The 9-12 Project of Central PA

"You Are NOT Alone!"

Anyone out there want to help organize ideas to do so? I understand we have a couple city slickers, theresa, who might be interested in some ideas?

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Great Idea!

check out this link for some ideas to get things started...

Gardening and Agriculture

http://thesurvivalpodcast.com/forum/index.php?board=15.0

My wife and I are doing some container gardening right now!

swanson
I grew up during the "Mother Earth" era, and my parents always instilled the need to be educated about self-sufficiency. Turns out, those skills have come in handy quite frequently, and not just in crisis.

Since my college days, I have always rented, so gardening, per se, was never an option. Still, some things, like tomatoes, can easily be grown in buckets, or in upside down containers like you see in the TV ads.

I am now renting a house where I can have a small garden this year, and while I don't expect to feed myself completely, it's the skills that I want to develop. It's been about 25 years since I've "worked the fields", but I want to make sure that I can still put seeds in the ground and have them grow :-)

My garden plan this year calls for a practical mix of low-maintenance items, as well as some herbs. I think that taste, alone, is one argument for a small garden, no matter what the socio-economic climate.

I figure tomatoes are a natural, and require almost no care, zucchini grows like a weed and I love it. I don't have the patience for potatoes, so I'm actually looking for ideas for a starch substitute that I can grow without a tiller and too much trouble.

I thought a nice selection of herbs would be handy, since I love to cook, and I've already got a small plot with thyme, rosemary, marjoram and tarragon and several mint varieties going from a previous tenant. I'll make sure that comes back this year.

Next year, maybe a chicken or two :-)
Wayne,

!!AWESOME TOPIC!!

My wife and I do a decent amount of container gardening as mentioned before.

We should link up and put together a workshop on this topic for sure.

I wonder who else we might enlist?

Gardening is an absolutely critical path to securing individual independence and putting cash back in your pocket.

Our national food supply system is very fragile, and gardening is a great way to hedge your bets against hard times.

swanson
Also important is stocking up on some dried goods that last a long time. Like William Ames said, you can grow herbs easily and dry them. Spices are expensive to buy in the store. Rice is a good staple and can be stored, and beans as well. Honey never goes bad (I just heard this on the Science Channel. They found it in ancient Egyptian tombs and it's still good) It's a good substitute for sugar in flavoring some things. I plan to stock up on our beans and rice supplies.
Hi, Jodi!
I have invited friends who have a farmette near Centre Hall to come to the meeting this Thursday. I know you will not be there for the meeting, but maybe we could get our expert guests to be regular expert guests as consultants to our group. You can check out their website http://www.youngamericangrowers.com/ to get some background on them!
Hope you can make the meeting sometime.

Kris
Jodi C. said:
Oh gosh, I could use some advice on this!!!

I am putting a vegetable garden back in this year. I have a nice sunny spot in a field for veggies so I'm going over companion planting sites online to figure out what I want to plant. So far, so good on that front. But, has anyone ever grown Amaranth? I wonder if it's something easy to grow or if it can even be grown around here. And I also have a spot on the west side of my house that only gets mid day to evening sun. Any ideas of food that can planted there? Or herbs? I've been watching videos on youtube of people planting their tiny little yards and getting huge crops, so I assume I should be able to plant something in that spot and get some yield from it, but I have no idea what would grow there with only half a days worth of sun.

I'm also getting some laying hens. If anyone has advice or knows where I can get leghorn pullets locally, I'd be grateful for the information.

We did have chickens when I was growing up but as far as gardening, canning, preserving food, even cooking ... I'm pretty domestically challenged! Any help would be great!!!
This idea appears to be catching on

"W. Atlee Burpee & Co., the nation’s largest seed and gardening supply store, has registered a 25-30% increase in vegetable seed and plant sales since last year."

http://www.reteaparty.com/2009/04/recession-gardens-growing-more-po...
Wayne Stottlar said:
Here are a couple pics of our weekend start.

Nice garden - level, soil looks nice! I remember having a garden spot like that. Now, I have sand and rocks - I seem to have moved out of the 'clay and loam' part of the county into the 'rocks, sand, rocks' part of the county, with a bit of iron and pyrite thrown in. I'm trying some pelletized lime to make it close enough to neutral to not burn the plants. I figure it will take me some time to build some real soil, but I love gardening, so I'm going to work away at it ;-)

Wayne and I love to garden. It's not just about the veggies though. I love seeing things grow, and I love flowers. We are growing most of the veggies from seed this year. We've got a batch in the basement and a batch upstairs where it is warmer. We put in yellow onions, white onions, scallions, beets, and carrots last weekend. My legs have been sore for three days from stooping down, but it sure was fun to get out there and play in the dirt!

I also picked up a couple more bags of dried beans at the store the other day. We're slowly building our "reserve" food supply. It will feel good to know we can at least eat if things get really bad fast. The electric grid hack has us a little paranoid. Maybe that is just one prong of an all out attack on our country? We have a dehydrator, canner, and we're buying a vacuum sealer next month so we can vacuum pack lots of things. Mushroom hunting starts in a couple weeks too, and those are easy to dehydrate and have on reserve!

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