Depression Era. In 1929 when the stock market collapsed, and the money movers in Wall Street jumped out of skyscraper windows. This universal financial debacle probably had less effect on our part of the country and our neighbors than on most of the rest of the world. We were already short of cash because crops hadn’t been good and farm prices were down. So we went from very little hard cash to virtually none, as did most all the people . Farm communities re-developed a sort of pioneer self-sufficiency.
Pioneer Gardens is a community of choice for our mothers and fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, and all who seek fun-filled, secure, service-oriented, health-conscious senior supportive living.
Pioneer women cooking over an open flame in a fireplace. This fireplace is usually in a central location of the home. From this we know that, our forefathers have been using wood fireplaces to heat their home.
In some family, we were never hungry, because they had the usual farm animals (cows, chickens, and hogs) plus a vegetable garden. A balanced diet was not always possible, but surely they had enough to eat.
In them gardens, they grew potatoes, onions, cabbage, green beans, and, what else?… cucumbers, tomatoes…, they just had a garden, they didn’t grow carrots — none of the sophisticated stuff, you know. To prepare the soil, some, most of the time for the garden he used a plow, horse and plow. But for the field, he had a tractor.
The garden is very diverse, filled with a variety of tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, cucumbers and other vegetables. A fantastic variety of herbs and spices have their own beds and are interspersed between the vegetables. They have planted paw paw, kiwi and apple trees and allow some weeds to grow in the garden as decoy plants, knowing that leaf-eating bugs like decoy weeds better and leave the vegetables alone.
They have encountered a couple of difficulties in their urban yard. The soil is poor, almost clay-like. To fix this, they use permaculture principles, preparing the beds by digging 2 feet down, placing organic material such as logs, leaf mulch and horse manure on the bottom, and then covering it with a layer of soil mixed with mulch. The material at the bottom will continue to rot for a long time, fertilizing and releasing nutrients into the soil.
RELATED : DIY Straw Bale Gardening-An Easy Way To Grow Plant no Weeding & Harvest After the Harvest
These Pioneer steps to learning how to plan a garden for self-sufficiency and build on them each year. Before you know it, you’ll be providing a year’s worth of food on your own land:
Grow High-Value Fruits and Veggies:
What do you consider value? Flavor? Freshness? Or savings on expensive varieties from the supermarket? You can save money and enjoy flavors by growing varieties that can’t be found in grocery stores.
Get the most out of the seasons:
Make use of late winter/early spring by using cold frames, tunnels, cloches and other devices to stretch the season and grow more food. You can get a head start on spring salads by at least a month. Extend your fall crops by using row covers to protect them from frost and deer. Extend both seasons to grow more cold-tolerant greens and root crops for food production.
Grow early-bearing fruit and berries:
Grow June-bearing strawberries and early raspberries. You can put these up in your freezer before canning veggies take over the kitchen. In the fall, there are late-ripening raspberries and apples that come after the hectic food preserving frenzy of summer.
Utilize what grows in your climate:
Some crops will be easy to grow in your area while others can be a challenge. Soil type also determines what will grow where you live. If carrots don’t grow well in your area, but beets thrive, then grow a small patch of carrots and all the beets your family can eat. This takes you in the direction of self-sufficiency.
Grow your beverages:
Mints, sage, raspberry leaf and nettles make delicious and healthy teas. Even rhubarb stalk makes a tea that tastes like lemonade. Learn to make your own sodas, hard cider and wine from berries and fruits.
Grow perennials:
Perennials come back every year and this save you in time and maintenance. Just weed, fertilize and mulch. Asparagus, rhubarb, sorrel, Jerusalem artichokes, horseradish, bunching onions and bamboo shoots are just some of the possibilities. Find out which ones do well in your area.
Choose varieties that grow in your area:
Talk with gardeners around you to see what varieties grow well and produce high-yields. It’s frustrating to spend all summer tending to a tomato plant and only harvest a few tomatoes at the end of the season when a different variety would have produced an abundant harvest.
Grow Herbs:
Culinary herbs like dill, basil, rosemary, sage, parsley and mint add flavors to foods for canning and freezing. They are easy and inexpensive to grow.
Don’t overplant one type:
Yes, you can grow too much of a good thing! It’s easy to overbuy at the greenhouse on too many tomato plants. Don’t plant 50 when 10-15 plants will supply 2 people with a year’s worth of frozen, canned and dried tomatoes. The only reason to grow more would be to sell at farmers markets.
Grow something new:
You don’t have to grow it all your first year. As you grow in knowledge and experience, add something new each year and keep learning. If something failed to grow in spring, see if it grows better as a fall crop.
Growing enough food to preserve for a year or more is a fine goal and achievable, but there is a learning curve if you’ve never done it before. Take one step at a time and build on your knowledge each year. Before you know it, you will have a pantry and cellar full of shiny jars of food you grew and preserved yourself!
“MY SURVIVAL FARM”
…and it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before… An A to Z guide on survival gardening that is easy to read and a joy to put into practice, full of photos, diagrams and step by step advice. Even a kid can do this and, in fact, I encourage you to let the little ones handle it, to teach them not just about self-reliance but also about how Mother Nature works.
Here is just a glimpse of what you’ll find inside:
How to plan, design and put into action high-yield survival garden that will literally keep you and your family fed for life, no matter what hits you, even when everyone else around you is starving to death. No digging and planting year after year and no daily watering because you’ll have more important things to worry about when TSHTF.
How to set up highly nutritious soil for your plants. Do this before you plant anything and you’re on your way to setting your food forest on auto-pilot for decades to come. I’m gonna tell you this one “weird” thing to add to the mulch that’s not only highly effective but also 100% free (because you already have it in your home right now).
Step-by-step instructions on how to plant over 125 plants inside your permaculture garden. Plus, special instructions on choosing the right ones for your climate. From Arizona to Alaska, you can do this anywhere…
How to “marry” your plants. We’re gonna tell you which grow well together and help each-other survive and thrive, so they don’t ever compete for sunlight and nutrients. You get the full table of plants that work well with one another as well as the ones you should NEVER be put together.
The Lost Ways is a far–reaching book with chapters ranging from simple things like making tasty bark-bread-like people did when there was no food-to building a traditional backyard smokehouse… and many, many, many more!
Books can be your best pre-collapse investment.
The Lost Ways (Learn the long forgotten secrets that helped our forefathers survive famines,wars,economic crisis and anything else life threw at them)
Survival MD (Best Post Collapse First Aid Survival Guide Ever)
Conquering the coming collapse (Financial advice and preparedness )
Liberty Generator (Build and make your own energy source)
Backyard Liberty (Easy and cheap DIY Aquaponic system to grow your organic and living food bank)
Bullet Proof Home (A Prepper’s Guide in Safeguarding a Home )
Family Self Defense (Best Self Defense Strategies For You And Your Family)
Survive Any Crisis (Best Items To Hoard For A Long Term Crisis)
Survive The End Days (Biggest Cover Up Of Our President)