Posts Tagged ‘seeds’
To Sprout or Not To Sprout?
Posted by nwnikkie on June 20, 2012
Posted in Food, Garden, Health, Organics | Tagged: Grain, Nuts, seeds, Sprout | Leave a Comment »
Self-Seeding Crops You’ll Never Need to Replant
Posted by nwnikkie on July 19, 2011
Manage these vigorous self-seeders so you’ll never have to buy seeds again.
(MotherEarthNews)One of the characteristics of a truly sustainable garden is that it produces at least some of its own seed. This is most often done when gardeners select, harvest and store seeds until the proper time for planting the following year. But some self-seeding crops produce seeds so readily that as long as you give them time to flower and mature, and set seed, you will always have free plants growing in your garden. You can simply let the seeds fall where they are, or toss pieces of the seed heads into the corners of your garden, or whichever area you want them in — no harvesting, storing or replanting required. With most self-seeding vegetables, herbs and annual flowers, you’ll just need to learn to recognize the seedlings so you don’t hoe them down. Should seedlings require relocation, you can simply lift and move them — after all, they are sturdy field-grown seedlings.
In addition to getting all the free garden plants you need (and some to share with family and friends), nurturing self-seeders is also a great way to provide a diversity of flowers that supply pollen and nectar for beneficial insects. Self-seeding flowers, herbs and vegetables that show up in early spring include arugula, calendula, chamomile, cilantro, dill, bread seed poppies and brilliant red orach (mountain spinach). Nasturtiums, amaranth, New Zealand spinach, and even basil or zinnias appear later, after the soil has warmed.
Starting a new colony of any of these annuals is usually a simple matter of lopping off armloads of brittle, seed-bearing stems in the fall, and dumping them where you want the plants to appear the next season. It’s that easy. Most of the seedlings will appear in the first year after you let seed-bearing plants drop their seeds, with lower numbers popping up in subsequent seasons.
Posted in Food, Garden, Organics | Tagged: annual, crop, garden, herbs, organic, seedlings, seeds, self-seeding, vegetables | Leave a Comment »
The Fantastic Four – 4 Essential Wild Edible Plants
Posted by nwnikkie on July 14, 2011
(TacticalIntelligence.net) Did you realize that knowing just 4 wild edible plants could one day save your life?
If there were any four categories of plants that I would recommend all people to know how to use and identify it would be these: Grass, Oak, Pine, and Cattail. For the knowledgeable survivor, knowing just these four plants can make the difference between life and death if stranded in the wilds – for each one is an excellent food source which can sustain you until help arrives.
GRASS
Surprising to many is the fact that you can eat grass. Despite there being hundreds of varieties of bladed grass found in the Americas, almost all (99% of them) can be eaten. This ranges from wheat, oats, and bamboo to the wild meadow varieties.
The young shoots up to 6 inches tall can be eaten raw and the starchy base (usually white and at the bottom when you pluck it) can be eaten as a trail nibble. The more mature the grass plant gets, the more fibrous the plant becomes. For older plants the base can be chewed and spit out — extracting the beneficial juices in the process. Or a tea can be made from the fresh or dried leaves.
The best part of the grass plant to eat are the seed heads, which can be gathered to make millet for breads or filler for soups & stews. Of the 99% that can be eaten raw, about 1% have toxic seeds and require that you roast or cook the seeds first. As a word of caution, stay away from blackish or purple colored grass seeds. This is a good indication of toxic fungus. Just make sure they are green or brown. Also use common sense when gathering. Don’t gather where there has been recent sprayings of weed killer.
Posted in Food, Health, Survival | Tagged: cattail, flour, food, grass, oak, pine, seeds, survival | Leave a Comment »
Roman-era shipwreck reveals ancient medical secrets
Posted by Sisko on July 10, 2011
Roman-era shipwreck reveals ancient medical secrets
A first-aid kit found on a 2,000-year-old shipwreck has provided a remarkable insight into the medicines concocted by ancient physicians to cure sailors of dysentery and other ailments.
The aquarium recreated in the museum, where several vials and containers, (still sealed), are preserved Photo: EMANUELA APPETITI
By Nick Squires in Rome
9:34PM BST 09 Jul 2011
A wooden chest discovered on board the vessel contained pills made of ground-up vegetables, herbs and plants such as celery, onions, carrots, cabbage, alfalfa and chestnuts – all ingredients referred to in classical medical texts.
The tablets, which were so well sealed that they miraculously survived being under water for more than two millennia, also contain extracts of parsley, nasturtium, radish, yarrow and hibiscus. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Everyday Use Items E.U.I, First Aid/Medical, Food Storage, Health, Survival, Tools | Tagged: emergency, food, health, nutrition, prepardness, seeds, Storage, supplies, survival, Waterproof | Leave a Comment »
Vegetable Recommendations for New Gardeners
Posted by nwnikkie on June 29, 2011
Copyright © January 14, 2011 by Robert Wayne Atkins, P.E.
All Rights Reserved.
Introduction
To grow your own vegetables you will need some seeds, some good rich soil, some water, and lots of sun.
Do not buy hybrid vegetable seeds. Most hybrid seeds are only good for one growing season.
(Hybrid seed note: Some people recommend that you should try to reverse engineer the second generation seeds from a hybrid vegetable to get one of the original parents of the hybrid vegetable. I totally disagree with this recommendation. During a serious hard times event when your family may be desperate for food, and when you have to work hard all summer trying to grow some food, then why would you want to bet your life and the lives of your family members on some random experiment where you are trying to force some second generation hybrid seeds to grow something you can eat. This is a gamble I strongly recommend that you do not participate in.)
Instead please look for and purchase heirloom vegetable seeds or open-pollinated seeds, unless you have a very good reason to do otherwise.
Many of the heirloom vegetables have been popular with home gardeners since the mid to late 1800s.
Heirloom seeds will produce the same exact vegetable year after year after year if you will save the seed that is grown each year and plant it again the next year.
During a serious hard times event I suggest you consider growing mostly root vegetables, such as beets, carrots, onions, potatoes, radishes, turnips, and peanuts.
The edible part of a root vegetable grows below ground. Therefore it is invisible unless you know what is growing below the vines or leaves you see on top of the ground.
However, in order to provide some reasonable variety in your meals and to help avoid appetite fatigue, you will also need to grow some vegetables where the edible part of the vegetable is above ground. Anyone who happens to walk by your garden area will see these vegetables and they will know exactly what you are growing and how much you are growing.
Therefore in order to help minimize the complete loss of your entire vegetable crop to looters and thieves during a serious hard times tragedy event, it might be a good idea to have at least two or more vegetable plots. One vegetable plot should contain your above ground vegetables and it should be conveniently located in any area that gets full sun all day. A second or third vegetable plot should be in a more obscure area that also gets full sun and it should contain your below ground vegetables. You should probably allow a few random weeds to grow in this area to help hide your below ground vegetables. Since the vegetables will be growing below ground the only thing visible above ground would be some leaves or vines. And unless a person knew exactly what type of leaf or vine it was, then it would be very easy to mistake those leaves and vines as random weeds. In order for this to work you should not plant your underground vegetables in a nice neat straight row. Instead plant them in a random haphazard fashion all over this remote garden area, and whenever possible, mix the different types of vegetables together so you don’t have all the leaves of one specific type of vegetable growing close to one another. This means each type of vegetable would be randomly scattered throughout this garden plot and this would help to create the visual picture of lots of different types of weeds just haphazardly growing together.
Posted in Food, Garden, Health, Organics | Tagged: food, gardening, harvesting, heirloom, nutrition, organinc, seeds, survival, vegetables | Leave a Comment »
What to do right now if the hard times have begun and you are not prepared
Posted by nwnikkie on June 24, 2011
Copyright © June 1, 2011 by Robert Wayne Atkins, P.E.
All Rights Reserved.
Introduction
There are two possible scenarios for the beginning of hard times:
- Scenario One: You have some money and many of the local stores are still open for business.
- Scenario Two: You don’t have any money, or you do have some money but the stores are all closed.
The overwhelming vast majority of people who have thought about the possibility of hard times are expecting the hard
times to unfold according to the first scenario above. Therefore they have not done anything to prepare for any type of hard times. The reason they don’t prepare is because they believe they will have plenty of time at the beginning of the hard times to buy all the things they will need. Although this might work it is my personal opinion that this strategy has about one chance in a million of being successful.
The most likely scenario will probably be the second one above. In the second scenario:
- A person will not have any money, or
- A person will have some money but he or she won’t be able to get to it because the banks will all be closed, or
- A person will have some money and he or she will really, really want to spend it on the things he or she desperately needs but all the stores will be closed because the stores are now empty and they have nothing left to sell.
The second scenario is the one that occurs when an area is destroyed by a hurricane or a tornado or an earthquake. The people living in Japan on March 11, 2011 discovered how quickly an unexpected hard times event (an 8.9 earthquake and a 30-foot tsunami) could completely disrupt their normal life style and thrust them into a day-by-day survival mode where they had to deal with radioactive fallout, limited amounts of food and water, and intermittent utility services. Simple things, like batteries, or a flashlight, or a battery operated radio, were unavailable in Japan after March 11 and during April of 2011. Many, many people in Japan really wanted to buy these things but all the stores in Japan were sold out of these items. The only individuals who had these items were the people who had purchased them before the earthquake and the tsunami hit the island of Japan.
Posted in Health, Safety, Shelter, State of Mind, Survival, Tools | Tagged: ammo, BOB, family, Fire, food, foraging, generator, guns, hard times, rifles, safety, seeds, state of mind, Storage, supplies, survival, tools, vegetables, water | Leave a Comment »
Start a self-sufficiency garden even in a cramped apartment
Posted by nwnikkie on June 10, 2011
By Nancy Wolcott
You are sitting there in your recliner chair in your small city apartment desperately longing for the day when you can escape to the country and become a homesteader and become more self-sufficient. Well, don’t just sit there. Get a head start. Bloom where you are planted until you can actually make the big move. Don’t waste valuable time in pointless dreaming. Begin making your
dreams a reality, now.
You dream of growing your own fresh, pesticide-free, organic vegetables. So do it. Go dumpster diving and trash mongering and collects all the free containers you can find that will hold soil and that you can poke a few holes into. Wash and disinfect the containers thoroughly. Then get some potting soil suitable for veggies.
Posted in Garden | Tagged: apartment garden, container gardening, fruit, home, seeds, small space, vegetables | Leave a Comment »
