Andrew

My garden isn't doing well. I had a great bean harvest and a pretty good pea harvest, but my tomatoes and potatoes are doing terribly. The blight that is sweeping through the Northeast is killing my plants. I lost all my potato plants and managed to salvage a meager 7 potatoes. I should have had upwards of 20lbs of potatoes. So far I've managed to harvest one tomato and it looks like I might get about 20-30 tomatoes before my plants succumb.

My garden is doing quite well now. Not much to say, so I'll let the pictures do the talking:

My garden is moving along at this point. My pea plants are growing very well and despite the assertion on the packet that I didn't have to stake them I ended up having to set some stakes out. They were supposed to be "dwarf vines" that didn't need to be staked, but the plants are growing tall enough that they fall over and were getting tangled up. Instead of letting them vine along the ground I decided to let them grow up. Now that they're staked they're doing very well. I can see the very small beginnings of the seed pods that will hopefully yield fresh peas.

I made some homemade yogurt over the weekend. It was remarkably easy. I started with 1/2 gallon of fresh milk from a local dairy and I heated it to 180F, stirring occasionally to keep it from sticking. I then let it cool to 110 before adding the starter. For the starter I used 1 6oz cup of plain (no flavors, additives, etc) Dannon yogurt. I transferred the milk to pre-warmed jars (1qt Canning jars) and put them in my oven with the oven light on.

My garden is continuing to grow. I recently transplanted most of my tomatoes to even larger pots (sorry, no pictures right now). The tomato plants were 4-6" tall with lots of leaves so I decided to put them in a larger planter until I transplant them into the actual garden. May 15th is my average day of last frost so I plan on transplanting them in the next week or two. One of my tomato plants lost its first leaves, but I've been assured that most of them do that so I shouldn't be worried.

My garden is taking off! The last post I made indicated that my gardening adventure was heading towards peril, but it seems like things are changing.

I have added some quality food to my food stockpile. I decided to convert the large cans of tomato sauce in my stockpile to something practical. I realized that having large #10 cans of tomato sauce was impractical for every day use. If my food stockpile is supposed to be useful in any short or long-term emergency I shouldn't be required to eat a week's worth of sauce in a single setting or risk it going bad. I bought the sauce because it was the cheapest way to have a large portion of sauce, and I knew that I make a lot of meals that make use of marinara sauce.

First the sad news. Everything I planted a few weeks ago, with the exception of a single onion, is dead. We had a few days of severe frost that killed even the frost-hardy lettuce and onions. There's only one lettuce sprout that looks like it's still alive and kicking. It's still bright green and is thicker than it was when I planted it. The rest of the sprouts are all shriveled and dead (or will be very soon). I've learned that starting from seed is hard and that if you plant at the wrong time you can lose some plants.

I've begun my journey on the gardening path. I've recently started my first garden and I plan on chronicling my journey. I decided to start with the Square Foot Gardening method because it seemed like the easiest way to transition into gardening. I have already built two boxes and filled them with dirt.

Some people think I'm crazy. I've been growing increasingly concerned about a general lack of preparedness by people. I have also been trying to convince people that it's wise to prepare for the unknown. I've been labeled a crackpot, a survivalist, and a paranoid crazy person. I'd like to think that I'm quite rational and that my decision is based upon logic and reason and not paranoid delusions. Some people have asked why I think it's wise to prepare, so I'd like to lay out a few reasons why preparation is prudent.