Can Square Foot Gardening Yield a Harvest for a Family of Black Thumbs???

How can one be truly self-sufficient if they cannot grow their own food? There may be relevant answers to this question but I certainly cannot think of any right at this moment. If you are like me and you take a moment to think about how dependent you are on others for food then you will find it down right scary! I will tackle storing water in another post because the two surely go hand and hand. For now I want to start with our history of "gardening" along with a refreshed attempt now that we have begun our journey.

Our History of Gardening

Not sure if you can tell or not but that is an Earth Box with Trellis! This picture tells the perfect story of a short and unfortunate history of gardening. We spent about $100 in total materials and never picked one tomato. We found gardening to be miserable and unrewarding the first time around so with that in mind we needed a fresh approach given the critical nature of this task.

A Fresh Start

Enter this book, I actually read it from front to back:

If gardening had a Tony Robbins of motivational speaking it would be Mel Bartholomew. Upon completion of this book I was not confident that I could grow my own food, I was convinced! He gets you so fired up and makes everything sound so easy that you just can't wait to try it! The concept is simple, build a 4x4 raised bed that is six inches deep and divide it into sixteen squares. Then add the "perfect" soil mix and Voila, a bountiful harvest for all to enjoy. Construction began immediately...

Following the instructions in the book we made a couple of boxes.

Creating the boxes seemed pretty straight forward but coming up with a large batch of magical soil known as "Mel's Mix" was a whole other story. Here is the "simple" formula as Mel puts it:

• 1/3 Blended Compost
• 1/3 Peat Moss
• 1/3 Coarse Vermiculite

Mix equal parts of each, measured by volume, not by weight. The problem is that here in the Tampa Bay area, two of the three ingredients are not easy to find. Furthermore, the blended compost ideally has to be made up of 5 different composts! It took about 3 hours of research and phone calls to find the five sources that I needed. Here they are in case I can save you some time:

1. Black Kow Manure compost from any major store (Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Lowes etc)
2. Organic Lawn and Garden Compost from Wal-Mart
3. Big Earth Landscape Supply at 9502 East MLK BLVD  - PH:813-626-3270
4. Mother's Organic - Waste Disposal and Humus Farm at 6727 CR 579 - PH:813-628-0600
5. Hillsborough County Yard Waste Processing Facility at 350 North Falkenburg Rd - PH:813-744-5599

WORD OF WARNING: The bottom three places sell compost in BULK mainly to major landscaping companies but they also cater to the public. If you are an average joe like me though this presents a problem in the preferred unit of measurement that they use. The lady on the phone politely told me they sold compost by the yard but if she had known I was ignorant she would have said a cubic yard which is a unit of volume that roughly weighs about 2,000 lbs. Anyhow, I borrowed a friends truck, threw a couple of empty storage tubs in the back, and off I went. About a half hour later, with the help of a FRONT LOADER, this is what I got for $8.75

Yes, I only intended to get two rubbermaid tubs full but what I got was a Spanish speaking Front Loader driver and a quarter cubic yard of dirt dropped right in the bed of the truck! I saw him driving towards me and I was like HOLY CRAP!!! Only $8.75 for all that compost but then I had to pay $49 for a shiny new wheelbarrow just to get it in the back yard.

So that leaves the remaining two ingredients. Peat moss is readily available but coarse Vermiculite in a 3.8 cubic foot bag is very hard to find. This is what it looks like:

I found it at Shell's Feed and Garden Supply in Tampa. Really nice folks and they have a good supply of Vermiculite and a really nice guy to help you out to your car too! Here is a link to the website:

http://www.shellsfeed.com/index.html

Now it was time to make Mel's Mix, the perfect soil!! Here is a picture of the finished mix:

We used an 18 gallon storage tub as the perfect measuring cup for each ingredient. The soil looked perfect in my opinion, just like the picture in the book. Now time will tell if it really works!

Here are what the finished products look like:

Now it's time to figure out what can be planted in Florida (Zone 9) in the fall. This is an awesome place to start:

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/vh021

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/topic_vegetable_gardening

Future posts will explore building of enclosures to protect your garden boxes from pests and critters as well as the first planting of seeds!!!

Resources for Self-Sufficient Living and Sustainability

There is a tremendous amount of information on the internet about Self-Sufficient Living and Sustainability. I got my start by reading the Idiot's Guide and one of the first things that jumped out at me was the fact that there are many different variations on Self-Sufficiency. I will list how the book summarizes them:

• Self-Reliance
• Simple Living or Voluntary Simplicity
• Voluntary Poverty
• Frugality
• Tradition
• Homesteading
• Urban Homesteading
• Green Living
• Survival (This could be Survivalists, Preppers, Individualist, Isolationists etc...)

I will refrain from going to into too much detail on the different types because frankly I am not equipped to do that effectively. I do want to list all of the websites that I have found that pertain to one or many of these variations. Here goes:

American Livestock Breeds Conservancy
www.albc-usa.org

Appliance Repair
www.bobvila.com/FixItClub
www.fixitclub.com
www.repairclinic.com

Aquaponics - One of the more fascinating evolving sustainable systems in my opinion. I think it is pretty darn cool, especially if you love fish!
www.aquaponicsusa.com
www.aquaponiclynx.com
http://theaquaponicsource.com
www.morningstarfishermen.org

Bees
www.gpnc.org/honeybee.htm
www.honeybeesonline.com

Canning and Freezing
Book - Ball Blue Book of Preserving
http://www.pickyourown.org/allaboutcanning.htm

EPA - Residential Efficiency Program
www.energystar.gov

Foraging Plants
Book by Teresa Marrone. Abundantly Wild: Collecting and Cooking Wild Edibles in the Upper Midwest
Book by Samuel Thayer. The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants
NOTE: We live in Florida and I am pretty sure a lot of plants mentioned in the above books may not be indigenous here. I have yet to find good information on foraging in the Southeast.

Gardening Books and Seed Catalogs/Websites
Book by Mel Bartholomew. All New Square Foot Gardening (I just finished reading this and we will profile the building of two Square Foot Garden boxes in a future post)
www.burpee.com
www.johnnyseeds.com
www.companionplants.com
www.cooksgarden.com
www.dixondalefarms.com
www.fedcoseeds.com
http://gurneys.com/default.asp
www.jungseed.com
www.kitchengardenseeds.com
http://parkseed.com/
www.southernexposure.com
https://www.superseeds.com/
www.territorialseed.com
www.tmseeds.com
www.totallytomato.com
www.vermontbean.com
www.seedsavers.org
www.victoryseeds.com
www.banana-tree.com
www.seedsofchange.com

Geothermal Heat Pumps
Geothermal Heat Pump Consortium - www.geoexchange.org
International Ground Source Heat Pump Association - www.igshpa.okstate.edu
United States Department of Energy - Geothermal Division - http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal

Gardening Supplies
Gardens alive!, www.gardensalive.com

Hatcheries
http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/BRKPoultryPage.html - This is a very extensive annotated list of hatcheries across the United States and Canada and beyond.
www.mcmurrayhatchery.com
www.mthealthy.com
www.ridgwayhatchery.com

Homesteading
Book by Coyne, Kelly, and Erik Knutzen. The Urban Homestead
www.selfsufficientish.com
www.urbanhomestead.org
www.themodernhomestead.us
http://www.journeytoforever.org/
http://www.soilandhealth.org/

Housing
Book by Gregory Paul Johnson. Put Your Life on a Diet: Lessons Learned Living in 140 Square Feet - www.resourcesforlife.com/g
www.littlehouseonasmallplanet.com
http://www.resourcesforlife.com/small-house-society
http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/

Insects, Eating
http://creepycrawlycuisine.150m.com
http://insectsarefood.com/

Peak Oil
www.hubbertpeak.com

Lawns - Perhaps nothing gets me more fired up than this topic. The American lawn is such a gigantic waste of resources and is so detrimental to the environment. Something must be done about it and I think it starts with Homeowners Associations and what they deem as "acceptable" for lawn presentation.
Book by Heather C. Flores. Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard Into a Garden and Your Neighborhood Into a Community
Book by Fritz Haeg. Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn
Book by Ted Steinberg. American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn

Phenology -  the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate. - www.usanpn.org

Poultry
Book by Gail Damerow. Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens
Book by Rick and Gail Luttman. Chickens in Your Backyard
Book by Judy Pangman. Chicken Coops: 45 Building Plans for Housing Your Flock
Book by Joel Salatin. Pastured Poultry Profit$

Rain Barrels
www.ehow.com/how_4604915_make-rain-barrels.html
Enter Rain Barrels on YouTube for many more ideas.

Root Cellaring
Book by Mike and Nancy Bubel. Root Cellaring: The Simple No-Processing Way to Store Fruits and Vegetables
Book by Phyllis Hobson. Build Your Own Underground Root Cellar

Slow Food
www.slowfoodusa.org

Survival
http://www.shtfblog.com
www.thesurvivalpodcast.com
www.americanpreppersnetwork.com
http://secretsofurbansurvival.com

Survival Foods
http://www.efoodsdirect.com - There is no meat in any of this food in case you are a Vegetarian.
www.foodinsurance.com
www.quakekare.com
https://ineed2prepare.com
http://wisefoodchoice.com

Sustainable Agriculture
www.sare.org/about

Well this may be just skimming the surface but you have to start somewhere. Feel free to let me know what I have left out in order to make this list even more beneficial.

Introduction - The Awakening

I don't have much use for television these days but when I used to watch it I got the sense that outside of the History and Discovery channels the state of quality entertainment was rapidly deteriorating. Perhaps it was the ten dead bodies I once counted during a CBS commercial break. Or the all too popular television shows that parade dysfunctional youth to include series dedicated to pregnant teenagers and lavish sweet sixteen birthdays. All of this positively contributed to what I now consider to be a firm belief. The preoccupied insanity of human beings known to most as normalcy is resulting in the destruction of our beautiful planet. I get the impression that most people not only think that Abraham Lincoln was the second US President but also that our water supply is fed continuously from outer space via cloud delivery systems. Now I would love to write a blog on US and World History because I find it fascinating but saving our planet seems to be the more pertinent issue at this time.

So how did I get here? I have always had a love for all living creatures. Most insects that invade our home are politely shown the door with the exception of the giant American Cockroaches (Palmetto) that are capable of taking full flight. Long before that I was beaten up twice in middle school for interrupting groups of kids that were hurting animals. In both instances I quickly became the target of their aggression but I was able to save a rather elder looking possum (the giant toad didn't make it).

My love for creatures combined with the recent birth of our beautiful son beckoned me to do more than fill recycle bins with water bottles and cans. I felt the calling to change my lifestyle to something much more simple and at the same time sustainable. My ignorance on the subject of being really Self-Sufficient led me to purchase "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Self-Sufficient Living" by Jerome D. Belanger. This book changed my life and I shared its contents with my wife during late night feedings of our son. We made the decision to embark on a journey to make our lives as self-sufficient and sustainable as possible. Thanks for visiting and we hope you join us!