Prep Blog Review: Tips for Garden Prepping

It’s no secret to anyone that our economy is free falling so the best way to prepare for when things go South-er is to be self-sufficient and well-stocked.

Since there’s no better time than spring to start working on your garden, we’ve gathered 4 articles to help do it. Also, see one useful piece about cooking your harvest outdoors.

Read out weekly Prep Blog Review below and feel free to speak up your mind using the comment form at the end of the article!

1. What is Permaculture? Plus 12 More of Your Permaculture Questions Answered

“Would you like a garden that produces bountiful harvest year after year without back-breaking effort? Of course! Who wouldn’t? Last fall, I sat in on a lecture by Rick Austin, author of Secret Garden of Survival.

Rick showed the class one picture after another of a forest-like garden filled with every fruit and vegetable imaginable and said once planted, the garden pretty much took care of itself.

Amazing, I thought. I have to do this at our mountain house!

A month or so later, I’d thought I figured out the best spot for a food forest and called a tree removal company.

The week the bulldozers were scheduled to raze a half acre of our wooded land, I met Joshua Deel of Barefoot Farms & Permaculture. Whether you consider it a coincidence or an act of God, it was perfect timing.”

Read more about this on Home Ready Home.

2. Best Manure For Your Garden

“Organic gardeners love manure; yet if you use it wrong, you may destroy all you’ve worked for. I recently was e-mailed by a regular reader. She wrote:

Hey David, have you done a post on the different types of manure yet?
The reason I asked is that I’m looking to grow my gardening area (the size) and was thinking about what type of compost/manures to add.I thought about your post about compost manure can be a concern and also from the ag county may have herbicide. I was also considering mushroom compost (mushroom farm nearby —) but read about the concerns of how the treat for bugs, etc.
So what did I come up with? Bunny poop!”

Read more about this on The Prepper Project.

3. Build Your Own Wicking Garden Bed

“A few weeks back I harvested a nice crop of yacon from a friend’s “wicking” garden bed. For those of you who are tired of watering, building a few self-watering beds like his wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Here’s one easy type to try out: I get quite a bit of water in my area so I haven’t done much with this method, though I have grown water-hungry species in simple self-watering containers.”

Read more about this on The Prepper Project.

4. Learn two homemade soil pH testing methods

“I’m always looking for quick tips to make my gardening chores easier.

I ran across a couple of gardening hacks about testing your soil pH without a kit and I thought I would try them out and see what I need to do with my garden. Let’s do a little kitchen chemistry!

But first…

Why do you care if your soil is alcaline or acidic?

Knowing your soil pH is the key to understanding if essential minerals will be available to the roots of your plants.

According to The San Francisco Chronicle, “if you live in an area with alkaline soil — which has a pH above 7.0 — you havetwo options. You can either take measures to lower the pH, or you can choose plants well-suited to growing in alkaline conditions. If you take the latter path, you have a wide variety of plants to choose from.”

Read more about this on Preparedness Mama.

5. How to cook in a steam pit

“If you attended Dirttime 12, you were treated to a class on steam pit cooking by Stone-age skills instructor Chris Morasky.

Really, though, if you’ve attended a clam bake, that’s all it really is. At its core, steam pit cooking is nothing more than a pit with hot rocks, followed by food, then green vegetation then covered with dirt and allowed to sit.

The moisture from the vegetation helps in the steaming process and keeps the food tender.

Okay that sounded really basic, so here is a little more in depth article that covers this type of cooking. Not only will it turn out delicious moist food, but it is always a crowd pleaser.”