No Weeding, No Digging, No Tilling, No Kidding!

THE TEN BASICS OF SQUARE FOOT GARDENING

LAYOUT – Arrange your garden in planting squares, not rows. Lay out 4 ft. by 4 ft. planting areas separated by 3 foot wide walking aisles.

BOXES – Build 4 ft by 4 ft by 6 in deep bottomless boxes to hold a special soil mix above ground.

SOIL –You don't dig up your existing ground, just remove any weeds or grass inside the box, lay down a weed cloth, then just fill boxes with a special soil mix: 1/3 compost (made from many different ingredients), 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 coarse vermiculite

GRID – Make a square foot grid for the top of each box to organize the garden for planting.

CARE – Never walk on the growing soil. Tend your garden from the aisles. Soil then stays loose and friable.

VERTICAL FRAME . – Build a sturdy vertical frame to train all vine crops to grow up to conserve ground space.

ELECT – Plant a different flower, vegetable, or herb crop in each square foot, using spacing of 1, 4, 9 or 16 plants per square foot. Crop rotation happens automatically thereafter.

PLANT – Conserve seeds. Plant only a pinch (2 or 3 seeds) per hole. or place transplants in a slight saucer-shaped depression. Plant only what you will use during each season. No waste. from overplanting

WATER – Nurture plants by watering by hand from a bucket of sun-warmed water (hose or drip system okay).

HARVEST – When you finish harvesting a square foot, add a handful of compost to replenish nutrients and replant with a new and different crop.

Read entire article here.

Your Own Family Emergency Planning Book

I found this on one of my Yahoo email lists. I thought I would share it. Through time I would like to add to this idea....

Okay, [someone] mentioned... not being able to run to a computer when the going gets tough. while I can't take all the credit for this. It can literally be a lifesaver.

First of all, get some 3 ring binders. preferably the bigger ones. Then get a laser printer. Black and White can be used, but you also might need a color one. Get lots of acid free paper for your laser printer and start printing out all your survival information. Also, you might want to put you and your families personal info on these pages. Never know when a comp or CD will be so much scrap.

Now, why a laser printer and acid free paper? A laser printer burns the info into the paper and then somehow adds the ink. while the ink may itself fade with time. The lasering technique will still allow your info to still be read. the acid free paper, just means the paper will not turn yellow and brittle over time. Oh, it might in 50 or more years, but I doubt that. If you don't believe me on this. Check out those first paperback books that came out in the 50's and 60's. The paper in there can be extremely brittle and definitely yellow or even browned over the years. While most of the more expensive hard bound books, still look very good and are readily readable.Depending on how much information you have. You can use a lot or a few of those 3 ring binders. maybe some smaller 3 ring binders for some things.

Here are some hints for what to put in these binders and how to label them.
Food Storage Recipes
How to Get Potable Water, Including Wells and Witching
Medical, including First Aid
Alan Hagans Food Storage FAQ(300-400 pages)
Communication
Transportation
Animal Care
Guns
Ammo Reloading
Computer Repair maybe
Gardening
Metalworking
Woodcraft
Hunting
A list of your own supplies and where they are
What to take in certain situations
Your Family History(including future records)

and obviously, you can have lots of subjects here.

Bill

What is Square Foot Gardening?

It's a very simple, easy, and unique method of gardening that eliminates all of the hard work, heavy tools, and time-consuming chores of traditional, single-row gardening.

Because of all these advantages, gardening can now be easily done by not only the very young, the very old and everyone in between. It adapts to any location in the world. Since we don't dig up or try to improve the existing soil; we need no tools and no work. It's the greenest of the green methods of gardening, because it uses only 20% of the space, 10% of the water, 5% of the seeds, and only 2% of the work of a traditional, single-row garden, yet produces over 100 % of the harvest..

Read entire article here.

Preparing for the Second Wave of the H1N1 Virus

The world has been re-awakened to the specter of the pandemic – how quickly and uninvited they arrive, and how alarmingly fast they can spread to many nations. Historically, there are records of pandemics going back to the days of Hippocrates, which was 2400 years ago. Records kept since then show that pandemics have occurred about every 20-40 years. Since the Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968, we are at 41 years.

Read the entire article here.

Why Go Shopping Anymore?

Why spend the time, money, gasoline and hassle when you could step outside your back door and grab the same items—fresh, organically grown, non-contaminated, never-to-be-recalled, nor handled by anyone else—in two or three minutes? You won't even have to use your credit card. And the kids could pick their own, which makes it a special treat rather than a chore of having to wash and trim the vegetables from the plastic bags you picked up at the store....

Read the entire article here.

Square Foot Gardening

I'm so excited to hear that Mel Bartholomew, author of the Square Foot Gardening System has agreed to write a weekly column exclusively for Meridian Magazine.

I'll be sure to post the link here to the article. Stay tuned!