Container Garden In The Works

Instead of blogging here on the When The SHTF blog over the past week or so, I got busy reading more on container gardening, watched videos about the same, and slowly started my container gardening. I worked on article writing (not published yet. The topics of Indrid Cold, Zombie Invasions, UFO theories, etc., require some research time, believe it or not) as well as blogging elsewhere while I waited to see whether or not some seeds I had kickin' around from last year would actually sprout or not - along with some new seeds I just bought and planted. I got the seeds into the soil last weekend (for three store-bought mini-garden "kits" I brought home on the weekend).

I was happy to note that a few days ago, li'l green, white, red and yellow-ish shoots started peeking out from the soil and if I take care of these li'l organic life forms, I'm going to have some salad greens, herbs, tomato snacks and add better nutrition into my lifestyle!

I'm also RE-Purposing many containers! I got baby spinach and lettuce mix each in family sized plastic containers a little while ago and these are being re-used instead of going to the landfill now that I've finished eating the greens. In these containers are - you guessed it - spinach and lettuce mix, in soil, and I'll be able to harvest the leaves in just a few weeks for fresh salad meals and snacks.

When shopping, I've been looking at what kinds of containers are holding the items I bring home. I want to be able to fill the empty containers with something else once the original content is gone out of the container. I never expected to feel this way about shopping, recycling, re-purposing objects when I was growing up but really, I think we all can do more to ease damage and waste to our environment. As well, re-purposing can save money on items I'd normally go out and purchase as empty containers, so there are more benefits to being environmentally friendly than I expected when I first began thinking about making an indoor/outdoor or container garden.

I'm using salad greens containers like in the picture below:

And once I get my digital camera recharged properly, I'll take some pics and show how my own container garden looks. I will do better than the very short vid clip below.

Recycle, Re-purpose, Re-use. I can tell that these three words are going to be very familiar to me from now on, along with the actions that go along with these words.

I know the video clip is only a few seconds but it shows the very small containers I am using to start my garden in. Yes, that little tiny rectangular container at the back is a lunchbox sandwich container - extremely small - but I intend to transplant the plants into a larger container soon. The soil should come out of that box in a little brick and I can just lay it down into a soil filled bucket in a couple of weeks. The little round container is a plastic pop bottle, cut in half with the top inverted to make a very small version of the pop bottle planter I displayed in the last blog post. I wanted to try making a self-watering bottle planter on a small bottle before I started hacking away at larger plastic bottles.

To get a better idea of the scale, here's a snap shot from a vid where I placed an ordinary drinking box in the area and ran the video camera again.

I found some excellent items in my backyard today that will come in handy for my gardening needs this year - some strollers and a li'l red wagon. I started cleaning up the wagon but since it's still really sloppy with melting snow outside, the wagon isn't ready for use yet.

I hope to get my li'l red wagon as clean as the one above in just a few days.

There isn't a whole lot of vegetation going on or to show just yet but I've made a start. The good part of all this is that I've still got a whole bunch of soil and seeds here. As a low income resident in my community, I have a whole store of motivation to grow my own food, save myself money on groceries, eat healthy and stay engaged with this gardening project!

So far, the items I've planted:

lettuce (3 or 4 different kinds, including a red lettuce)
green onions, chives and sweet basil
tomato, cayenne pepper and cilantro
strawberries
spinach
swiss chard (a nice variety, ruby red)
garlic (in the mini pop bottle)
a few bean and pea plants and an experiment with beet seeds (lol)

I may have forgotten something but by mid-week next week I will have put together some containers with more beans (green and yellow varieties) and peas, carrots, parsnips, radish, more lettuce, and more garlic. Once I get to a store that has a better variety of seeds on display than I've found so far, I'll buy more seeds and plant more herbs.

moi~~

Interesting Container Gardening Possibilities

With snow still on the ground over where I'm at, I find I'm really impatient about having to wait to start my container gardening. To ease the wait, I'm surfing and watching videos, how-to clips on gardening with various containers.

Actually, I thought this would help me calm down about all this but, instead, I am more determined to start gardening by this weekend - INSIDE - without waiting for Mother Nature to send a warm breath my way...

The following video shows some creative and amazing gardening in all sorts of containers from old crates and re-used furniture - to (not very large!) styro-foam take-out containers! Wow, this video shows that you can pretty much use ANYTHING, fill it with soil and seeds, then grow stuff!



I watched a few other videos but, honestly, some of the avid survivalist gardeners and their methods of planting and setting up containers seems convoluted and complicated!

I'm definitely going for "minimalist" and am going to be working to save money, so I'll keep watching all the how-to videos that I can on this subject - but I can't see how I'm going to manage to gather the kind of advanced tools and materials some people are using for their container gardens.

I have a bunch of kitty litter buckets and those keep on showing up as I have a feline friend at home, so they'll have to do to start with. No plastic pipes or any other kinds of pipes are available to me and I'm going to refuse to spend money on any but the most basic of tools and materials. Call me "CHEAP-O" but remember that I live on a below-poverty-level income.

...I suppose I'll just have to be as creative as possible with all of this.

If you've watched the video from this post, you'll see why I might be saying I'll refuse to buy anything I don't need to... WOW, plastic juice/water bottles have been used for gardening in this video. This project is going to let me get rid of a bunch of stuff I've been calling "absolute junk" around the house and put it to good use... There will be no running to the hardware store or department store to ask for best prices on buckets! In the above vid - jars, bottles, styro-foam take out containers, burlap sacks, cups, milk jugs - you name it... plants are growing in all of those things. Tomato, Bok Choy, Onions, Lettuce, Basil, Garlic and other herbs... Re-use, Re-cycle, remarkable gardening!

Enjoy the vid - I hope other people decide to start doing this, too!

moi~

Beginning of Being Prepared

Times are a-changing - for the worse in many places - so I started getting interested in getting prepared for unforseen circumstances.

I suppose I shouldn't say literally UNFORSEEN circumstances - at least not in North America - because what we are seeing in N. American politics, military, etc., in the content of movies, music, in our social constructions and society, in general - isn't unforseen at all.

For years many wise men and women have been warning us about the negative aspects of materialism, consumerism and similar topics. Yes, I view videos from the likes of Jim Marrs, Alex Jones, David Icke... and even if their worst case scenarios aren't ever going to happen, I don't think we should be ignoring or making fun of these people. In the least, they have pushed forward against the mainstream, making ripples, bringing up questions and topics we'd better start thinking and talking about!

Eventually, I suppose, this blog will turn into a conglomerate of off-shoot topics - survivalist, current events, conspiracy theory possibilities, but for right now, Spring is nearly here in North American regions of the world, so I'm going to be reading up on, learning about, and engaging in some gardening/food production projects.



It's amazing to me (maybe because I'm not that young) that living in an urban area now (I grew up in a rural location), I find so few people who grow their own food. I don't live in an urban area that is considered over-populated at all, either - but I am still surprised that most city-dwellers who do maintain their yards are primarily bent on having nice grass and then keeping stray dogs, cats, and kids off their lawns!

I use public transit most of the time and so I'm walking past yard after yard after yard... I'm surely not trying to be a peeper here but I do glance into my neighbours' yards and into yards on the next block, all the way to the bus stop. What I see mostly are grass and some flowers in the front yards and very few greenhouses or gardens at the backs of houses. I must say there are a LOT of nice lawns in my area.

I can only conclude that, in general, people in my district are pretty much all buying food from stores year-round - and I'm not going to place a harsh judgement on that, however, I must say I'm worried that in my particular region of the country, we seem to have very little frugality or care for the resources that are right in front of us.



My plan for this year, this Spring (just a few short weeks away) is to start growing some of my own food and to use buckets and such so that I can bring at least a little bit of my gardening inside once the weather turns cold again. I figure that once I start, I'll have about 6 months to get things right with the plants, figure out which plants I am good at growing.

As well, I am a low-income urban resident of my city, so if I can keep some things growing in containers after the summer months, I'll be doing myself a huge favour by creating a dent in my winter grocery lists! In my estimation, it will take me a few YEARS to properly learn some useful survival skills in case of freak weather events, political events or societal upheavals... so I decided I should learn about food, growing, storing, etc, as a first project here.



I started learning a little bit about hanging pots for gardening prior to this winter. I purchased a couple of hanging bags/potting units as winter was almost upon my region, when the prices of gardening items went on sale. I've had a good look at how the pieces are made and won't have to purchase anything fancy as Spring rolls around. I've asked some friends for large buckets and I'm just waiting for some funds so I can purchase seeds and soil to get started. Oh - as well, I'll wait for the snow to clear before getting into high gear with things.

Here's one of the videos I've been paying attention to from a you tube user:




My idea is that when the SHTF I'll still have some tomato, lettuce, radish and other veggies around so I'll make us up a salad while we're figuring out the rest of our survival tactics! :)



BTW, I've been viewing all the Haters' comments under you tube vids for people who are displaying "Survival tips" videos so I am not looking forward to that kind of response to my blog. I'll just stay anonymous for the time being if that's all right with readers. I'll just call myself moi for now.

moi~~