Misc/Chat Gardening for the Grand Solar Minimum

[Toosh]

Tunnels and protection is a wonderful idea. Choose crops that mature early. Look for crops that do well in the growing zone just north of you. If you do that then you should be able to get multiple crops in your growing season.

Leafy greens are great but rabbit food is not survival food. It won't give you sustenance. Look to grow calories and food that stores/preserves well. Pole beans. Potatoes - for sure - regular and sweet pots. Corn. Peas. Squash. Cabbage. Onions and Garlic

Get started with a tunnel garden but let me just say that gardening is a skill that takes time to develop. If you have not had a successful garden, in a tunnel, in the past then you need a Plan B. This year, you need a sure thing. Buy enough to store what you need else partner with a successful gardener and barter gardening skills. Learn to can. Take advantage of every sale and buy enough fresh produce to fill a canner full each week. You'll fill your pantry with good, fresh food that you can depend on being there when you need it.

 

[Martinhouse]

Just this last week I've harvested the last of the second growth I get from my overwintered kale, broccoli, etc.

It all gets dehydrated and then added to soft foods that I am able to eat. Today I have planted half of my sweet potatoes where the greens were and tomorrow will plant the other half. My greenhouse isn't a high tunnel or even a regular arched tunnel, but it is attached to the south side of my house and is a wonderful place to be on a chilly but sunny winter day.

It gets too hot in there to plant most garden things in the summer, but sweet potatoes should love it, and I have big container garden areas in the back yard for things that don't do well in the intense heat. There's a nice row of containers that are giving me strawberries right now. Turmeric does well out there, too.

This year I'm making a new container garden on the north side of my house. I'll be planting lots of edible and useful weeds there.....things that are already growing all over my place. I'm talking things like plantain, dandelion, wild lettuce, lambsquarters, etc. Got people on the lookout for me to find yarrow, mullein and other things that I haven't had here on my place for the last few years.

 

[nomifyle]

For onion success, it's vital to get varieties which grow well in YOUR particular day-length. For you folks in the south, you need either "day neutral" or "short day" varieties.

The absolute best source I've found for onion plants is Dixondale Onions, in Texas. Lots of varieties to choose from, excellent quality plants... if you have a way to get together with some other local folks and order, you can get your cost down to a little under $3 bunch, which is a great deal.

But even if you end up only buying one or two bunches and paying full price (prices include shipping), if they do anywhere near as well for you as they have for us, you'll be way ahead of store prices.

In 2018, we planted 22 bunches, and got NINE BUSHELS of huge, beautiful onions.

Summerthyme

Thanks, I just ordered a catalogue from them

 

[alpha]

It's pleasant when I find that things I've been inspired to do here on the homestead not only succeed easily but later seem to have been merely my fulfillment of Gods' directive for my life and thus, blessed by Him. To be a bit more specific I should mention that our gardens have been hugely abundant this year and we've been putting a great deal of the crops up in the pantry. Our Angus heifer (now officially a cow) gave us a beautiful and healthy heifer calf and will soon be bred back again. The dairy goats are doing very well and looking forward to a September breeding. Turkeys and replacement laying hens all growing and producing our future protein supplies. Our new pasture was cleared, limed, fertilized, seeded and has been growing quickly with all our rain this past month, all in anticipation for next Spring.

All these years of preparation for whatever life might throw at us has certainly provided much joy along with the usual harassment from the "uninitiated" within our circle of acquaintances. But, a lot of that joy comes in the form of otherwise casual conversations with neighbors such as the one we had last week with our 86 year old farmers next door while discussing the beauty of farming... She married him while still a junior in high school because "I always wanted to be married to a farmer"! Their children, like mine, all live within five or ten miles and are always there when needed.

Well, yesterday and today SouthernPrepper1 did two good videos ( Could the collapse last longer than a year and Another nail in the coffin of our way of life ) on what he (and I) believe we are soon to experience here in this country. I sort of relate to him in that we both take responsibility for the safety and welfare of our extended families (nom de plume: 'alpha'). There's joy in vindication of your convictions as well, so in the essence of why TB2K came to be I hope every member took the possibilities to heart and prepared for the ultimate endurance test.