Chapter 7 – Compost, is essentially a chapter that explains how the home gardener can produce their own fertilizer. Here’s some of the author’s context for this home production effort:

• “… feedlot manures and composted chicken manure are widely available and seem inexpensive to most people right now, and industrial agricultural wastes like seed meals and slaughterhouse wastes are also cheap. But if present trends — peak oil, climate change, irresponsible monetary manipulation by central banks, competition over resources — result in the least desirable outcomes, then ordinary people will find it ever more difficult to afford to eat healthfully. It seems almost inevitable to me that the real (inflation-adjusted) cost of amendments is going to increase substantially. Composting is the alternative to purchasing. It allows small-scale food growers to make their own fertilizer, to manufacture “well-rotted manure” without the need to own livestock.”

And this:

• “If you can’t afford to have your food gardening efforts fall far short of your hopes, if you can’t afford to shrug off this years catastrophe and hope that it’ll be better next time …I suggest that you read this chapter more than once.”

In PH’s opinion, the author understates both the current situation and the effort you should put forth in mastering this abbreviated treatment of perhaps the key subject in hard-times gardening.

Mr. Solomon immediately moves from composting rationales to composting topics and techniques, such as: “Mulch gardening“. “Carbon to nitrogen ratios (with a great “Carbon nitrogen ratios” for additional clarity)”, “Sheet composting (We‘re working with a slight variation of the author’s stated technique here at PH.)”,”Temperature and decomposition“, to “What is this thing called compost?”. From this last topic, this: ”Composting decomposes organic materials before they are put into the soil so they become instant plant food.” and a very informative chart that provides an “Analysis of various composts”.

The author continues with a discussion of low, medium and high grade compost that is combined with a ten page presentation on “Composting procedure”. This is followed by a short treatment of “Green manure and cover crops” – along with their some of their pluses and minuses- to end the chapter.

Sandwiched in (so to speak) between ‘procedure’ and ‘cover crops’ is a small, one page topic called “Humanure”. After giving the reader an excellent reference on the subject, Mister Solomon reminds us again that this book is a serious treatment of hard-times gardening:

“If times got rough enough that I could not afford to spend a few hundred dollars each year on maintaining the gardens fertility, or if the materials to do so got so scarce that there was little choice, then we would definitely start using humanure.”

This chapter has broken down the complex subject of “compost” into a set of topics, any of which could be a book in itself, that are clear to the layman/lay-gardener and yet extensive enough to offer a short reference. It’s hard to offer praise beyond this.

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

• “I suspect there will be some seeds you just won’t be able to buy if you wait (to order your garden seeds) too long on it,” said Bill Hart, the wholesale manager in charge of seed purchasing at Chas. C. Hart Seed Company in Wethersfield, Conn.
• “The problem is primarily due to soggy weather last year that resulted in a disappointing seed crop. European seed growers also had a bad year, leading to a big increase in orders for American seeds.” (Please note that this means that American home gardeners are competing with their European counterparts for available garden seed during difficult economic times both in the US and the EU/PH) Demand for seeds in the U.S. soared last year, as the poor economy and worries about chemical use and bacteria contamination prompted many people to establish gardens.”
• “Kathy Gocke of Bondurant, Iowa said she orders early for herself and her county’s master gardener’s program and advises others to do the same.”
• “Burpee Seeds in Warminster, Pa., bills itself as the largest provider of home garden seeds, and Chief Executive Officer George Ball said the company’s huge reserves mean it will have plenty of seeds. But Ball said he understands why others might have limited supplies after a big spike in demand in the past two years.
• “It was unlike anything I’ve seen in the past 30 years,” he said.

PH Comment: What if Mr. Ball’s estimate -“plenty”- of his company’s “huge reserves” of seed are wrong and/or demand from Europe and the US far exceed his expectations? What about next year? Have you noticed the weather in the US this year?

• “ Barbara Melera, owner of D. Landreth Seeds of New freedom, Pa., expects carrot seeds to be especially hard to find because of big orders from Europe, which had a poor crop last year. Also, fewer farmers are opting to grow seeds, she said. Many now have switched to growing corn for the biofuels industry. “In this country farmers who grow things for seed are becoming an endangered species,” Melera siad. “The farmers producing things for seeds is reduced significantly, and in the past two or three years they can get more money for growing corn for ethanol plants than carrots for seeds.”

At the end of a review and commentary on Chapter 4 of Steve Solomon’s book “Gardening when it counts – Growing Food In Hard Times” a short time ago, we recommended that the home/family gardener obtain their seeds from a regional seedsman or one with a climate similar to their own. Please let us amend that recommendation now to: buy seeds for your garden from any reliable seedsman – again with emphasis on those varieties that do well in your area (If you have any questions, check with your county ’Ag’ agent of state university), buy enough for two full gardens MINIMUM, and buy them NOW.
We plan a review with commentary on Chapter 5 – Seeds, of Mr. Solomon’s book next week. Please stay tuned.
Until next time; keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers changing fast.

It is because of the serious nature of gardening and providing food in hard times that the author wants to provide information on the gardening center. His goal here is to aid the home gardener avoid the pitfalls and mistakes abundant in dealing with these centers. He’s very aware that most of us family gardeners get our seeds and vegetable transplants from this/these sources and with that in mind he reminds us:

“… the garden has to be given the same degree of attention that other enthusiasts give to selecting the right fishing lure, modifying their automobile, or refining their golf swing.”

Mr. Solomon begins with  the topic of “Transplants ” and by identifying some of the vegetables that are very difficult to transplant and some that transplant relatively easily.

He continues his presentation by discussing the problems of seedling mislabeling and poor variety choices along with what to look for when choosing seedlings for transplant. By way of further guidance he offers this; “… make sure you can trust the seller.”
The author then moves on to the topic of growing your own seedlings and presents an easy way to do so; beginning with having the right soil for growing seedlings and then proceeding on with how to use it in various containers.
Fertilizer for seedlings comes next, in a careful discussion combined with recommendations  that include the all-important “whys and how’s”. Here’s a brief example concerning the use of coffee grounds:

“Used coffee grounds are a seed meal that hot water has been passed through. Judging by how coffee makes leap forward, I would reckon the grounds to be about half as strong as chicken manure. … They could also be put in a compost heap in place of chicken manure.”

“The garden center seedrack” gets its own section with this critical seed-choice guideline: “… I learned that every product or service could be compared to a three-legged stool with the legs being price, quality, and service. If lowered one leg, you had to lower the others accordingly or the stool tilted…”.
Commercial quality seed is discussed as well in this chapter along with the critically important aspect of vigor. These areas of discussion are enhanced with an excellent two-page “Germination standards” chart that shows a number of common garden seeds with their germination standards/rates from the USDA, a high quality seedsman, and commercial quality seeds. Also presented is a column that gives seed-storage longevity graded in years.
Lastly, “Regionality” is presented as an important aspect in seed choice that allows the home/family gardener another way to improve gardening results.

PrudentHome Comments: Mr. Solomon’s Chapter 4 reminds us, directly and indirectly:

1. Choose your garden seeds from a regional seedsman or one with a climate that is similar to yours.
2. One of your gardening reference BOOKS should be geared to gardening in your climate and your micro-climate if possible.
3. The serious gardener/food producer must keep good records. Like all long-term sustainability: it has to begin, operate, and end with a pencil and a notebook.

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

• “Legendary investor Jim Rogers remains bullish on commodities and says the world will soon face food shortages.”
• “The inventories are now at the lowest they’ve been in decades, not in years.
• And that trend is just intensifying Rogers tells CNBC.
• “Things are getting worse. Many farmers can’t get loans to buy fertilizer now, even though we have big shortages developing.”
• And what will be the end result of this dynamic?
• “Sometime in the next few years we’re going to have very serious shortages of food everywhere in the world, and prices are going to go through the roof,” Rogers said.

Credit: lollyknit

Seed Shortage: PrudentHome is presenting information from this hometownannapolis.com article from             1/16/10 by Susan Reimer entitled “Seed shortage may come in 2010” because  we’ve been advocating that the prudent, prepared/preparing family have a MINIMUM of two gardens worth of garden seed on hand for their home garden: one to plant and one to save for “situations”. Here’s some of the “Why”:

• “Will there be a shortage of vegetable seeds for gardeners in 2010?
• It is possible, says Barbara Melera, owner of the oldest seed house in the country, D. Landren Seeds, formerly of Baltimore and noe of New Freedom, Pa.”
• “ … she said, “In 2009, we had the worst growing season in 60 years.” Rain and disease destroyed crops and with them, the seeds for next years garden.”
• “We are being told that many, many varieties simply won’t be available.”
• “Word of possible shortages must be leaking out, Melera said, because retailers are telling her that they had their best December in years.”

PrudentHome Comment: In our last post, we advocated that the prudent family expand their food storage program and their garden seed reserve (to two years worth of garden seeds MINIMUM).
We again advocate these expansions but add an ASAP. It looks to us as though things are very uncertain and that that uncertainty is growing. Oh, and keep your awareness level high to give yourselves as much lead time as possible for situation changes in areas such as food and seed availability.

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

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’ll go right to our guide book in just a moment but first it might be useful to look at some context Charles Hugh Smith provided for us yesterday at his Of Two Minds website (oftwominds.com) in his post “Grain, Drought and Systemic Risk”. Here’s some context from that article:

• “Nobody realizes that only 1% of the US population are real farmers. 70% + of our food supply is grown by them in a relatively small area of the Midwest between Southern Minnesota to Texas and Eastern Nebraska to Ohio. So most of our food, the only thing we need every day to survive, is grown by 1% of the population in the middle of the country whereas most of the population lives within 20 miles of the coasts.”
• “There used to be a lot if grain stored up courtesy of the government, but that was all gotten rid of in the 80’s so that the money used for it could be spent on social programs. So now we have no contingency plan for this occurrence. Currently we are long overdue for a drought in that part of the US. If we get one there you can make your own conclusions as to what will happen.”
• ” … the global supply chains for the two necessities of industrialized civilization –oil and grain– are precariously balanced on a few large suppliers, a situation commonly termed as ‘systemic risk, ” meaning it is not temporary but an integral feature of the supply chain.”

Now for a look at “The Holistic Garden For Small Spaces” by  Clinton R. Craft. Let’s begin with Mr. Kraft’s Introduction:

• “Try to look into the future and you may see such problems as dwindling world petroleum resources, rampant human population growth (the world has hit 7 billion souls within the last week/PH), decreasing arable land, increasing reliance on food sources from distant locations, the greenhouse effect, the ozone hole, and unpredictable climate change. …  But there is something we can all do whether we live on a farm, in the suburbs, or even an apartment — we can all plant seeds.”
• ” … I decided to conduct a personal research project devoted to finding  THE MOST NUTRITIOUS PLANTS THAT CAN BE GROWN IN A LIMITED AREA (caps/PH) in temperate climates. I started collecting anecdotes and researching the available literature. I soon discovered that one group of plants was held in high esteem by a number of references. This group of plants I refer to as “The Super Seven of Nutritious Plants.” Plants that were recommended by at least one researcher or knowledgeable informant became “The Honorable Mention Of Nutritious Plants.” All these plants have a wide range of nutrients and yield their bounty in a limited area over a relatively short period of time.”
• “I soon realized while researching these plants that many of the varieties of vegetables that are ideal for home gardens are rapidly disappearing in favor of ‘modern hybrids” … open pollinated varieties of vegetables can be found that will equal or excel the gardening performance of any hybrid variety. The secret is to keep trying different open pollinated varieties until a variety is found that does well in your micro-climate.”

Next time, at mid-week, we’ll continue by discussing, ‘The Super Seven Of Nutritious Plants.”

Until our current week’s end then: keep your eyes on the horizon as the weathers 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.

Mr. Stoddard’s article points to several reasons most American’s are currently pursuing interest and effort in gardening: saving money in hard economic times, healthier, tastier, and safer food. But there in another reason American’s are gardening and if you read much on this trend, you’ll pick up on it.

Here it is twice in Mr. Stoddard’s piece:

• “There is a growing sense in these tough economic times that food security starts at home.“
• And gardener Peyton Tamburo spells it out clearly – “I know that if everything goes to hell in a hand basket, that I will be all right. You own a house, land, and you’ll be able to feed yourself … ”

Please note that PrudentHome advocates two full gardens worth of current garden seed (open-pollinated/heirloom) be stored at all times. No one knows where this recession/depression’s going to go so it would pay to be very careful.

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