Bay Leaf Additional Information 11-2-22

Bay Leaf (Bay Laurel) has many benefits, and beneficial applications. In my most recent post I gave you a lot of them. But later I remembered some things that could be of benefit for future survival uses. And more data about handling the leaves once harvested.

Because Bay has insect repelling capabilities it can be used to protect your storage of grains and dehydrated foods. Of course the best way to protect these things is to put them in air-tight sealed and hopefully glass containers. But sometimes even the most careful cleaning before storage misses the odd bug egg. So, in order to keep from infestation, place dried Bay leaves in to the flour, grains, dehydrated or freeze dried foods and seeds. As you use these up, just pull the used leaves aside and remove the contents, and occasionally replace them with freshly dried ones.

When I harvest my stems, I place them out of the sun so they don’t bleach out. You can leave them on the stem and hang them in your house from a hook on the wall, or put them in a heavy vase without water, and let them just air dry. You can also remove the leaves from the stem or still on the stem, place them on an old screen, cleaned of course, in a shady place – outdoors is fine, or in a garage or dry basement. Just make sure there is good air circulation. If you’re in a hurry you can use a dehydrator but on the lowest heat setting so you retain the volatile oils.

Once they are so dry they crack when you break them, they are dry enough to store. Keep in a closed glass air-tight jar – I like Mason jars or repurposed quart honey jars. Smaller is OK too. Keep out of direct sunlight, and in a cool place. Otherwise you loose the volatile oils that are a big part of their usefulness.

Their medicinal properties for hair restoration blends well with other herbs like Rosemary and some others. Don’t be afraid to make your own blend with a little research.

I have used dried Bay leaves for 2 years but they are best if used within one year. Keeping them in air-tight jars lengthens their usefulness. Also, if you use a vacuum unit on the jar, their shelf life improves like is available with Food Saver equipment.

If you want to grow your own plant, find a sheltered place with a west exposure, by a rock wall or cement, or other heat capturing environment if you live in a cold winter climate. They are not particularly delicate but once I had 60 hours of 5F and the outside leaves were burned in my well established bush. So choose the location carefully, and not where it would be exposed to cold winds or air movement below freezing. It is a strong perennial if you take care to give it a comfortable home.

Good growing and medicine making. Diann Dirks 11-2-22

The Wonders of the Bay Laurel aka ‘Bay Leaf’ for Spice and Medicinal Benefits. 1-1-22

I was in Michigan about 8 years ago visiting friends. We visited a nursery and there on the table was a Bay Laurel plant. I had never seen one for sale but I wasn’t sure it would grow in Georgia where I live. The nursery lady said in Michigan it was considered an annual. But we’re in a more southern growing zone so I bought it. It seemed worth the try.

I was building a new area of my extensive garden and found a little micro-climate area on the west side of our house where the concrete foundation is exposed and painted black with waterproofing. I had built an enclosed raised bed along the whole side of the house where the sun shines late into the day, so heat builds up there. And right under the chimney for our fireplace on the main floor was the perfect spot.

Since then that little Bay Laurel has grown into a very well established tree/bush. It is so happy we have to prune it down every fall or the branches grow up under the siding about 10’ tall there. As a result we get a goodly harvest every year, and any time during the year as it is evergreen.

CULINARY USES:

For years I have been adding fresh Bay Leaf to my soups, stews, tomato sauces, etc. for additional flavor and to calm the acidity of the tomatoes, only knowing the edible aspect of this wonderfully flavorful herb. The leaves can be used in culinary recipes both fresh (more fragrant and tasty) or dried. I like using the fresh ones right off the bush, but I dry them carefully so they don’t loose their taste or color as much as you find in the jars on the grocery shelves. The difference is especially poignant when fresh.

Used also to flavor wild caught fish and organic chicken.

Instead of using the whole leaf, the powder made from the dried, ground leaves also has use in cooking singularly or in spice blends.

The powder is useful as a porridge spice for oat or corn meal, in sweet bread combined with cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon and clove – ¼ tsp of bay leaf in the mix. For a savory Stew Spice combine with spice berry, cumin, coriander seeds, add paprika, black pepper and ¼ tsp bay leaf powder. Can be used in stew or chicken stew.

MEDICINAL USES:

But recently I have been exploring the medicinal properties of it because one of my interns showed me a site where it’s one of the herbs that can stimulate hair growth. After covid I and others have experienced hair loss and thinning which no Rogaine or other commercial product was attractive to me. I don’t like using chemicals on my body for their potential toxicity, so this was intriguing.

Then I started to explore the many other medicinal and helpful attributes of Bay Leaf. The more I researched, the more impressed I became with this many uses.

The first area of interest was hair loss. Here is what I discovered:

HAIR AND SCALP:

It strengthens hair roots and eliminates dandruff. And it’s effective against head live.

Used as tea (aka infusion) it benefits both the skin and hair. For hair loss, dandruff, and scalp fungal infections, make a ‘decoction’ (a strong tea made by simmering over high heat) making a hair rinse or using in a spray bottle. To make this more concentrated infusion, use 30 or 40 dry or fresh leaves, let simmer, cover, remove from heat, steep till the water cools down, then strain out leaves. The color will turn to light yellowy green. Then use against dandruff and hair fall. Then use the leaves for mulch in the garden.

Pour into a spray bottle or in a bottle, it will keep in the frig for a week. To use on hair, shampoo and condition as usual, towel off, then spray with the infusion, or pour over the hair as a rinse. Massage into the scalp and make sure the hair strands are well covered. To refresh after a couple of days, spray the hair and work into the roots, brush in gently with hair brush, allow to dry in the hair. Wash the next day as usual. For dandruff use additionally with neem about 1 Tbs, 2 Tbs Aloe Vera gel, mix with Bay decoction, apply on scalp for 15 minutes, rinse off.

Hair loss using bay leaf and prevent baldness, and grow in thicker hair as a natural hair conditioner, heat a pan of water on low heat for 10 minutes with a handful of leaves (dry or fresh). This is anti-fungal and removes dandruff. Strain, store in the frig 7 days while using. Spray the roots and hair, massaging the scalp. Do this 3 times a week to stop hair fall and baldness.

Bay Leaf also works well by including rosemary leaves to these recipes as well as fenugreek seeds while making infusion or decoction. Can add also Aloe Vera gel to the mixtures for added health to the hair and scalp. And you can add a bit of avocado oil and shake with them to soften and strengthen the hair but use in one setting, don’t store for long periods of time or it will spoil. And if you have it, you can add a tsp of MSM powder to further strengthen the scalp and hair, spray on scalp – allow to sit and massage till moisturized. This can be refreshed after a few days.

HAIR HEALTH:

24 pieces of clove, 5-6 pieces of bay leaf. Fill pot with water, bring to boil, add clove, cover and boil 10 or more minutes till water turns pale yellow. Add Bay, stir 5 minutes, let boil 10 more minutes. Turn off heat, cool, strain; apply directly to scalp, massage, leave overnight, then rinse thoroughly.

The benefits – rich in Vitamin A, C, and minerals iron, potassium calcium, magnesium all for general good health. This treats migraines. It contains enzymes that break down proteins and aids faster digestion. It calms indigestion. For this tea: 16 oz. water, 3 bay leaves, the juice of one large or 2 small lemons, decoct (slow simmer), cover and drink.

So, I’m sharing what I have learned here in my blog in the hopes that it will help you. Also, because my garden produces an abundance of the leaves, I can offer them to you at the bottom of this article.

Then I started to explore the other areas of the body Bay Leaf benefits:

FORMS USED:

You can make an alcohol or vinegar tincture with it for medicine or recipes. It makes a lovely tea alone or in combination with other herbs. It can be made into massage oils and oil based ointments and salves for a number of health issues. It can be made into a stronger water extraction by slow boiling for topical use, or an infusion like making a tea bag. It also can be dried and powdered and used directly or placed in capsules. It is also available as a powerful commercially made therapeutic grade essential oil. And burned the dry leaves can be used as an incense. It has almost no side effects, but always test any herb for allergic reaction before using, or check with your doctor if you are taking pharmaceutical medications for cross reactions.

The areas and systems benefiting from Bay Leaf medicinal preparations:

DIGESTIVE:

It’s a digestive helper – relieving symptoms of Celiac disease, relieving symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome, while strengthening the immune system. It also reduces gas and bloating.

MENSTRUAL PROBLEMS:

It helps with menstrual problems.

NERVINE:

Provides quality sleep. The tea calms and relaxes psychological diseases such as insomnia for comfortable peaceful and uninterrupted sleep. It’s a nervine calming and smoothing nervous problems, anxiety and handling stress. Linalool, a compound found in Bay, lowers the stress hormone promoting calmness and depression.

As an aromatherapy, the compounds from the volatile oils are calming of the mind and help relax the body. When burned in a bowl to make smoke as an incense, it is said to change the atmosphere to remove ‘bad energy’ lodged in the house, changing it from the smell.

HEART HEALTH:

Lowers bad cholesterol (LDL). It contains caffeic acid which ensures the removal of bad cholesterol from the circulatory system. For this reason caffeic acid also considered a powerful heart helper. When combined with rutin, this benefit is increased. Bay leaf also strengthens the capillary walls in the heart. The caffeic acid also increases exercise tolerance for athletic performance, and mildly reduces the stimulated levels of lactolate which causes muscles to hurt and often is used in pre-workout supplements.

INFLAMMATION, PAIN:

Reduces inflammation in the body. The caffeic acid inhibits the production of nitric oxide, a cause of inflammation. Also made into an infused Bay Leaf massage oil, it is used to relieve muscle aches and pains, swelling, and arthritic pain considered an “anti-arthritic”. A tea made relieves pain caused by diseases in the body. It reduces the pain in muscles and joints. Reduces inflammation in the body. The caffeic acid inhibits the production of nitric oxide, a cause of inflammation. Also made into an infused Bay Leaf massage oil, it is used to relieve muscle aches and pains, swelling, and arthritic pain considered an “anti-arthritic”. Bay Leaf essential oil also reduces severe pain in the body due to arthritis, rheumatism and sprains. Use with a carrier oil such as olive, avocado, almond or other mild oils in salves, or massage oils.

Massage Oil:

Into Mason jar. 30 Bay leaves, 1 Tbs. Perilla oil cold pressed. Seal tightly, Fill pot with water, place sealed jar in the pot. Heat to boil. Simmer 2 hours. Cool slightly, strain, refill with 15 more leaves to oil, repeat process another 2 hours, cool, strain into clean container. Store in cool dark space, use as necessary for pain and inflammation, massaging into the painful areas.  

HEADACHE REMEDY:

It’s a powerful headache remedy such as migraines, improving the quality of life by relieving pain. One remedy is placing a single leaf in the nostrils.

ANTI-AGING, ANTI MICROBIAL, ANTIOXIDANT: Pain and Inflammation

Being anti-microbial, and antioxidant, and including polyphenols – a type of sugar found in certain plants, such as eucalyptol, cineole, sabinene, and linalool, all of which are anti-aging, and help with pain and inflammation. See below under “TEA”

ANTIBIOTIC:

Compounds in Bay treat Salmonella (along with white wormwood, rose scented geranium), E-Coli as the essential oil, has the highest antioxidant – and of the three the bay leaf had the highest antioxidant quality. As an infusion, it also lowers fever.

FUNGAL DISEASES AND CANDIDA:

Other phytochemicals (plant chemicals) in Bay are volatile and non-volatile oils, flavonoids, tannins, sesquterpenic alcohols and alkaloids. As such they have many healing powers.

It also fights Candida and other fungal diseases. It’s also wound healing as an essential oil. The Essential Oil disrupts adhesion between the cell wall and Candida so it won’t penetrate so it protects and fights fungal infection.  

PARASITE HANDLING:

It is also a powerful remedy for parasites in the body by chewing and swallowing 1 leaf a day for 15 days. This removes all worms and pathogenic (disease causing) microbes in the intestines. This is very helpful to the immune system as about 85% of the immune system resides in the lining of the intestines called the ‘micro biome’.

DIABETES:

Regulates and lowers blood sugar levels for diabetes and blood cholesterol. The ground leaf taken 2x a day lowers blood sugar and LDL as well as increases HDL (good cholesterol), and improves insulin function for Type 2 Diabetes – taken in capsules. Also because it helps release toxins in the body it’s also good for kidney health. As such it helps treat kidney infections and kidney stones. Bay leaf helps release toxins in the body which also helps with kidney health.

Seizures are treated with a poultice of the leaf with cinnamon, nutmeg and olive oil.

ANTI-CANCER:

Some research shows Bay to be anti-cancer and anti-oxidant. The phyto nutrients (plant nutrients), catechins, linalool and parthenolide helps the body from the effects of cancer causing free radicals. The leaves and fruit kill cancer cells, particularly noted were Breast Cancer and Colorectal Cancer in early stages of detection.

NUTRIENT RICH:

It’s rich in vitamins and minerals – such as magnesium, calcium, manganese, iron.

SKIN BENEFITS:

Used for skin problems, is helpful treating acne and blackheads on skin. Bay leaf powder mixed with a dash of lemon juice clears acne. Keeps neck wrinkles at bay and helps with skin allergies. Makes for clear soft blemish free skin. Effective on difficult to cure skin diseases. And it fights skin infections. Treats bee and wasp stings as poultice, oil, or infusion wash. Also can be included as an infused oil for a skin lotion. Because it is anti-fungal, a daily consumption forms a protective layer on the skin against microbial organisms entering the skin membrane.

Mineral rich and skin astringent, Bay Leaves for skin difficulties.

Teeth Remedies and skin treatment.

Make a paste: 1 Tbs water, 1 ½ Tbs Bay Leaf powder.

Apply to the skin to heal cuts, bruises, insect bites.

Add to Toothpaste for dental health.

COLD AND FLU:

It’s cold and flu season, with sore throats, clogged nasal passages and throat phlegm, acting as an expectorant (unclogs mucus), and is antibiotic and antiviral to help with the infection. Used in a tea or tincture in juice or water, it can help relieve symptoms and fight the infection helping the immune system. See how to make the tea below. Besides using it internally, the incense of dried leaves helps with coughs, colds, bronchitis, and chest infections. Used in powder form, it clears cough, sore throat, respiratory system, nasal passages against harmful bacterial.

LUNGS AND RESPIRATORY SYSTEM:

Bay leaf eases respiratory ailments. It opens airways, purifies ambience in a space, can be used as an incense. Burn 3 to 4 leaves in a bowl, burn.

Nose Bleed: Using 3 pieces of sun dried Bay leaf, crush roughly. In 2 cups water, add leaves, bring to boil, simmer 10 minutes, cool, strain, and drink.

TEA:

To make a tea, place 1 cup water in a small pot, adding 2 leaves, or for a large mug, a couple of cups. On high heat bring to a boil and then lowering heat to a low heat simmer for 10 minutes, cover with a lid and brew 10 minutes without added heat. The tea is good for colds, flu, and even the covid virus, bronchitis. Add lemon to the tea for Vitamin C. It’s an antioxidant and strengthens the immune system. It also helps weight loss and detoxifies the body.

Making a tea with the powder, place ½ tsp. into a tea bag per cup of boiling water, cover, and steep. Use just before bed to help sooth and sleep. For a Chair Tea, add to this a tsp of ginger powder, mix in, and place in the tea bag.

The tea is antibacterial and aids digestion processes, adding a lemon slice and sweeten with a teaspoon of honey.

OTHER USES OF BAY LEAF:

Besides being medicinal, it also attracts deer, and can be used as a fire starter.

It’s also a natural insect repellent.

If you are interested in purchasing organically grown bay leaf fresh or dried, please contact me on my email address for prices and shipping charges. Bay is very light weight.

didirks@comcast.net or FB Georgia Dirks PM

A beginners guide to making medicinal salves and ointments from herbs in the garden. 8-23-22

I get requests for simple explanations of making your own medicine on my FB page. Someone wanted to know as a beginner how to make a salve using yarrow. I posted this little tutorial you might find useful:

I usually use a little double boiler. You can also put a stainless steel bowl or pot that fits into the bottom one over a sauce pan of water on the stove called a Bain Marie. Put water in the bottom but not so much that it will bubble and spray water into the upper bowl or pot. Make sure you keep having some water in it though or it will burn. The bowl has to be wider than the pan.

Put your favorite carrier oil (I like extra virgin olive oil, or sweet almond oil) in the pot – start with about a cup. That will give you about 3 tins finished product. As you get more certain, you can make bigger batches, but smaller amounts of oil are hard to process with the herbs in there. Cut some fresh herb earlier and let them wilt – this gets rid of excess moisture you don’t want in an oil salve. (You can also use dried herbs).  I usually use about ¼ cup herbs for a cup of oil. Make sure the oil covers the herbs generously. Cut them up and add to the oil. Bring it to a simmer and keep it there (not boiling) for about an hour. Let it cool a bit (enough you can touch it) and strain it thru cheese cloth and squeeze all the oil out.

Return to the double boiler and heat it up again. Then add about a tablespoon of shaved or pelletized bees wax and let it melt, stirring till you don’t see the bits in the bottom of the pot. Then have a spoon handy and dip it in. Let it cool, and test for consistency.

If it’s too stiff, add a bit more oil. If it’s too soft, add more wax and get it to just the right consistency. Then pour it into a few small containers. I like to save mint tins like Altoids, cleaned and dry, and pour in about half full. Then label it with ingredients and uses. You can get fancy and add comfrey leaves, calendula flowers, plantain herb, chickweed or others (do a little research). Try various herbs and combinations as you feel more certain. But do your research and go online for Youtube videos. Lots of neat ones in there, google “making salves and ointments”. I’ll bet you have lots of useful salve making herbs just growing in your yard or in a nearby field. Just make sure you choose things never sprayed with lawn care or harmful chemicals. Anything put on the skin if toxic goes right into the body within 7 seconds. Good luck and have fun.

Oh, and if you want to give it a little natural preservative so it lasts longer, use essential oils like lavender essential oil, or vitamin E oil, about 8 drops per cup of oil. Do that last after the wax is in and the consistency is right. Other essential oils can be used too like camphor, clover, oregano, or others as your research discovers.

I make salves for skin care, skin healing and wound care, muscle and joint pain and inflammation, poison ivy, bug bites, psoriasis, rashes, and other conditions of the body. I never use petro chemicals or artificial ingredients, or fragrances. I do use lavender essential oil in small quantities for preservation but not enough to give a smell especially. Use fresh ingredients, and organic if possible. If you see a little dark liquid in the bottom of the pan as the salve cools, let it cool all the way, then let out this liquid as it will make your salve spoil. Then reheat it so you can pour it into containers.

Keep your salve or ointment in the refrigerator if you don’t use Vitamin E or Lavender oil (or both, I do) as it will spoil in a few months. But with these natural preservatives, they will last for a year or more in the frig. And if you have kids, give them a blob of the ointment in tiny jars with screw on lids (cosmetic eye cleaning lotion jars work great) for their personal use so they don’t put dirty hands into the main container and contaminate it. When they run out, refill the little jar. This also works great for the purse or for camping.

This fosters self reliance as kids get used to fending for themselves with a little first aid. Make sure they wash wounds or cuts or scrapes, etc., before applying. Also, for those salves to help with pain and inflammation, be generous and rub in well so it penetrates more deeply if it’s in an unbroken skin condition.

Enjoy your self-reliance!

Diann Dirks 8-23-22

Home Remedies that work – Chicken/Bone Broth Soup 8-16-22

Chicken Soup/Bone Broth

Good for what ails ya.

Sometimes the old fashioned home remedies are the best. Recently a friend’s son came down with a mystery flu bug (not covid), and was having a lot of nausea, weakness, dizziness, and feeling terrible, minor fever off and on.

Instead of loading the body up with antibiotics which can play hob with the gut microbes that account for 70 to 85% of the immune system, I have found it better to try old standby methods first. My mother called chicken soup “Jewish Penicillin” and I’ve actually seen research on how effective it can be. So, I wrote up my recipe for this soup to my friend. I decided you might find it useful.

Whole chicken (thawed if was frozen and cleaned) in a big pot, add a big cut up carrot or two, chop up an onion in 4 pieces, and a couple of stalks of celery with the leaves (especially adds flavor), some salt and pepper. Add purified water to about an inch from the top, bring to boil, lower to simmer, simmer an hour. Remove the chicken but leave the vegs. Cut the meat off the bones, put the meat in the frig for later. Return the bones and skin and if you have any chicken feet (available at WalMart and many Mexican stores with a meat counter) or more bones saved from baked chickens adds nutrients, simmer the stock for a few hours. Strain off the liquid and return to the pot or put in mason jars for later use and refrigerate. This is bone broth. Compost the now soft bones and vegs.

To serve the soup, pour the right amount of the bone broth into a sauce pan for a serving, add new vegetables you want in your soup – can do more carrot, celery, onion, add parsley, and other vegs as you wish (see below) as well as rice or noodles. Simmer till vegs are cooked. Add meat enough for a serving, let simmer just enough to heat it up, into the soup, and serve. For added flavor, squeeze a lemon into the final soup. Salt and pepper to taste if desired.

Sometimes I like to vary the final soup a bit with some herbs and spices. Oregano, thyme, and tarragon, dried and tied in bundle, later removed, a few bay leaves also later removed, or lots of cilantro or fresh parsley or green onions, added about 5 minutes before serving (keeps the flavors fresh from the fresh herbs) or sprinkled on the final soup to serve all taste wonderful.

Some vegetables in the final soup I like to add (besides the ones mentioned) include fresh tomatoes or home canned tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, green beans, canned beans like white or garbonzo, celery leaves, parsnips cut up and sautéed before adding, celeriac also sautéed,  bok choy, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms canned or fresh, Swiss chard including the stalks, spinach, fresh snap, English or snow peas, or combinations of them. Because I have a big garden, often it’s just a trip out into the beds with a basket and a harvest knife for ingredients available at the time.

This is traditional soup stock kept on hand for many uses besides just making soup. It can be used to cook rice, in stews, or sauces. It’s delicious.

This soup is also soothing to the stomach (if someone is sick, you can just serve the broth without vegs or meat if they can’t hold other things down) and very nutritious. Research has been done on this for healing and illness recovery and it actually has many benefits.

I like to use organic chicken if I can find it and organic vegs. And always use purified water – either filtered, or filtered rain water, or pure spring water. Costco sells good organic whole chickens. Chicken feet add collagen to the bone broth and make it more healing. To a large pot of broth I add one to two lbs. of the chicken feet. When cooled in the frig, this broth will be almost like jello in consistency, it’s so high in collagen.

For added nutrition, you can throw any old vegs in your frig into the pot when you are at stage two with just the bones and skin and original vegs in the broth after you take out the chicken itself. They can be wilted or almost bad. The broth will absorb the nutrients, kill any germs, and be thrown out with the bones at the end.

When you have a garden, you can throw in greens from the broccoli or cauliflower, onion tops, carrot tops or otherwise composted plant matter for additional mineral content and flavor. I have found these otherwise wasted things add another dimension to the flavor and often a sweetness unexpected.

We are a thrifty family so whenever I bake a chicken we save the bones and put them in the freezer to add when making bone broth. I have a very large stock pot which holds over 2 gallons and this gets put to use several times a year so we have a good supply of bone broth all year long. It keeps nicely in tightly covered mason jars for many months in the frig, or longer in freezer bags in the freezer. I don’t like to freeze mason jars because I’m afraid they will crack and spoil the contents.

Making broth with otherwise left over or unused edibles is one of the best investments in time in a kitchen. You can use a crock pot too if you have a big one. It also makes the dollar stretch and increases yield from the garden or farm. Even if you only have a few buckets with soil in them on your patio, you can grow food and make it into things like broth.

Enjoy and bon appétit.

Diann Dirks Auburn, Ga.

SETTING UP A PATIO GARDEN WITH 5 GAL. BUCKETS 8-2-22

I wrote this article to help a friend of mine in California who is handicapped but who wants to be able to grow some of her food. I have made it as simple and user friendly as possible. The advice is good for anyone starting out or those with mobility or energy issues, or who just are uncertain that they can even grow food at all. She has a patio off of her condo, but no real yard. This would work for almost any small space.

It can also be used to grow an herb garden instead of a food garden, or a combination of the two.

People now are starting to realize that food security and having a way to grow your own food may become more and more important with the changing of the times. Not everyone has acreage to build a farm, or a backyard in suburbia to set up raised beds to grow their own food. Here is a simple way to grow food on a gradient approach that anyone can do. Even kids. I had a neighbor across the street who had never grown anything. I started her out with a pretty big plastic planter and a tomato plant I gave her. She was nervous at first and thought for sure she’d kill that plant. But I encouraged her and helped her out now and then when she had questions like I can do for you. But she gained experience and confidence, and after several years and teaching her two young daughters what she learned, she had her husband build her 4’ x 8’ raised beds in her yard. Then she moved to Michigan and kept up her garden there. Anyone can do this!

Here are the steps to do this project. In Permaculture Design we are taught to start small and take care of the critical things first. So these paragraphs below are in the sequence you need to put in to do this. Easy peasy.

WATER: Secure a way to water your plants – preferably a hose from a faucet outside the building. Have a hose with a wand with a shower head which screws onto the hose. If you don’t have a hose, you can use a watering can and fill it half way (to avoid hurting your back) to water a few containers to start out.

GROWING ‘BEDS’: Purchase 3 or 4 – 5 gal. buckets from Home Depot, Lowe’s, a bakery, or a soap making company (usually cheaper from bakery or soap company). Make sure you get the lids too. They are placed under the pot to catch the water.

Drill ¼” holes, 6 or 7 per bucket, in the bottom of the buckets. Lay some kind of permeable fabric over the holes so the soil doesn’t wash out. You can save the plastic net bags from oranges and apples, and lay a number of layers over the bottom for this purpose. Or cut a circle of screening like in windows and lay it over the holes. Water will drain through the fabric and not hold it in so it won’t rot the roots.

Purchase large bags (usually 2 or 3 cubic feet sized) of Potting Soil. Just one to start out, and see how many buckets one bag will fill. I prefer purchasing the kind that has already got fertilizer in it like Scott or Miracle Grow. It will say on the bag if it’s fertilized and if it’s ‘water control’ which holds the water better. You’ll  probably need to get help moving this to your patio. Purchasing little bags is easier to deal with but more expensive! I cut a gal. water bottle  with a handle so it is the shape of a scoop, leaving the handle but cutting out a “D” shape on the side starting including the narrow hole at the top. This makes it much easier to move the soil out of the bags into the buckets and it’s free. Much easier than doing it double handfuls at a time.

Fill the buckets with the soil, leaving 1 to 2” from the top to leave room for water, and mulch.

You need full sun for most summer vegetables so place your buckets side by side with the lid under the bucket, close together in a line by the wall. Start with a small number of these until you get used to taking care of them. Add more as you can make a trip to purchase them, and buy bags of potting soil as you need them.

You won’t need to fertilize your soil for about 6 months, then you need to purchase some ‘fish emulsion’ thick fertilizer that you dilute. This is organic and non-chemical, the plants love it. A bottle from the nursery lasts quite a long time. Read and follow the directions on the bottle.

Purchase seedlings from the nursery of Home Depot, Lowe’s, or a nursery. It’s summer but in California it’s such a great growing climate, you can mostly grow almost anything. At first just start with ‘patio’ variety tomatoes, lettuce (likes it cooler and not in full sun), Swiss chard, bush beans, bush cucumbers, and other vegetables that you like. Check in with me before you purchase specific ones. And go onto a seed company site like Burpees, Seeds of Change, Livingston Seeds, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, and my favorite – Baker Creek Heirloom Seed company, or other seed company to give you ideas for what to grow – online. Usually they tell you what will grow in a container or stays compact in the description. Almost any seed company will have their catalog online but most of them will also send you a hard copy if you want to peruse them (and drool on them like I do, lol).

SEEDS: If you want, you can try sowing some seeds if you can’t find seedlings for what you want. Don’t go nuts. Look thru some seed catalogues for ‘patio’ sized, compact cultivated varieties. They won’t be in the nursery seedling lots except maybe patio tomatoes. Starting from seeds can be so much cheaper and you have so many more varieties to choose from. Nursery seedlings tend to be very limited in varieties. But it’s educational to walk the aisles of the outdoors nursery offerings for ideas about what to plant. Start with a few only and as you get more containers to grow in, you can increase the varieties. I liked growing lettuces, one or two parsley plants, 3 or 4 tomato plants, radishes (easy to grow), Swiss chard, bush beans, and a few other things like chives for snipping into a salad. Lettuces should be leaf variety, not heading varieties. You can pick leaves on them and they keep growing. Head varieties are a one shot harvest. Once you pick the plant, you have to replant.

SUPPORTS: If you grow things that vine or climb, like pole beans, vining cucumbers, and most tomatoes, you need to support them with a pole or a ‘tomato cage’. Poles like bamboo poles can be purchased at a nursery, or if you know a landscaper, sometimes when they prune a bush, they have long branches that can be used for supports when held together in teepees with cable ties and set into the soil of the container.

TOOLS: You will need a few simple tools. Get a plastic 2 or 1 ½ gal plastic watering can from the nursery (for diluting fertilizer and doing spot watering). A garden trowel. A scoop (you make yourself). A spoon – teaspoon and tablespoon – I get old ones from a thrift store or just dedicate one from your kitchen to plant small seedlings – easier than using a bigger trowel. And save the little paper/wire ties in the grocery store or from a non-ziplock plastic bag box to tie up your plants to the supports.

FERTILIZER: You can use the fish emulsion fertilizer. But also crush your eggshells down into as tiny bits as you can, and mix that into the soil, not disturbing the roots. Or just lay them over the top as a mulch. As you find moldy stuff in your frig (not meat or bones, or citrus peels or avocado peels or seeds) dig that into your soil. Carrot and potato skins and other debris from cooking can go in there too.

WATERING: You can over or under water plants on a patio. The test of when to water is to stick your index finger into the soil 1”. If it feels dry, put your finger down 2”. If it’s still dry, you need to add water. If it’s moist 1” don’t add water. In the heat of summer, you may have to water every day. Check every day. In really hot weather, I have had to water 2x a day. If your plants start to wilt, immediately check the soil.

You can also set up a drip system from a kit available online so you always have a bit of moisture going into the containers, to save walking around with a hose. Again, depends on resources and money available, but I’ve seen entire rooftop farms in containers watered by drip systems.

The nice thing about bucket growing is you can move them around to find the right light exposure or take it with you if you decide to move. And if a plant isn’t happy in one spot you can adjust it a bit to be happier.

HOW TO APPROACH THE PROJECT: I suggest if you wish to make your garden from containers, that you build up the numbers, gradually, and line them up along the walls, then leave about 2 ½ feet between the lines of buckets, and in the middle do a double line but leave space at either end and in the middle to walk around them. You could probably get quite a nice garden in the space you described for your patio. It would be done gradually because it’s a heck of a learning curve. And you’d have to spend money to mock it up. Start out with three or four buckets and see how it works for you. Start with a tomato plant in one of them with some garlic cloves pushed in around the edge of the bucket, two inches apart. Then plant another one with some leaf lettuces. Decide what you want to grow and what you can find as seedlings, and start from there. There’s some bending over in working with them but not as much as a raised bed or in the ground. You could even set them up on 2×4 tables so they were at a comfortable height, but that would require more money. Or set the few you are growing up on cinder blocks so you don’t have to bend over at all.

Here is a more elaborate and full scale patio garden with buckets, spaced according to the amount of space, the available resources, and one’s energy to work with them. These plans are elastic, fitting to the space and the resources. It could be on a patio, on a drive way, on a rooftop, on a side walk, along an alley way if there’s enough sunshine or in a vacant lot you have access to. Sometimes people make arrangements with neighbors who have unused space and take some of the produce as exchange. This plan is for a square patio, but you place them according to the shape of your space. Just leave about 2 ½ feet between the rows and maybe 1 ½ feet for pass thru spaces so you can move around easily. You can even just put them in the middle and not around the edge of the space if you have shade there and not enough sunshine.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

O          walk ways                                  O

O     OOOOO    OOOOO   OOOOO     O

O     OOOOO    OOOOO   OOOOO     O

O                                                            O

O     OOOOO    OOOOO   OOOOO     O

O     OOOOO    OOOOO   OOOOO     O

O                                                             O

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO doorway exit

You get the picture. It’s not to scale but the concept is there. Of course the ‘O’s would not be as many because they would be the buckets.  And you would have to see how your energy holds up starting with a few. But you could find out how much you can do and do that.

It’s amazing how much food you can grow using containers like this. As you get more and more familiar with the techniques of growing this way, you can use several buckets to grow something you especially like. And because bio-diversity is a good thing, mix up the buckets so you don’t have a bunch of the same thing in a row. This confuses the pest bugs and helps to keep their numbers down so you don’t have to deal with that.

If you have questions about what to plant with what, you can google ‘companion planting’ asking for companions for the plants you want to put together in a pot. Some plants are happy to be planted in the same pot, some are not. An example of those that don’t like each other – anything in the onion/garlic family, and any of the ‘legume’ plants like beans and peas. They inhibit the growth of each other. Good companions are tomatoes, garlic, onions, parsley, lettuce, and carrots. Of course you wouldn’t put all these in one pot, but they could be paired up happily.

I hope this helps you get started. Remember, start with 3 or 4! Learn, then grow it bigger.

Diann Dirks, Certified Permaculture Designer

How Things Are In The Garden Today – A window into the life of a passionate gardener. 7-25-22

Dear reader,

I forget sometimes that some of the people who read my blog are interested in gardening and started reading it for garden tips and such. So, I’m copying parts of a letter I wrote today to my friend in Switzerland who I correspond with. She lives in a flat in an old part of a village, very picturesque, and she tells me all about her life. I share mine with her. So, she said it was cooler the last couple of days. I’ll start with that. It’s about the current state of my garden and my work here. BTW, I’ll be 77 in November, so you can imagine me out there doing my garden yoga and digging happily in the garden soil, planting, watering, weeding, and listening to the birds sing, the bees buzz, and watching the hundreds of butterflies flittering around. It’s heaven. Did you know the actual meaning of the word paradise is “a confined garden”? Well, this is not confined but it sure is a paradise.

You can ask me about these things in the comment part of the blog, and I’d love to hear from you.

Diann Dirks

I don’t know how hot it will be here today but it’s supposed to be a scorcher. Yesterday it was overcast even though it was hot, and I got a LOT done in the garden. Everything I do in this garden takes effort. Nothing is easy, especially in the heat. But if I don’t do it myself I have no help for another week or so, so I’ve been getting in there and working, and enjoying it a lot. I love getting my hands in the dirt. (My interns are both on vacation with their families before school starts in August.)

I had help from my neighbor Rhys putting in cinder blocks in the garden along a pathway which formerly had rotting 2×12” 12 foot long boards put in new many years ago. I rounded up cinder blocks from all over the garden and between us we lined one long section and the return to the edge of the garden. It’s so much nicer! But I like to plant things in the holes of the cinder blocks to make use of the growing space, and that takes a LOT of prepared soil. Now all the beds are either lined with bricks or cinder blocks, no more wood boxes. The pathways between these liners are filled with coarse wood chips. As part of the redoing of the east garden growing area, we (mostly me) have been digging up the pathways which have had wood chips in there for many years. Now that organic matter has decomposed making beautiful black soil. But we have added more chips over the top of that which have had to be sifted out in order to use that nice decomposed rich soil. So I had filled a long row of black plastic tree planter containers with the chips mixed with the soil.

Over the past week I have been sifting that soil in a sifting box Loren (my husband) made for me, by hand. Then to fill the cinder cells I have added vermiculite (a puffed wheat kind of mineral that makes soil lighter in texture), sand and ash, and composted manure to the sifted soil. This is beautiful light fertile soil! But a lot of work. I think I filled over 40 cinder cells yesterday with two big wheel barrow loads of this mixed soil. I got the last of the chip/soil containers sifted and added, and mixed the other ingredients into it, then precariously wheeled the wheel barrow, two loads, over to the row of cinder blocks. Then I used a plastic liter bottle with the top cut off to fill the cells since they are too small to use a shovel. Amazingly enough I had exactly the right amount of soil to fill the whole row! Nothing left over, and just enough! Phew, just the win I needed!

So today the mission is to plant those cells with seeds and seedlings of flowers, herbs, and carrots which grow very well in those little spaces. It ends up being about a gallon of soil for each hole, so a nice growing space. And I keep them watered. I have done this with all the cinder cells around the beds with zinneas, coleus (lovely colored leaf plants), and some herbs and radishes, which the bees love, and butterflies. So it’s a riot of color out there, as well as being very productive.

The long bed 17’x5’ that I just put in the cinder blocks around now needs the soil refreshed, and everything planted in there. Still putting in some summer plants but also starting some cool weather seeds like broccoli, cabbage, and maybe even lettuce if I can shade those plots.

I divide up the larger area into blocks about 2 1/2 or 3 foot squares, with a rock for stepping on in the middle corner, which is just enough space to work and plant in one hour. Instead of trying to work the whole bed at once, which is exhausting, if I do it in sections, I get it done systematically and get things actually growing quicker.

This long bed is the last of the beds in the east garden area to be planted. I still have two of those beds which need some work, weeding and succession planting in the empty spots, but otherwise it’s a big project almost finished. Then I’ll start working on the west beds.

But now the whole garden area not only is filled with color but the tomato plants are 3’ tall and starting to produce, the peas, beans and cucumber plants are climbing up the stick supports I built. The okra and peppers both hot and sweet are about 1 – 2’ tall, one actually made me a hot pepper so far. Swiss chard is needing some attention but is productive.

And I planted a whole area with squash, pumpkins, melons and peas with various kinds of radishes, some grow 2’ long in an area just down hill of the main beds on an old hugelkulture berm (where rotting wood is first placed as a bottom layer then topped with a couple of feet of compost and soil – very productive). It’s all getting very exciting! I haven’t really had a garden in 3 years due to covid and my own lack of energy.  

The peach tree went nuts this year and produced loads of actual peaches that didn’t rot and fall off before looking like peaches. I don’t spray with chemicals so having them make it this year has been so wonderful! Just the right climatic conditions. Many of them were blown off by a big storm we had, and a lot of them started to rot on the tree whole or in spots. But much of that was salvagable and over the last week I’ve been picking the ones that are almost ripe, and for the ones with bad spots, cutting out those spots and salvaging the good parts. They are delicious peaches! I actually cooked down several quarts of them the other day and will do the same with more maybe today, and when they are all cooked down, I’ll reduce the liquid and make peach butter preserve. YUM! Delicious!

The rotten parts I leave out for the bees in a big gray bin so they get the food they need to last the winter. They love the sweet parts. They never bother me. I’m very kind to bees here. I don’t have any hives but they come in from wherever their hives are and help me pollinate my garden so we’re friends. We have an agreement.

I’m still harvesting the last of the blueberries. The wild raspberries are done. And I am seeing little grapes starting to form on my scuppernong (a bronze kind of muscadine grape) vines.

I have a bunch of fruit now I need to either preserve or use. Some of the peaches I want to make into a pie, and some into ice cream if I can find the electric gizmo that fits over the ice cream freezer bowl like thing in the freezer. I LOVE peach ice cream but I can’t eat what’s in the stores, so much sugar. I’ll make it with stevia.

This year we are reconfiguring the whole growing areas to get the work material like bricks and tomato cages off the drive way and back behind the growing areas. This meant I lost about 1/5^th of my growing space on the east side. But I realized also that with age making things harder, lessening the amount of space but concentrating on making the growing space I have better, richer, and more productive, I’ll actually have a better garden and be kinder to myself.

So, all the beds are shorter but now re-lined and neater, the pathways cleared and chipped with fresh wood chips, and replanted, things are looking so much better. Also, with the cinder blocks being utilized for flowering plants for the pollinators, instead of just full of weeds like before, I’ve actually regained a lot of growing space. All in all it’s a much more efficient space. We will move the plant table back into the utility space and have a much nicer looking prospect of the house and driveway.

One of the things I recently posted in this blog was an article about growing in 3’x3’ beds for those whose schedules are too tight for full time gardening, or even regular gardening. I have been using that technique and biting off smaller chunks of work to do. This makes it possible for me to work in an hour or two instead of trying to do 4 or 5 hours before. I just can’t do this anymore. Especially in the heat.

I’ve been working in the mornings before it gets hot and have stopped working when I felt dehydrated, tired, dizzy, or just needed a break.  But smaller time blocks and specific projects done regularly actually is getting the job done more thoroughly and efficiently. Check out that article in the last couple of months in archives. It keeps me focused so when I do a stint of time, I walk away with a real product. Otherwise I often just putter and leave areas half done. This isn’t nearly as satisfying. Just sayin.

Good luck with your gardening, and start gathering your cool weather seeds, planning the transition from summer to fall planting, and enjoy harvesting the results of your summer planting.

Best,

Diann Dirks

Deer Fencing on a Budget 7-15-22

For about 4 years I had deer eating all my beautiful organic garden produce right down to the roots. It was frustrating and discouraging to say the least. I loved the deer that came to visit us, but not their greedy ways. So I figured out how to keep them away without spending a fortune. Here is my solution:

Deer Fencing on a budget – Diann Dirks 7-15-22

Time for fencing! This is my own design. Get 2′ sections of rebar cut to order, the size that pvc pipe fits over snugly but easy to fit on. Measure your garden and purchase enough of these rebar pieces to go around. Set a piece of rebar around your garden with a 2′ walk space every 6′ leaving a 2 1/2′ place for a walk thru inside the fencing. Purchase enough deer netting to circle the garden, leaving a few feet for overlap and to make a light weight gate. Deer netting is available at Home Depot in 7’x100′ rolls. Last I checked about $20 – may have gone up some. PVC is pretty inexpensive compared with 2x4s and hog panels! Use cable ties to fix netting on pvc set over your rebar. Put the bottom of the netting right down on the ground, and set a 6′ sections opvc pipe along the bottom, also fixed into place by cable tie so deer can’t nose their way under the fence (especially young ones). I also liked to put pvc across the top of the netting too, to make it more secure also cable tied. The pvc pipes should be 8′ long. If you don’t like the look of white pipe get some spray paint and paint it black or dark green. I had this kind of fence around my garden for 7 years. It got some tears in it which I fixed with little cable ties. Don’t let netting pile up around the bottom. This catches and kills beneficial snakes and they suffer. Cut the netting to size and save the rest for repairs.

My garden is on a steep hillside and is uneven land so there were some places where pvc along the ground left gaps that little deer noses could poke under. So, I had a friend who’s husband replaces windows in people’s homes for a living. She gave me a lot of old used screen panels which I placed around the base of the deer netting and secured with cable ties. I also used one of the larger ones as a gate. If you can’t find this kind of thing, set cut long sections 2 or 3′ wide and ‘sew’ onto the bottom of your deer fencing with fishing line and a long needle, so it overlaps any gapes, and place bricks or rocks on the overlap so bunnies and baby deer can’t nose under. Hope this helps.

I still have a few copies of “A Georgia Food Forest Book” by Cynthia Dill (the only book of its kind for growing ever productive perennial 7 vertical layer garden installations in zones 7 thru 9. PM me (Georgia Dirks) on FB to order.

Famine?

Diann Dirks

Famine, especially widely spread famine, is a word we never thought we’d hear in this land of plenty. We have had a history in this country of not only enough, but great abundance of not just staples but every imaginable kind of food, and inexpensive.

We go into the grocery store and see every kind of protein source – meats, fish, fowl, eggs, dairy in great variety, flavor and amounts. The produce departments are usually a rainbow of beautiful perfect fruits and vegetables from all over the world, also inexpensive.

A few years ago there was a nation wide survey of kids in middle school asking them where food came from and 90 plus percentage said ‘the store’ with no reality at all of where food actually comes from. The tiny few who said ‘dirt’ or ‘animals’ were verbally invalidated by the other children because they just didn’t understand.

There has been a movement among enlightened people to bring gardens to schools to give kids some reality on food, how to grow it, and even use the produce in the school cafeterias. Where it has been implemented it has been popular. But in our society most of the gardening until more recently has been done by the older population. “We go to grandma’s garden, we don’t have a garden ourselves.” And when asked if grandma taught them how to do it themselves, the attitude has been “why would we want to, we’re busy”.

Yet during the Great Depression of the 1920s and 30s, people survived economic collapse because they were at most 2 generations from an agrarian society. Everyone knew how to grow food. And during the depression, people plowed up their yards and put in gardens just to survive.

During WWII when most of the production of farms was going to the soldiers overseas, food was severely rationed. So the government encouraged “Victory Gardens” so people could still eat. During those time 40% of the food grown in this country came out of these victory gardens. People learned how to ‘can’ their abundance, smoked meat, salted down some, dehydrated food, and shared seeds. Articles appeared in magazines and newspapers on how to grow their own food. People kept chickens for eggs, and where there was land, people grew livestock for meat and milk for their own use.

Thrift became a way of life. Nothing was wasted. And we managed to survive those national crises. But we have existed in a new global world for so many years now, the younger generations have never known want, except in exceptionally impoverished circumstances. The average child never goes more than a few hours without food or snacks. We aren’t tough and we have never known real want in the majority of the population. Of course there have been exceptions to this; I’m not downplaying the plight of the very poor in this country. But the majority just doesn’t have those experiences.

We have blissfully known abundance all our lives. We have never been forced to forage for our food, grow our own or raise livestock just to put food on the table for ourselves and our children. So several whole generations are completely ignorant of these basic life skills.

Playing devil’s advocate, I for many years have been trying to educate people that this is a recipe for disaster. We never know in this world what will come next, and when those skills will be the difference between life and death. Most people just think money is the answer and will solve everything. Even long time farming families have sent their children off to college so they could have a ‘better life’. This has left a vast deficit of knowledgeable farmers, many of them passed on or growing too old to continue or teach. And even the small home farm is only just now making a come-back with farmers markets as outlets, because the ordinary grocery store is so lacking in nutrients, due to many years of chemical farming practices and knowledgeable people are falling back on old time practices. Enter genetically modified foods which we now know cause cancer and other health issues.

Unlike my generation (I was born in 1945, just at the end of WWII), these newer generations haven’t known real food. We ate food that was real. No chemicals just at the end of the war, when the war industries began to change over to agricultural implements and materials, we ate food that was untainted and nutritious and delicious.

We never saw fat kids then. In my whole elementary school there was only one fat child and he got fat because his Mexican mama fed him their diet when he broke his leg, and couldn’t exercise for 6 months. Mostly obesity now is caused by poverty and the preponderance of carbohydrate diets that keep the stomach filled, but do little to actually nourish lean muscle mass. Kids stay inside and play video games when in our era we never spent a minute inside that we didn’t have to. I never walked, I always ran. My bike almost wore out from the constant use as me and my friends roamed for miles. But of course that was before people became predators and traffickers of children like now. We got out and we moved. And we had the energy from the good food to live to the fullest.

Good pure food, exercise from an early age, constant use of our muscles, strength used to do ordinary things which are now done mostly by machines, made us lean and strong. We didn’t have motorized lawn mowers, we had push mowers and that took strength. We biked, we didn’t have motorized scooters, and we worked in the yard and did chores. Then we were off playing baseball at the corner vacant lot for hours and hours. No 3 hour games, we’d start after breakfast, go home for lunch, and rush back till dinner time around dusk, full on. Or we hiked in the woods, or biked for hours. We weren’t fat.

But we did have good food and plenty of it. And since that era we have been used to food in unending supply. And as a side note, we rarely got sick or if we got ‘childhood diseases’ which our mothers made sure we got when young, we were sick a few days, and recovered quickly and fully. We were healthy. We didn’t have ADHD or anything like that. We ran off our excess energy in recesses in school, not made to sit like robots for hours getting fidgety, and given ‘speed’ drugs to calm us down. We were healthy and strong, lean, and full of energy. We weren’t quietly starving living off sugary fake food.

Moving forward almost 80 years (from my birth), we have grown in population on the planet to almost 9 billion people from 4 or 5 back then. We have gone from small family farms to mega farms run on chemicals that are in dwindling supply, and which have caused the erosion and lost of billions of tons of precious top soil. We have contaminated the majority of our farm land as it has been forced to out produce its ability without the fertilizers. When plants are weakened by poor nutrition, they become vulnerable to disease and insects. So causing the necessity of more chemicals such as pesticides and funicides to fight them. This has killed off most of the valuable micro-organisms which actually make the nutrients in the soil available to the plants. So, we have food that looks pretty and perfect without bug bites, yet is a mere shadow of the food value of 80 years ago.

Food processing to fill out our food supply to make it tasty, full of sugar, salt, and carbs, has robbed us of the true value of fresh natural uncontaminated foods and has made us fat, as a culture. We are already slowly starving from this commercialization of our food supply for profit. Kids are falling victim to this by manifesting behavioral problems called ADHD etc., when in fact when these conditions are treated by detoxification and a change to natural organic diet, the symptoms often disappear and kids return to normal behavior. Diet is a huge factor in this because when deprived of the necessary nutrients in a growing developing body, kids act out from the inside out, and manifest slow starvation.

I’ve watched this for years and tried to educate people about this, but I am often met with incredulity from parents and people who are blinded by the ‘professionals’ who tell you the pharmaceutical is the answer and they know best. So, slow starvation and fake food has covered up something that has been a growing problem for at least 50 years, from personal observation but now backed up by serious research.

Enter in the growing political unrest and control factors brought by the globalists who would have us all live in cramped cities, and remove us people from the land. This was leaked with Agenda 21, and further made known thru Agenda 30, making less freedom, and more control, less land, and choices.

I’m certainly not the only one who has seen the actual game here. The people, who wish to rule the world like George Soros and Bill Gates, want less of us. This is so unbelievable we as a people can’t imagine such evil. Not in our world! Not in our live easy, live free, everything is fine world. We live in a bubble and therefore don’t prepare for possible outcomes.

Just from a devil’s advocate viewpoint, what if the things that have been happening in our world aren’t coincidence or just random occurrences. What if the pandemic wasn’t just a random problem, but an intended depopulation action? And since that didn’t kill off people as planned (devil’s advocate remember), in order to profit from this caused-laboratory-genocidal-plan, in came vaccines which were supposedly created in 6 months. But in fact those vaccines were actually patented a couple of years before that. And they weren’t actually vaccines, but lab substances meant to destroy the immune system and flood the body with heavy metals which either kill immediately or later. Thousands have died within a week or two of being inoculated but the information has been squelched in the media, owned by the same bad guys profiting from all this. Meant to create delayed illness such as auto-immune, cancer, and failures of the systems within 3 years, and sped up by ‘boosters’ being heavily promoted.

But what if that wasn’t fast enough to bring down the population 85%?  What if the whole game was really vast wealth grab, land grab, totalitarian control by a few? In fact that is what it is looking more and more like being the actual game. But this is so vastly unbelievable and evil, people can’t imagine it and have to slough it off as ‘conspiracy theory nonsense’. But how do you hide things from the public? You PR it off as something not to be considered or campaign covertly to make those ideas unacceptable or crazy.

OK, yes, this is unbelievable, yet have you noticed how many liberties we have lost through gov regulations and various laws? For just one example, have you noticed how children can be so easily removed from families by child protective services, taken from their homes. Think about those things we see in the news that you just can’t believe are happening. So many things we would have been hollering about in protect 30 years ago are now just considered news bites and not serious? It’s about control of our freedoms and liberties. We can fight back with knowledge and good planning. I don’t advocate violence.

So, continuing with the devil’s advocate viewpoint, if a pandemic didn’t kill off enough people, and the vaccine didn’t kill off enough of us, next in line is the destruction of our food supply and distribution. Just starve us, that should do the trick. If we don’t just quietly starve because the food isn’t nutritious, then what if it isn’t being grown or the trucks can’t bring what is being grown to our neighborhoods, and we don’t know how to grow our own. Then what happens when your neighbor with 3 little kids can’t feed them, and you have a survival supply of food, and he owns a shotgun. He’ll get food for those kids somehow! That’s the nature of parenthood. So we’ll end up killing each other for that last bag of beans, and that will further deplete the population through riots, roaming bands of hungry people, like a crazed army.

In case you haven’t been to the grocery store lately, in the past two years we have already seen the price of groceries go up as much as 50%. This is seen weekly as prices climb and climb. This isn’t imagination. We are loosing ground. This is published information anyone can access. We have lost 3 valleys of prime agricultural land in California because gov regulations have cut off water supply to them. Food processing plants and distribution centers have been ‘mysteriously’ burned to the ground in the past year – over 60 of them!

These same globalists with the agenda of lowering drastically the population are also promoting people eat no meat, and now we are seeing in the news the promotion of laboratory created meat and even milk that has not a shred of actual food in it. Even if you fill your stomach with plastic that looks like food and tastes like food, your cells are screaming to be fed. We have seen the destruction of thousands of cattle through inexplicable events “On top of that, mysterious fires, alleged bird flu outbreaks and other inexplicable events are killing off livestock and destroying crucial infrastructure. Since the end of April 2021, at least 96 farms, food processing plants and food distribution centers across the U.S. have been damaged or destroyed by fire (see below).^{2,3” “}An estimated 10,000 cattle also perished in Ulysses, Kansas, in mid-June 2022,⁴ under mysterious circumstances. The official claim is that the cattle died from heat stress, but that seems highly unlikely. Heat could conceivably kill some weaker cattle, but 10,000 on the same day?” * This is no coincidence.

Of course this hasn’t hit every corner of the world, some will be hit harder than others. And time enters in as some areas are able to recover and others don’t have the available resources to rebuild or recover. But if the globalists with their power and resource availability really want to cause genocide planet wide,  and we are too dazed or unaware to notice the noose is tightening, and do nothing, then we will see famine, societal unrest, and chaos. This is what these people want because it’s the great ‘heist’ of global resources. They don’t want all of us ‘useless eaters’ standing in the way of their agenda. So, the solution is to get rid of us, and profit from it at ever step. They aren’t stupid.

But neither are we if we pay attention and plan.

I don’t advocate filling our basements with MREs  (meals, ready to eat, military ration packets) or thinking we can gather enough food for years to feed us through the coming problems, though certainly a rational gathering of staples such as dehydrated vegetables and meats, beans and rice, and other food stuffs is an excellent idea. We call this normal insurance against hard times.

What I do recommend though is learning how to grow your own fresh foods in a garden on your land or sharing land where it is available in a community garden, friendly farmer’s land which isn’t being cultivated at the time, or even roof top gardens or patio containers.

Eating stored food only nourishes us partially. We need live food for enzymes and live vitamins. We need the special water stored in vegetables for real health. And we need to be able to generate our own food no matter where we live. This means we need more than anything to build the skills to grow our own food.

We have let others grow and produce our own food for so long, we mostly have no idea of the actual effort needed to create food. We have been outside of that loop and worse, have considered it unnecessary or even in some cases beneath our consideration. But those times are changing. That requires a gradient of skills. It also requires seeds and physical work. And a great deal of knowledge to actually be able to produce enough food to replace the grocery store. But certainly given the conditions of the day, that effort and consideration needs to be expanded if we are to survive this planned depopulation agenda. And it is very real. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck but is purple, it’s still a duck.

Some people just can’t even imagine doing this. So, there are people now who are going back to the family farm, the home grown food subsistence lifestyle, selling their produce at local farmers markets, or CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture – the subscription farm where you pay a certain amount for a quarter, half or whole year, then receive a box of produce weekly or bi-weekly). This is a growing movement and well worth supporting and participating in.

Or you can partially rely on others, and find a way to grow some of your own fresh vegetables and fruits on whatever land you can utilize. Or gather some friends and sort out aspects of this then trade.

I have been teaching people organic gardening for 13years here on my subdivision lot, in a demonstration garden with an intern program. I have also taught classes to groups and even early on gave a series of 5 classes each at my local two libraries. They were very poorly attended which told me how little people valued these skills. But then why bother when the grocery stores were full of cheap affordable food? But that is about to change.

The internet is full of information about gardening. YouTube has loads of videos from knowledgeable growers willing to share their information and techniques for free. I watch them all the time and keep learning from them. There are groups on Face book and various groups who do seed swaps, farm tours, various foraging groups, and even people who sell their produce through on-line farmers markets or CSAs. Finding those contacts now is a good idea. There is no lack of information. But the thing we must do now is realize this is important and do something now while there is still food in the stores and we have enough money to purchase what we need with prices skyrocketing. It’s bringing up our necessity level and awareness to act now while we have it relatively easy.

I really hate gloom and doom articles meant to make us feel hopeless and helpless, which further plays into the hands of those who would control us all. My motto is “WE CAN ALWAYS DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!”

So, what should we do right now?

1. Find someone who can teach us how to grow and preserve our own food. This could  include grandma or Aunt Thelma with the green thumb, a neighbor with a vegetable garden, or the local county Extension Officer in your area who might have classes available in gardening. Find an internship program like mine in your area and get your hands dirty. Take a class at a local community college or community garden.
2. Start by growing something. This could include purchasing some 5 gal. buckets at your local home improvement store or bakery, drill some ¼ inch holes in the bottom and fill with planting soil mix. Purchase some vegetable seeds at the nursery, online at a seed company like Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co, or get some from a gardening friend, and plant them. Keep them watered appropriately and watch them grow. Or purchase already started plants from your local hardware store or nursery. Meanwhile read up on that plant and see what it needs to thrive.
3. Turn some of your yard into raised beds, watch videos on how to do this on YouTube, plenty of them there, and start growing season appropriate plants of things you like to eat and are nutritious. Engage your kids in helping you and instill in them the joy and miracle of growing plants and their own food. My mother gave me my very own first plot 3’ x3’ when I was 3 years old and I never lost the love of it or the wonder.

Find likeminded people who see the need to be self-reliant and talk to them, meet with them, organize meeting with them, and learn as much as you can. There is a wonderful growing women’s organization of homesteaders called Ladies Homestead Gathering of which I have been a member since its inception, finding a wonderful supportive group for self-reliance.  https://ladieshomesteadgathering.org/  But there are gardening clubs and other groups all over the country which can help you learn.

4. Start gathering seeds and place them in your freezer for those things you wish to grow. Only bother with  ‘heirloom, heritage, or open pollinator’ varieties, ignoring all ‘hybrid’ varieties, when purchasing or trading for seeds. You can’t save the seeds of hybrid kinds because they don’t breed true, but the first kinds do. Then learn how to save seeds (check out YouTube or the internet, or purchase a book about it) so you can maintain the diversity of food growing seeds into the future. Once you grow a vegetable or fruit from these varieties and save the seeds, you will never be without food.
5. Start!

If you can manage the space, start out with a small clutch of laying chickens and learn how to manage them. They eat a variety of foods which include some kitchen scraps, bugs, wild plants, etc, (again, YouTube, or a book on the subject) and you have a protein source of eggs. If you can also have a rooster, you can have an endless supply of baby chicks and future of meat and eggs. This is a skill based activity so do your homework before getting chickens. They do require some simple equipment and fencing to keep away predators and keep them from running away. They like to be in groups and I find 6 is about the minimum number for regular production of eggs once they grow up enough to lay.

Learn how to hunt if you live in an area with abundant deer or rabbits. Find some seasoned hunters and a mentor because you don’t want to do this without skills! But two deer a year well processed can provide a considerable amount of animal flesh protein.

Go in on a cow with friends to provide you with milk, cheese, fermented milk products like yogurt and kefir, cream, whey and other nutritious foods. One good cow can produce a tremendous amount of food and protein. You will need pasture space, and a source of hay for cold months and a place to shelter her. This is also a skilled activity, but if you have friends who have the space, do a mini co-op and share the labor and products. Goats require less space and are smaller and easier to house, and if used very fresh is delicious and very much like cow’s milk. Older goat’s milk can be gamy though, so this is a fresh use for milk and products.

Learn to preserve your food by canning, dehydrating, smoking, salting, pickling,  and fermenting, so none of your hard won production goes to waste. Your Extension Officer can provide information on this, and there are good on-line classes available on YouTube.

If all this seems overwhelming, I always recommend starting small. On this blog site I have a number of articles which are well researched and helpful. One is about the 3 foot garden method. https://thegardenladyofga.wordpress.com/2022/05/09/the-three-foot-square-garden-gardening-on-a-tight-schedule-5-9-22/ The Three Foot Square Garden –Gardening on a Tight Schedule 5-9-22 When you have a busy life, this is the way to get started and continue on about an hour a day. I have used this method for many years when I had a business and couldn’t spend my days working in my garden. It works.

I live by the concept that if you know the tech of something, can apply it, and do so, you can’t be the adverse affect of this. (LRH reference “Your Post and Life”) Learning is a gradient process. One skill builds upon the other. In the case of feeding yourself and your family, now is the time to master basic skills which can be added to as the need arises, to give you life sustenance. Without it we are at the mercy of the economy, the distribution of supplies when fuel becomes too expensive and the trucks aren’t running, and the politicians who are the puppets of the people who would be your masters.

Mahatma Gandhi once told a story to a person who wanted to help him with his journey to free the people of India from their British oppressors who had stolen India’s cotton and cotton fabric industry (at that time the finest in the world) by forcing the people of India to turn over all their cotton production so England could mill and weave cotton fabric. This person asked Gandhi why he didn’t gather all his resources and have a huge recognizable and powerful event, protesting for his people. He wisely said by using all their resources to do such a thing in the hopes of influencing international sentiment, they would blow those resources on a news cycle lasting maybe a week or less, only then to be forgotten. But he said England couldn’t suppress a million Indian women quietly spinning and weaving their own cotton clothing in their homes. That was what was going to bring down England’s control over their fate. Being non-violent he finally won the day and India was freed of England’s suppression.

300 million Americans growing their own food in their back yards, on patios, on rooftops, in their local community gardens, or cooperating with neighbors to utilize some spaces, growing their own food, cooperating with a cow or some chickens, feeding themselves, and being free of rising prices and distribution problems will keep us free.

Diann Dirks, Certified Permaculture Designer and consultant, 55 year organic grower, teacher, internship provider, researcher and author. You can contact me via email at didirks@comcast.net, on my FB Page The Garden Lady of Georgia, or on this blog site.

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Dehydrating for Survival – Using a Dehydrator 5-27-22

Preserving food and herbs by dehydration is a superb and long lasting way of saving the harvest of your garden or food forest, or the gleanings of foraging. Making the most use of this method of preservation has been a long quest of mine.

I wanted to share some of those lessons and ways I use my dehydrator for which some may be out of the ordinary.

Mine almost never turns off because I am always putting my herbs and vegs in there. It’s a very useful tool. I’ve had one going now for about 15 years. Before that in Calif. for about 25.

I make my own supplements and herbal remedies so the dehyd comes in very handy for preservation and preparation.

I make teas from the herbs, gathering them individually, putting them from the dehyd into big plastic containers I save from nut mixes from the store and other uses. Sometimes I use mason jars but often they aren’t large enough for my use. Later I take the individual herbs and blend them into remedies or beverages. I don’t mix then dehydrate because some dry at different rates and you don’t want to try to store something that has even the smallest amount of moisture as it spoils.

During harvest in the summer I often have way too many green beans. I don’t like them canned, but I dehyd them, and powder them, later to be added to soups or stews as a thickener and added nutrition. I use a little hand held electric coffee grinder for a lot of these uses. I have also rehydrated them for stews later.

I save the greens from my organic carrots (and other root vegs, but carrots are the best) as they actually contain a LOT of beneficial phytonutrients, so they get dried, powdered, and also added with the beans and other vegetable powders for added nutrition.

I don’t like Southern cooking much but the green tops from many of the root vegetables are loaded with nutrition and can likewise be dried and powdered. It’s almost a kind of spice mix to blend those veg. powders together and sprinkle them on cooking food like eggs, or meat rubs.

I use the dehyd for my medicinal herbs a LOT. At various times of the year many medicinal plants are abundant. I cut the flowers from valerian (a ‘nervine’ for anxiety and sleep), elderberry (when I’m not making a tincture with them), goldenrod, ground ivy (detoxes heavy metal), stinging nettle (nutritious and detoxes heavy metal), cilantro (detoxes heavy metal) – the last three I blend the powders, and put them in ‘00’ capsules as a detox remedy. I dry yarrow flowers as a preservation method, and later blend them in tinctures or oils as yarrow has compounds that actually get cells to reproduce to heal, and other benefits. This is especially useful for topical applications for healing wounds or skin abrasions. Many herbs can’t be made into oils or salves if they have too much moisture in them.

I save and dry the butt ends of my bread rather than have them spoil, then later in the food processor make my own bread crumbs for meat loaf or meat balls.

I cut fine sheets of screening to conform to the shelves in my dehyd for fine things like seeds or delicate herbs, and sometimes if it’s really fine drying material, muslin fabric.

If I am making highly nutritious material that has enough nutrients in it even after making tea or tincture, I spread the wet material over the fabric and let it dry, then powder that. It can be added to food. Things like Chaga mushroom or other mushrooms can be loaded with nutrition even after other uses. Even things that would be considered slurry can be placed on plastic sheeting in a dehyd shelf. This is how fruit leather is made. Blend fresh fruit to a thick slurry, then pour it thinly on a plastic sheet on the dehydrator and when thoroughly dry, roll it up and place it in a zip lock baggie.

I dehyd mushrooms for preservation and powder them later as needed for remedies. When it’s chanterelle season, or other abundant mushroom seasons, this is a great way to later store for use in winter or out of season.

Almost any plant or plant like material (like mushrooms) when there is an overwhelming abundance can be dehydrated for later use since it reduces the volume vastly. Like beets. I cut them up in thin slices, dehyd them and powder them. My husband hates the taste of them but they are highly beneficial, so they go into capsules and he’ll take them that way.

Other than the usual preservation methods, for survival considerations, taking large amounts of meat like a deer harvest and making jerky from the relatively low fat areas of the carcass is good preservation. If you have a hunting family, you might want more than one dehydrator for this reason. Some people smoke their meat, but not all meat lends itself to this method. Likewise fish harvests. If you wish to add flavor to your meat or fish, roll them in spice powder before dehydrating.

Some people either freeze or dehyd leftovers that they later throw in a crock pot when making soup. No waste!

You can use a dehyd to dry fabric after dying if you don’t have a place to hang it dry, same goes for spun fibers once they have been cleaned.

You can use a dehyd to make paper too, leaf at a time, though it should be sandwiched in between screening so it doesn’t curl up; maybe weight it down here and there for this reason too. Some people use garden leaf material and flowers to make paper and this takes awhile to dry otherwise.

Of course using a dehydrator to make fruit leathers is a common use. As is dehydrating tomato slices and other vegetables for storage.

I sometimes use my dehydrator to proof my yeast bread though not inside on a shelf. Mine has a vent at the top of the stacked trays and this is a very nice heat source, not too harsh, for keeping yeast dough just warm enough to rise. I set it on top (not over the vent directly, placing spacers between the vent and the bowl) and cover with a plastic sheet which captures the warm air coming up. Since mine is always on, this doesn’t waste energy firing up the oven for warmth.  

A dehydrator doesn’t have to fully dry something to be useful – like the yeast rising – and sometimes you just want to dry something a bit for use. When I am making salves and ointments, and I’m in a hurry, rather than letting my herbs fresh from the garden wilt overnight, I’ll lay them on trays in the dehyd, and turn it on a low temp, like 85 or 90F and watch them till they are just sufficiently wilted, then proceed with the salve process.

My dehydrator came with a supply of yogurt cups which fit exactly into the thicker shelves. I have an L’Equip which is stacked plastic shelves, with two depths of shelves, rather than the shelves like drawers that pull out in some models. But which ever kind you have, if you can get pans or containers in your dehydrator you can program the temperature perfectly to make yogurt.

If you make soap, adding plant material to the soap can add to the benefits of the soap, or the aesthetics. Drying flower petals like roses, calendula, thyme flowers, or other herbals like mint, when just lightly dehydrated to hold their shape in the soap can be very helpful. They don’t have to be 100% dry for this as soap is a wet process. Usually you add the colorful bits just after ‘trace’ (thickening of the soap at the end of the process). But you can use them dry later out of season when harvested at their peak, and then added in to soap recipes.

It was a common practice in the early years of this country to dry fruit in abundance during the harvest to later make pies. Apples were routinely dried and taken across the country in covered wagons in barrels to be rehydrated and made into famous dried apple pie when fresh fruit was unobtainable. Any fruit can be used like that.

There were/are a number of food preservation methods – salting, pickling, smoking, canning, freezing, jerking, preserving in honey, making jams with sugar preserves, and these days vacuum packing, but dehydrating is one of the oldest and longest lasting preserving methods man has used. Any abundance, almost, can be stored better by removing the moisture since without moisture fungus, bacteria and other invasive pathogens can’t take hold and spoil.

Having a dehydrator is one of the most useful kitchen tools I know, and makes the process of drying so much simpler, hygienic, and efficient. The amount of energy used in one is about like a light bulb, very good energy use.

I like the modern dehydrators and did quite a bit of research before purchasing one. Mine is an L’Equip, because it has excellent controls of time and temperature. It comes with 6 shelves, 2 1”, 4 2” deep. But it is so powerful it can hold up to 20 shelves which can be purchased in two shelf sets. I currently have 12 running all the time. But I would use more if I had space.

But you can make a solar dehydrator DIY https://offgridworld.com/how-to-make-a-solar-powered-food-dehydrator/ (there are many free plans on the web), food preservationsolar food dehydratorsolar food dryer or purchased https://spheralsolar.com/best-solar-dehydrator/.

Buying a dehydrator is a matter of need, use, and budget. The above site for purchased styles includes solar dehydrator styles.

But you can start out with a cheap one from Wal-Mart or something online or a hanging bag style (see in the purchased solar site above), or a glass frame with shelves, though they can get pretty hot and you have to watch the temperature on those kind. Start simple and experiment. I found it a lot of fun to use and try different things with it. I spent about $185 because I’m an herbalist and a gardener, so I needed a kind that would hold up to long hard use. I had one before I purchased at a state fair about 40 years ago which was the shelf kind which were made of screening in a frame, and pulled out. But I finally wore it out and it didn’t have temperature control. I save the framed screen shelves though and pile them on top of my L’Equip for softer drying. Nothing goes to waste!

5-27-22 Diann Dirks

The Three Foot Square Garden –Gardening on a Tight Schedule 5-9-22

Diann Dirks

Many years ago when I was working 16-20 hour weeks, I found a way to have a very productive garden on about one hour a day. I had a small plot of land – 5000 sq. foot – with a house, drive way, patio spaces and both sides of an 1175 square foot house, and two postage stamp lawns front and back. This was a tiny amount of space but once started, it grew almost effortlessly, fit into a very busy schedule.

On that property in a subdivision in Southern California, 2/3 of the backyard was garden. I also had about 1/3 of the front yard on the border of the property between that and the drive way, another bed, one by the front of the sidewalk, and some ornamentals around the front patio. Everything was very small.

When we first moved there 23 years before we moved to Georgia, the soil was hard gray clay, very alkaline and unforgiving. After working on areas around the house I was growing so much food and herbs, I was leaving grocery bags of produce on the doors of nearby elderly neighbors. And anyone visiting left with a big bag of veggies and fruit. Size doesn’t matter. You can grow your own food! Even if all you have is a patio or a flat roof strong enough to bear weight.

I loved to watch Martha Stewart on TV and one day she was doing a program on gardening. But it wasn’t the vast areas she usually talked about. This time we showed how to make a 3’ x 3’ garden space surrounded by pathways. It was a light bulb moment for me. The possibilities expanded in my mind. Wow, I CAN do this with the little time I have.

And ever since I have used this technique to make and grow a garden when time was of the essence.

I found that I could mark out this kind of small bed, dig up the soil, or create a raised bed, and in one hour slots of my busy day, work that bed. First was creation of soil so I had a compost pile, collected grass clippings from neighbors (who didn’t spray their lawns) for soil amending and top mulch, made friends with a local juice bar for their shredded vegetables they usually just threw away for composting, and found no-spray straw (never hay, too many weed seeds) for mulch.

With these resources, I could dig up the clay, mix it with compost if I had it or purchased some from the nursery by the bag, or just mixed it with juice bar leavings, maybe half a bag of purchased composted manure from the nursery, mix it up, plant some seeds, water it, and leave.

The next day I’d make sure the bed was watered. Then start the next one. Later when everything was planted bed by bed, that hour was used to walk around the beds, picking any tiny weeds, putting out some mulch around the growing babies, making sure all was the right moisture level, looking for any bugs or problems. Every day, a happy hour in the garden was my time. Stress dissipates in a garden! As the garden soil built up with every successive season adding more compost and working in good organic matter, the soil became black rich loam, perfect for growing anything. I had 5 year old tomato plants in that California climate. Anything I planted grew beautifully. After a year or so, that hour could cultivate an empty bed, pulling any weeds, adding some compost, planting seeds or putting in some nursery tomatoes or other already started plants, putting in a couple of supports where needed, and mulching. Voila, a planted viable bed! Soon, food.

Instead of trying to create long beds, putting in large rows, and wearing myself out, that little 3’ plot was a manageable amount of space to cultivate. I didn’t plant rows, I fit the whole bed with plants, making sure each plant had enough space to grow. This is called intensive gardening. Some things did better with other plants, companions (see my article in the blog about companions) so I’d mix companion plants up in the bed. Often I’d throw in a flower especially marigolds which protect plants against certain soil born pathogens (organisms that cause disease) along with the other plants. Sometimes I’d throw in a few onions or garlic buds (but never by any pea or bean plants, they aren’t good neighbors). Onions and garlic repel certain bad bugs.

There’s a good book on small gardening called Square Foot Gardening. It tells you how much space each kind of plant needs for one square foot. A 3’ bed has 9 square feet and you can grow a lot of carrots, lettuce, a few tomato plants, or any number of kinds of good food plants or herbs in 9 square feet.

I made sure the 1’ wide pathways between the beds were covered with straw. This absorbs rain so I didn’t have to walk thru muddy areas to tend my garden. It also keeps the weeds down and holds in the moisture for the surrounding beds. This kind of mulch needs to be added to now and then, breaks down into composted soil, and later can be dug up and added to the beds.

Later in the season, as many of the vegetables were pulled out – harvested, or spent – I’d pull them up and throw in a handful of compost, then replant. This is called successive planting and it doesn’t waste those precious inches of garden space. I never leave open garden space – it will just grow weeds and dissipate the nutrients and moisture in that soil.

Using compost continues to keep the soil moist, friendly to worms, the gardener’s friend, and improves the texture. Compost also keeps the clay soil light. With high clay composition, I also added gypsum which keeps clay from clumping so hard. And I would put in some sand and ash from the fireplace when I had it, in small amounts to increase the mineral content of the soil. Continuously adding these amendments to the soil keeps it improving over the months and years.

By doing these small projects of one hour every day or every other day, it’s manageable.

Then once everything is planted, going out every day to observe, do some watering and observation, pulling a few weeds when they emerge – which keeps ahead of hours spent pulling more established weeds, is not only enjoyable, but keeps one in communication and communing with the plants, soil, growing, and seasons.

Many plants can be harvested a month or so after the beginning of the summer season, and as they mature. That hour includes taking a basket out with you, picking the lettuce, pulling the mature radishes, etc. After the end of May I usually brought in enough lettuce for fresh salads, some root vegetables, maybe some Swiss chard.

As the seasons progress more and more food comes out of the garden. The weeds pulled just get laid on the ground where they came from if they haven’t gone to seed yet. But the spent plants all went into the compost pile along with kitchen waste, coffee grounds, tea bags, egg shells, potato peelings, etc. Everything goes on but meat or bones, citrus peels, avocado skins. Even rotten food goes on. I used kitty litter products only on the non-food plants because of possible parasites, and never around food or herb plants. It’s OK to use them around trees and bushes though.

My day would consist of working, coming home, having a quick snack, going out with my basket and maybe a little pruner called a secateurs, and a bag collected from the kitchen waste. That would go on the compost pile. Then I’d walk around for a bit looking at existing beds, watching for emerging seeds, seeing the plants mature, looking for yellowing leaves (plants needing water, nutrients, or bug infestation), pulling a few weeds. Then if a bed was ready for planting, I’d add some compost from under the compost pile, dig that in, add a couple of handfuls of sand, maybe some composted manure from a bag, work that in. Then if I had nursery plants, I’d plant them, water them in, put a few handfuls of straw or grass clippings around the newly planted babies, and leave. It’s such a small space, that all gets done quickly.

If you have a garden space of just about any size in a sub division, if you have sunny space, access to water, and a corner to put in a compost pile or compost tumbler, you can grow a tremendous amount of food.

I didn’t use boxes or bed surrounds then. I didn’t find out about that technique till much later. And I still dug up my soil instead of planting on top of the hard packed soil. You can do it that way too, just keep the size of the bed to a manageable size.

A couple of tips in planting.

I liked to put a marigold in every plot, or some kind of flower to attract the bees and pollinators. Some herbal flowers are also medicinal such as chamomile, or calendula, or nasturtiums, but I used only annuals in those beds. If you want to grow perennial herbs such as oregano or thyme, they need to go in perennial only beds because their roots get disturbed every seasonal change when annuals get planted and it is harmful to them. Also many of the perennials spread out and take over the little annual beds so choose a space for them where they can grow out or put them in pots.

Some plants need upward support. Tomatoes do best when supported by cages made of heavy gauge metal wire. Get the strongest heaviest ones you can and the tallest ones. The cheap short ones are easily overwhelmed and just fall down. Useless. You can also use bamboo you drive into the soil but make sure it’s old bamboo or it will grow if newly cut down. Bamboo can be a devil to get rid of.

I use bamboo or long sticks pruned from my trees to make my own supports like teepees for pole beans, cucumbers, melons and other vining vegetables. I use heavy duty cable ties to bind them together. But you can get fancy and use hog panels purchasable from farm supply stores, curved around into a wide tube. Metal supports can last a long time.

If you are growing your garden in a climate that has four seasons, you can grow cool weather crops in the spring, fall and even in winter (if you cover them with plastic over a support making a mini green house – I lay my tomato cages on the ground as a plastic sheet support, alternating direction). Then hot weather plants start seeds in late February in a sunny window, and plant out in mid May or early June. Start cool weather varieties in late September, shaded from hot sun. Purchase your seeds or trade with other gardeners, and keep your seeds in a cool, dark, dry place. Many garden groups have seed swaps in spring and fall where they have excess seeds to trade.

Look into these subjects to help you with your journey – Companion Gardening – book ‘Carrots Love Tomatoes’; ‘Lasagna Gardening’ for soil creation; do your own research into composting and compost and manure tea on the internet; look into Seasonal planting – from your local county Extension Officer for plants that grow in your area, or Google seasonal planting.

It is also often beneficial to join a local community garden where you can often take on a little plot, and learn from the people who are more seasoned gardeners. Sometimes there are classes at the local community garden or garden clubs for beginning gardeners for more hands-on training and workshops in your local area. And sometimes a seasoned gardener will just mentor you out of community spirit.

Don’t be intimidated. Start small and build your growing space as you gain experience and confidence. Putting down some good soil, putting in a plant, even if you just start out using a big pot and some potting store from the building supply store, gives you some experience. If you kill some plants, don’t be dismayed. Ask questions. Do your research watching YouTube videos on gardening – there are many really good gardeners who share their knowledge there.

If you don’t have a big yard, containers on the patio or around ornamentals in established beds can get you started.

But most of all, enjoy yourself. Get your hands dirty, watch a seed come to life, look forward to picking and eating your first tomato or radish from your own garden. This is joyful stuff. It’s calming, helps with anxiety, and is grounding to the emotions and the body’s energy systems. I wish you all the luck. Turn that little patch in the back yard into your first little garden, it gives you bragging rights, can connect you to local communities of gardeners, and in harsh times, gives you the basis for real survival skills.

Read other articles in the blog and ask questions if you have them. I always answer questions when posted. I also have an internship program in Auburn, Ga., if you live nearby in its 11^th year, love giving talks to groups, teach classes as requested, and do workshops upon request as well.

Best of Luck

Diann Dirks, Certified Permaculture Designer, organic gardener of over 50 years, consultant, educator, author, and happy gardener