Have you thought about what you're going to do when your stock of food and supplies start running low? What if things haven't straightened themselves back out to a world we're more familiar with and you notice that you're getting down to the last bag of beans and just a couple cans of vegetables or something? I don't even want to think about all the worrying I would do if I ever seen my food supply starting to get low, there's nothing that scares me more than thinking I can't provide the next meal for my kids. I do some small-scale gardening right now so I can supplement what we eat and what I can add to the foods that I save for the future's unknown, but I think you should be doing the same. Have you thought about doing any gardening, or are you currently doing any right now just to make your food ends meet? Gardening should be everyone's backup plan, but you can't wait until there's only a few days worth of food left in your pantry to start. I think it would be a great idea to learn the ropes of it now if you aren't already familiar with gardening. Not only can this provide food, but it plays a big role in being able to provide yourself with herbal remedies too.
Although some plants (like radishes, green onions, and leafy greens) can start being picked from after about just a month of growing, most take a couple months or more to reach their peak. If you haven't tried growing any of your own produce, now is the best time to try your hand at it. Depending on where you live, it may be too late in the year to grow things outside from start to finish, but there are ways to work around this. You could always purchase a greenhouse, or make your own, to grow in all year long. Or if you have a sunny windowsill you can practice with some small indoor gardening. You may even be interested in setting up an area with growing lights and go that route, if my home was bigger I'd definitely designate a spare room to doing just that. I seen an article on an underground garden that you can grow in without any heating pads or anything too. You can check it out here if you'd like. If my yard were bigger I'd love to have one. However you choose to do it, just do it.
Growing food isn't a skill that everyone should automatically assume they have, it really does involve more than just throwing some seeds in dirt and hoping for the best. I found that out the hard way. The first year I tried gardening, I spent around $100 on seeds, potting soil, containers, and gardening tools just to reap nothing that I had sown. Not a single plant produced anything. In fact, not a single plant grew more than around three inches tall. I still to this day have no idea what I did wrong, but I assumed I just didn't have that green thumb that I noticed so many people in my area seem to have. I felt like adding gardening to my list of can't do's... I almost gave up. I tried a few different things after that, having some luck with some of them, none at all still with others. I do think that the place I moved into about a 16 months ago seems to be the place I was needing, because I have had the best luck here than anywhere else.
I continued reading lots of articles and watching video after video about everything regarding gardening after some of my failed attempts, and when I moved here I decided to give it a try again. I started with just some simple herbs. I don't really know how long herbal plants are supposed to grow before you need to replant, but I'm on well over a year with the same small window box that I regularly pick off for cooking and the thing just keeps growing and growing. This past fall I decided to try some potatoes in the front of my trailer, I was more than excited to see that they'd grown all through fall and winter. In March I dug up 39 potatoes that grew from just the five small potatoes I pulled out of a store bought bag that had sprouted some eyeballs. When I seen that they grew so well, I decided to try a small variety of other things to see what I could get to grow. I can proudly say I think I have the hang of it now, for the most part.
My yard isn't very big so I'm not growing huge amounts of crops or anything, but most of the seeds I did plant seem to be doing just fine. While I'm unsure about whether some of my current plants will grow to maturity so I can pick things from them, the potatoes, sugar snap peas, corn, lettuce, peppers, and tomatoes that we've been able to enjoy so far are rewarding enough. Not only did growing these from a low priced pack of seeds save me money, but it gives me a sense of security that if S ever does HTF, I'll be able to continue providing at least these things for my family. I encourage you to grasp onto a little piece of that security for yourself, start off small with just a few things like I did and see where it takes you. Even if nothing works the first crop around, don't give up. You'll figure it out soon enough and it'll pay off in the long run.
Now that I've shared a bit of my thoughts about gardening with you, please share some of your mind with me. What is your take on gardening? Do you think it's worth it? Have you done any gardening in the past, growing anything now, or are you planning on doing any in the future? If you do grow your own food or are thinking about it, what are your opinions on pesticides? Do you think they're a good thing, or are you against using them and would rather try an all natural alternative to keeping plants safe from all the crop terrorizing bugs? I know that some people would rather use them so they don't loose their crops, but others worry about the possibility of contaminating the food. I personally use the Sevin 5% dust because I lost over half of my first plants almost overnight to an army of squash bugs that appeared out of no where. I'd like to go the natural way, but that proved to not work for me. I'm personally stocking back on the stuff, if I may have to depend on only what I can get to grow in the future, I'm not taking any chances of loosing it all just because I'm worried about a little bit of pesticides on my plants. I'll just be sure and wash them well before eating them. What's your opinion on it? I'd love to know.
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