Comments on: Review: The Small Budget Gardener

By: valleycat1

valleycat1 — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 01:40:25 +0000

#4 deRuiter – I ‘m pretty much with you on using hybrids, particularly for beginners. Collecting & drying seeds & tracking what’s what would be quite a project. Plus you have to let items go to seed that you might not normally – & some plants aren’t edible once they bolt. Most seed packets have more than you need for one year, and the extra can be saved if you’re really wanting to be super frugal. Usually the big-box store items are those that grow well in your area, but you do still need to familiarize yourself with what growing zone you live in so you can double check.

The counties in our state have a “master gardener” system set up where you can get useful free info, I think as part of the county extension service. Most states at least have the county extension service which can be a good resource; colleges/universities with ag. science departments also usually are helpful.

By: Lori

Lori — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:08:56 +0000

I garden and have done so for years. I live in NoCal, where water is NOT free so I garden around the hot summer months and use gray water to water (run off from my hose that is collected or redirected to the raised beds). I have done flat, row gardening and raised beds and I like raised beds. We live on a farm, so we have a huge scrap wood pile my husband has accumulated from projects and work castoffs, so I build them myself, 100% recycled wood and 80% recycled screws. We have goats and so that makes wonderful dirt. Using Alfalfa as mulch would work, but at 18.99 a bale (I bought 2 bales this weekend for goats and it is really high right now) is an expensive option…plus you will have to weed because it will sprout. I use pine needles, old newspapers (black and white only), mown grass clippings (weeding again).
For seed, I have used the Tightwad Gazette’s recommended source of FedCo seeds. They are GREAT and cheap. You can get organic too. We eat all year and I can what we don’t eat right away AND the table scraps go to the pig and chickens, which are then recycled back to us via pork and eggs. My mom was born in 1928 and NEVER wasted. I was born in 1967 and , although a product of the 80′s, I save and recycle. ANyway, I like the gardening topic.

By: deRuiter

deRuiter — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:48:55 +0000

I can’t get all that excited about non hybridized seeds at a high cost. Find out what varieties do well in your area and buy that kind of hybrid seed. Or, go to Shop Rite or the dollar store in the spring and knock yourself out with 5 packs of seeds for $1. We have great luck with these. Then, if you are satisfied with the performance of the plants and like the produce, save the seeds from your favorite vegetable of each variety. What grows from them the next season will be the same or a bit different from the plants last year and you will have several slightly different plants (and produce) from the saved seeds of one plant as nature takes its course. Save the seeds from the produce (lettuce, dill, spinach, squash, corn, pumpkins, basil, and on and on) you like best for the next year. You will quickly get strains which grow best in your garden location and climate. Most seeds sold as hybridized seeds are not pure, nature has sent some bees who did a bit of hybrididizing, but you are still paying high prices for the words “non hybrid.” What is wrong with a hybrid tomato plant if the seeds provide you with good tomatoes, and non hybrid seeds for the next year, even if they are not quite the same as the hybrid parent plant?
Food gardening is a cheap hobby. Get your hand tools at yard sales for pennies on the dollar. Hire someone to turn over your patch the first year, the only big expense. Compost all vegetative waste. Pick up free manure if there is a local stable. Then follow Ruth Stout’s “no work garden” method with heavy mulch and you’ll never have to till the garden again. If you want only a small garden and have the strength you can turn over the soil in the fall, plant in the spring, mulch heavily as Ruth Stout teaches, and garden cheaply forever without a single major expense. Food gardening is cheap to do! Want to grow butternut squash? Go to the market, buy a nice butternut squash. At home, cut squash apart, spread seeds without pulp on paper towels to dry for a couple of days and cook the squash and eat it, you’ve got free seeds! Same with all winter and summer squash, even things like tomatoes. And you’ll be surpirsed that the tomatoes you raise from the seeds of those tasteless store tomatoes will be much better when they are from your own garden because you pick them when they turn red, not when they are green and then gas them to make them red. Food gardening doesn’t cost much and it provides a huge return on your investment. It’s good exercise and gets you outdoors so you don’t need a gym membership. I am so bored with articles which claim that to raise 11 tomatoes and a row of leaf lettuce costs $987. and that the “gardener” is going to buy from farm stands in the future. Successful food gardening has been done with minute amounts of money or no money for thousands of years by people unable to read or write with no access to modern equipment. Surely well educated people can figure out that if they buy the tools at tag sales and buy cheap seeds or scrounge the seeds from vegetables they buy at the market, they can garden successfully and cheaply, producing large amounts of almost free food.

By: Gretchen

Gretchen — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 01:04:41 +0000

I’d love a garden series.

By: valleycat1

valleycat1 — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:42:46 +0000

One warning – buying non-hybridized seeds is a fairly high initial expense. My husband has a degree in agricultural science, and he says many of the so-called heirloom plants and seeds sold at the large garden stores are not true nonhybrids. Seeds from Seed Savers are expensive but they have an amazing variety; you can order online, & their actual store & demonstration farm are fun to visit if you’re ever in Northeast Iowa.

Another useful series of short books is The Weekend Homesteader by Anna Hess. This year she’s been issuing one Kindle book a month on gardening & other homesteading topics applicable to that month (for where she lives). I expect that sometime next year there will be the full-year version. Her husband designed a chicken waterer they make themselves from accumulated parts & sell from their homestead. Her blog has interesting posts on other projects they’ve tackled, as well as links to a variety of similar blogs.

By: Steven

Steven — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 22:13:20 +0000

There’s a book already written about everything you can possibly imagine. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write something else. And when did you start worrying about being redundant? ;-)