and an empty cat food can; keep an eye on the water level (just enough to cover the roots is all that’s needed) and top it off as required. After a few days, you should start seeing some sprouts. Once the roots and sprouts have established themselves, they can be transferred to a garden soil-filled container.

Onions can be perpetuated indefinitely with some care and luck. Simply remember to save the cuttings from the onions you grow and continue the cycle.

Image property of www.alphafoodie.com

The next step up the indoor home garden ladder is vegetables that require a bit more space. I can’t recommend zucchini or cucumbers, as they have a habit of taking over, but tomatoes, peppers, or lettuce are generally well-behaved in that regard.

As with most plants, one of the most important things is to make sure they have enough root space: if they become root-bound, the plants will not flourish and may die. Obviously, water and sunlight are also essential, but different plants will have different requirements.

Image property of www.countryliving.com

Whether you’re just starting out as an indoor gardener or you’ve kept houseplants and would like to expand into edibles, there are many resources available. One of the best online sources of information for all things plant is this Cornell University Home Gardening Extension.

For print references, I’ve heard good things about Indoor Kitchen Gardening by Elizabeth Millard and Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening by Peter Burke. 

No matter how big or small your living environment, there are options available to supplement your food budget by growing your own herbs, spices, and vegetables. 

Good luck and happy gardening!

Garden Planners

Winter is when we spend more time inside and make plans for spring. Sitting in a warm house and thinking about being able to get outside more often is a common activity in northern parts of the country. One of the things that used to be common is starting to make a comeback: planning a garden during the cold months so you'll be ready when the snow melts.

I've written before about “garden dreaming” and the joy of browsing through seed catalogs looking for ideas and bargains for a better garden than what we grew last year. The seed companies are making it easier for the digital generation to partake in this activity with the addition of free or low-cost garden planners online or downloadable. I'm still playing with a few of them, but the easiest and most convenient I've found so far comes from Gardener's Supply.

Kitchen Garden Planner (KGP)

This one is a web-based planner that lets you drag and drop various types of plants into a virtual garden bed that you've set up. It uses “square foot” plots instead of the traditional rows, which means that your virtual garden is broken up into sections one foot on a side. You can lay out several sections to create rows if you want to be more traditional, but each set of rows will be in one foot increments of width. Depending on spacing between rows, you may be able to squeeze in a few extra rows than the planner shows.

Observations

• The options for things to plant are a bit limited, but doing some research will let you substitute one of their options for a plant with similar growing patterns.
• These are kitchen gardens, so you're not going to see options for flowers and only a few herbs. Our grandparents (OK, some of you will have to reach back to great-grandparents) grew a lot of their own food in “Victory Gardens” during WW2 because most of the commercially-grown food was being shipped overseas to feed the troops. You won't be able to feed a family of four completely with just a kitchen garden, but it can lighten the load of what you have to purchase from someone else.
• There are pre-planned gardens in the menu for those who don't really have a clue as to where to start. They are easy to modify to fit your space requirements and add or subtract crops. Personally, I hate eggplant and would rather spend my time and effort growing something that I would enjoy eating.
• One of the things that I like about most of these planners is that you can save your design for future use or editing and print it out when you're ready to play in the dirt. Most of the ones sponsored by seed companies will generate a shopping list that you can order from them, which may be convenient but may not always bethe most inexpensive option.

Raised-Bed Gardening

The KGP is also set up for raised-bed gardening, where you build containers of soil that are elevated above ground level to plant your garden in. David Bock recently wrote a good article that covers them in detail. Raised-bed gardening has some advantages:

• You don't have to bend over as much or as far as you would with a flat bed. This gets to be important as you get older.
• Keeping young plants a foot or two above the ground shields them from late frosts a bit. This will let you plant a few days or weeks earlier, which stretches your growing season.
• Having your plants off of the ground makes it harder for the rabbits and other vermin to snack on your future food.
• Raised beds allow the gardener more control over the soil since it has to be placed in the bed. Tailoring the soil conditions to the crop makes for better yields. Think huge flower pots, with the same control over drainage and water retention, more efficient use of compost, and ease of weeding.
• Some crops spread by sending out roots that will form new plants the next year a short distance from the parent plant. This is good for growing a garden but bad when the strawberries start to take over the whole yard. Raised beds eliminate this problem by containing the roots- we used an old metal horse tank with no bottom as a raised bed for our strawberries, and it worked quite well.

If nothing else, playing around with a virtual garden will keep your mind off of the snow swirling around outside and keep you from succumbing to the draw of the television. Mindless entertainment has its place, but too much of anything is not good for you. Keep your mind engaged and exercise your imagination once in a while, and you'll be happier.

Raised Bed Gardening

If you have a large amount of property it’s possible to put some of that land aside for cultivation of food crops. However, if you lack those large tracts of land, that might not be feasible. 

An alternate consideration is raised bed gardening. Raised beds are available in kit form, like these, but can also be made from all sorts of materials; just be careful to line them with a barrier material if using treated lumber as one of the ingredients often found in pressure treatment chemicals is arsenic.

The first raised beds I built were made from 3”x5”x8’ treated landscape timbers. These timbers cost about three dollars each at the time, and each 4’x8’ bed took twelve of them. The process was fairly simple and I learned as we went. 

First, my wife and I dug out the ground to about the depth of one layer of landscape timber and about six inches clearance around the edges. In the bottom of this we placed a layer of heavy duty anti-weed fabric which allows water to flow through but helps prevent other plants from growing up from underneath your garden. On top of the anti-weed fabric, we placed a layer of gravel to help with drainage. Then I started to assemble the bed itself from the landscape timbers.

As you can see from the pictures, the beds are made from full 8’ lengths on the sides and half lengths on the ends. The layers are held together with countersunk lag bolts, but rebar can be used as well.

Once the frames were assembled, the inside was lined with a double layer of plastic sheeting to help isolate the soil from the chemicals in the wood. The outside space was filled in with spoil from where we dug out the site, and then the beds were filled with garden soil which we'd had delivered and dumped on a large tarp next to them to save both money and time. After the beds were filled and leveled, we covered the top with lighter anti-weed fabric. Cuts were made in the fabric just big enough to plant through.

Over the twelve years we lived at that house we increased the number of raised beds from two to four, and when we sold the house almost four years ago they were still in good shape. The current owner of the home uses them to this day.

We also made a smaller raised bed with a stone border that we used for an herb garden which we called Stonehenge.

I couldn’t even guess how many pounds of onions, tomatoes, peppers (both sweet and hot), cucumbers, etc. we grew in these gardens, not to mention all the dill, oregano, parsley, basil, etc. from the herb garden. 

As an added bonus, our next door neighbors also had a garden and we coordinated with them to some degree. While there was always overlap between our garden and theirs, we both made sure to grow things the other didn’t and we traded produce at the end of the season.

For those on Facebook, there's a raised bed group where people share tips and tricks as well as success and failure stories. Give it a try; it doesn't take much time, effort, or money to increase your food independence using this method.

Greenhouse Basics

I love fresh herbs. I also live where it gets really cold, and our growing season is 4-5 months for most things. This means I either spend a bunch of money at the store half the year getting the herbs I want, or I have to cook with dry herbs. My desire to have fresh ingredients year round drove me to look for a solution.

Bringing the plants inside would be the easiest solution, but I don't have a whole lot of appropriate space in my house to grow anything, and my dogs and cat would destroy them. This means that the best solution is a greenhouse. I don't have space for a big walk-in area, but I also don't need that much growing area for a simple herb garden; a 2'x4' space with a couple racks inside would be plenty. I didn't find many commercial solutions for my needs, and nothing I wanted to pay for, so I did some research on designing and building my own and I'd like to share the basics I've found with you.

Greenhouses are designed to trap heat and light, two things that are in short supply during the winter in northern latitudes. If you have the capability to recess the floor of the greenhouse into the ground to a point below the frost line, this makes the heat portion of the equation far simpler. Unfortunately, the area where I'm looking to site my micro greenhouse is on concrete, so I'll have to design a bit differently.

Both light and heat in greenhouses are primarily supplied by the sun. This means you need a glass or plastic wall that faces the sun for the longest possible amount of time during the day. For me, that means a southern facing with about a 30 degree slope, and a white or other light colored material on the northern wall to direct heat and light back into the growing area.

In order to trap the most possible heat, you need to insulate your greenhouse. Insulation should be placed into the roof, sides, and back. This can be residential fiberglass batting, foam board, spray foam, or whatever other material you have available. If you're building on concrete, elevate your plants a few inches and insulate under them -- concrete is wonderful for retaining heat, but it takes a ton of energy to get warmed up. My plan is to use half of a wooden shipping pallet as a floor and then pack it with straw or some other fill material.

Either glass or clear hard plastic will work fine for the sun-facing wall. Glass is great for trapping heat, but it can be expensive and fragile; plastic is light, inexpensive, and durable, but it doesn't insulate well. I haven't decided which to use yet, and probably won't until I'm actually laying down cash, but that's one of the last things I need to put in place as summer is just starting and I won't need to worry about insulating my plants until sometime around October.

I'll keep you updated as design and building progress this summer. With a bit of luck and skill, I'll have fresh rosemary and cilantro to put on steaks in January.

Lokidude

Fertilizer Basics: Natural

Last week I covered commercial chemical fertilizers for gardening or farming. Commercial fertilizers are common because they are fast acting, allowing a farmer the chance to tailor his fertilizer to his crop and change what gets planted as the weather and markets change. For example, corn needs nitrogen while soybeans don't, and there are several other differences between crop requirements. Cash crops are different than gardening in that a garden will be planned out at least a year ahead and the plants will all have similar fertilizer needs.This will allow a gardener to use slower methods of fertilizing their ground and still get a good yield.

Natural fertilizers all start with some sort of animal waste. The feces and urine produced while raising animals has to go somewhere, so why not use it to our advantage rather than just disposing of it? Growing feed using animal wastes creates a cycle of nutrients that is easier to maintain and mimics the way the Earth has worked for as long as animals have been around.

Manure
Animal wastes mixed with straw, sawdust, or other bedding material is referred to as manure. The stuff you have the kids mucking out of the stables and stalls is a good source of plant nutrients once it has been treated a bit, depending on the type of animal it came from. Many manures or droppings are too concentrated to be applied to a garden; the high nitrogen content makes them too "hot" for young plants and will kill them. We need to break some of those manures down a bit to make them suitable for plant use and to do that we need to compost them.

Lokidude covered the basics of composting a while back: pile it up, keep it moist but not wet, and turn the pile over every few days to keep it aerated are the main points. (The different designs of compost heaps and their operations are a topic for a dedicated gardener, which I am not, so if you have pointers or instructions please contact us and we'll get you to write a guest post.) Composting eliminates a lot of the odors of the manure and breaks down the more complex chemical into forms that plants can use more easily. If done at a high enough temperature, a compost pile can also eliminate many disease-causing microbes (pathogens) from certain manures. Composted manure should be applied at least 120 days before harvest for root crops, and at least 90 days before harvest for other crops, to avoid pathogenic contamination.

Making a simple "tea" out of manure will dilute the hot ones and is a lot quicker than a compost pile. Simply place the manure in a container and add water to get 5 to 10 times the amount of the manure, let it sit for a few days, stirring it once a day, and then strain the solids out and use the liquid as plant food.

A third method is to work the fresh manure into the top foot of soil in the fall and let it break down over the winter. The four to six months of  contact with soil, and the microbes present in it, will break down most of the manure and create a good place to plant seeds in the spring.

Types by Animal
The various types of manure can be classified by the kind of animal that produced it. A quick-and-dirty version is by their eating habits.

Herbivores are common food animals and they can be further separated by digestive methods.

• Ruminants have multiple stomachs (usually 4) and chew a cud. The will eat plants and store some in their first gut (rumen), bringing it back up to be chewed on some more after they have found a place to rest. These are your sheep, goats, cows, and deer. Ruminant manure is a good general-purpose fertilizer with a good blend of nutrients and a fairly low nitrogen content, so it is less likely to burn young plants.
• Other herbivores like horses and mules are monogastric and have only one stomach. Food passes through them much faster and doesn't break down as well in the animal. Expect to find viable weed seeds in the manure, which will require a composter kept at 140° for a few days to kill them.
• Rabbits are a pseudo-ruminant. They have a single stomach and rely on bacteria in their gut to break down plants. Rabbit manure is a good choice for fertilizer, and there never seems to be a shortage of it if you're raising them.

Omnivores like pigs and humans are poor choices for manure. The amount of pathogens present requires a high temperature (140° or higher) or longer retention time (up to a year) to remove. I covered composting toilets in an article, so I'm not going to repeat it all here; there are books written about how to close the gap in our current food production cycle, and see the links titled "Humanure" below. Omnivore manures also tend to smell worse than that of herbivores, but that may just be a cultural thing.

Carnivores like cats and dogs share the risks of omnivores, with the addition of nasty things like roundworms and toxoplasmosis. These are not safe to use on food crops, but once composted they can be used to feed trees and shrubs.


I'll leave a few links at the bottom of the page in case you're looking for more information. Properly feeding your plant will let them produce more food for you in the same amount of space, so it is an important aspect of gardening for preppers.

• How to Use Manure as Fertilizer
• Humanure
• Humanure: The Next Frontier in Composting

Fertilizer Basics: Chemical

It's been 4 or 5 years since I mentioned fertilizer chemistry, and with spring around the corner a lot of farmers and gardeners are getting ready to plant this year's crop. The science of soil chemistry is a college-level subject, but I'll try to cover the basics and give you a base to build upon.

I'm not going to get into which fertilizer you will need for each crop or condition; that's an industry in itself known as Agronomy and I don't have the space to cover everything here. Do your research on what you're going to grow and take notes on what to look for that indicates possible nutrient deficiency. Unfortunately, without access to a lab and soil sample, you'll have to plan your fertilizer use by how the previous year's crop did.

Fertilizer is anything you add to the soil to provide nutrients that your plants need to grow and yield. A properly fertilized filed or garden will produce more and better food, so the cost of the fertilizer is usually offset by the increase in yield. This applies even if you're growing flowers: a properly fed row of flowers will give you more and bigger blooms and leaves, which is handy if you're growing herbs. Trees can also benefit from being fed the right things, especially when they are transplanted or young, as getting a good start means a longer life and a sturdier tree. I'll look at commercial (chemical) fertilizers in this post and cover manures and organics later.

Chemistry Ahead!

Plants require various chemicals to grow and produce fruit. They can pull carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen from the air and water around them, but they also need two classes of nutrients in smaller quantities.

Macro-nutrients are needed in fairly large amounts and are used in the production of the building blocks of life like carbohydrates and proteins.

• Nitrogen (N): Essential for protein synthesis.
• Phosphorus (P): Used to create new cells for growth and allow stored food energy to be converted to chemical energy.
• Potassium (K): Helps maintain water balance and transpiration in the leaves of plants.
• Sulfur (S): Part of many amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.
• Calcium (Ca): An important part of nutrient transport through a plant and used in enzyme production.
• Magnesium (Mg): Used in the photosynthesis of sunlight to carbohydrates.

Micro-nutrients are trace elements that are required in much smaller doses for optimal health, like the vitamins we give children. 

• Zinc (Zn): Mostly used by the plant in growth regulation and protein production, one of the main limiting factors in plant yield.
• Iron (Fe): Used in enzymes and helps make other nutrients available to the plant. Fe is also critical in the production of lignin, which is part of the plant stem or stalk.
• Manganese (Mn): Makes S and P more available to the plant and is also used in enzyme production.
• Boron (B): An important part of building and maintaining cell walls within the plant.
• Chlorine (Cl): Important for many energy-transfer reactions within the plant, this one is rarely in short supply.
• Copper (Cu): Activates many enzymes and is used in protein production.
• Molybdenum (Mo): Used in the root systems to help bacteria bind N into a form that plants can use.

Commercial fertilizer is usually marked with a series of numbers separated by hyphens. The macro-nutrient chemicals are listed in the order of N-P-K and represent the percentage of each available in that fertilizer. These are the three numbers you will see on most bags of fertilizer in the garden shops and big-box stores. Urea is a common form of N, and it will be marked 46-0-0.

Some specialty fertilizers will have more than three numbers, with S and Zn being next in the list, so you may see something like 12-40-0-10-1 which tells you it has 12% N, 40% P, 0% K, 10% S, and 1% Zn. Ammonium Sulfate, a common fertilizer used to lower the pH of soil, would be designated 21-0-0-24 (sometimes 21-0-0-24S). Boron, Iron, and the others are usually designated with their chemical symbols.

Commercial fertilizers are heavily regulated, I have inspectors from the state come by and grab samples of what we sell every few months. The lab tests ensure that we're not “cutting” the expensive stuff with cheaper chemicals to cheat our customers, and I get the results back to make sure my suppliers aren't cheating me. Certain chemicals lend themselves to, let's say, “recreational” uses and are further controlled by various government agencies, and a certain monster that I will not name blew up most of a federal building with a rental truck full of fertilizer-based explosives resulting in that form of fertilizer no longer being on the market.

The meth labs used to steal anhydrous ammonia (NH3) for one of the steps in their recipe, so we had to have locks on every single valve on every single tank that holds it. The cartels in Mexico can make meth in bulk and ship it cheaper than the idiots can make it locally, so we've seen a huge drop-off in NH3 thefts. I used to get Sulfur in 2000 pound bags, but since a person can use it to make black powder the BATFE has made it a paperwork nightmare today.

Be careful of what you stockpile; if you ever end up in the news, some things can be reported as “bomb-making materials” or “drug-making chemicals”.

With the distinct possibility of disruption of  the delivery of food (and other goods), growing some of your own food is always a good thing to try. If nothing else, you'll have fresh food that you know you can trust.

Tubers and Chicks Update

In this video we revisit some old friends.

Building a Potato Garden Box, part 3: Potatoes, Chickens, and Tariffs

Let's check on how my lazy potatoes are doing!

Building a Potato Garden Box, part 2

How to construct a potato bed from wooden pallets.

Building a Potato Garden Box, part 1

I'm growing potatoes the easy way.

Guerilla Gardening

A few weeks ago I wrote about buying a pile of garden seeds. I also mentioned guerilla gardening (GG for short) as one possible use for such a large amount of cheap seeds, and I thought I should expand upon that concept a bit.

As preppers, on of our main goals is to have enough food available to withstand a crisis. Food is usually third on the list of needs, right behind shelter and water. The emergency rations I've reviewed are one method of setting aside food, and one that is better suited to provide for short-term emergencies or long-term storage. Over the years, several of us have written articles about growing and storing food as a way to feed ourselves in the event that grocery stores are no longer an option. There are even a few posts about scavenging or foraging for food in the archives. However, GG is a method of improving your odds at foraging by hiding food-producing plants in areas that aren't under your direct control.

Let's say your BOL is miles away from your normal residence and you don't have a caretaker watching over it. If you plant a normal garden at your BOL, you're going to need to make (at least) weekly trips out to it in order to keep the weeds and insects under control. If one of your goals is to keep the location discrete, each of those trips is going to whittle away at its anonymity.

Or what if you don't have a BOL and have decided to “bug in” or shelter in place, but don't have enough land for a garden? City dwellers may also have Home Owners' Association (HOA) restrictions or insane city codes that would prevent the use of lawn space for growing food.

Or maybe you have a good BOL, but you'd like to have an extra layer of supplies close at hand. If it is rural, there's a good chance that it is close to land owned by some level of government (county, state, or federal park or reserve, state or national forest, road or water right-of-way) that may be a good spot for some GG.

What Exactly is Guerilla Gardening?
Wikipedia sums it up as “the act of gardening on land that the gardeners do not have the legal rights to cultivate”. While the idea has recently been picked up by “activists”, it's not a new one. People have been growing marijuana on state/federal land for decades, and even when I was in high school the local “growers” knew that the banks of rivers and streams (almost always government-owned as a right of way) had the most fertile soil and plenty of water. Two centuries ago, there was Johnny Appleseed planting apple tree nurseries as he traveled, spreading a valuable resource (cider apples) along what was then the frontier. As a prepper, the idea of GG is closer to “stocking the pond” for future possible use than setting up a garden that needs to be tended on someone else's land. Any produce that you don't get a chance to harvest will be appreciated by the local wildlife, which may improve your chances of hunting that wildlife later.

Here are a few GG ideas to ponder:

• Planting climbing vines or plants that require support along fences. A woven-wire or chain-link fence would provide plenty of support for climbing gourds or pole beans.
• Another blogger has explored the idea of grafting fruit-bearing limbs onto weed trees in the empty spaces formed by a highway clover-leaf. He's even offered scions to graft and time if anyone in his area is interested. This is a bit more advanced, but grafting isn't impossible to learn and it is a form of permaculture that requires very little attention after the first year or so.
• Perennial or “walking” onions are hardy plants that go dormant in the winter and sprout again in the spring. They “walk” by producing seed heads at the top of their stalk that gets heavy enough to make it bend until the seeds touch the ground, planting another generation a few feet away from the original plant.
• Rural road ditches around here used to be full of wild plums and elderberries, but aggressive clearing operations have provided slightly safer roads at the cost of freely available fruit. Clusters of plum or small nut trees placed far enough back from the road would have a good chance of surviving to produce fruit.
• There are people who GG with wildlife. Pheasant and quail used to be common around here (until the DNR brought back the bobcats and mountain lions) and a few folks are raising and releasing them to try to get colonies reestablished. Commercial hatcheries offer chicks of a few different species every spring, so it may be something to consider.

Things to consider if you're contemplating taking up GG.

• Since the land isn't yours, you have no “legal” right to the produce. Don't call the sheriff if you find someone else picking the fruit, as the result won't be worth the hassle.
• Since most GG takes place on public (government-owned) land, anyone can harvest the produce. If you don't get there on time, don't expect it to be waiting for you.
• Pick plants that will blend in with the background. Planting tomatoes with bright red fruits next to a well-traveled road isn't going to work out too well. Look for species with colors and leaves that are close to that of the weeds in the area, so they aren't obvious to everyone passing by.
• Choose perennials over annuals whenever you can; the require less maintenance and they tend to spread out on their own.
• An apple tree in the middle of a wooded area is going to be a lot easier to tend than a small plot of peppers or peas in the same place. It will also have a better chance of being ignored by others, since it's just another tree.
• Root crops like garlic, carrots, beets, turnips, etc. are easy to hide since they don't have visible fruits. They also tend to be hardy and fairly low maintenance, so once they're planted you don't have to pay them much attention.
• The modern “activists” that are talking about GG have never read about the “tragedy of the commons” and know very little history. If people know something is free, they will try to use as much of it as they possibly can to better their own life without any regard for the lives of others. Greed is an intrinsic human trait: just look at any toddler that has to share her toys.
• Stocking a lake or pond with fish caught somewhere else is a tough one. Governments frown on “bucket biologists” who introduce non-native fish into “their” waters, and the fines can be astronomical. Around here the state will stock a private lake for you as long as you open it to the public... which defeats the purpose of stocking the lake.

I'm going to use some of the seeds I got in my big bag of vegetable seeds to see what will grow in the hills around the family farm. The soil is pretty poor, but I know of a few spots where squash and cucumbers should do well. If nothing else, I'll be feeding the deer and maybe a few of them will stick around for hunting season.