Become Self Sufficient » Gardening

Cheap, Simple Hydroponics

Chelle — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 20:47:36 +0000

Growing with hydroponics will extend your growing season and can be tasty. It can also get expensive. Here is a video on how to do so simply and to be cheaper you can use fish water from your aquarium instead of the boughten chemicals.

Bottle Gardening

Chelle — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 20:40:26 +0000

You may never heard of bottle gardening before. Doing so to the extent shown in the video was new to me but I like the idea. You could do so much in a small space and if you use bottles that you cannot recycle it would be even better yet.

Take a look at this video and see if it gets your mind jumping with ideas of things to grow all year long, just ion the winter months or in an apartment.

Take a look:

Being Self-Sufficienct to Survive

Chelle — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:54:19 +0000

I am so sorry that I haven’t been posting lately. Our family has had a lot going on as far as deaths in the family and family friends, car trouble and I have been having health issues.

I was reading recently that some people believe that in just 5 years the cost of living could go up to 10 times what it is now. Even worse is that these same people are forecasting that even with this incredible increase in the price of everything that there may be no increase in salary.

OMG! That is a scary thought- isn’t it?

Now I have always said that you should prepare for the worst but hope for the best.

What can we do?

Well, some people think that there must be something that we can do to avoid this happening.

If you have any ideas about what we all can do to keep this dramatic price increase from happening then please post your ideas here and let’s see what we can all come up with.

What can you do to prepare for such and event?

First of all try to pay off any and all bills that you possibly can in the next few years. This will give you more of your income to be able to use in the even that this does happen.

Insulate your home to cut back on energy waste

Switch to fluorescent bulbs and shut off lights when not needed

Switch to solar and/or wind power

If you don’t already then you should try gardening. Don’t have room? Maybe you can find someone that does and you can work something out about the seed, plants and work and then divide up the produce accordingly

Plant fruit and nut trees, shrubs, vines NOW. Most of these will be producing something, even if it isn’t at full capacity, in 5 years. A friend of ours planted a cherry tree 3 years ago. They canned something like 30 quarts of cherries this year. That’s in just THREE YEARS!

My best advice right now would be to start planting as many different kinds of fruit and nuts in your yard as you can. With your own fruits and nuts and a vegetable garden you will know that no matter what happens in the world and with the prices of food that you will have something to feed your family. AND it will be good healthy food which can cut down on medical bills so it is a WIN WIN situation.

If you have the room and can afford to you should install a root cellar and build a greenhouse. This will help you to be able to feed your family year round with home grown fruits, nuts and vegetables

If you are on low income you might also want to try to become educated and/or certified in a career that will increase your income.

Cut down on wastes wherever and whenever possible.

Raise some chickens and rabbits. These don’t take up a lot of room but will provide you with eggs, chicken and rabbit meat for protein. Homegrown NATURALLY Raised meat is actually more filling than much of the meat that you buy at the market. Rabbit meat is also one of, if not THE, leanest meat that you can eat.

If you have a pond you can also grow your own fish. Fish is becoming VERY expensive and I am sure that it’s price will only continue to go up so this could be a very good investment for you if you have the room. A pond will give you entertainment, fire protection, you can use it to water your garden or your animals if needed AND you can grow fish.

These are just some suggestions for you. Anything that you can do to raise your income, lower your outgo and be able to provide for your family will help you to become more self-sufficient. Anything you can do to become more self sufficient will help to increase your family’s chances of survival and their comfort level during tough economic times.

Gardening for Self Sufficiency

Chelle — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:05:49 +0000

Every year my son, Josh, and I try to grow a bigger and better garden.

This year is no different. We are in the process of enlarging the garden by cutting down some of the trees near the garden and adding on to, and moving where it is needed, our fence around the garden.

We would like to have that whole area that we are adding to the garden be filled with raised beds. We will do this as we are able but it will be a big job. It may be next year before we have them all done but we will work toward our goal and accomplish it.

Last year we planted more cabbage than ever before and it STILL was not enough. Course part of the reason was that our chickens got into the garden and made complete pigs out of themselves by eating numerous heads of cabbage as well as some other vegetables.

So, this year we decided to plant a LOT more cabbage as well as other crops.

We are hoping to have a root cellar/storm shelter ready before Fall in which to store as much of our garden produce as possible for eating throughout the Winter months.

I read recently that for every $60 spent on seed and plants that you can harvest as much as $2,000 worth of food.

THAT is incentive enough for everyone to plant and grow something for their family to eat. With food prices being about triple what they were just a few short years ago we all need to do what ever we can to save money.

Growing your own food also ensures that you and your family are getting the freshest, most nutrient dense food possible without the loss of nutrition that comes with long transportation, picking while green and covering with waxes like you find at the market.

This year Josh and I have been doing some studying to try to determine which crops produce more for the space they require & the time needed to grow.

Some Space Intensive crops include:

Beets & turnips-

as you can eat both tops and bottoms without a lot of waste

Radishes

- they are fast growing and fit in anywhere. They also make good markers of where you have planted other crops as they come up fast and mature fast so they will show you where you have already planted and yet they will be out of the way fast for the other crop to mature.

Pole beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, vine squash

- plant plenty and grow them up on to fences, fence panels or netting of some kind. The trick is to grow them up so you have room to plant a LOT more and harvest a LOT more

We also are looking at crops that are easy to store in a root cellar in order to cut down on any processing needed.

Our freezer went this year without warning and we had $1-2,000 worth of food put aside, in order to be stocked up for emergencies,. that was lost.

This was food that we have bought on sale, had given to us or grew ourselves. It didn’t cost us that much at the time but to replace it would. We cannot afford that so we want to use methods where we will not have to worry about that happening again.

Our top picks for storage will be dehydrating, canning and cold storage in a root cellar.

We hope to pick up another freezer if we can find a good deal but we don’t ever want to rely on just that 1 method of food storage again as the loss of all of that food hit us hard

Here are some of the crops that we have found to be good for storing in a root cellar

Root Cellar Storage Crops:

Cabbage

Onions

Garlic

Winter Squash