In this booklet was a section called “Ten Good Reasons To Grow Your Own” (there are actually 11 good reasons in this small section) . If the reasons sound good to you then go to bountifulgardens.org, click on the Ecology Action Research Papers section and look for BEA – 0017. We keep two copies as they’re valuable and inexpensive.

Anyway, they seemed to fit in well with our book review subject matter and here we are with “Ten Good Reasons To Grow Your Own“ (11):

#1. Fresher Food – - … “dinner at your doorstep.”

#2. Better Flavor – - “Produce in the market is bred for toughness and storability. You can choose varieties for flavor and harvest them at their peak.”

#3. No Pesticide Residues – - “You can control how your food is grown.”

#4. Money – - “A 50 square-foot garden can produce 75-150+ pounds of vegetables in 5-15 minutes a day. Your time saves money while you grow better food.”

#5. Reduce Air Pollution – -”Save trips to the grocery and reduce the amount of food that is trucked across country and shipped across oceans.”

#6. Reduce Garbage – - “Eliminate the wasted cans, bottles, boxes, and plastic bags that package our food. Compost your vegetable waste.”

#7. SAVE WATER (caps/PH) – - “80% of our water nationwide is used to produce food, and water is fast becoming a critical resource with underground reserves being depleted in many agricultural areas. Biointensive techniques use 1/3 to 1/16 the water per pound of food grown.”

PrudentHome Comment: This is the kind of information we had in mind during our beginning review of Steve Solomon’s book, “Gardening when it counts“, when we said that Mr. Solomon’s view that biointensive gardening used more water than some of the other techniques he proposed was open to question.

#8. Renew The Soil – - “Most agricultural systems eventually deplete the soil. Tests by a University of California soil science graduate student show that the biodynamic/French Intensive method may be one of the few approaches that actually build the soil over time. It also has the great potential for eventually helping reclaim decertified areas.”

#9. Create A Multiple-Use Homestead – - “Fruit – and nut- producing trees can shade your house, block cold winds, and provide wood and food.”

#10. Exercise – - plus the satisfaction of working with fresh air, soil, water, and living plants … .”

BONUS: #11. More Nutritious Food – - “Fresh-picked produce is higher in vitamins and adds more color, flavor, and texture to meals. Also, children love vegetables when they help grow them.”

FOOD SECURITY: From PrudentHome please add this vital reason to grow your own food.

A quick look at our world food situation should give support here:

1. More than 1 billion people now suffering from hunger in the face of a world population increasing at the rate of a Great Britain per year,
2. Climate change producing food-killing droughts, cyclones/hurricanes, etc.,
3. Peak Oil – With about 90% of the worlds food  produced via fossil fuels, then when oil production declines -  food production declines.,
4. Decreasing farm land availability – Major countries like China and India are buying farmland outside of their own countries to insure food security for their populations.,
5. Fresh water stocks diminishing, reducing agricultural production., and finally
6. World Food/Grain reserves are now low and there is a tendency to deplete reserves even more for both market ($) and humanitarian needs.

For family food security, the prudent family must stock food reserves and be able to produce additional food for itself.

Until a little later; keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers moving fast.

Chapter I, con’t: “Size of your garden”

• “As a rough gauge, take the 2,00-square foot wartime allotment plot in the United Kingdom. Britain’s cool and frequently cloudy summers mean that most vegetables grow more slowly than they usually do in the United States or southern Canada. But on the plus side, the mild English winters allow gardeners in many areas to harvest frost-hardy crops year-round. The wartime British were not expected to make a complete family diet pot of 2,700 square feet of vegetables. Their staff of life was bread from the local baker. … Probably during the war years vegetables, including potatoes, did not make make up more than a third of the family’s total caloric intake.”
• “ … If your goal is to produce not half, but nearly all the calories and nutrition needed year-round, and your family can depend on the ordinary potato as their healthful staff of life, then you can add more land in order to produce sacks and sacks of nutritious spuds or sweet potatoes. … The good thing about potatoes is that working plots of this scale (from 500 t0 750 square feet per each adult depending on water conditions/SS) can be done entirely with hand tools. To produce the same amount of nutrition by growing cereal grains would require five to ten times as much land per person. The healthful potato is really the thing for getting through hard times.”

PH Comments: We are in strong agreement with Mr. Solomon in his comments regarding the nutritional value found in both Irish and sweet potatoes (and recommend growing both where possible) but again we part company as regards his method of gardening requiring relatively large amounts of land.

Based on our own experience, our observation that the average homeowner/gardener in America has significantly less land to work with than Mr. Solomon proposes,  and at least two major gardening methods that require relatively little land and have proved reliable/productive here and around the world: we support/advocate the more intensive gardening systems found in John Jevons’ “ ‘How To Grow More Vegetables’ “ and Mel Bartholomew’s “Square foot Gardening”.

We plan to continue reviewing Mr. Solomon’s excellent book (and to continue commenting where we think appropriate) coming up as he has produced a wealth of gardening information and insights for dealing with gardening in hard times.

Until a little later then: keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers changing fast.

An Apology: We have missed a full week “plus” of posts due to illness within our family. Our health concerns seem to be diminishing with this brief time in treatment and we hope to have all well and about soon.

We have just a couple of post’s planned for this week with a full schedule beginning the next week. Thank you for your understanding.

Continuing Book Review – “ ’Gardening When it Counts’ “ by Steve Solomon: Introduction/Chapter I-  con’t:

“The coming hard times”

• “We are soon going to base our civilization on something other than oil … or else we aren’t going to have much of a civilization left. Soon, everything made with oil is going to cost a lot more; gasoline, food, clothing, transportation, heating of houses, etc. And after that, if oil is still the basis for almost everything we do, then everything is going to cost even more.”
• “… those practicing raised-bed intensive methods will discover that intensive use of land requires large quantities of water, manure/compost, and fertilizer.’
• “Water has become scarce in many places. … watersheds are becoming ever more degraded, lessening the recharge of groundwater.”
• “Chemical fertilizers and many organic ones too, are made with petroleum or natural gas, so they are going to become more expensive.”
• “This book is for people who must have a good result.”
• “The successful home gardener must start with strong seeds and truly healthy transplants of varieties that are dependable and productive.”
• “Actually, to veggie garden successfully you only need a few hand tools, used properly.”

PH Comments: We agree with most of Mr. Solomon’s statements. We sincerely question his observations/conclusions however regarding the use of raised/intensive planting beds as requiring “large quantities“ (what are “large quantities” here and how does that square with these intensive techniques being taught/used successfully in some of the most difficult terrain, climate and poorest countries in the world? – Check out and follow up on some of this work being done via Bountiful Gardens catalog) of  “…water, manure/compost, and fertilizer.”

Again, we are going over Chapter I carefully to establish where Mr. Solomon is coming from in his observations and conclusions. There’s plenty of room, in our view, for honest yet differing opinions as to what might work well or best in particular situations. We have an open mind.

Until next time; keep your eyes on the horizon as the weather’s changing fast.

We’re going to do something a little different here at PrudentHome, as regards more traditional book reviews; we’re going to do a running book review and commentary. Each mid-week post over about a two month period of time (we plan on building in a couple of “open’ weeks within this time frame in order to allow for information that may be of urgent interest) we’ll present our continuing review with commentary.

Here’s why, because Mr. Solomon’s gardening book is one that deserves our special attention as it’s written especially for our times (and beyond?): hard times.

Here’s the beginning: Introduction -

“These days I feel fortunate to have retired to one of the world’s most remote places, Tasmania, a temperate south pacific island with a climate that is a lot like Oregon’s. From here I can enjoy a slight sense of detachment as I watch how the planet is going. But Tasmania is not self sufficient, so I am not nearly as detached as I wish I could be  about the hard times I foresee coming. I have the feeling that I should share some gardening knowledge I’ve accumulated with those who are probably soon going to need it, which is why I wrote this book.”

Here’s some of Mr. Solomon’s history, perspective and viewpoint:

• “I had a five-acre (two-hectare) homestead …”
• “In 1979 I created Territorial Seed company, …
• “During the 1980’s, when intensive (gardening) had become the standard practice, several things came together to teach me it was not the best way. Because I was running a seed company, I had to do a variety of trials. … Trials require that you grow plants far enough apart that each can develop to its full potential. One thing I noticed from doing this was that my trial plots didn’t need nearly as much irrigation as my intensive veggie garden. Another was that these well-separated plants got much larger; they tasted better than crowded vegetables did when they weren’t harvested promptly; and many vegetable species grown that way yielded more in relation to the space occupied, not less as I had read in books by intensive gurus.”
• “… I researched the nearly lost art of vegetable gardening without irrigating at all, which is mainly done by putting plants extremely far apart.”
• “These days I no longer raise my vegetables using the extreme intensive method that is still advocated by Everybody Else. And I irrigate much less than most people. If I did not have irrigation, I could still grow my garden. I believe I’ve worked out methods that best suit the coming hard times.”

PH Commentary: Please note here that Mr. Solomon has five acres of land on which to  plant his garden, he speaks very much from the viewpoint of a professional seedsman who has become disenchanted with the method (intensive gardening) used by “Everybody Else”  for some specific reasons: irrigation, harvesting-timing concerns and eventual yields, to name three..

High water use in intensive gardening is a very controversial conclusion as we understand it.

Until next time, keep your eyes on the horizon as the weather’s changing fast.

The Planet’s Future: “The planet’s future: Climate change ‘will cause civilization to collapse’ “, an “Authoritative new study sets out a grim vision of shortages and violence …” is the title and ‘sub’ of the Jonathan Owen piece on 7/12/09 posted by the UK’s The Independent (independent.co.uk) on 7/13/09. Here are some of the highlights:

• “…the authors of the report, produced by the Millinium Project – a think tank formerly part of the World Federation of the United Nations Accociations- set out a number of emerging environmental security issues, “The scope and scale of the future effects of climate change – ranging from changes in weather patterns to the loss of livelihoods and disappearing states – has unprecedented implications for political and social stability.”
• “An effort on the scale of the Apollo mission that sent men to the Moon is needed if  humanity is to have a fighting chance of surviving the ravages of climate change.’
• “This is the stark warning from the biggest single report to look at the future of the planet – obtained by The Independent on Sunday ahead of its official publication next month. Backed by a diverse range of leading organizations such as Unesco, the World Bank, the Us Army, and the Rockefeller Foundation, the 2009 state of the Future report runs to 6,700 pages and draws on contributions from 2,700 experts around the globe.”
• “The impact of the global recession is a key theme, with researchers warning that global clean energy, food availability, poverty, and the growth of democracy around the world are at “risk of getting worse due to recession” …”.
• “The immediate problems are rising food and energy prices, shortages of water and increasing migrations ‘due to political, environmental and economic conditions”, which could plunge half the world onto social instability and violence.”
• “The effects of climate change are worsening – by 2025 there could be three billion people without adequate water as the population rises still further. And massive urbanization, increased encroachment on animal territory, and concentrated livestock production could trigger new pandemics.”

Home Garden Warning: From Reuter’s today we get “Potato famine disease striking home gardens in U.S” by Julie Steenhuysen. Here is some of the key information:

• “Late blight, which caused the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840’s and 1850’s, is killing potato ant tomato plants in home gardens from Maine to Ohio and threatening commercial and organic farms, U.S. plant scientists said on Friday.”
• “… the fungal disease spread by spores carried in the air, has made its way into the garden centers of large retail chains in the Northeastern United states.”
• “Wal-mart, Home Depot, Sears, Kmart, and Lowe’s are some of the stores the plants have been seen in …”

“What’s unique about this year is we have never seen plants affected in garden centers being sold to home gardeners …”

*PrudentHome Note: ALL of the above information should provide additional incentive for the home gardener and food producers to consider PrudentHome’s recommendation to have at least two gardens worth of seeds (open-pollinated, natural &/or organic) on hand always, and we now add; each of your garden seed collections/selections should come from at least two sources, preferably in different areas of the country. That and SAVE YOUR SEED.

A Valuable Source: You’ll find a link at PrudentHome to M.D. Creekmore’s “The Survivalist Blog” (thesurvivalistblog.blogspot.com).

You’ll want to put this site on your list as Mr. Creekmore’s perspective on survival is at once tactical and practical. He supports individual/family independence via economy, simplicity and reliability in preparation (as do we at PrudentHome) from his skills as a gunsmith, martial artist, and practitioner of independent living. He’s worth your read.

Until next time: keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers changing fast.

Gas Price Increases: CNNMoney.com posted this Ben Rooney article today: “Gas prices menace battered economy”. The article speaks to increased gas prices in an economic downturn. Here are some of the key points:

• “The national average is up 28% over the last month and a half, straining wallets and threatening the economic recovery.”
• “Retail gas prices have risen daily since April 29, and are nearly $1 higher than the beginning of 2009. According to AAA, The national average now stands at $2.632 a gallon.”
• “As gas prices rise, analysts warn that consumers will be forced to cut back on spending in other areas. That could make it harder for the economy to recover because consumer spending  makes up the bulk of U.S. gross domestic product.” (about 70% of US GDP/PH)

Water & Food Supply: “California’s Water Woes Threaten the Entire Country’s Food Supply” is the title of the alternet.org’s June 9, 2009 piece by Scott Trill. In this work we learn of California’s significance to U.S. food supply and water’s role in California’s food production. Here are some excerpts:

• “Nearly a third of the country’s food supply comes from California, but drought there may be a catastrophe for farmers — and the rest of us.”
• Our current secretary of energy, Dr. Stephen Chu, Ph.D.: “I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen. We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California. I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going,” Steven Chu told the Los Angeles Times in February, shortly after taking office in January. “I’m hoping the American public will wake up.” he added.
• “…some not-so-fun facts: California’s agricultural sector grows approximately one-third of the nations food supply and is nourished by diverted rivers and streams filled yearly by runoff from it’s prodigious sierra Nevada snow pack, as well as ground water pumping and other less reliable methods.”
• A three year drought has, “…California’s central valley, home to a majority of the state’s agricultural output, farmers … leaving hundreds of thousands of acres fallow…”

Later this week, PrudentHome plans to discuss WHY investors are now looking at farmland as the investment of/for the future and why it’s important to the prudent home. Until then, keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers changing fast.

Sustainability In Food Production: Since 1975, Ecology Action has used the term “sustainable” (or “sustainability”) on a consistent basis when discussing soil fertility for food production and so it should come as no surprise that we’ve chosen their definition of it to guide us in developing a continuing family food production system.

We refer today to their paper “Ecology Action’s Comprehensive Definition of Sustainability — Self -Teaching Mini-Series #24″ (available from the 2009 catalog of Bountiful Gardens – 18001 Shafer ranch Road, Willits, CA 95490 for less than $2 plus postage www.bountifulgardens.org.

Here are some of the papers key points:

• “Because sustainability means continuous soil fertility, productivity which is based on non-renewable inputs cannot be considered sustainable. Only those yields that can be maintained indefinitely, using inputs which are themselves in sustainable supply, can be considered sustainable. …the only real foundation for a sustainable agriculture is healthy, fertile soil”
• “For hundreds of years, the Chinese practiced a manual, organic form of intensive farming using only fertilizers produced on the farmstead. They were able to feed about two times more people per acre than the United States presently does using modern mechanized techniques (assuming similar non-meat diets).”
• “Conventional agriculture requires ever-increasing amounts of chemical fertilizers at an increasing cost as petroleum supplies dwindle.”
• ” … the yields of biologically intensive agriculture can be sustained because the techniques used replace those elements within the soil that plants and humans need to sustain life without depending on petroleum-based synthetics.”
• “Sustainable soil fertility, then, can be said to exist when soils are not diminished by agriculture, but rather enhanced and maintained at an optimal level by nurturing practices such as those used for thousands of years by Oriental and Greek cultures.”

(Some) Steps toward Sustainable Soil Fertility:

#4. “The complete recycling of all farm waste products, including crop residues and animal manure. …”

#8. “The maintenance of genetic diversity in seeds so that a broad plant base which can respond to different, changing, geoclimatic conditions can be preserved.”

#11. “Most important, there needs to be a goal of “closed-system” farming with as few nutrient and biomass exports and imports as possible.”

• “…we need to properly feed the soil, and in turn it will feed us.”

Note; For additional information, see the Sustainability chapter on pages 18-31 of “How to Grow more Vegetables’ …(and fruits, nuts, berries, grains and other crops) than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine” by John Jeavons

Soon, PrudentHome.com plans to give some “up-to-dates” on the current world and national oil availability picture. This information should provide the home food producer with additional incentive to seriously work toward some level of sustainable home food production.

Until the end of the week then: keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers changing fast.

“Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is no prospect of a near term resolution to the crisis.

Soros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.

THE ECONOMY/MCCOACH: From “The Hijacking of America” by Greg McCoach at www.321gold.com on 2/19/09 (thanks to survivalblog.com of 2/23/09 in the section “Items of the Economatrix”)

“Looking at the dismal record of fiat currencies throughout history, no country that has disconnected their currency from a gold or silver standard has ever made it past the 40^th year mark before inflationary panic and disaster unfolded. The United States is now in the 37^th year of it’s fiat currency experiment since Nixon took us off the gold standard in in 1972.”

THE ECONOMY/W.B. YEATS: From Yeats poem “The Second Coming”:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

More accurately, the Yeats poem would perhaps reflect our general world condition and not just the narrow economic scene.

SOCIAL UNREST: “Britain faces summer of rage – police” is the article’s title in the UK’s guardian.co.uk/uk post on 2/23/09.

“Police are preparing for a ‘summer of rage’ as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned.”

The article goes on to note that “…people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings”

are “…becoming ‘foot soldiers’ in a wave of potentially violent mass protests.” and that “…middle-class individuals who never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests…”

‘COPING’: Two articles in Energy Bulletin (energybulletin.net, Food & Agriculture) on 2/20/09 deserve attention: the first is “UK allotments boom as thousands go to ground in recession” by Rebecca Smithers, The Guardian.

“…as recession bites, the growing enthusiasm for homegrown veg has seen more than 100,000 people join waiting lists for a patch of land as demand hits an all-time high.”

And second, “Portland, Maine allows backyard chickens” from Tom Bell, Portland Press Herald.

“…Portland City Council voted 7 -1 to remove its long standing ban on chickens and allow people to keep up to six hens within city limits.

“ …proponents of the measure…said the measure is part of a broader movement to create a situation in which food sources are found as close to home as possible.” and that “This brings us one step closer to sustainability …”

Until a little later in the week then, keep your eyes on the horizon. The weathers changing fast.

The article elaborates: “Approximately 40% of U.S. consumer credit is provided through securitization of credit card receivables, auto and student loans and similar products. This market, which is vital for lending and growth, has for all practical purposes ground to a halt.”

Monday (11/10/08), the article continues, American Express ( the credit card issuer) was reclassified by the Federal Reserve as a bank in order to enable it to more easily access government financing under the bailout plan : it has reportedly asked for $3.5 billion.

Note: About 70% of the U.S. economy is the consumer.

THE ECONOMY: WHAT LIES AHEAD? An article in “YAHOO FINANCE” (biz.yahoo.com) “Soros says deep recession inevitable, depression possible” offers one view from George Soros on 11/13/08. On the same day at Money News (money news.newsmax.com) , Tiger Management CEO Julian Robertson , in the article “Robertson: Long, Tough Time Ahead” views the economic road ahead for Americans as long and hard.

OIL- SAUDI ARABIA X 4: Energy Bulletin of 11/12/08 in a “shortie” article by Robin Pagnamenta, Times UK entitled “World needs four new Saudi Arabias, warns IEA” notes that “Fresh sources of oil equivalent to the output of four Saudi Arabias will have to be found simply to maintain present levels of supply by 2030, one of the world’s leading energy experts has said.”

PrudentHome Insert: Is the above do-able? If it is do-able, what would the cost be? Isn’t 90% +/- of the worlds agriculture dependent on oil (& natural gas, etc)? What’s the above going to do to food costs and availability worldwide? — Just thought we’d ask

COLLAPSE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE ?: info wars.net on 11/13/08 posted a piece from “George Washington’s Blog” entitled “Obama Won’t Stop the Collapse of the American Empire”. We’re pretty much apolitical/independent here at PrudentHome but a quick look at the core of this short piece intrigued us. We were vaguely familiar with Kevin Phillips as a reporter of some note and a brief read allowed us to separate the articles’ title and other content from the Kevin Phillips observations. See what you think.

“Political insider and veteran reporter Kevin Phillips has documented that every major empire over the past several hundred years has undergone a predictable cycle of collapse, usually within 10 to 20 years of its peak power.

The indications are always the same:

• The financialization of the economy, moving from manufacturing to speculation
• Very high levels of debt
• Extreme economic inequality
• And costly military overreaching

‘BEE’: On November 11^th’s post we mentioned that Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) amongst the U.S. bee population had as yet no clear cause to our knowledge and that due to the importance of the honey bee in food crop pollination, we wanted to look into the latest info on this disorder. We noted too that it was our understanding that “back yard” bee raising was being promoted to perhaps broaden the honey bee population base. Well we’ve been looking and have as yet been able to find no definitive cause for this disorder and no formal back yard bee raising program. We going to keep looking and get back with our readers ASAP.

Until next week, keep your eyes on the horizon.