Growing Food: Gardening in Small Spaces

Ya gotta think outside the box! If you live in an apartment or in a small house in a big city with very little lawn or garden space, you can still grow food to dehydrate or preserve for emergencies.

Just check out this photo on the left. My wife grows all her herbs on our back deck but we've never branched out into growing tomatoes or zucchini or other plants there. We have an unused front porch too where no one ever sits! This photo has me thinking more creatively too. Guess what I'm going to be trying next spring?

For those with too much direct sun on the patio I've been advised that 4 bamboo stake/poles and a few yards of muslin will make a nice sunshade - lets light through, doesn't let the hot sun scorch the plants.

Epsom Salts - Amazing Emergency Supply item.

Epsom Salts are an amazing Emergency Supply item. Did you know that Epsom salts can be used for medicinal purposes, gardening and extending the life of a battery? Epsom salt has numerous health benefits as well as many beauty, household and gardening-related uses.

We stock Epsom Salts to extend battery life. With a solar panel like HQRP 50W Mono-crystalline Solar Panel 50 Watt 12 Volt in Anodized Aluminum Frame 10 Years Limited Power Warranty we can charge a car battery and then use it for lighting or other purposes. Epsom salts will extend that battery from 2 or 3 years to 4 or 5.

And we can use it in our First Aid Kit too.  Epsom Salts/Magnesium Sulfate 10lbs are available at Amazon.com

An Emergency Preparedness To-Do List

If you don't have an Emergency Survival To-Do List, maybe it's time to think about writing one up. Figure out what you've done and what you still need to do to prepare for an emergency situation. 


What food have you stockpiled? What do you still need in the way of food for one year?


What about water? 


What about weapons?


What about gathering and storing firewood ahead of time? 


These are all things you need to think about as a Prepper.


This is not the same thing as your Emergency Survival Plan.  Your Emergency Preparedness Plan is what you create first. It's your overall plan of how you and your family and friends plan to survive a catastrophe. 


The To-Do list is what you're going to focus on in the next few months or during this year. For example our To-Do list includes the following:


* Buy more oats. We plan on breakfasts of Oatmeal each day and for a year's worth of such breakfasts we need a specific amount of oats. This year's focus is to reach our goal for enough oats for one year for 6 people. 
* Buy more corn - need to reach our goal of enough for one year for 6 people
* Buy more dried beans - need to reach our goal of enough for one year for 6 people
* Make a manual pump for our drilled well. The time to build this is now, not after a disaster. We need more than one.
* Cut and store firewood. Firewood takes time to cure and it takes time, effort and gas to power a chain saw to cut trees. The time to do this is now
* Make a root cellar. We have a work weekend coming up in July. Both my step-sons are coming up to help me dig out under the mudroom to make a small root cellar. We need it now so that not only is it done and ready but my wife and I can experiment with how best to use it to keep our vegetables and fruits for prolonged periods of time
* Buy more baking powder - this is something my wife has worked out that she needs to bake one Irish Soda Bread loaf for 365 days for 6 adults. 
* Extend the herb garden and rhubarb patch
* Plant squash and pumpkin this year in addition to last year's vegetables (zucchini, onions, peppers)
* Organize our available storage areas and figure out what items need to be kept in each. We have some climate controlled areas but we also have some with extreme fluctuations in temperature and humidity so we are starting to create a  list of what items can go where.  I'll go into detail on this in another blog post.


What's on your To-Do list?