The Lazy Gardener and Self Reliance

All through the long winter, I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring, I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth. I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar. - Helen Hayes Ah gardening. That easy laid back relaxing past time NOT! Im a lazy gardener; I want the quickest, easiest, least amount of work and costs garden to produce the food I need. I have an advantage over most folks right now because it is just me and I. My children are grown and on their own and my daughter and grandson live in another state. Although I am not an expert gardener I have gardened most of my life from the east coast to the west coast; arid lands to wet lands and I spent a good number of years on my grandparents farm in upper state New York. I have learned from others and made a ton of mistakes along the way and if I can help just one tentative gardener be successful then I will be happy and content. When you garden for self reliance you must be vigilant and you must work for the harvest. There is nary a spare minute even if you are lazy like me. Lets face it, self reliance is not a walk in the park, you have to want it enough to work for it and then reap the rewards. However that doesnt mean you cant still enjoy and have fun despite the work. An advantage of self reliant gardening that quickly pops to mind is that you are not locked into huge plantings that would require machinery to harvest the produce. So that leaves you with the weeding and watering, along with the usual frost patrol responsibilities until harvest. You have the advantage of knowing what has gone into the soil of your plantings. You know the produce hasnt been washed in some chemical bath or forced to ripen with some gas. I havent seen any scientific studies on this but, homegrown produce to me just plain tastes better too. "Gardening is a way of showing that you believe in tomorrow." - Unknown I grew up back east and was always taught to do raised bed gardening. There was so much moisture that plant roots often got bogged down, hence the raised beds. When I moved to New Mexico I had to learn gardening all over again. In the Southwest you need to protect the ground surface around your plants from arid, hot desert winds that suck the moisture right out of the soil very quickly when they blow by. Raised bed gardens are not the wisest things in the Southwest unless you create an elaborate wind break around them. There are several ways to avoid the hot and dry winds. You can use sunken bed gardening or protected bed gardening. The Native Americans of the Southwest used waffle dry desert companion gardening. These were 1-2 foot sunken squares that were planted using the 3 Sisters method of companion planting. The second method is to put a wind barrier around your garden, however if your garden is large, more than 6 feet along any side, you may still experience dried central 1| Page

The Lazy Gardener and Self Reliance - continued

areas of the garden and will need to water those areas more often. I prefer the waffle style of gardening. You plant in rows of waffles. Where each waffle is 1-2 feet square and these have raised sides of 6-8 inches. I live at a rather high altitude in New Mexico so I had to also adapt to the temperature differences even though the growing season is not shortened like it is up north (east or west). Soon I will be moving to a semi-arid far north area and will have to adapt to a much shorter growing season. I love the waffle companion method of gardening as it is the lazy persons way to have a bountiful harvest without much work. I have a friend in Tennessee who uses a raised bed version of the desert waffle garden and she loves it. The common trait between eastern and southwestern waffle gardening is really in the companion plantings per waffle. This type of gardening reduces the need to fertilize the soil or spray with any type (organic or poisonous) pesticides and crowds out most weeds, even the tenacious ones here in the desert. The companion plants of each waffle help ward off the insects, molds and diseases for each other while they draw and replace different nutrients from the soil. If the waffle is sunken or raised sided, in accordance to where you are located, you can reduce your water usage as well. In the Southwest the Native Americans rarely watered their waffle gardens after the plants neared their flowering stage. For cheap easy gardening try straw bale, this is a type of raised bed gardening. If you live in the southwest place a straw bale in a large lawn and leaf bag; expose the top, then cut the baling wire; add your seeds and put some mulch or dirt on top; water and sit back and watch them grow. I have grown potato, corn, tomato, green beans, chili, cucumber, squash, melon, pumpkin and bell pepper. Many flowers grow in straw bale as well. If you live where it is humid, dont put the bale in a trash bag and instead of cutting the bailing wire, just stab the top center a bit to loosen things up a bit and then plant. One neighbor just got bags of planting soil, laid them in a nice boarder around his fence; slit the tops and planted. When he trimmed his trees and hedge he put the chipped trimmings over the plastic soil bags to hide them. Created a great garden with those but had to dispose of the plastic later on. Soil preparation will need to be accomplished no matter where you are geographically, in a greenhouse, container style or out in a field and will vary from location to location, even on your own farm or backyard. This is where good information on composting will come in handy no matter if you are an experienced gardener or not. If you are just starting and have tons of weeds or usually get a lot of weeds; dig down about 8-12 inches and then line that with a thick layer of newspaper,

2| Page

The Lazy Gardener and Self Reliance - continued

cardboard or paper bags and put the cleaned dirt back on top. These will decompose but in the meantime any weed roots/seeds will be exterminated. "What is a weed? I have heard it said that there are sixty definitions. For me, a weed is a plant out of place." -- Donald Culross Peattie Since Im lazy I try to avoid tilling or double turning the garden as tilling the soil creates microscopic carnage. Things like earthworms, nematodes (yeah, they're beneficial), bacteria, protozoa and fungi can all die when you till. Did you know that every time you till you add oxygen to the soil. This creates a bloom of bacteria that digest your organic matter. So the organic matter you added when you tilled is consumed without being much use to your plants. To get around the destruction and work I use compost, my valley friends manure and newspaper. Lay cardboard or eight sheets of newspaper down and add organic matter or leaves on top. You can also sprinkle a little cheap fertilizer around (6-8-6 or 10-10-10). The total depth should be at 6-8". Compost any remaining cardboard (the fertilizer will help this process) that hasnt decomposed and sow the seeds or poke holes in the cardboard to plant. Make you organic matter from dirt, compost, aged manure, straw, shredded leaves or chipped tree trimmings. If you're short on dirt and compost, pile up the shredded leaves, straw, and any other big bulky material, then put the compost and topsoil in piles on the top. Use the little piles to plant in. This will reduce the amount of expensive topsoil or precious compost you would need. During the summer, the bulky matter will break down and compress, but you can add mulch on top to keep your plant roots covered. Or you can dig a small hole, plant your plant and spread newspaper around the plant, right up to the stem. Then dump mulch and compost on top of the newspaper. The grass will die underneath and provide food for worms and other friendly life forms. Newspaper appears to work best with the fertilizer ON TOP because it slowly filters down to the soil without harming the good bugs or the plants you want and it acts like a poor mans timed release fertilizer or closer to the organic fertilizers, all while it helps break the paper down to make the compost. Plus the fertilizer will jump start the soil and with constant feeding of compost and other fiber back into the soil it will continue to build it, not deplete it, as chemical fertilizer do over time. The only drawback to this type of no-till planting is that root crops dont seem to do very well the first year. I had carrots that divided when they hit large pieces of stuff, like shredded leaves and the potatoes grew sideways when they hit the newspapers. Companion planting is also good for pest control but you can also purchase ladybugs and Praying Mantis at your local hardware store and they work wonders in the garden. Or use Diatomaceous earth on and around each plant. Diatomaceous earth is made of fossilized sea creatures and sharp - to bugs. Bird houses to attract 3| Page

The Lazy Gardener and Self Reliance - continued

wrens, pigeon doves, robins and the like that love to eat bugs are good to have around your garden. Hummingbirds are good too, but the feeders are just too much to me as they should be cleaned every other day or two, so I only keep the humming bird feeder out until the plants start to flower. This way the humming birds are already hooked on my yard by the time I stop filling the feeder and the flowers appear on the plants. Worms are great for your garden too. Yep worms, the wonder bug. I currently live in a city and mostly container garden and since I started my small coffee can sized worm farm two years ago my plants havent been better. Not only that but when the worm farm got too crowded, I turned the worms loose on my small grass patch out back and the lawn is healthier than it has ever been. Yeah I do get a worm with wanderlust now and then, but it sure beats having to keep treating the soil in the containers every season! Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw. -Henry David Thoreau If you live high in the mountains or up north, you will most likely want to have some kind of greenhouse to either start plantings early or for year round harvesting. I have one friend in Montana who has several small greenhouses. One is for tropical type plants and that greenhouse is heavily heated via geo-thermal heating and includes some citrus trees. He has another greenhouse for winter harvesting of produce and another smaller one for sprouting and seedlings. The latter two do have some heating but they are more temperate rather than an actual hot house type greenhouse. However in all three, (except for the trees) he utilizes the waffle garden method with raised sides. He also has the local bee keeper put a partial hive in his greenhouses to facilitate the pollination of his winter crop. Another other aspect to self reliance gardening is the saving of seeds for the next season. Different plants require different methods for preserving their seeds and you want to make sure you utilize open-pollinated or heirloom plants and seeds in order to be able to save some seeds from your garden for the next season. Why try to explain miracles to your kids when you can just have them plant a garden. - Robert Brault In short you do not want any hybrid or GM (genetically modified) seeds or plants, as these types will only pass on the plant genetics of one of the parents of the hybrid and not produce another hybrid. On top of that many GM plants are genetically male sterile so the plants dont produce enough viable (fertilized) seeds for sprouting a new plant for the next season. As with any garden, flower or vegetable, east, west, north or south, you will need to check what planting Zone you are in and adjust for altitude so the most likely first and last frost dates are more accurate. These Zones will for the most part take into 4| Page

The Lazy Gardener and Self Reliance - continued

consideration the length of the growing season. The Zones will also help you identify which plant varieties will do best in your location. "Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God ." -- Thomas Jefferson All kinds of things can be used as containers for your garden from old handbags, boots, cans, plastic tubs, to old kiddie pools and even an old chest of drawers. Let your imagination flow. Only things you need to worry about are drainage, if the item is deep enough for the plant you are going to grow or if it is too porous you will need to add some holes for drainage. Used, but clean plastic soda bottles, milk and juice jugs can be used as minigreenhouses to shield early plantings. Or you can make cheap hoop-houses or teepees out of PVC pipe, coat hangers and sheet plastic for individual plants or a whole row. Got limited space? Grow vertical. Hang plants for strawberries, herbs, spices and the like. Make staggered ladder shelves and use the coat hangers to make a lattice for tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and other vine plants. A friend of mine turned a chest of drawers into a progressive tiered container garden. His deep rooted plants were to the back as that had the deepest sections of soil. I have asked him to send me some pictures because it is one of those things that has to be seen to be believed and he says it was really easy, because even I could make it! "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in." --Greek proverb Now please understand that I am not some kind of expert gardener. Nope, shriveled tomatoes and exploding melons are proof of that. I also never expected to get all the know-how I needed from the back of a seed packet, especially since now days I would need a magnifying glass to read the thing. Instead I have accumulated several books over the years that I consider my gardening bibles, great teachers from family and friends to neighbors and a good dose of luck. All of which will come in handy when I move north and rural. "There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments." -- Janet Kilburn Phillips Of the tons of books and such out there on gardening, I have a few that I strongly recommend as they are good for just about any type of food gardening, be it container, kitchen sized or a larger rural size. I have never attempted hobby farm sized gardening so I dont have any recommendations for that large a scale. I also have not had the opportunity to grow a good nut or fruit orchard on a small, medium or large scale, so that kind of reference is missing. The references I do list do have chapters on these trees and scrubs which so far have been perfect for me.

5| Page

The Lazy Gardener and Self Reliance - continued

Carrots Love Tomatoes by Louise Riotte. Four Season Harvest by Eliot ColemanTurner Seed Sowing and Saving by Carole B. Desert Gardening Fruits & Vegetables by George Brookbank The Complete Guide to Herbal Medicines by Charles W. Fetrow and Juan R. Avila Herbal Remedy Gardens by Dorie Byers The Medicine Wheel Garden by E. Barrie Kavasch

For a quick reference and a downloadable spreadsheet see The Lazy Gardener's Automatic Seed Starting Chart with notes at http://www.yougrowgirl.com/grow/seedstartingchart_lazy.php Her Notes PDF is at http://www.yougrowgirl.com/grow/seedstart_chart.pdf For growing season, last and first frosts see any one of the following: http://www.almanac.com/content/frost-chart-united-states#chart http://www.jerrysplantsonline.com/frost_chart_for_usa.htm http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/freezefrost/frostfreemaps.html http://www.humeseeds.com/frost1.htm Hardiness and Zone Maps http://www.backyardgardener.com/zone/index.html http://www.thegardenhelper.com/hardiness.htm http://www.garden.org/zipzone/ Enter Zip code at http://www.thevegetablegarden.info/planting-zones for details http://www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/ushzmap.html http://www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/hrdzon4.html http://www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/hrdzon5.html Planting Schedules http://www.thevegetablegarden.info/planting-schedules http://www.moongrow.com/moon_phase_gardening/moon_phase_planting_zones.ht ml For some great downloadable PDFs: 6| Page

The Lazy Gardener and Self Reliance - continued

Self Reliant Agriculture for Drylands- 3_02 at desertrestore.ORG vegetable_gardening_containers_E-545 at aggi.horticulature.tamu.EDU Straw Bale Method No Dig Garden-FS05 NDG at aboutTheGarden.COM.au Growing In Straw Bale-is1678 at msucares.COM Garden Fall Freeze 32F at ncdc.noaa.GOV Garden Fall Freeze 28F at ncdc.noaa.GOV Garden Spring Freeze 32F at ncdc.noaa.GOV Garden Spring Freeze 28F at ncdc.noaa.GOV Garden Freeze free 32F at ncdc.noaa.GOV Garden Freeze free 28F at ncdc.noaa.GOV General Seed and Garden Information: http://www.coldclimategardening.com/2010/01/14/seeds-for-cold-climates/ http://www.coldclimategardening.com/2010/01/14/seeds-for-coldclimates/#ixzz0eQgNhnxn http://www.gardening-tips-idea.com/coldclimategardening.html http://www.vegetable-gardening-and-greenhouses.com/cold-climate-gardening.html http://www.self-reliance-exchange.com/?p=4315 Article on gardening http://www.seedstrust.com/ Open Pollinated Heirloom Seeds http://www.self-reliance-exchange.com/?p=2147 Saving Seeds http://www.self-reliance-exchange.com/?p=294 Homemade Greenhouse http://www.arkinstitute.com/ Open Pollinated Heirloom Seeds http://www.territorialseed.com/ Open Pollinated Heirloom Seeds http://www.seedsavers.org/Content.aspx?src=aboutus.htm Open Pollinated Heirloom Seeds http://www.slowfood.com/ & http://www.slowfoodusa.org/ Open Pollinated Heirloom Seeds http://www.heirloomseeds.com/ Open Pollinated Heirloom Seeds

7| Page

The Lazy Gardener and Self Reliance - continued

http://www.seedsofchange.com/ Open Pollinated Heirloom Seeds http://www.victoryseeds.com/ Open Pollinated Heirloom Seeds http://orchardhouseheirlooms.com/ Open Pollinated Heirloom Seeds http://readynutrition.com/resources/survival-seeds-to-sow-heirloom-gmo-or-nongmo_17012010/ Survival Seeds to Sow - Heirloom, GMO or Non-GMO http://www.survivalistseeds.com Seeds packed for long term storage

http://survivalseedbank.com/ Seeds packed for long term storage http://www.non-hybrid-seeds.com/sp/seed-packs.html Seeds packed for long term storage

"We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses."-- Abraham Lincoln

From a 50 Something, soon to be rural homesteading, Prepper.

8| Page