Gardening

In a Stateless World, Can You Grow Veggies In Your Front Yard?

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– In a Stateless World, Can You Grow Veggies In Your Front Yard?:

The Miami Herald reports that a local couple is going all the way to the state supreme court to fight a local ordinance banning front-yard vegetable gardens:

Hermine Ricketts and her husband Tom Carroll may grow fruit trees and flowers in the front yard of their Miami Shores house…

Vegetables, however, are not allowed.

Ricketts and Carroll thought they were gardeners when they grew tomatoes, beets, scallions, spinach, kale and multiple varieties of Asian cabbage. But according to a village ordinance that restricts edible plants to backyards only, they were actually criminals.

“That’s what government does – interferes in people’s lives,” Ricketts said. “We had that garden for 17 years. We ate fresh meals every day from that garden. Since the village stepped its big foot in it, they have ruined our garden and my health.”

Read moreIn a Stateless World, Can You Grow Veggies In Your Front Yard?

The 14 Best Foods You Can Grow In a Survival Garden

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Topinambour and Chinese yam root (Dioscorea opposita, Dioscorea batatas) should be on that list.

Additionally: Herbs, like the stinging nettle, goatweed, jiaogulan and many others should grow in and around a survival garden.

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Growing vegetables in your own front yard now a CRIMINAL act: Florida residents being fined for growing vegetables on their own property

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Farmer-Gardener-Harvest-Crops-Vegetables-Soil

– Watch out: Florida residents being fined for growing vegetables on their own property:

Florida may be known for its tropical climate and spicy Latin-American culture, but what it’s not known for is the freedom to garden. The southeastern state continues to make headlines over the state government’s contempt for front yard gardens.

Tom Carroll and Hermine Ricketts had been cultivating their garden for 17 years when their hometown, Miami Shores, passed a new ordinance restricting vegetable growing to the backyard. The couple begrudgingly dug up their lush garden in August 2013, after local officials threatened them with a daily fine of $50, according to reporting by Fox News.

Read moreGrowing vegetables in your own front yard now a CRIMINAL act: Florida residents being fined for growing vegetables on their own property

Govt Bans Growing Food, Forces Family to Destroy Front Yard Garden — Now They’re Fighting Back

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– Govt Bans Growing Food, Forces Family to Destroy Front Yard Garden — Now They’re Fighting Back:

Miami, FL — Tom Carroll and Hermine Ricketts recently had a run-in with the law and were threatened with daily fines for their illegal activity. Carroll and Ricketts weren’t robbing banks, or trafficking humans, or running some other criminal enterprise — they were growing their own food.

That’s right. For 17 years, the couple grew their own food in their front yard until one day, the state came knocking. They were threatened with a fine of $50 every single day they let the garden grow in their yard.

Not wanting to be extorted or kidnapped and thrown in a cage, the couple immediately complied and dug up their garden. However, now they are fighting back in the form of a lawsuit.

Read moreGovt Bans Growing Food, Forces Family to Destroy Front Yard Garden — Now They’re Fighting Back

How gardening can help your immune system

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Girl-Plants-Vegetable-Garden

– How gardening can help your immune system:

One of the best ways to protect your children from a lifetime of allergies and autoimmune disorders is to make sure that they – and you – spend plenty of time outdoors getting dirty, scientists are now saying.

That’s because exposure to the naturally occurring microbes in our outdoor environment helps program the developing immune system to learn what types of foreign agents are actually harmless. This prevents it from later attacking innocuous allergens, or even your own body.

“You want your immune system to have a large repertoire of harmless organisms that it has learned not to attack,” said medical microbiologist Graham Rook of University College London. “If you have this, then, because all lifeforms are ultimately built from the same building blocks, you are equipped to recognise almost anything that comes along and mount an appropriate immune response,” he continued, as reported by the U.K.’s Daily Mail.

Read moreHow gardening can help your immune system

Best Practices For Wintertime Seed Storage

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Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners

By Lee Flynn (Freelance writer and expert in emergency food preparedness and food storage)

As the gardener savors the last of the autumn harvest, collecting seeds for next year’s garden should be a priority as well. Seeds can typically be collected and stored for one year while maintaining high levels of germination. Under ideal conditions, many seeds can be stored for much longer. Moisture, light and temperature are all important factors to consider when storing seeds.

Choose open-pollinated seeds

Seeds from hybridized plants will typically not develop into plants that are true to form. When a plant is cross-pollinated, it may take on characteristics from both parent plants, and desirable aspects of the hybridized plant may be lost. The gardener should save only open-pollinated varieties of seed, which are also known as heirloom varieties. Open-pollinated varieties of seed will stay true to form, despite different types of pollination.

Read moreBest Practices For Wintertime Seed Storage

13 Natural, Easy Ways To Deal With Ant Infestations

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Flashback:

– Aspartame kills fire ants … and it also kills you:

“Fire Ant Remedy – sprinkle a packet of aspartame (Equal or Nutra Sweet) on the mound. Ants will be gone the next day. Anyone eating or drinking anything containing this stuff is nuts!

– 13 natural, easy ways to deal with ant infestations (Natural News, Sep 26, 2014):

Vibrantly colored leaves falling from the trees, blanketing the ground in deep red, orange and yellow hues, accompanied by cool breezy nights and porches laden with pumpkins, remind us that autumn is here. For many, it’s a season filled with heartfelt moments centered around holidays, family get-togethers and delicious, home-cooked meals.

However, while cooking your Thanksgiving pumpkin pies, you might notice some uninvited guests in your kitchen. Just because the weather’s changing doesn’t mean pesky insects have disappeared, in fact, ants often head inside homes before the winter hits, seeking shelter to forage during the cold months.

Read more13 Natural, Easy Ways To Deal With Ant Infestations

The Town That Is Growing ALL Its Own Veggies

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Refreshing!

Food for thought
Food for thought: Todmorden resident Estelle Brown, a former interior designer, with a basket of home-grown veg

– Carrots in the car park. Radishes on the roundabout. The deliciously eccentric story of the town growing ALL its own veg (Daily Mail, Dec 10, 2011):

Admittedly, it sounds like the most foolhardy of criminal capers, and one of the cheekiest, too.

Outside the police station in the small Victorian mill town of Todmorden, West Yorkshire, there are three large raised flower beds.

If you’d visited a few months ago, you’d have found them overflowing with curly kale, carrot plants, lettuces, spring onions — all manner of vegetables and salad leaves.

Today the beds are bare. Why? Because people have been wandering up to the police station forecourt in broad daylight and digging up the vegetables. And what are the cops doing about this brazen theft from right under their noses?

Read moreThe Town That Is Growing ALL Its Own Veggies

Farming On A Rooftop (National Geographic – Video)

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– Farming on a Rooftop (National Geographic):

In New York City, farming on a rooftop is not just an idea. Brooklyn Grange farms more than two and a half acres of rooftops in Brooklyn and Queens, and then sells what it produces to New Yorkers. A special soil mixture is used to minimize weight on the roofs and allow rapid drainage during heavy downpours. The farmed rooftops also house chickens and an apiary.

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The Lazy Gardener (Video)

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Beautiful garden!

Video is in Swiss-German.

The garden is located 1000 meters above sea level.

He uses raised beds to harvest several times a year.

He uses a ‘Pendelhacke’ (pendulum garden hoe) with a copper alloy (bronze, copper) according to Viktor Schauberger:

@Amazon.de:

Pendelhacke

– Pendelhacke “HYDRA” Kupfer Bronze Gartenwerkzeug nach Viktor Schauberger PKS Hochwertig, langlebig, ästhetisch, funktional

Here is a spade made from copper:

– Edles Gartenwerkzeug: Spaten Orion aus massiver Kupferlegierung nach Viktor Schauberger, PKS, gebogener, unbehandelter Stiel aus haltbarem Eschenholz, 118 cm lang, lange Lebensdauer, für gesunden Boden

Books about and from Viktor Schauberger:

– The Water Wizard: The Extraordinary Properties of Natural Water

– Nature as Teacher: New Principles in the Working of Nature (Ecotechnology)

– Hidden Nature: The Startling Insights of Viktor Schauberger

– Living Water: Viktor Schauberger and the Secrets of Natural Energy


YouTube

NOT The Onion: FBI Warns Of Terrorists Toting Copies Of Old Farmers’ Almanac

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You can’t make this stuff up!

– FBI warns of terrorists toting copies of Old Farmers’ Almanac (Boing Boing, Dec 29, 2013):

My country grows stranger by the day. The elderly Italian lady who lives next door to me annotates her almanac to keep track of which moon phases bode best for planting, thinning, or harvesting fresh back yard arugula. Suspicious ways? She’s definitely attempting to maximize the likelihood of operational success through careful planning. If the taste of the fresh, shared greens she drops off on my doorstep in brown paper bags are any proof — it’s working.

 The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning.In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs “to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning.” It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways. “The practice of researching potential targets is consistent with known methods of al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations that seek to maximize the likelihood of operational success through careful planning,” the FBI wrote.

Link (San Francisco Chronicle)

AND NOW … Kyoto Prefectural Government Detects Radioactive Manure At 4,990 Becquerels/Kg

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See also:

– And Now … Radioactive Compost Sold in 23 Prefectures

– #Radiation in Japan: Now It’s Radioactive Manure (EX-SKF, August 2, 2011):

Now that the Ministry of Agriculture has set the provisional safety standard for compost at 400 becquerels/kg, this is the first manure to exceed that limit. It was made in Ibaraki Prefecture, and was being sold in Kyoto.

Low-level contamination spreads to the western half of Japan. Already, radioactive leaf compost have been found in Tottori Prefecture (Chugoku region) and Kagawa Prefecture (Shikoku region).

From Mainichi Shinbun Japanese (12:35AM JST 8/3/2011):

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The Kyoto prefectural government announced on August 2 that 4,990 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium was detected from the manure labeled “made in Ibaraki Prefecture” ; the level of radiation is more than 10 times the provisional safety limit of 400 becquerels/kg. The manure was sold at “Royal Home Center Mozume Branch” in Muko City in Kyoto. It is the first time radioactive cesium has been detected from the manure made in Ibaraki. According to the Kyoto prefectural government, the manure is sold by a dealer in Tokyo and labeled “Horse Manure” (5 liters), made from horse manure and rice hay. The prefectural government instructed the store to remove the manure from the store premise and to recall the product voluntarily. There’s no information as to how many bags of this manure have already been sold.

Read moreAND NOW … Kyoto Prefectural Government Detects Radioactive Manure At 4,990 Becquerels/Kg

And Now … Radioactive Compost Sold in 23 Prefectures

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See also:

– WAKE-UP CALL: Prof. Tatsuhiko Kodama of Tokyo University To Japan Government ‘Shaking With Anger’: ‘What Are You Doing?’ (Part 1, 2, 3)

– #Radioactive Compost Has Been Sold in 23 Prefectures (EX-SKF, July 29, 2011):

It’s attracting far less attention, but the radioactive leaf compost is getting to be like the radioactive beef.

First, it was 20,000 bags sold in Akita. Then, an unknown number of bags sold in Tottori (link in Japanese). Now it turns out 200,000 bags of the radioactive leaf compost from a retailer based in Gunma Prefecture have been sold at least in 23 prefectures, Tottori included, at the retailer’s 166 outlets throughout Japan.

Home gardeners in 23 prefectures ended up irradiating their garden soil.

From Mainichi Shinbun Japanese (7/28/2011):

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Tottori Prefecture announced on July 27 that 14,800 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium was detected from the leaf compost sold at a home/garden center “Cainz Home FC” in Tottori City.

Read moreAnd Now … Radioactive Compost Sold in 23 Prefectures

Unbelievable: Japan Government Considers Reprocessing Over 1,550 Tons Of Highly Radioactive Sludge Found In 5 Prefectures As Soil For GARDENING

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– 1,500 tons of radioactive sludge cannot be buried (NHK, July 29, 2011):

Nearly 50,000 tons of sludge at water treatment facilities has been found to contain radioactive cesium as the result of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Over 1,500 tons is so contaminated that it cannot be buried for disposal.

Water treatment facilities in eastern and northeastern Japan have been discovering sludge containing cesium.

The health ministry says there is 49,250 tons of such sludge in 14 prefectures in eastern and northeastern Japan.

A total of 1,557 tons in 5 prefectures, including Fukushima and Miyagi, was found to contain 8,000 or more becquerels per kilogram. This sludge is too radioactive to be buried for disposal.

The most contaminated sludge, with 89,697 becquerels per kilogram, was discovered at a water treatment facility in Koriyama City, Fukushima.

The ministry says 76 percent of the roughly 50,000 tons of radioactive sludge is being stored at water treatment plants and they have no ways to dispose of most of it.

It says more than 54,000 tons of additional sludge has not been checked for radioactive materials.

The ministry plans to study how to dispose of the radioactive sludge.


“The health ministry will cooperate with the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and consider reprocessing the sludge as soil for GARDENING.”

– Over 1,550 tons of highly radioactive sludge found in 5 prefectures (Mainichi Japan, July 29, 2011):

Over 1,500 metric tons of radioactive sludge requiring controlled handling has been found in five prefectures across Japan amid the ongoing Fukushima nuclear crisis, the government announced on July 28.

The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said that an examination of 49,250 tons of sludge produced during decontamination work at water-treatment facilities in Tokyo and 13 other prefectures by July 12 detected 1,557 tons of sludge in five prefectures with a level of radioactivity of over 8,000 becquerels per kilogram. It has judged that sludge with radioactivity of over 8,000 becquerels per kilograms should be placed temporarily at controlled disposal facilities.

The five prefectures are Fukushima, Miyagi, Niigata, Tochigi and Gunma.

Read moreUnbelievable: Japan Government Considers Reprocessing Over 1,550 Tons Of Highly Radioactive Sludge Found In 5 Prefectures As Soil For GARDENING

US Seed Shortages: Better Order Your Seeds Now!

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DES MOINES, Iowa — Dreaming of biting into a garden-fresh cucumber sandwich this summer? Better order your seeds now.

A poor growing season last year and increased orders from Europe could make it difficult for home gardeners to get seeds for the most popular cucumber variety and some vegetables this spring. Farmers, who usually grow different varieties than home gardeners, aren’t likely to be affected.

Seeds for what’s known as open-pollinated cucumbers seem to be most scarce, but carrots, snap peas and onions also could be in short supply.

“I suspect there will be some seeds you just won’t be able to buy if you wait too long on it,” said Bill Hart, the wholesale manager in charge of seed purchasing at Chas. C. Hart Seed Company in Wethersfield, Conn. “The sugar snap peas we’re not able to get at all, and other companies that have it will sell out pretty quickly.”

The problem is primarily due to soggy weather last year that resulted in a disappointing seed crop. European seed growers also had a bad year, leading to a big increase in orders for American seeds.

Demand for seeds in the U.S. soared last year, as the poor economy and worries about chemical use and bacteria contamination prompted many people to establish gardens. Homegrown food seemed safer and more affordable. But some wonder if the wet weather that ruined gardens in many areas last summer will discourage first-time gardeners from planting again.

Read moreUS Seed Shortages: Better Order Your Seeds Now!