It’s the time of year to start planning out the garden for the coming season and it’s been on my mind a lot lately. We’ve gone three years in a row with some fairly crummy gardening results and last season I was almost ready to give up entirely. But, a winter’s worth of tasteless grocery store fruits and vegetables has brought me back for another attempt. This year I actually plan to grow more than ever before so it should prove interesting to see how well I follow through with it.
Last year we had attempted the gardening method called Lasagna Gardening. It was a spectacular failure but I think part of that was our fault. Over the winter I researched some other gardening methods and came to the conclusion that I don’t need any fancy gardening method. People have been growing stuff right in the ground for thousands of years and all it took was some hard work to keep the weeds out. And keeping the weeds out is always where we have faltered. So I’m looking for some tips and suggestions that any of my readers might have from their gardening experiences that might help me grow a successful garden this year.
I’ve also been contemplating the question of what would I do if there really was a shortage in the food supply? Could we survive on what we grow? Right now the answer would be no, but I want to take a step in that direction. I am going to take one week this summer and not eat anything beyond what we have produced ourselves. There will be two exceptions to this idea. The first one will be fluids, though I will try and limit fluids to water, milk, and some juices. Nothing artificial at all. The other exception will be meat, though here again I will limit my intake during this week. We don’t produce our own meat so I can’t be too strict about that but again certainly no processed meats and I’ll probably come up with some preset amount of portions of meat that I will eat for the week. If our chickens are producing eggs by this point then the eggs will obviously be fair game.
I really think it will fun and quite healthy to exclusively live off of what we grow. I haven’t picked an exact date yet, when I do I’ll post an update. So is anyone else willing to take the Grower’s Challenge with me?