My New Favorite Book!

You might have seen that I'm making a few changes to My Bookshelf.  This is now one of my top pics!  

The Resilient Gardener

Scientist/gardener Carol Deppe combines her passion for organic gardening with newly emerging scientific information from many fields ― resilience science, climatology, climate change, ecology, anthropology, paleontology, sustainable agriculture, nutrition, health, and medicine. In the last half of The Resilient Gardener, Deppe extends and illustrates these principles with detailed information about growing and using five key crops: potatoes, corn, beans, squash, and eggs.

I LOVE THIS BOOK!!!  The author Carol Deppe has a real-life perspective on growing food in different conditions and financial circumstances.  

When I purchased The Resilient Gardener I thought it would be a survival book.  While is is a bit about surviving in the garden, it is a more well-rounded homesteading book.  I love her writing.  It's easy going and simple.

The 5 key crops: potatoes, corn, beans, squash and eggs are true staples on a homestead.  Of course, we have Mary's Heirloom Seeds for our organic garden needs so that's a plus.  The eggs we have on our homestead come from chickens.  After reading The Resilient Gardener I am very interested in adding Ducks.

Here's a quote from the beginning of The Resilient Gardener, 
"I do it primarily because growing and using those potatoes, corn, beans and squash provides superb food of a quality I can't buy, personal satisfaction and greater joy and health for myself"

YES!!  I wholeheartedly agree with this.  We GROW.  We don't necessarily grow because it's cheaper or more convenient that the store.  We grow because it makes me feel good knowing that I can provide healthy, clean food for my family.  As an added bonus, I can use my own garden to help customers at Mary's Heirloom Seeds grow their own healthy gardens!

When I finish reading I'll post a follow up and let you know how it was.  So far, I highly recommend this book!


*This post contains affiliate links.  This is one of several ways we fund our homestead projects.  If you choose to purchase these books using the links I might make a small commission.  Any and all opinions shared are my own*

Making Seed Balls with School Kids

Last week I had another amazing opportunity to volunteer at one of my favorite schools.  The Sage School Garden invited Mary's Heirloom Seeds back for Earth Day Celebration and my station was making Seed Balls.  However, we didn't "just" make seed balls.  Before each class, I gave a short explanation of the importance of planting for pollinators.

Fact: 1 in every 3 bites you eat required pollination from a honey bee.
Honeybees aren't the only pollinators.  Just as important but not really discussed are birds, bumblebees, ladybugs, hummingbirds and even the wind (to name a few)

Planting for pollinators can increase crop yields in your garden so we recommend adding a few extra seeds to your garden or around your garden.

I enjoy volunteering and teaching.  This was AWESOME! So awesome that I plan on doing this again with my sister and her kids for our garden.  These will be great for our Pollinator Protection Patch.

"An Ancient Method of No-Till Agriculture"
The rediscovery and popularization of seedballs (or “Clay Dumplings” as he called them) in modern times is typically ascribed to Japanese natural farmer and philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka.

As with many natural farmers, Fukuoka believed that tillage over large areas is laborious, destructive to soil health, and ultimately not needed and thus a waste of time and energy. Thus, seedballs have become an important aspect of many natural farming and conservation enterprises around the world.


Learning how to make seed balls is a fun activity for kids. It’s easy to do and can be easily adapted to your region. The seed ball recipe can be altered simply by changing the ratio of ingredients and/or seeds.

Ingredients:
potting soil
clay powder
water
seeds
large tray to mix ingredients
box to store seed balls

Directions:
I've seen different ratios of soil and clay so feel free to adjust depending on your ingredients

Start with 2 cups of potting soil, 1/2 cup clay powder, seeds and 1 cup of water.  Add more water if your mix doesn't stick together.

We used the Butterfly garden Mix seed pack for this first batch

 ALL of the kids in my 6 classes had a chance to get their hands dirty making seed balls to take home!

To make it easy for them to transport, we stapled the instructions to small bags for them to take home.  A cardboard box would be better to store them in but that wasn't possible this time around.  Funny thing happened to my seed balls.  I forgot to take my "sample" seed balls out of my go-bag from the event.  About 5 days later I opened it up to prep for my next school volunteer day and the seeds had SPROUTED!!

When you're ready to plant your seed balls, don't bury them.  You can place them carefully over the area to be planted or you can gently toss them one at a time.  From there, Mother Nature will take over!

I hope you have enjoyed another educational article.  If you have additional questions, please leave a comment below or send an email to mary@marysheirloomseeds.com

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15 Survival Seeds You Need to Stockpile

TIP: Stocking up on seeds for SHTF only works if you're actively growing and rotating seeds!

Please don't fall for the "lasts indefinitely" claim from most survival seed companies. Seeds most definitely have a shelf life (even in mylar bags). No one grows a perfect garden every year so if you're planning on growing, PRACTICE is essential.

We have been asked many time if we plan on offering a "survival seed pack" but it's just not something we want to encourage.  We do however offer several Seed Combo packs as well as a Back to Basics Homestead pack.

There are many reason to be prepared and not all of them are a complete collapse of our system.  Sickness, loss of a job or a reduction in wages are just a few very personal reasons to prepare for the unexpected.  

Being prepared doesn't necessarily need to be for TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it).

As we mentioned in Food Security & Insecurities in the US

Reasons for Food Insecurities include

Job Loss

Sickness

Rising food costs

Crop failure due to Weather or Water Shortage

Farm labor shortage

Interruptions in transportation of food

Civil unrest

Natural Disasters, as we've seen in recent months, are another VERY important reasons to be prepared.  Due to our aging infrastructure and roadways, emergencies can stall the delivery of goods, leaving a community without food for a given period of time.  While the recent hurricanes and wildfires have wiped out many people's gardens, their gardening experience cannot be taken away.

Getting Started

-Find out what grows best in your area and when to plant for your region.

Our Planting Guide for the US is a great resource

-How much space do you have for growing and is it adequate for feeding your group

*I'm working on a plant spacing article so we'll update this article soon*

-How many plants and varieties do you need to sustain yourself and/or your group

Read Feeding A Family from the Garden

-If you're newer to Growing, it might be a good idea to start with easier varieties.  Stock up on all of the food varieties that you eat but start planting the easy ones.

Read 9 Easiest Vegetables to Grow from Seed to Harvest

-Timing is everything!  If you're in a very HOT climate, usually summer is not the time to plant.  If you're in a cool or cold climate, it is best to plant indoors to get a jump on planting season and/or provide a greenhouse to extend your growing season.

Our Planting Guide for the US is a great resource

-Learn to Save Seeds! 
FIRST and most important: Seed Saving from your own harvest is preferred. Store bought produce can be GMO or even hybrid. Even organic store bought can be hybrid.  Hybrid seeds can be sterile and will not produce true offspring from saved seeds.
Open-pollinated, heirloom seeds will grow seeds that can be saved and re-planted year after year.
Read Seed Saving Part 1 

Don't Wait until it's Too Late

As we mentioned above, 

"No one grows a perfect garden every year so if you're planning on growing, PRACTICE is essential."

Learn to grow the foods that you eat regularly.  Canning and preserving those foods would be the next step in being more self-reliant.  You'll find that growing food takes a bit of patience and knowledge of soil, sun and water.  If you have clay soil you mid need to amend with compost.  If you have rocky soil you may need to grow in raised beds.  These are things you'll learn as you grow. 

We offer 3 new videos about using Compost and Manure to amend your soil and these resources are FREE!

Getting Started with Manure in the Garden

How to Use Manure in the Garden

Composting Basics with Mary

SEEDS!  

Beans - Easy to grow and preserve. Beans are very high in fiber, calcium, Vitamins A, C, and K

Spinach -  Cold hardy and prolific. Many call this a superfood based upon its large array of vitamins such as Vitamin A, C, iron, thiamine, thiamine, and folic acid.
Potassium

Carrots - Another hardy crop that requires very little space. This root crop is a good source of carbohydrates, vitamin A, vitamin C

Squash - Both squash and pumpkin are prolific producers.  Both store well, especially winter squash. Seeds can be saved and/or roasted and consumed. Squash has lots of carbohydrates and a great nutrient list, including Vitamins A and C, as well as magnesium and potassium.

Allium varieties - This includes Onions, shallots, Leeks and garlic.  A good source of dietary fiber, Vitamin B6, Vitamin C, folate and potassium.

Beets - Easy to grow and multi-functional.  Both roots and greens are edible making beets a dual purpose crop.

Tomatoes - If you can keep your pest issues to a minimum, tomatoes can produce an abundance of food from a relatively small space. Tomatoes are a good source of Vitamin A, C, K, E, Potassium, thiamine, and Niacin

Broccoli - Another cool weather crop. Broccoli is a good source of protein, Vitamins A and K, and carbohydrates

Peppers - From a medicinal view, peppers such as cayenne are essential for natural remedies. Peppers are high in vitamin A and C

Eggplant - Not something most people would think to grow but still an important one.  Eggplant is relatively easy to grow and can grow for 3 or more years.  Bonus, it's pretty easy to save seeds from Eggplant

Asparagus - An essential perennial. Depending on your region, established Asparagus plants can continue to produce for 30 years (some report for longer)

Amaranth - Another dual purpose plant.  Amaranth is naturally drought tolerant.  Seeds from the amaranth can be used as a grain (cook just as you would quinoa).  Leaves can be picked while young and tender and eaten raw or suateed as you would spinach. 

Radish - If you need a FAST maturing crop, radish is one of the best.  From seed to harvest, radish is mature in as few as 25 days.  Seeds are easy to save from crops and just as easy to stockpile.

Corn - I know I mention grain below but Corn deserves a specific mention.  While corn might not be the easiest crop to grow, it has many uses.  Most people automatically think of Sweet Corn.  However, Dent Corn & Field Corn are important.  Both can be dried and fed to livestock.  It can also be dried and ground into cornmeal. 

Grains - If you have livestock on your homestead, grains can help feed them.  Grains are a good source of carbohydrates, are high in dietary fiber and manganese

EXTRAS

HERBS: Natural pest control can be obtained thru companion planting with herbs. If you're planning on making your own herbal remedies, medicinal herbs are a must.

Read COMPANION PLANTING

See our Flower Power Combo, Homesteaders Herb Combo & Homesteaders Herbal SUPER Combo

FLOWERS: Do not underestimate flower power!  We use many flowers planted throughout our garden for companion planting and to attract bees for pollination.  Most common flowers we use are Borage, PurpleConeflower, Marigolds, Nasturtium, Plains Coreopsis, Cornflower, Yarrow, SUNFLOWERS and Calendula

Potatoes - *Keep in mind, seed potatoes do not keep.* You must continually replentish your stock from your own crops (or Mary's Heirloom Seeds as long as we have internet). Potatoes are a staple diet of many of the world’s peoples, especially those in the west. The contain potassium, copper and B6 and are really good to ‘fill you up’ at mealtime. They are also usually pretty easy to grow, although some varieties are very disease prone. 

I hope you have enjoyed another educational article.  If you have additional questions, please leave a comment below or send an email to mary@marysheirloomseeds.com

Sign up for our E-Newsletter

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By submitting this form, you are granting: Mary's Heirloom Seeds, P. O. Box 3763, Ramona, California, 92065, United States, http://www.marysheirloomseeds.com permission to email you. You may unsubscribe via the link found at the bottom of every email. (See our Email Privacy Policy for details.) Emails are serviced by Constant Contact.