It’s been a bit since I wrote a blog post, but I’ve been busy getting my backyard garden set up and working in my front yard too. I’ve continued with the container gardening, but I added two metal raised beds and I have two more metal raised beds to put together. I bought these raised beds last year, but never got them put together. Each one has 40 nuts and bolts and my fingers were worn out after getting these two together. I have some diabetic neuropathy in my fingertips and I’m giving my fingers a rest before attempting to put the other two together. Filling them was easier than putting them together. And yes, my patio needs pressure washing desperately – I’m always potting and messing with plants on it.
The dog is Marius, my late husband’s dog and he’s 16 years old. I put down a different ground cover fabric that I ordered online from Grower’s Solution. After watching a Living Traditions Homestead video, where Kevin and Sarah offered tips on using ground cover fabric, I’m skipping putting woodchips on top of this, like I did with the cheaper ground cover fabric I used the past two years. This better quality ground cover fabric is working much better and by skipping the woodchips, I’m noticing a lot less bugs bothering my plants so far. The only issue with this ground cover fabric is it gets very hot on hot days and I’ve had to keep the dogs off of it, even though Marius loves to walk on it and lay out in the sun on it in the mornings. Marius walked onto it when it was hot and he got in a panic.
The green beans are getting ready to bloom.
These are the same Burpee Veranda hybrid tomatoes I’ve grown the past few years – it’s a patio tomato, gets 18″ to 24″ tall and produces loads of cherry tomatoes that grow in tight clusters. I started my seeds inside in early March. I have some bigger tomato plants too – think I started Better Boy this year.
This is a yellow squash. I planted a few zucchinis and patty pan squash too. There are two types of peppers and cucumbers growing. I have some grow bags with celery and I’ve never tried growing celery before.
Zinnias from seed I saved a couple years ago.
Cosmos from seed I saved.
Marigolds from seed I saved.
This tarragon plant I started from seed last year and it’s growing back.
This oregano I started from seed in 2022 and it keeps growing. I also have dill, lemon balm, parsley, stevia and thyme that just grew back too.
I bought a small pot of rosemary at Walmart in 2022 and it just keeps growing.
When I decided to get back to gardening in 2022, I ordered some fruit bushes from Stark Bros. I got 6 blackberry bushes that spring, but didn’t plant them in the ground until fall. I didn’t build a trellis, just let them ramble. They are loaded with huge blackberries this year.
I had gotten 4 blueberry bushes at Lowe’s in 2022 and this year I added four more blueberry bushes.
I’ve got other assorted flowers and herbs growing too.
I started some balloon flower seeds in a small square Dollar Tree container in 2022. They grew and grew and I gave some plants away. This spring I’ve given more away and I filled this raised bed with them, plus have some other large flower pots with them. Apparently, in Korea the roots of this flower are eaten and it has medicinal uses. I just think the flowers are beautiful, but I’m containing it to this raised bed from now on.
I’ll be back to politics when I have time, but for now it’s pretty busy in my own backyard.
Well, it’s stormy weather today, so what better time to sit at the kitchen table and do an elementary school science project. I sorted through my shoebox of old seeds and decided that it would be easier to do some simple seed viability testing before planting a bunch of old seeds. The oldest pack I’m testing is a 1996 unopened pack of onion seeds.
There are a lot of unopened flower seed packs. I googled to refresh my memory on seed viability testing, because it’s been many years since I did this. It’s basically the old ziploc bag method with a dampened paper towel inside. I watched a video by Gardener Scott, whose YT channel I enjoy, and he had some useful tips. He recommended that instead of wrapping the seeds inside a damp paper towel and sticking it in the bag (how I used to do it), he suggested placing the paper towel inside the bag, then misting the paper towel inside the bag, and finally put the seeds on one side of the paper towel. That way you can see if the seeds germinated without opening the bag and fiddling with unwrapping the paper towel to find the seeds.
A lot of gardeners keep a garden journal, but I’m not organized enough to stick with jotting down notes regularly and keeping track of data. And the thing about any journal or recordkeeping is it’s only useful if you analyze the notes and data, to gain some information and insights. Know thyself is always a good bit of data to seriously analyze before starting projects. I know I won’t keep up with jotting down notes in a journal, then reading them later, plus I’m likely to misplace the journal (like I did with this shoebox of old seeds). Since it’s winter time, I figure I can easily keep track of some baggies with seeds in them for a few weeks and check if any germinate. Using that information will make it easier to decide which of these old seeds to plant.
I have a few packs of cactus and succulent seeds, like these 2010 Park Seed succulents and I remember those were not cheap. I’m not doing seed viability testing for those, because there aren’t many seeds in these packs. I’ll just plant them and hope for the best.
Apologies for the terrible photography. I am really awful at taking pictures. Now, it’s back to laundry for me.
Note: Yeah, yeah I looked at the succulent seed packs again and noticed there are 300 seeds with that sempervivum pack, but the other packs of cactus and succulent seed packs don’t have many seeds in them.
“Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”
– Mother Teresa
It’s a gloomy overcast day here this morning and we’re expected to get storms tomorrow. When I took the dogs out I was admiring this pretty little viola that popped up in the yard, right at the edge of my patio. I planted viola seeds in a plastic container in 2022:
Last winter and now this winter, I’ve got violas popping up here and there near my patio. I spotted a few more viola plants growing on the other side of my patio a few days ago, but they haven’t bloomed yet.
This past summer I was sick several times and after a bout of COVID I had lingering fatigue and got winded very easily. I talked to my cardiologist about this and he ran some tests and his advice was to walk and move as much as I can. While spending too much time sitting around last summer, I didn’t work enough in my summer garden and although I did plant a few things for a winter garden, I neglected them.
The bigger thing was I was neglecting my health by not forcing myself to move more. I’ve been pushing myself to do more moving and stretching and a few daily exercises, but most of all I’ve been trying to work on my mindset and attitude.
With the three cherry tomato plants I stuck on my back porch/sun room for the winter, well two look pretty sad despite regular watering and plant food, but one is growing and producing bigger cherry tomatoes now.
Small steps matter, but often we focus on big and lofty dreams or compare ourselves to what other people do or have rather than appreciate or utilize what we have or can do. Picking a few cherry tomatoes to toss on my salad in January feels good and while, like that little viola blooming, it’s just a small thing, well, it makes me feel hopeful. A small 10 oz. container of cherry tomatoes at my local Walmart Neighborhood Market is $2.98. I keep leaf lettuce growing year-round now, in an Aerogarden that was a Mother’s Day gift a couple years ago.
Last month, my son, came across this shoe box in one of my closets. I have been trying to sift through closets and get rid of some things. I hadn’t seen this shoe box in many years, despite looking for it many times. Some of the seeds are from the late 90s, while most are from the early 2000s. I noticed many are unopened seed packets from 2004. A lot of life happened between 2004 and 2022. I had uterine cancer and an uncommon type of ovarian cancer in 2003 and after surgery and radiation treatments, I wanted to get back to planting a garden. I was working fulI-time and although I planted a few things over the years, it wasn’t until 2022, that I made up my mind to attempt a small container garden effort. It turned into a bit more than I had planned.
Rather than just toss out all these old seeds, I decided that I’m going to pick out a few packs of seeds and sow them heavily and see if any grow. Of course, I am also planting fresh seeds and browsing through seed catalogs too. If even one plant from those old seeds grows and produces well, I can save seeds from that for next year. I think that small effort is better than tossing all these old seeds in the trash.
Burpee seeds definitely aren’t 97 cents now, like in 2004… This shoe box of seeds is sort of like a time capsule.
Pansies are part of the Viola genus, but what I planted a couple years ago are a smaller viola hybrid. Back in 2013, I wrote, The pansies smiling at you, about a feisty old German woman, who worked in lawn and garden at our local Walmart. Renate despised me when I first went to lawn and garden as the department manager, but I made it a goal that I was going to find common ground with her somehow and work with her. It was a challenge, but eventually we became friends and she started calling me, “My Sue.” It’s taken me a long time, but this dreary morning when I stood on my patio and admired this tiny viola, I finally saw pansies smiling at me.
Last night I watched a YouTube video by MIgardener, who has a very popular organic gardening channel. He also runs a seed business and I have ordered seeds from him. I feel what he said should be shared. He’s not a fearmonger or someone who puts out alarmist content. In this video he’s urging gardeners to plant more food now and he stated that the heavy smoke from the large number of Canadian forest fires is impacting plant growth for crops and in home gardens in a large portion of the US.
We can add this looming problem to the drought situation in parts of the country too and it’s obvious our food supply system will be challenged in coming months.
“The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 triggered a change in the global climate. The heavier material fell to the ground and the ocean’s surface. However, when lighter particulates reached the stratosphere, they spread out and created an aerosol cloud the size of Australia.The cloud blocked sunlight from reaching the earth and changed the global climate by 2-7 degrees Fahrenheit, the effects of which devastated much of the world in what should have been the summer of 1816. Crops failed across Europe and the U.S. due to the cold or lack of sunshine causing grain and oat prices to soar, torrential rains flooded crops in Ireland, novel strains of cholera killed millions in India, crime became rampant, and people starved in many countries.”
There are rumors galore about the cause of these Canadian forest fires, with the far-right media ecosystem putting forth that these fires were deliberately set by the infamous “THEY,” to starve “us” to death, but I don’t have the time or energy to invest in the constant conspiracy theory hot takes.
Heck, I even saw some conspiracy theory on Twitter, after reports of NYC was dealing with heavy smoke a few weeks ago, that the Canadian forest fires aren’t real, but it’s some evil US government plot that’s creating all this smoke in the US. I believe the Canadian forest fires are real and it’s neither here nor there about what caused these Canadian forest fires. The issue is these fires are burning and the smoke situation is impacting the US in many ways, including food production. There are drought conditions and crazy weather events galore in the US this year too.
So what can we do to lessen the impact on our families?
The video above is not alarmist. He’s urging people to grow more in your garden now and to keep planting. Trying to find ways to encourage people to take steps to be prepared for more potential shortage situations and more food inflation seems common sense at this point. You don’t need to get hysterical or jump into panic mode, but even small efforts to work on building up some extra food supplies in your pantry and trying to learn to grow some vegetables and herbs are better than sitting there doing nothing.
I know plenty of people who are resistant to “prepping” and have a million and one excuses for why they don’t do things that could lessen their worries and bring them more sense of control in rapidly changing times. However, calmly urging people you care about to take steps to be able to feed their family – no matter what crisis comes our way – matters.
Since the 4th of July is right around the corner here in America, perhaps explaining that working toward personal food security really is an integral part of personal freedom might work better than warning about doom and gloom events. Every little bit you do to learn more skills and work at becoming more self-reliant really means you’re on the path to personal freedom. I’ve got some of my family agreeing with me on basic preparedness now, so I feel like that’s progress.
Where I live in southeast Georgia, we’ve had unseasonably warm weather in the past week or so – up in the mid-80s and it’s felt like spring. Of course, since we’re only at the end of February, it’s a safe bet we’ll still have some colder weather, but the warm weather sure stirred this deep desire to rush about and get my container garden planted. Common sense asserted itself, so I’ve put the brakes on most of that and focused mostly on indoor seed starting.
It’s not just me that’s got spring fever, I’ve got cosmos seeds sprouting around my garden area and a lot of these dainty Johnny-jump ups (photo above) popping up around my backyard and in the woodchips where I had set up my container garden last year.
I had planted one pack of Johnny jump-up seeds in some containers last spring. A few plants have reemerged in the containers, but there are certainly a lot more from stray seeds peeking through the grass and wood chips. Along with working on growing vegetables this spring, I’m going to plant more flower seeds.
“Volunteer” plants that pop up unexpectedly feel like a gift. I’ve got little yellow flowers and purple “weed” flowers blooming in my back yard and I’ve been admiring those too. Of course, the real showstoppers at this time of year here are the azaleas and they’ve started blooming too. I suspect most people don’t even notice the delicate little “weed” flowers.
When I listen to people, it’s often very interesting what things they notice and what things they don’t. It’s even harder to really gain some awareness of what I am not noticing and usually it’s something someone says to me that prods me to take a step back and remove the plank from my own eye first or I read something and realize that I was completely unaware of that or I know nothing about that topic that seems very important.
Yesterday, as I was watering a few things still growing in my container garden, I spent some time just looking around and thinking about how a year ago, I was still finding excuses to talk myself out of attempting a gardening effort on my own and now I’m thinking of ways to improve my gardening space. I already have seeds started indoors and some gardening plans.
Sometimes starting on a new path begins with just a change of attitude.
Along with the gardening, I want to get back to working on my needlework and crafting again. Here’s the reality though, I am still stocking up food and basic supplies regularly, because there are so many major problems still swirling – war in Ukraine, China flexing its muscles, global economic problems, political rot in Washington, and plenty of unusual climate and weather events, let alone all the social and cultural problems here at home in America.
Along with my gardening effort and hobbies, the reality is we are living in very uncertain times. I’ve heard a lot of talk online about being prepared for an EMP attack in the past year or so and frankly, I don’t even understand basic technology, let alone an EMP attack. This morning I ordered a book by Ted Koppel, I saw recommended on a video titled, The Worst Risk You Face, by a YouTube channel, Jim’sWay. I had seen this man, Jim Phillips, on The Provident Prepper YouTube channel and he’s been teaching survival skills and preparedness for 40 years. There’s nothing flashy or savvy about his video quality and it does feel like sitting in a lecture, but he provides a lot of useful information I had not seen elsewhere. He said people often make comments about Ted Koppel being a liberal when he recommends this book, but he said Koppel’s 2015 book, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath, is excellent. I found the book on amazon and there were lots of used copies that are cheap. I found a used copy in very good condition for $5.59. Some people only want new books, but since I grew up with hand-me-down books, I’m fine with used books. I opt for “very good” or “like new” condition, due to getting some used books online in very sad condition that were listed in “good” condition.
Phillips talked about how it’s not just man-caused events like terrorism that could take down the grid. He mentioned the Carrington Event of 1859, which I knew nothing about. Trusty Wikipedia states:
The Carrington Event was the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history, peaking from 1 to 2 September 1859 during solar cycle 10. It created strong auroral displays that were reported globally[1] and caused sparking and even fires in multiple telegraph stations. The geomagnetic storm was most likely the result of a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun colliding with Earth’s magnetosphere.[2]
That 1859 geomagnetic storm was before there even was an electric power grid, but there were reports of telegraph failures across America and in Europe and with telegraph pylons throwing off sparks.
We are all very dependent on our modern systems that all rely on the energy grids. The power went out for a few hours the other day in the afternoon and while it caused no major disruption in my life, I did check the Georgia Power outage map site on my cell phone frequently to see if there were updates on when power was expected to be restored. I’ve been without power for several days after a big storm before and daily life changes instantly. Even simple things take more thought and effort without power readily available.
There are still some places around the world where people do live without electricity in their homes, but most of the world is like me – totally clueless about all of the difficulties an extended power outage would create and not even able to fully grasp the myriad of challenges. I’m still working on basic preparedness goals and trying to think through whether to purchase many pricier preparedness items or embark on new projects I’ve seen people talking about online or read about. However, there are dozens upon dozens of little things to do that are within just about everyone’s reach and one of those is being willing to invest some time to learn more. I’m also working on staying focused on being grateful for the many blessings in my life and trying to curb my judgmental habits. Those don’t cost anything, except giving myself a few jolts of self-awareness each day.
So, basically, I still have no idea what documents Trump had, that were so urgent a raid on his home was necessary. Furthermore, I have no idea what classification any of the documents seized are. Yes, I mock the Dem/liberal media spin attacks on Twitter, in hopes of “defusing” some of them, lol.
Now, on to the other topics. I’ve continued to dehydrate herbs and pressure can meat. I also pressure canned 16 pints of chili, 12 quarts of potatoes and 13 pints of carrots recently. This morning I am pressure canning 8 more pints of ground beef. I used store-bought potatoes and carrots, so I’m not waiting until I grow enough fresh vegetables to can. While I am wanting to continue stocking up food and supplies, in case the economy gets worse and a lot of things are either in short supply or very hard to afford, another goal is I want to build my skills with home canning. I could have purchased cans of potatoes and carrots at the store at a reasonable price, but I opted for buying fresh, then pressure canning them, to get more experience with canning. I already have dehydrated potatoes, both potatoes I dehydrated and ones I bought at the store. I keep working on learning more about dehydrating food too.
I planted some more cucumbers for my fall garden and so far they’re looking okay.
I have some plastic totes with cabbage and red beets started.
This red cabbage is supposed to be a compact type, suitable for containers, so we’ll see how it does.
In previous post I posted photos of the five pieces of succulents in this pot, so here you can see the babies growing at the base.
These are mascotte beans. I have 10 containers planted to try these.
In the spring I planted a pack of balloon flower seeds, which are a perennial. I have a lot of plants to figure out where to plant. I used to have one in the flower bed in front of my house for years, until it stopped coming up in the spring. I plan to take some to give to the nice lady, who gave me the succulent pieces.
I started this post yesterday and didn’t get it finished, so here it goes:
This post is going to be a garden/prepping update, then I’m going to get another post written about some Ukraine news. It was overcast and very humid here in southeast GA this morning, but I took a few photos. The flowers are looking pretty on my patio.
My vegetable garden is mostly done in by the heat and I’ve already started some seeds inside under grow lights for a fall garden effort.
I replanted cucumbers, because my cucumbers have some fungus thing, I guess it is – leaves got yellow spots, which turned into brown spots and then they got very brittle. I tried peroxide in water and sprayed that on them, but it didn’t help. The new cucumber plants are getting the same thing. It’s been very hot, very humid and I’ve got more bugs attacking my plants (and me) than I can identify.
I had a lot of cherry tomatoes, but the Abe Lincoln tomatoes didn’t produce many usable tomatoes – many had blossom-end rot or birds pecked into them (I watched the mockingbirds do this). I had planted six 18-gallon plastic totes with seed potatoes. The first three I dug up were not impressive. This morning I dug up the potatoes in the other three. Out of these six totes, I maybe broke even on the weight of the two small bags of seed potatoes I planted. It was my first time planting potatoes and although the plants grew tall and vibrant, they didn’t produce many potatoes.
Here’s today’s skimpy harvest.
That brings me to expectations vs. reality and here’s the thing, I didn’t really expect much, so I wasn’t disappointed by the reality. Even more importantly, I haven’t banked any of my emergency preparedness efforts on my little container gardening effort, so everything it’s produced is a bonus. I’ve learned a lot, from the failures as much as the successes, and I’m looking forward to the fall garden effort.
I have tried to use whatever my little container garden has produced and preserved any extra – even herbs. I will use these potatoes and be thankful for them, plus there’s a satisfaction that’s hard to describe when eating food that you grew yourself.
Along with the container garden, I’m continuing to stock up store-bought food and supplies plus encourage family and friends to stock up, even ones who don’t think inflation or shortages will get much worse. It is frustrating to feel like my advice is not being taken seriously, but I keep mentioning it. The grocery stores here have more food in stock right now than they’ve had in a long time and I assume most people see this and assume everything will be fine.
Each day I try to do something to work on being better prepared. Today I have cayenne peppers in the dehydrator and I cooked and pressure canned 16 pints of chili.
Learning to pressure can was something I’d thought about for years. I bought the pressure canner a couple years ago and it was sitting in the box in the garage. I really wanted to stock up on more canned meats, but most of that canned meat is expensive and has loads of salt. I thought home-canned meats would be a good thing to have, even though I’ve got a lot meat in the freezer and some store-bought canned meat too. I’ve pressure canned chicken, ground beef and pork a few times now and I am so glad I finally took the pressure canner out of the box and am learning how to use it. I pressure canned 20 lbs. of store-bought potatoes last week. I water-bath canned pickles too. I am going to pressure can more vegetables I buy at the store or local produce stands.
There are loads of people online who have a lot of experience and knowledge about home canning. I like the RoseRed Homestead YouTube channel for canning information, because the lady there provides the science behind home canning. I’m a total dunce at science and math, but she explains things in a way that I can grasp it. I’ve also been following instructions and recipes in my Ball canning cookbook and the USDA booklet. I reread the general canning instructions each time, so I don’t forget steps. For this chili, I used a recipe at the National Center for Home Food Preservation., with a few little changes.
Vincas I started from seeds.
I’ve been collecting seeds from the zinnias, cosmos and marigolds. Those are easy seeds to collect, but I bought two books on seed saving and have been trying to learn more. Buying more books on how to do various things has become part of my “prepping” effort.
More flowers.These 5 succulents are still growing and a couple of them have babies started at the base of the stems. I had some green onion bulbs still left in a bag, so I planted those too.
In 2020, when I began to stock up a lot more, I went through periods of self-doubt about having so much extra food and supplies on hand, because for many years after my kids were grown and had left home, I still kept buying food and cooking like I was cooking for a family of six, when it was just my husband and me.
Gradually, over the years I tried to downsize on stocking up and with my recipes, especially after a Walmart Neighborhood Market opened very close to my home several years ago. That store was open 24 hours a day, but 2020 changed my views completely. My confidence in almost every American system, that I took for granted, has been shaken since then. I never thought America would face serious shortage situations, especially not food shortages, but here we are. I had a high degree of trust in American medical experts – that’s been demolished since the pandemic. I trusted Americans would pull together in a crisis and now I have serious reservations about that too. I admit I hadn’t had much faith or trust in our political leaders for decades, but now I worry that the federal government is creating more problems than it solves.
Beyond the food storage and supplies, I’m trying to learn how to do more types of home repair things, since my husband died. He was very good at that sort of thing, but I’m not, so I’m working on learning how to do more basic home repair things. Of course, I’ll still have to hire a professional for many things, but I’m now browsing the aisles at Lowe’s, beyond the gardening section, and when I purchased a pack of washers at the Ace Hardware a few months ago, the cashier asked if my name was in their system and she asked for my phone number. I gave her the home phone number and my husband’s name was in their system, so I asked her to change it to my name. It felt weird.
My days of second thoughts or caring what anyone thinks about my focus on becoming better prepared are long gone and these days I wonder why everyone isn’t working hard to stock up food and basic supplies. I often think about a neighbor I had, who didn’t even have a flashlight in her home in case the power went out. I gave her an LED battery-operated lantern when we had a hurricane warning years ago I wonder how prepared her adult children are and worry that there are millions of totally unprepared people in America.
I bought this little box a few years back and I keep small office supplies in it on my desk. I like things with sayings on them and “Be grateful for this day,” is a good reminder.
I still remain hopeful for the future and remind myself daily to be grateful for the many blessings and the abundance that life in America still offers, but truly I believe everyone should be taking steps toward being better prepared and acquiring more skills to become more self-reliant.
Wherever you’re at on your life’s journey, the truth is everyone’s path takes twists and turns that are a little bit different than everyone else’s. Everyone learns different things and forms their own perspective and views. A phone conversation with my youngest daughter this morning got me thinking about how there’s so much blanket advice and how many people become committed to a one-size-fits-all approach in so many areas – even gardening.
I mentioned the watermelons growing in my container garden and my daughter right away reminded me of how when I grew watermelons and cantaloupes in my backyard years ago they got rotten spots on them before they were ready to pick or the bugs got them. I told her I remember all that. That’s why when I posted a picture of the little watermelon the other day, I said I don’t expect much.
I used to plant an in-ground garden. After my melons rotting the first year, in subsequent years I put mulch underneath the melons right when they formed to keep them off the wet soil, with no success. Then I tried trellising the cantaloupes and gave up on watermelons. I had minimal success with growing melons in my backyard, which was GA swampland before they built this residential area.
Our property wasn’t a designated floodplain when we bought our house, but many years later FEMA redid the floodplain map and a small corner of our backyard fell into being part of a designated floodplain. We had to purchase flood insurance, in addition to carrying homeowners insurance. The new designation cost us money, but the reality has always been that the backyard is often very swampy. And yes, my husband put down more top soil and he added a lot of amendments to the garden area, but it didn’t help much.
One of the first things my father told me when my parents first visited our new house was that we would have been better off buying a house up the street, because it’s on higher-ground. Luckily, knock-on-wood, our house has never flooded, but if we get a heavy rain we’ve had our backyard remaining a swampy mess long after the front yard has dried out.
An in-ground garden was a constant struggle in my backyard and even with this container garden effort, I weighed the pros and cons of using weedblock fabric and putting woodchips down to keep the containers out of sitting in mud, if it rains a lot vs. woodchips attracting more insects and voles. We’ve had voles many times in our backyard.
With gardening a lot of people have very strong views about which methods, which seeds ( I buy some heirloom, some hybrid and I don’t care one iota about “non-GMO” truthfully), which products and how to deal with challenges are the right ways and I’m pretty much agnostic. I’m willing to try different things, but I don’t have rigid views on gardening. I’m an amateur gardener and have had more success growing flowers than vegetables, but even with flowers, I’m a realist. My climate and especially my yard isn’t conducive to growing things like tulips or daffodils, so I just buy a small pot at the store to put on my table, if I think I need some tulips in the spring.
I bet some of the backyards in my neighborhood up the street, that are on higher ground, are probably better suited to growing vegetables, but I live here and will make-do with what I’ve got. I’ve been grateful for everything in my container garden that grew this year and produced food. I made 7 pints of dill pickles today.
I’ve seen a lot of debate about back-to-eden/no till/lasagna gardening methods vs. traditional tilling methods or using woven groundcover.
I had an elderly friend give me some Jerry Baker gardening books many years ago, but I never was taken with his home plant concoctions. I did try mixing up one long ago, but when I told my mother about it, she didn’t think much of using that. It didn’t work.
Instead, one of the gardening books I’ve found most useful is a GA Master Gardener’s Handbook I bought for under a dollar at my local Goodwill store many years ago. That handbook has clear information and science-based advice from UGA’s College of Agriculture and Environmental Studies. UGA has a ton of information specific to my area online. Someone else might be a Jerry Baker adherent or Ruth Stout or think back-to-eden is the best method.
I did buy the Patricia Lanza book on lasagna gardening and a Ruth Stout book, based on a recommendation from a guy who has a YouTube channel about no-till gardening. I’m curious to learn more, but at the same time I’ve seen numerous gardeners and homesteaders who say why these no-till methods didn’t work for them in the Deep South. I am open to trying a small area in my backyard using a no-till method and seeing how it does.
The truth about my backyard is it’s naturally GA swampland and that’s a reality no amount of gardening information and savvy will change, so I’m trying to work with what I’ve got and what I can manage. The container gardening has worked better than in-ground gardening did, but I would like to try a couple raised beds and see how that works.
There’s very productive farmland just a little further inland (my area is considered part of coastal GA) and I used to tell my husband repeatedly that I wished we had bought a house out that way in a more rural area, but at this time here’s where I am and the benefits are medical care is nearby, grocery stores are nearby, friends are nearby and aside from the swampy backyard, I like my house a whole lot.
Next week, I plan to take an elderly friend, who is 85, to Lowe’s so she can look at the flowers and get a new flower arrangement for the table on her front porch. I worked with her for years and she lives nearby. She loves purple and I had gotten a container with purple petunias and some other lighter lavender flowers earlier in the spring, but I told her yesterday, it’s time for some new flowers for her front porch. The heat’s taken a toll on those petunias.
Her mobility has gotten very poor, so she uses a walker even in her house. She keeps telling me how much she’d love to be able to work on planting flowers in her yard, but that’s not possible. Instead, she has a lot of houseplants she tends by pushing her walker around with her watering can on the seat. She loves the flowers on her front porch, which I water for her, but she can’t safely work in her yard. I’ve been telling her about my container garden challenges and she told me for years she kept buying ferns for her front porch, which gets full-sun most of the day, and no matter what she did they died. I told her ferns love my front porch, because it gets a lot of shade. Sometimes we have to accept that some things we really want to grow where we’re at, aren’t going to thrive there.
I started buying cut flowers for her often and putting them in a vase on her kitchen table rather than putting flowers on my husband’s grave. She loves having a vase of pretty flowers to look at and truthfully, I know my husband would think getting flowers for her makes more sense than putting flowers on his grave. Her remaining son died last summer, a couple months after my husband died and she lives alone. She’s on home hospice care. Whenever you think things are bad, you don’t have to look far to find someone who is facing even harder struggles.
In the past couple weeks the belief that the food facility fires are part of some deliberate, politically-motivated effort to destroy our food supply has spread faster than, well, wildfire among the right. In the past couple days I’ve seen various people on social media proclaim it’s “eco-terrorism” and I’ve seen several mentions of some iteration of “he who controls the food supply, controls the people,” being bandied about. None of these people can give details of who exactly they believe is responsible for these fires or evidence that supports that conclusion. but they’re convinced there are just too many fires for it to be a coincidence or accidents.
The right-wing crazy spreads as fast as the left-wing Trump derangement spread. I’ve yet to see any real evidence indicating these fires were eco-terrorism or that they are all connected. A whole lot of people on the right believe Biden, Democrats and liberals pushing climate change/green policies will do anything to force Americans to comply with their agenda, so believing these fires are eco-terrorism fits perfectly with their belief that these people on the left are evil. People on the left, who went totally bonkers about Trump being akin to Hitler, were caught up in that delusional belief pattern too.
So, yes, there are plenty of people on the left who want to force Americans to comply with their green agenda and yes, many of these people put their ideological beliefs about climate change above individual rights and our liberties. Some even spout that their policies, which are crushing small businesses and even the American economy, are a small price to pay to move to their vision of green energy. However, I’ve seen no evidence linking these fires or bolstering the conclusion they’re part of some diabolical plot to destroy the food supply.
Where I do see efforts to control people is on social media – trying to control information (the endless spin information war) and efforts to silence numerous people on the right or people who did not accept the “trust the Covid science” put forth by health officials and politicians. However, here again the overreach centered on a four-year effort to silence Trump, but it also spread to include other Republican politicians and mostly people on the right, but there was also a massive effort to kill the Hunter Biden laptop story in October of 2020. Twitter and other social media platforms banned users from reposting the NY Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Distrust permeates between partisans in America, but often even between people who hold differing views on preparedness or what to stock up on. I don’t care what people stock up on, but I will keep preaching about how important it is to try to get out of debt, especially consumer debt. I also believe it’s important to stock up on hope and optimism too. I’m not going to run around calling anyone evil if they disagree with me and I prefer to assume most people are operating in good faith, even the people who I think went down a right-wing rabbit hole on this “they’re trying to destroy our food supply.”
I haven’t seen much in the way of competent strategic planning on the left – even with the Davos crowd. The policies they’re proposing and most of what Dems in America have pushed will definitely lead to worse economic woes, but if you watch how much of a mess the baby formula crisis is and how inept the response, well, it’s hard for me to believe these people are the masterminds of some grand plan to destroy the food supply via arson at food facilities. They might wreck the food supply through their total incompetence and stupid policies that don’t work, but I just don’t see them as strategically plotting arson attacks to destroy the food supply.
All of the trillions spent for COVID hand-outs and other rash spending have put us on the path to massive economic problems, then add in the war in Ukraine, sanctions on Russia, and other assorted weather problems, shortage problems, shipping problems, well, we’re heading into some trying times.
Rather than sit around doom-casting or worrying about everything from what I’m going to do if people come to my door asking for food, to worrying about America collapsing, I’m focusing on what I can do each day to positively affect my life and help my family and people I come into contact with. I’m not wasting one second worrying about what I’m going to say to a family member or friend who made some comment about me stocking up and then comes to ask for help. It’s pretty easy for me to offer help, if I can, but my help comes with telling them they need to pass it on.
True story from my trip to visit my youngest grandchild last month – my daughter thinks my level of stocking up is ridiculous and she assumes life will continue as normal. Until the federal government puts out some bulletin, I doubt she’ll believe me about the precarious economic situation.
In my usual travelling mode, I took some cash with me, to have in case. At my daughter’s house one day, the guy who does the yard at the house where they just moved into, came and mowed. My daughter came in the house and asked my son, who travelled with me, if he had cash to pay the yard guy. My son said he doesn’t carry cash. I asked her how much she needed and I told her I had it, so I gave her the cash. She said, “Who carries cash?” I said, “Everyone should carry some cash.” Perhaps they’ll think about it, but even if they don’t, I’ll help them regardless, because they’re family.
Rather than preach about growing food, I decided to attempt container gardening and it’s working for me, but I also gave 6 people plants and I offered plants to two other people, who didn’t want any. I’ll still be happy to share extra vegetables with those two, because they’re nice neighbors, who would help me out too. I am not investing any energy into getting angry at anyone – even people I totally disagree with or who hold differing political views.
With other things I’ve done to try to be more prepared, like most people, I’m a work in progress and have a lot of gaps – some from deciding what my budget allows and some from I feel totally out of my depth in knowing what’s best for me – like a generator or portable solar power. With talk of rolling black-outs being likely across the country this summer, thinking about this area of preparedness seems more pressing, so I’m trying to do some research.
I have several ways to cook food – butane burner, gas grill, charcoal grill and there’s still some little gas stove thing my husband used in the garage – plus if push comes to shove, I have a fireplace, but I sure don’t want to light that in the summertime in GA. I’ve thought about a sun oven, but the All American sun oven is expensive and I doubt I would use it much. A long time ago I watched a video on how to construct a sun oven cheaply, but I haven’t tried that.
A huge problem for me is organization and figuring out better ways to organize my food pantry, my supplies, tools, craft and sewing stuff and now more gardening stuff has become a priority. What good is buying a lot of stuff to be prepared, if during an emergency I can’t find things quickly or am digging through closets, boxes, plastic totes, and even store bags, hunting down the vital preparedness supplies I bought? Yes, a lack of good organization will neutralize all my good preparedness intentions. Things here sort of float about too long without a designated home and labeled containers are a rare sighting in my closets, although I do label and date every container or bag that goes into my freezers. Organization remains my biggest challenge.
Yesterday, I got outside early and watered my container garden before heading to the veterans cemetery where my husband is buried. Clouds were gathering, as some boys and men were preparing for a Memorial Day ceremony, but I didn’t want to sit through speeches. The rain hit before I got home.
I think my husband would shake his head at my container garden effort, but he would approve of me not giving up and trying to do the best I could this spring to get vegetables growing again. I’m thinking about more durable infrastructure for my garden, but so far this container gardening effort is working. I’ve found loads of container gardening information and inspiration online, but truly the hardest part was just getting started and taking the first steps to start some tomato and pepper seeds indoors. Once those seeds took off, well, then I was committed to figure out something to transplant them and get them outside.
I picked this Reba McEntire song as one of the music selections for my husband’s funeral service last year:
My husband loved Reba.
Each step forward made me feel a bit more optimistic, but there were plenty of problems and a few failures, like the bareroot strawberries I bought at a local store didn’t grow. I saw several homesteaders and gardeners online recommend Stark Bro’s Nurseries as a good place to order fruit trees and bushes, so I went ahead and ordered some more strawberries and a few other things. The 25 pack of bareroot strawberries was on sale for $9.99 and every single one is growing.
I planted some of the Stark strawberries in containers with flowers and I put these in a rectangular grow bag in my gorilla cart temporarily, until another tiered container from amazon arrives. I’m glad I bought more strawberries and gave it another try.
My first bit of advice is don’t quit when you face failure with gardening (or any other endeavor). If it’s feasible, due to your growing season and within your budget, try again as soon as you can. The longer you talk yourself into excuses and defeat, the harder it is to get started again – trust me on this, because I’m the queen of “I Tried That Once And I Can’t.” I’ve faced slug problems, some bug problems, and made loads of dumb mistakes and I’m sure all three of these gardening maladies will hit again, plus some more. I planted 4 zucchinis and they were thriving, so I gave away two of them, thinking I’d be flooded with zucchinis. I picked one nice zucchini off of the best looking plant, then one day that plant started drooping a lot and by the next morning it had fallen over and the stem looked demolished.
My remaining zucchini doesn’t look terrific, but I transplanted it into an 18 gallon tote container. I also planted a few more zucchinis, because there’s a long growing season here. I have 3 pattypan squash plants that have started producing and two yellow crookneck too.
One of the yellow squash is conjoined twins.More yellow squash growing.
In previous posts I mentioned that I’ve used a lot of grow bags, but here in the GA heat, these grow bags dry out quickly. I bought small black trash bags and have put the grow bags inside of the trash bags and I can pull the bags up all the way or push them down, coming up only a few inches along the sides of the bags, to hold in moisture.
The trash bags seem to be helping to hold in water with the grow bags. The Burpee seeds for these veranda tomatoes have formed tons of cherry tomatoes, but the foliage is very tight and dense, making it hard to prune them and hard to get at the ripe tomatoes. These are determinate tomatoes. The cucumber seed packet said “bush variety,” but these were vining out a lot, so I staked them. I see a lot of people online put up cattle panels as a durable trellis. That’s something I might invest in later, after I figure out if I’m going to stick with container gardening, put in some raised beds or go back to in-ground gardening. This year is just getting my heart and mind committed to gardening by myself.
Problems and troubleshooting are just a part of gardening (and life). I hadn’t planted a vegetable garden in probably 15 years. There are pros and cons with container gardening and definitely with using grow bags too.
The portalacas in the top of the tiered container have gone crazy blooming.
Before I forget, the 5 cabbage plants that I started in a gallon milk jug with that winter sowing are still alive – slow to form heads, still in the Dollar Tree bags, had some bug damage, but, well, they’re alive. I will plant more cabbage later this summer to grow through the fall.
Bottom corner, that’s a spaghetti squash growing from that same “winter sowing” experiment.Basil and parsley in Dollar Tree dish pans, with drainage holes burned into the bottom.Back in late Feb-early March I planted seeds in some square Dollar Tree food containers and these violas didn’t grow, but then some seeds sprouted and now some are blooming. It’s way too warm for violas here, but no one told these violas that, lol.
Here’s a photo of the overall garden and yes, with all this container gardening on my patio, my patio really needs to be pressure washed:
I planted everything by myself, which I’m proud of doing. I put down almost all of the weed cover and wood chip mulch by myself, One of my sons helped a little with the first weed cover and mulch area, but then I expanded several times since then. On my back fence, there are weeds taking over and I’ve cleared some of that and need to get the rest of it cleared. The area behind my fence is like the woods are encroaching. My husband used to keep that area cleared and mowed to keep the woods further back from our back yard. I miss him, but I’m thankful everyday that he helped me learn not to be a quitter. If I can do this, I think just about anyone can. Just bite off a little bit at a time, then each day do a little bit more.
There’s so much bad news almost everyday now, that finding some rays of hope can be challenging. Working on my small backyard container garden is helping me find some inner peace and being out in the sunshine gets me away from my computer and away from the chaos roiling through the online news and social media world. It’s peaceful in my backyard.
As a child, I spent a lot of time in our garden and following my great-grandmother around as she tended her flowers. She could get anything to grow and taught me how to propagate a lot of plants. My mother was big on saving seeds and it seemed wondrous to collect flower seeds, then plant them the next spring and see beautiful flowers grow all over again. Each seed that has sprouted this year still feels like a small miracle unfolding before my eyes.
Here’s the song I chose to close my husband’s funeral service – it fit him and all the other veterans perfectly:
libertybelle diaries 