Growing Veggies from Seedlings VS from Seeds

There are various ways to grow your own Vegetable Plants.

 The easiest way is to start with Seedlings.

This means baby plants. They have already been sprouted from being a seed and grown for a couple of weeks to a few months. The economical advantage of buying veggies as seedlings is that they are cheaper than buying mature ones from the grocery. The biggest advantage though, is that they are perfect for beginners. Growing veggies from seeds on the other hand, requires more time, trial and error, and there are more possible initial setbacks to deal with.

If you want to take it a step further, wouldn't it be more interesting to learn how to grow plants from a Seed? This is the more powerful way.

There are some advantages of growing from seeds.

1. The cost of buying seeds is cheaper than buying seedlings. You can buy a pack of organic or non-gmo seeds for 99 cents to $3 and that would probably contain an average of a 100 seeds.
2. You are in more control of the optimal growing conditions because you can see what works and what doesn't based on which seeds make it and which ones don't.
3. You can store the seeds for long term while you can't store seedlings.
4. Growing veggies from seeds is the Ultimate Skill for becoming a Resilient Prepper.
5. When you grow your veggies from seed, you create a special bond with the plants. It is not only fulfilling to see them grow like your own pet or babies, you will be more motivated and inspired to care for them consistently.
    

 You can buy seeds and seedlings from Garden Shops, Hardware Shops, and Online. I like shopping at Home Depot, not only are the prices fair, but they seem to rotate a special sale every time I visit.

 Whichever method you choose to start from, I highly encourage you and support you in this process to learn to grow your own food. It's a Cool Homesteading Skill to acquire. In particular, consider starting with Tomatoes, Swiss Chard, Lettuce, or Potatoes as they are easier to work with.

On a future article, I will publish Growing Veggies from Seeds using Soil Cube Makers

How Do I Begin

If you are new to Resiliency or being Prepared, you have nothing to worry about. I will introduce 2 ideas that would help you get started powerfully. All I need you to do is Use Your Imagination.

The FIRST method is think of it as taking a 3-day camping trip. If you were to leave your home with nothing but a bag or car, think about essential things you would take with you. Your goal is to make the trip easy, comfortable, and fun.
Thinking of it from this approach, you would start having ideas, and more importantly, you are not afraid or overwhelmed at all. If you want to take it a notch higher, and be more intense about the visualization, you can change the question to "what would I want with me if I suddenly became homeless," or "if I had to sleep out for the night, what would I truly want to have on me?"

The SECOND method is more personalized to you. It will help you to think of what your personal priorities are. The question to ask is, if I was suddenly left out to taking care of my own self, what would I need in the first 2 hours? What would I need after half a day? And what would I need overnight?

My priorities might be different from yours. For me, I am afraid of being hungry. And also for me, I get cold easily. For this reason, a lot of my preparedness is centered on short-term / long-term food storage and all sorts of state-of-the-art gears that keep me warm.

Solo Stove

I really like products that are multi-purpose and versatile.

I bough the Solo Stove because it uses bio fuel- like twigs and tree branches to burn. You simply gather some dry materials and you would be able to create fire using your favorite fire starters or matches, or lighter.

Another plus, is that the Solo Stove is light and compact. It can be disassembled to become even more compact to fit about your back pack.

What's extremely cool is that it is compatible with another separate product from another manufacturer called the Trangia. Not only is it compatible, the Trangia will literally fit into the Solo Stove and adds another depth of versatility to your cooking equipment.  It's essentially a tiny stove that burns alcohol of all sorts.

Below is a video I made to demonstrate how to start a fire using the Solo Stove and heat up a pack of MRE (meals ready to eat). You might see me battling to start the fire, but that's because I lacked practice. When you get the hang of it, it will be easy.

And if you are interested in expanding your skills in starting a fire, check out the "top down burn" method.

Enjoy...

How to heat up an MRE pack with a Solo Stove 

Receive Earthquake + Tsunami Text Alerts Free on your Cel Phone

If you would like to receive free real time update on tsunami and earthquakes, there is a way to receive text messages. It will 1st tell you where and the magnitude of an earthquake. Then another text message to tell you if there will be a tsunami.

Warning: It's great information but just know that they will text you even in odd hours like 3 am.

To receive tsunami alerts on phone send a text to 40404 and type follow nws_ntwc

A Huge Thank You to the National Weather Service, National Tsunami Warning Center.

Best 2 Free Informative + Entertaining Movies about Resiliency

A free movie from History Channel about Resiliency to watch during your day offs.

I love both of these. So entertaining: suspenseful enough to depicts a sense of reality yet, tasteful to show hope, perseverance, and a light at the end of the tunnel. And yes, very informative.

1) After Armageddonn - A SHTF scenario -History Channel
This movie is beautiful because it has a complete timeline. It starts from when the problem begins (an economic meltdown), what happens to the people in the city and the main family, the difficult journey to civilization, and how things look when things settle down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8rYaPfFLgo (1hour 27min)

 2) American Blackout 2013 - National Geographic
This movie feels like a reality show movie. A major blackout occurs in a major city and people start taking videos of their own experiences through their cel phones. These selfie videos feel so real, you wonder if it really happened. You will see a range of people from the prepared to those who never expected such an event could occur.
https://youtu.be/zNfJkMPTtWQ (1 hour 27min)

Feel free to comment below which one you liked, your thoughts, and your suggestions.

Useful Keywords for Beginners and Newbies

Now that you are beginning your Journey to becoming a Resilient Being who can take care of yourself, your friends, and your loved ones, here are some words you will start hearing.

•Resilient- someone who can take care of themselves

•Resiliency- the ability to take care care of yourself

•Prepper- as you start learning more from this blog and acquire skills and gears and supplies, you become a part of a community who call ourselves, Preppers. Mostly likely derived from the concert of a person who is dedicated to Emergency Preparedness, I think Preppers are really cool people who understand the importance of foresight. I consider this word as someone who truly cares about the well-being of those they care about. I am committed to sharing you my knowledge and skills in the fun and fulfilling journey.

•When the Sh*t Hits the Fan- this is a Prepper's jargon. It means when unexpected disaster strikes.

•TEOTWAWKI- this is another Prepper's jargon. It also means when unexpected disaster strikes. It stands for "the end of the world as we know it."

Please share if you know of more and I will add it to the list.

A Prepper's Approach: Two Equals One and One Equals None

Have you ever gotten yourself into a challenging situation where you needed a tool and tried to use it? If the tool preformed well, that's great but oftentimes, we find that due to lack of testing or practice, the tool was either missing a part, needed an additional part, or wasn't working properly. 
Among the Prepper's community, we have the concept of Two Equals One and One Equals None. This is to ensure that in the absolute, worst case scenario when you absolutely needed something to bail you out, that object's integrity is guaranteed and would not fail you.

A good example is a water purifier. Many years ago, I purchased the Steripen a cool device that uses batteries and UV light to sterilize water. Out of curiosity, I tested it on tap water and tried drinking it. I then gagged and had an Allergic reaction. Sometimes, I would trust all the stellar reviews and not have a chance to test a product out. This time, I'm glad I did. If a challenging event occurred, and that was the only means I had to clean water, it would have been a great disaster. How about having multiple ways of obtaining clean water? There's chlorine, water pump's, gravity filter, and of course, boiling water. Having multiple methods of producing clean water would guarantee that we will have some means to have clean water. 

Another item to consider is heating food. There are many ways you can heat food and it would be a good idea to have all sorts of reliable tool on hand.