Allen, I've been reading your posts for a while and my gut feeling is that you are trying to do too much at once.

Gooseberries, Raspberries, Blackberries, Peas, Tomatoes, Fruit Trees, Beans. Leggy seedlings, damping off, frozen plants, you are running into all of the beginner's problems at the same time. It's like trying to do brain surgery in your 8th grade biology class. Learn how to dissect a frog first.

It's still early in the gardening year and you still have plenty of time to grow a bunch of bumper crops, so start with the basics, prepare your soil. Then pick half a dozen crops that you would like to grow, things that almost always are successful.

Start lettuce, radishes, carrots and green bunching onions from seed, outside in the garden. You can plant those today (you can start all of them when the soil is workable in the spring). Limit yourself to an 8 foot row of each to start.

Start beans when the soil is warm. 4-15 foot rows will give you plenty to eat and plenty to freeze. Try a bush variety like Tenderpick or French Filet so you dont have to mess with trellises.

Plant tomatoes from nursery starts. Limit yourself to 2 plants of three different varieties. Pick reliable varieties, Sweet 100, Early Girl, Better Boy. You can have great fun with heirloom varieties in a couple of years once you have mastered the basics.

For now, learn the basics of growing, maintaining your soil, controlling your weeds, harvesting your crops and preserving your surplus. If you want a huge garden, fine, but for now, limit your self to about 100 square feet and learn how to care for it.

Sagely stated, Liz.

quote:

Originally posted by allenwrench:
How did the old timers do it in the prairie days? They didn't have all our fancy sprouting stuff.

Allen, I have been thinking about your premise that the "old-timers in the prairie days" grew things like tomatoes, warm-weather plants that are completely out of their element in the climate I live in. It's been an interesting mental exercise, and I thank you!

Things may have been different where you live, of course. But my conclusion is that the early settlers in this region must certainly have not enjoyed the luxury of a fresh tomato. Without a greenhouse, hotbed, or at the very least central heat, I can't imagine that it would have been possible.

In quickly checking a reference book I happen to have on hand about foods eaten in this region in the early 1800's, there is no mention whatsoever of the tomato. They refer to the "3 sisters" (corn, beans, squash), some onions and garlic, a few native starchy plants we no longer commonly eat, and a vast selection of nuts and berries. It appears that's the extent of the vegetable matter they ate.

It would be an interesting bit of research to explore exactly when things like tomatoes first started to be cultivated here. Have you done that research for your region? Just curious. I would expect that the first settlers here limited themselves to crops that could be planted in the ground and grown during the length of our native growing season.

Your question as whether to start tomato seeds in a 3 inch pot, to avoid having to transplant - I think that size pot would encourage overwatering and end up drowning the seedling.

I start in small containers, or the peat wafer type things - after the true leaves appear, I transfer to small styrofoam cups (holes punched in bottom), with the tomato planted deeper than before.

Best thing about the styrofoam cups is that you can write on them with a ball point pen.

josette, there are 2 ways to water the 3" pots that don't overwater. You can hold one that is very wet in your hand and get a feel for the weight of it. Compare that to one just filled up with dry potting soil. Just wait until the pot is light before watering. The second is observing the top inch of soil. It gets lighter in color and you can scratch it to see if it needs watering. I use a large tray with an inch of water in it and set the pots in it and let them wick up what they need. Once the top layer gets dark=wet, remove them. It takes some practice, but my starts rarely get water stressed unless I happen to miss one through the jungle of them.

quote:

Originally posted by Liz1:

quote:

Originally posted by allenwrench:
But, I just feel bad, as a survivalist devotee I do a poor job o growing stuff from seed. My goal is to save seed and grow from that seed...or at least be able to if the need arose and not have to depend on Lowes or Walmart.

Nobody says you have to glean all this knowledge and hone it to perfection in one year. Better to learn to raise the plant and harvest your own tomatoes from plants you raised yourself than to buy somebody else's food altogether. Any experience is better than no experience. But go ahead and start some more if you like. See what happens!

.....

Oh, and Allen ... in the north, they ate a lot of meat and animal products. A shipload of cows saved the Jamestown colony (milk). The plains indians hunted buffalo & pheasant. Etc. Think pemmican; beef jerky.

Thanks for your well spoken reply.

Yes, I am looking at it all as experimenting and learning. Just glad I started to learn now before I needed to depend on it.

It is amazing how the old timers even survived.

quote:

Originally posted by ctdahle:
Allen, I've been reading your posts for a while and my gut feeling is that you are trying to do too much at once.

Gooseberries, Raspberries, Blackberries, Peas, Tomatoes, Fruit Trees, Beans. Leggy seedlings, damping off, frozen plants, you are running into all of the beginner's problems at the same time. It's like trying to do brain surgery in your 8th grade biology class. Learn how to dissect a frog first.

It's still early in the gardening year and you still have plenty of time to grow a bunch of bumper crops, so start with the basics, prepare your soil. Then pick half a dozen crops that you would like to grow, things that almost always are successful.

Start lettuce, radishes, carrots and green bunching onions from seed, outside in the garden. You can plant those today (you can start all of them when the soil is workable in the spring). Limit yourself to an 8 foot row of each to start.

Start beans when the soil is warm. 4-15 foot rows will give you plenty to eat and plenty to freeze. Try a bush variety like Tenderpick or French Filet so you dont have to mess with trellises.

Plant tomatoes from nursery starts. Limit yourself to 2 plants of three different varieties. Pick reliable varieties, Sweet 100, Early Girl, Better Boy. You can have great fun with heirloom varieties in a couple of years once you have mastered the basics.

For now, learn the basics of growing, maintaining your soil, controlling your weeds, harvesting your crops and preserving your surplus. If you want a huge garden, fine, but for now, limit your self to about 100 square feet and learn how to care for it.

Thanks for your advice. Yes, took on a lot. Didn't know it was so much work. Still trying to get my fruit trees in and get the garden going. I did get the gooseberries in on the side. Also have to finish permanent fences. (We have temps up) We are making the paths and edges and will amend the soil in the garden hopefully get it planted by early or mid June. It would have been a lot simpler if it was all prepped last fall and the plants could be slipped in, But did not get into gardening until Feb of this year. I have cut back some on my 'lofty' goals. Growing food is much tougher than it looks on TV.

."If you can grow food, you have a cosmic obligation to feed those that can't."


That is tough biz for a survivalist. Sure we like to help out others. It is our human nature to some extent. But when TEOTWAK arrives life will be much different. You see this stuff happening with crude oil. This is nothing. this is not even the beginning of our problems.

....My discussion of this topic of 'sharing' from an earlier post to a survival forum.

We cannot save others if we have 'not prepared' to save them.

For myself I can barley afford to prepare for the 3 of us. Nor do I gave unlimited space for preparedness supplies for others even if I had more money.

I am lucky that I have a 45' x 75' piece of ground to grow food on...but in realty that is not much land for the 3 of us, so how could it be stretched even further? (I am lucky in the sense that when in L.A. I had much less land.)

It is a hard fact of life that the Survivor must be Selfish in order to SURVIVE.

Just be authentic with what you do and you can be at peace with whatever the outcome is.

For one to be Successful at Survival understand the importance of all the 'S' words and how one's Success at Survival balances on the interaction of all the 'S' words and by practical application of a Successful Survival philosophy.

And while we do need a modicum of Smarts to be a Successful Survivor...well, let me paraphrase the title of an old post I wrote so it is apropos here:

'Academic Smarts are not the Same as Survival Smarts.'

The realities of being a Successful Survivor are this.

To be Successful at Survival requires one to be Selfish as opposed to Selfless.

It is impossible to be a Saint and Save everyone in the world that has not done their preparedness footwork to Supply their emergency needs.

Just Sharing Some of your emergency Supplies with one other person may put your life in jeopardy.

So now there are two deaths as opposed to one.

But only you can judge how many lives your Supplies can maintain and your desires to be philanthropic can Support.

Don't ever let another person tell you otherwise. The one's doing the browbeating are usually the one's that have done little in the area of preparedness.

But the concept of Sharing goes beyond just Sharing Supplies. It also encompasses Sharing our time and our energies - for Survival can be a full time job just to keep ourselves and our loved one's alive.

We are all human and have limitations, so we can only Spread ourselves so thin before we Start to develop cracks in our health - whether it be mental health or physical health.

The Successful Survivor must accept that the Self must come first. And while it is unfortunate that the foundation of that Success is based in Selfishness and not in philanthropy...that is what the reality of it is.

If we lived in a perfect dream world, then we could wipe out all these unfortunate and unforeseen circumstances that would cause one to have to prepare for possible disasters, upheavals and emergencies.

But the cold hard facts are that the business of Survival is not always nice and pretty - but it is always rooted in putting the preservation of one's own life first.

This book gives goes into detail with this topic of 'Survival Philosophy'.

I highly recommended it...get it from your library

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book-Survival-revolution...id=1196866051&sr=1-1

Mental preparedness and physical fitness are the foundations of all our Survival quests For the mind guides the body, but an unfit body is not able to respond to the minds guidance.

We become mentally prepared when we are able to use the 7 Skills to defeat the 7 Enemies of Life

The 7 Skills:

Fire Starting
Water Procurement
Shelter Building
Foraging for food
Signaling
First Aid
Self Defense


7 Enemies of Life:

Fear and anxiety
Cold and Heat
Thirst
Hunger
Boredom and Loneliness
Fatigue
Pain and Injury

So in essence, we develop Self confidence by mastering the Skills needed to overcome any Situation that arises to threaten our life.

Let me delve into the concept of Selfish versus Selfless actions a little more. I don't wish to promote the wrong view that being Selfish is the key to being happy and at peace.

As the Taoists tell us...fleas come with the dog. And if one desires to be a Survivalist, then one must accept some fleas to come with the job.

Most humans have a natural desire to help those in need. It is part of their makeup. But we must accept that we have built our world on unsustainable means - a means built artificially on fossil fuel.

And when we live out of balance with natures intended means there is a price to pay to come back in balance with nature. And the price usually extracts pain from us in the adjustment process.

The world is in a death Spiral. It is just how we have built our world over the years. We can't blame any one person for this fact - we are all to blame. It would be one thing if we all reverted back to rural living, burning trees for fuel and housing and living within our comfortable means allotted to us by nature, as our ancestors did back in the day.

But seven billion people can't burn the trees!

It has been estimated that for the earth to Sustainably Support its population without fossil fuels a 90% dieoff must occur. I don't know if that figure is right, but I do know humans could not live as they do unless it was funded by artificial means via fossil fuels. Our life on earth has been 'pumped up' via steroids and growth hormones a.k.a. crude oil.

So if this dieoff happens, of course there will be great amounts of pain in the world. But it is natures intended balancing act. It also reminds us that nature does not bow to humans - it is humans that always bow to nature.

Will this dieoff occur? I don't know. Some genius may come to the rescue and find a way to burn water and we can keep consuming carefree. but there is still the question of petrochemical use. Irrespective of burning crude, petroleum is an irreplaceable component of many other products we consume.

http://www.ranken-energy.com/Products%20from%20Petroleum.htm

Animals live within their intended balance with nature and it is only man that destroys his environment and has to pay the price through pain and Suffering from working against nature.

This is why we humans need moral guidance or a moral conscience since they have a 'free will' of Sorts. If we did not have such a feature we would soon Self-destruct.

Actually it is like this.

We are free to do what we want -- but are not free to want what we want.

All our actions have consequences, and many of our actions produce consequences that end up destroying peace. (both ours and other's peace).

This is what separates us from the animals that run Solely on instinct.

Humans run by instinct as well as moral guidance. And what makes us a human is why we even have to discuss this question of helping others in the first place.

This question of Sustainability is the key to helping one make the tough decision as to whether to help another out with their provisions or energies.

If whatever you offer is available to you in unlimited amounts or amounts that would be hard to deplete, then one may not have to be so concerned with Sharing such bounty. (Although Sharing anything with desperate people also has the potential for Security problems irrespective of the question of Sustainability.)

But whatever way you decide to proceed...be authentic and you can be at peace with your actions.

The 'authenticity acid test' would ask the question; 'Would you do the same thing again knowing the outcome of your actions?'

If you would not do it again, then your actions are not authentic, since you are not at peace with the outcome.

Authenticity is the key to being at peace. For even if you or your loved ones must die early to gratify one's philanthropic desires, then one can be at peace with that outcome if one authentically puts philanthropy above personal Survival.

This all goes back to my quote on Thoreau and the subject of pride...where do we put our pride?

Do we put our pride in helping others first and ourselves and our family Second?

Or do we put our pride in Self preservation?

...In the end you only have to please yourself with your actions...just be authentic with what you do and you can be at peace with whatever the outcome is.

Book and DVD list. All available from your local library.


Beyond Oil: the view from Hubbert's Peak
by Deffeyes, Kenneth S.
http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/

The Coming Economic Collapse - how you can thrive when oil costs $200 a barrel
by Leeb, Stephen

A Crude Awakening - the oil crash
Lava Productions AG, Switzerland DVD
http://www.oilcrashmovie.com/

The End of Suburbia - oil depletion and the collapse of the American dream
by Greene, Gregory DVD
http://www.endofsuburbia.com/

High Noon for Natural Gas: the new energy crisis
by Darley, Julian
http://www.highnoon.ws/

The Long Emergency: surviving the converging catastrophes of the twenty-first century
by Kunstler, James Howard

Oil Apocalypse
History channel DVD

Peak Oil Survival: preparation for life after gridcrash
by McBay, Aric

Powerdown: options and actions for a post-carbon world
by Heinberg, Richard

Resource Wars: the new landscape of global conflict
by Klare, Michael T
http://www.amazon.com/Resource-Wars-Landscape-Conflict-...uction/dp/0805055762

A Thousand Barrels a Second: the coming oil break point and the challenges facing an energy dependent world
by Tertzakian, Peter

Twilight in the Desert: the coming Saudi oil shock and the world economy
by Simmons, Matthew R.
Well written book examining 12 of the key Saudi oil fields.

Who Killed the Electric Car?
Sony Pictures Classics release
http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/

Zoom:the global race to fuel the car of the future
by Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran

quote:

Originally posted by Liz1:

quote:

Originally posted by allenwrench:
How did the old timers do it in the prairie days? They didn't have all our fancy sprouting stuff.

Allen, I have been thinking about your premise that the "old-timers in the prairie days" grew things like tomatoes, warm-weather plants that are completely out of their element in the climate I live in. It's been an interesting mental exercise, and I thank you!

Things may have been different where you live, of course. But my conclusion is that the early settlers in this region must certainly have not enjoyed the luxury of a fresh tomato. Without a greenhouse, hotbed, or at the very least central heat, I can't imagine that it would have been possible.

In quickly checking a reference book I happen to have on hand about foods eaten in this region in the early 1800's, there is no mention whatsoever of the tomato. They refer to the "3 sisters" (corn, beans, squash), some onions and garlic, a few native starchy plants we no longer commonly eat, and a vast selection of nuts and berries. It appears that's the extent of the vegetable matter they ate.

It would be an interesting bit of research to explore exactly when things like tomatoes first started to be cultivated here. Have you done that research for your region? Just curious. I would expect that the first settlers here limited themselves to crops that could be planted in the ground and grown during the length of our native growing season.

I don't know if they grew tomatoes. I just imagined. I just know they didn't have plastic deer fence and fungicide and the weather man telling the frost was coming or a spigot to turn on the hose and all the rest. AMAZING they lived.

quote:

Originally posted by josette:
Your question as whether to start tomato seeds in a 3 inch pot, to avoid having to transplant - I think that size pot would encourage overwatering and end up drowning the seedling.

I start in small containers, or the peat wafer type things - after the true leaves appear, I transfer to small styrofoam cups (holes punched in bottom), with the tomato planted deeper than before.

Best thing about the styrofoam cups is that you can write on them with a ball point pen.

Yep, that is what happened. I read you post a little too late. but better late than never.

Don't worry Allen, it gets a lot easier, and in a couple of years you'll look back and be amazed at what you have accomplished. You will also have a good chuckle at the silly things you tried which were collassal failures, and with pride at other silly things you tried that turned out much better than anyone else expected.

quote:

Originally posted by oh2fly:
josette, there are 2 ways to water the 3" pots that don't overwater. You can hold one that is very wet in your hand and get a feel for the weight of it. Compare that to one just filled up with dry potting soil. Just wait until the pot is light before watering. The second is observing the top inch of soil. It gets lighter in color and you can scratch it to see if it needs watering. I use a large tray with an inch of water in it and set the pots in it and let them wick up what they need. Once the top layer gets dark=wet, remove them. It takes some practice, but my starts rarely get water stressed unless I happen to miss one through the jungle of them.

What do the pros do? When they sell big tomatoes plants have they been transplanted once or twice at the nursery? Or do they start them in bigger pots?

They start them in flats or cell packs, then move them to 3" pots, then larger and larger pots.

Around here, the nurserys start tomato plants in December for the following June, that's how they get the great big ones. I start mine in March, but they reach sufficient size, because around here, no matter how big they are when you put them in the ground, they have to survive the cold and whithering wind of the early season. I find that the little plants recover faster from planting out than the big ones do.

Unless I'm mistaken, they also fertilize the heck out of them, using things that most of us would rather not have on our personal hallowed ground.

CT, I'm seeing the same thing as you this season -- the smaller plants that I started later are more tolerant of weather changes than the larger ones. However in previous years, I haven't gotten them large enough and that was a problem also. (IOW they all keeled over.) There must be a "happy medium."

Allen, it sounds like you're already learning a lot! This whole food growing thing takes some practice. Of course some of the old timers didn't survive. But those that did, I have to believe, were those who were willing to work hard and learn from their mistakes, as well as from the mistakes of others (preferred... ).