Two Ingenious HACKS to protect your Seedlings (and Green Leafy Vegetables)

There are 2 ways to grow Garden Vegetables and Flowers. You either start them from seeds or from baby plants, called seedlings. Whichever method you choose, it is such a rewarding and inspiring experience to watch your plants growing and thriving.

However, both seeds and seedlings are still delicate and are in a way, very vulnerable.

Growing from Seeds (Fava Bean)

 A Seedling (Fava Bean)

Today, I want to share you 2 Ingenious HACKS to protect your Seedlings.

1. Protect them from Fungus
One moment, your baby plants and sprouts emerging from the ground are there. Next moment... POOF!!! They disappear. You begin to wonder. You begin to doubt. What exactly ate or nibbled or tore off your seedlings? In most of the cases, it's not a bird, or insect, or nocturnal mammals. It's a fungus. The gardening community calls it "damping off." The easiest way to put it is that the high amount of moisture on the seedlings created an environment for mold to grow.

A common Homesteading trick to combat this is to generously sprinkle cinnamon powder on the seeds or seedlings. This trick has helped me and I hope it helps you too.

2. Protect them from Slugs and Grubs.
For 2 years in a row, whenever I try to grow Bok Choy, I can't get them to grow more than an inch. They almost, always disappear, bit by bit. I suspected birds pecking them off and tried to get bird netting. The result was the same.
This year, I tried something new. I call it "Slug Check. Grub Check." Slugs love moist environments. So if you water your plants and there are water leftovers, they tend to pop out of nowhere. Slugs usually feed during the night. Some gardeners suggest to visit your plants during the evenings and catch the slugs. Unchecked, slugs can easily wipe out your seedlings. Especially the green, leafy parts.

Seedling Leaves eaten by Slugs (Fava Beans)

This year, whenever I water my seedlings, I incorporated a new task: "Slug Check. Grub Check." I would lift the pots and see what's on the ground and what's under the pots. The following is an exercise for you to find what kind of creatures were below my containers and on the ground. EXERCISE 1: Slug Check.  Click on the image and find the slugs. All these are my actual photos since Spring. Hint: Some of them have 2 in one photo.

Slug 1

Slug 2

Slug 3

Slug 4

As I practicing my Slug Check, I soon started to notice other creatures on the bottom of the pots. They looked like caterpillars of some sort. Then I remembered when I first began gardening, I lost about 8 medium pots of Radishes by green caterpillars. They ate all the huge leafy green parts of my  medium sized Radishes. If I was not able to catch these, I would surely have lost all my Fava Bean seedlings and Bok Choy seedlings.
EXERCISE 2: Grub CHECK. Click on the images and see if you can find the grubs. Hint: Some of them have 2 in one photo.

Grub 1

Grub 2

Grub 3

What should I do with the Slugs and Grubs?
That's up to you. Most gardening books, I've read says to kill them. I couldn't get myself to kill them. What I do personally with the slugs, is that I pick them up from the side of a flat stick, or with my fingertips, then I throw them on my compost pile. To me, this serves 2 purposes. I gave them a 2nd chance, instead of killing them. On a more practical reason, I believe that they are like scavengers, so I just get them to help break down all the unbroken matters on the compost pile. I do the same with rollie pollies and the grubs.

If you have any other tricks you want to share, please comment below. Here is a photo of the Fava Bean that made it and didn't get eaten up. She doesn't look too healthy yet, but she made it.

Fava Bean Survivor

Long Term Vitamin Storage for your Preparedness Plans

Long Term Vitamin Storage for your Preparedness Plans

Most of us prepare with food and drinks to be better for an emergency situation. One of the most overlooked item is Vitamins.

I once bought 2 jars of Multivitamins from Costco. I ended up not using it in the last 3 years and it's probably went bad by now.

In an crisis, most of our daily food intake will most likely be compromised. We might not even be able to eat 3-5 meals a day anymore. Or we might be on a Protein Bar diet. To assist our body to receive the essential fuel to stay optimal, I feel that this product will be helpful for myself and my loved ones.

What I like about SurvivaGuard is that they are the only Long Term Vitamin storage in the market. Yes... You can Buy it, and Forget it. They have this one product where the vitamin is contained in a #10 Can. I bought it in 2018 and the label says that it's good until 2028. I have a feeling that it will be valid for 20 years, but I like the fact that they are not overpromising. So, instead of buying my 2 jars or Costco Multivitamins and throwing it away, I should of just bought this once and kept it.
One of these #10 cans have 360 capsules. It says take 2 capsules daily. So that would be a 6 months supply for me! Or if I shared with my wife, it would last us 3 months! I got 2 of these cans so that we have a 6 months supply.

Check out their articles on their websites too! It's pretty helpful.

And if you have any suggestions on long term supplements, please share on the comments!

 Zeniatefida

Visit the Maker's site and Learn More about Or to Purchase

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

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.

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.

 

Harvesting your Produce without Canning

Most Home Vegetable Gardeners either consume or store their produce.

For Resiliency, it's a good idea to store your food for the long term. But most of us don't know how to can food or don't have the proper equipment for canning. In such a case, why not freeze your food?

These photos are produce that I harvested from my 2015 veggies. They are Swiss Chard leaves that bolted but still had some edible leaves and flowers. By storing them in freezer safe zip lock bags, they are more manageable and can easily be stored. Once in the freezer, I can thaw them out when I'm ready to enjoy them. No need to can or freeze dry.