Homemade Fertilizers

Part of being self reliant is to use all of everything. Every viable seed is stored, plastic containers kept and reused and old wood is transformed into new useful home or barn items. But what about food? We reap the rewards of a harvest, eat the foods and discard the skins and shells to the compost heap. Don't get me wrong, putting these types of items into the compost bin will benefit your gardens, next year. You don't have to wait until next year to benefit from things like egg shells, banana peels and orange peels and even coffee grounds, though. We don't have to spend a fortune on chemical fertilizers or even organic fertilizers, when we have a whole pantry full of fertilizer in our kitchens. Most of the fertilizers provide nitrogen, along with beneficial minerals that have been depleted from our soils.

Egg Shells 
When you cook and eat eggs, don't throw the shells away or into the compost bin. They are filled with necessary calcium and other minerals the soil needs to produce healthy foods. Lay the shells in the sun for a few hours until they crumble easily. Once they are dried, use a coffee grinder to grind them into a powder. Sprinkle the powder over the garden soil when preparing the soils for planting, when planting seeds or seedlings or whenever you feel your plants need a boost of nutrients. I have read that I need to cook my eggshells before adding them to my compost or garden soil, to prevent salmonella possibilities. I have never done this. I think possibly I have either gotten lucky or laying them in the sun to dry is enough to kill the yukkies. I don't know. I don't remember my mom or grandma cooking their eggshells before composting them either, so I am not sure. If anyone knows for sure if sunning them is enough, please let me know.

Orange Peels
Orange peels are packed with vitamins that our bodies need, so it only makes sense they will add nutrients to the soil once dried or decomposed. Orange peels add nitrogen to the soil, and repels ants and aphids as well. A double duty dose of good stuff for the garden. Dry them in the sun or on a low setting in the oven. Then use the coffee grinder to powder them and sprinkle the powder over the soil around the roots of plants. This will give your plants a nice boost making it easier for them to produce and hold an abundance of fruit. To use as an insect repellant, cut slits into the orange peel and hang it from infested plants or lay pieces of the orange peeling around the roots of affected plants. The oils in the peeling are undesirable to the insects, driving them away.

Banana Peels
Banana peels offer the same basic nutrients as orange peels, except they decompose a lot faster in the soil, so drying them to make into a powder is not necessary. Simply bury banana peels in your garden areas as you eat them, to give your soil extra nutrient it will need to provide the best way for your garden to grow. Banana peels also control some garden pests such as aphids. Cut the peels into small pieces, maybe 2 inches long, and bury them around the roots of affected plants. 

Coffee
I enjoy a nice cup of coffee in the mornings. What a nice way to start the day. Coffee is acidic, and many plants need acidic soil to fully mature and produce the kind of harvest people dream of having. Before adding coffee to your plants' soil, make sure the plant is an acid loving plant. ( a list of acid loving vegetable from the University of Colorado) Once you have determined which plants are acidic soil plants, you can add cold coffee in your watering can to foliage feed the plants or with a deep root watering. Coffee is acidic, but coffee grounds oddly enough are not as acidic, and they are full of potassium and phosphorous, as well as, smaller amounts of calcium, nitrogen, copper and magnesium for plants. I add coffee grounds to most of my powder fertilizers. But coffee itself is something I only use to feed my tomatoes, peppers, roses, eggplant and citrus trees.

Seaweed and Fish Emulsion
If you live in a coastal community it should be easy to walk along the sea shore and gather seaweed. You can use seaweed two different ways. It can be placed into a bucket of water and allowed to decompose naturally in the water, leaving a nutrient rich liquid. Add the seaweed water to your regular watering can cutting it at least 50/50 with water. I use 1 cup of seaweed water per gallon of clear water and feed plants, when I have seaweed, but I don't live on the coast, so getting seaweed isn't always my top priority.  I have read about people using lake seaweed as fertilizer for gardens, but I have never tested this to know how well it works. I would think the lake seaweed has similar nutrients since it grows in a similar way to ocean seaweed, but I don't know this to be true. Fish emulsion can be pricy to buy. I have an aquarium, so I make my own version of this fertilizer. I just use the water I remove from the aquarium each week, and mix it 50/50 with water to feed my plants. I don't know if this is technically using fish "emulsion" but it does have fish poo and leftover food bits and such in it, so it has to have most of what a commercial fish emulsion has, especially when combined with seaweed. No matter if it is technically fish emulsion or not, my plants go crazy for it. So whether you buy commercial organic fish emulsion or just use water from a fish aquarium, fish and plants go hand-in-hand.

My homemade fertilizers consist of nothing more than this: I take the ground egg shells, orange and banana peels, and I grind them into a powder (or at least a fine granulation), I add a handful of coffee grounds and I put a little into the soil when I plant, and then about once a month after that I will sprinkle the powder around the plants (when I have enough materials with which to do so). I use water from my fish aquarium once a week to feed them, and I mix in the seaweed water too when I have it.  I add coffee to my peppers, eggplant and tomatoes, oh and to my citrus trees and coffee trees that grow inside, and I water them with fresh clean water when they are dry. My water, currently, is chlorinated, so I let it set out in a bucket for 24hours before I use it on my plants to allow the chlorine to dissipate. Don't think I do this religiously, as I am probably one of the most scatterbrained people you will ever meet. This is my schedule, but I often forget or I just don't have the materials on hand to use. The fish water is weekly though, as I have to clean my aquarium to have happy, healthy fish, and I refuse to throw the water away. Remember: This is all a learning curve. My results have been wonderful so far, but I am sure others have had great results with other means. I figure, that as long as I keep letting God grow my garden, then I can't lose.
I am sure there are many other organic things I can use, and as I learn of them and try them, I will share. Have fun playing in the dirt!!

Epsom Salt for Better Plant Health

Once upon a time, farmer “J” lived in a little village where most of the inhabitants are subsistence farmers. Each of the farmers knows to plow the soil, plant their seeds and nurture them until harvest. One faithful year, Farmer J decided not to bother about nurturing his seedlings. Consequently, he was faced with the devourer of pests, weeds choked up the seedlings and the rest were scorched to death by excess heat and dryness. Lesson learned: Nurture your seedlings as they grow. (excerpt from Deeper Christian Life Ministry-New Jersey Consistently Nurture Your Growing Seedlings http://www.dclm-nj.org/viewpoint/achive.php?record_ID=10 )  

One of the major things gardeners have to contend with is poor soils. Our land has been so depleted of vital nutrients from generations of crops without conditioning the soils in between, pollution, dirty rainwater polluting the soil, and what other bad things we've done to our soils. I don't know how to replace all the nutrients organically yet, but as I learn, I will share. 
A while back I learned that Epsom salt is great for plant health. I know that it sounds odd to add salt to plants, as typical salt will kill plants, but Epsom salt is magnesium  and magnesium is vital to plants' ability to photosynthesize and make nice healthy leaves and luscious fruits and seeds. 
I didn't believe it myself when I was taught this. I had to check it out for myself.  I wish I still had the photos to show the results, but my experiment was to grow two identical varieties of tomato plant, adding Epsom salt to one and nothing extra to the other. Epsom salt was the only thing I added to the soil, both were planted in identical soil, both were planted in the same size cup and watered the same days with the exact same amount of water. I don't measure, so I can't tell you exactly how much Epsom salt I add to the water, but I can tell you it's not more than a pinch (maybe a teaspoon) in my little watering can, and no more than a Tbsp. in my large watering can. I think the large can is a gallon can.
What I saw was amazing. The plant with the Epsom salt was not only larger and grew larger leaves and vined quicker, but the tomatoes were twice the size of the other plant as well. I was so impressed with the results, that I make Epsom salt part of my routine feeding plan now. It's cheap. It's natural (I think?), and it works. Plus if I notice I still have plants that are looking a little yellow and sad, I can give that plant a bit more and it's never hurt one plant. I call it my plant steroids. Give it a try. Make it an experiment if you don't trust me (even though I am very trustworthy.....just ask me *wink*). I am sure you will find Epsom salt will help you as much as it's helped me.  Even if it doesn't, you know for yourself, whether or not it works in your soil. I bet it will, though. *smile*  
One last thing....remember....before we can truly live we must first die. Just like seeds must die to produce more life, we must die to produce real life. Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. John 12:24  Gardening and the Bible go hand in hand...go back to Eden to find the true beauty and peace of the land.
Have fun playing in the dirt!!

Insanity

Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. Jeremiah 33:3

People who see our land and hear our plans always tell us about how much grass we will have to cut. Personally, I think lawns are a waste of space. If the dirt will grow a lawn, think how much better life would be if I grew food in it instead? And since we don't have neighbors who can see us, why not grow food instead of grass? Who will really care? I read articles almost daily of different city governments that fine people who grow food over lawns, and even governments that send machinery into the "farms" to destroy the produce or milk, and I have to say I find that sickening! We live in the greatest nation on Earth, and yet people are starving here. Why? There are many reasons I am sure, but one of the reasons HAS to be bureaucrats wanting to micromanage every detail of every life inside it. Has that ever worked before? No. So why do they think it will work now? I read once that repeating an action over and over expecting different results may be a key component of insanity, so that is what I think Americans going hungry is....Insanity. Our governments trying to decide what we can grow, how much we can grow and where we can grow (heaven forbid that a pepper plant be in the front yard, how horrible is that?) and that is insanity.....the people don't roll over and say ummm duhhh okay I will just till it all under, all the hours of hard work, all the money saved, and any money spent, tilled under with no questions asked, so it HAS to be insanity that makes anyone in the government think it's okay to tell a free citizen their yard cannot feed them, ever. Anyways I went off on a tangent a bit, I want to take about grass not governments.
This week after working all day, and working at the new land a few hours each evening, my husband noticed that all our current neighbors are cutting their lawns. I HATE this time of year. He and our youngest girl tend to take care of cutting the grass. I have a spinal disease and the tractor jostles me around so much that I can barely walk for days after(and the last time I drove that beast I almost fell over going down a hill and said nope not doing that again!). They take care of it for me, and they do a wonderful job. It just seems like this time of year, he has so much going on that it really stresses him to get it all done. I really don't like him stressing...it makes him grumpy, which makes me grumpy and well you know what they say about things rolling downhill....it's a bad deal all around. This year he hasn't been grumpy with the start of the grass cutting season. I don't really think he cares anymore, because he knows that we won't be here for most of the season after all. I think he cuts it too short anyways, but it's his thing, so I let him do it as he wants. He says if he leaves it longer, then he has to cut it more often. I wonder if that is the difference between people who enjoy the job and those who feel it's a necessary evil.
 Yesterday, as I was walking through the woods, I noticed a dogwood flower that appeared to be lying on the ground. I had noticed other flowers earlier that appeared to be floating in the air. I could see the flowers but I couldn't see the branches holding the flower. It was truly magical to me that a flower could just float like that. I have to admit I was a little bummed to learn they weren't floating and were in fact attached to a tree. I like looking for magical type things....they are here if you look for them. The photo I took of the floating flowers didn't turn out. My cell phone has no flash, and part of my spinal disease makes my hands shake, and that makes for blurry photos without a flash. A photographer told me that when I use a flash, the flash of light is faster than the shake of my hands so it helps. Whatever the reason, when I use a flash I get beautiful photos, and when I don't, I get blurry photos.
 I went into the woods and had to play with the dirt a bit. the ground is so dark and rich for about the first 2 or 3 inches, and then it turns into the standard Carolina red clay. All the years of leaves dropping and trees or branches falling and decaying has made the forest floor this amazing growing medium that even the trees use to continue. I moved the leaves away and saw the soil, but what amazed me even more was this amazing tapestry of roots from tree to tree. The young sucker trees are attached to the parent trees through this amazing tapestry. I am sure this fertile soil on top of the clay would have been fine for the young roots, and they do extend down into that soil, but the bulk of the root system is on top of the soil under the leaves and rotten wood droppings. This told me why my garden last year did so well, even though I didn't "ammend" the soil in any ways other than by adding mulches of leaves and pine needles and barks. SOund familiar to what I saw yesterday? I literally grew an eden garden and I didn't know that's what I was doing. I even named it after eden. Tell me God doesn't prepare us and keep us while we are being prepared. He gave me His blueprint for gardening, and I never even had to ask for it. All I asked was to have a beautiful garden. I prayed in my garden daily....it was my refuge, and God made it grow like nothing I had ever seen. I had to yank the tomato plants before they were truly done, because my body said it had enough for the year, and we needed to ready the bed for the next season. I ended what God began and this year my seedlings look horrible in comparison. I went back to last year's ways and they are doing MUCH better now. The Miracle Grow is in the trash now too. my fish give and the mulches (along with some coffee and Epsom salt) gives my plants all the health they need to grow. I am going back to My Garden of Weeden to provide all the nutrients my food needs.
and my God shall supply all your need, according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus; Phillipians 4:19  ylt
What I learned was God provides for ALL my needs. He even gave my body the strength to grow the garden, and He continued strengthening my body as I grew my garden. Our new house will not have a lawn. It's shady and beautiful, just the way it is, and I don't care to ruin it with grass. I may give in to a little lawn if that's what he wants, but otherwise, the dirt in my yard will feed me, and since I am not a cow, I won't be eating grass. I hope not anyways? I have been trying to watch Back to Eden, which is a movie about a man's chase to become a farmer and fails until he goes back to what God gave us. That's what God told me yesterday in prayer: Go into the woods and see how I grow the trees. These trees have never had fertilizer, never been pruned or even touched by a human. It's all in the soil those trees had created over the generations.
Chemicals and altered soils is NOT the way to grow a perfect vegetable. It takes natural love, natural solutions and God. We can recreate all the food we want in labs, and it may feed us, today. What will tomorrow hold for us, though? The future of a chemical filled world is just that, more chemicals, and one day man will run out of chemicals. Then what? Eventually science will run out of "The Next Greatest Drug to hit the Markets", and we are left with a world full of sick dying people who cannot function any longer. If I were the creator of all things I would let us die that way, but no; our Creator is more loving than this. He sits in the shadows waiting for us to cry out to Him to save us. And I believe that all know eventually who is God and who He isn't. 
Eden's garden will be filled with beautiful flowers to attract bees and other pollinators and the fruits and veggies produce beautiful flowers too in spring, and then summer will be filled with yummy fresh foods, fall will continue the harvests and putting food up for winter, in winter it can still grow greens under shelter (through most of the South Carolina winter anyways), and I will still enjoy my bounty year after year.
And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Matthew 4:19 esv
If I encourage only one person to grow one kind of food this year, I have made a fisherman of that person. He or she will never go hungry, and I think of it like ripples in a pond. One stone thrown into the pond makes a ripple. That ripple makes another ripple and so on until the ripple hits the edge of the pond covering the entire surface with ripples that can glisten in the sun. Teaching one person to live self sufficiently can teach entire nations to do the same.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. 1 John 1:7
It's a world of connections. We're all connected somehow, by someone to each other. So go be nice to each other. Love one another as we love ourselves. Show one another the peace and joy we've been given. Then continue showing that love in helping one another in our times of need as well. Love builds bridges, hate tears them down. Let's all be bridge builders today.
Next week I will start with a few gardening tips, such as what can Epsom salt do for my garden. I am hoping to have more photos of actual work being done on the land then too, unfortunately the rain has kept us from doing much to the land lately, so I have no new photos. Of course I took a photos of the bugs and other scenery, though.
Until next time, our journey continues....Peace!!
P.S. sorry I rambled a bit today. Y'all will get used to my tangents, it's just how I am sometimes........

Welcome to My "Little Garden of Weeden"

Last year's very little,  "Lil' Garden of Weeden"

Welcome to my little garden of weeden. I call it this, because my garden is my place of refuge. Whether I am planting, weeding and caring for the plants, harvesting, or cleaning out the garden and  readying it for the next planting, I love everything about it; every bug, every creature, every sore muscle and blister, every sunburn (I refuse to wear sun screen), every failure and every successful harvest. It's truly an amazing process: I plant the seeds and water them, and then I watch God grow them, and I get to eat what I harvest. Things couldn't get much better than that!

I am married to the greatest man I know. He's my best friend. I can tell him anything, and even though he doesn't always react how I want him to react, he always reacts how I need him to react. I choose to love him every day, and I have never regretted this choice. I don't choose to love him in spite of his quirks and annoyances, but rather BECAUSE those are parts of him that makes him the amazing man I married. We've been married for 21 years, and we have three beautiful daughters who are 20, 18 & 15. We are finally able to build our dream. When we were first married, we talked about the future often. The kind of home we wanted, how much land, whether we wanted animals and gardens or not, and what we wanted to do with the land.

This is what the land looked like before we started clearing.

My dream is to be able to grow enough fruits and veggies to be able to feed us, and sell or donate the excess. I want to share my passion with others, so whenever I donate food to the local pantry, I want to donate seeds and growing instructions, as well as, seed saving instructions. I think the words are, "Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day, but teach him to fish and he can eat for a lifetime". If I can find a place to locally accept my seed donations I will be set.  My husband's dream is to live in a mortgage free home that is 100% self sufficient, and he wants to be able to retire early. Our dream together is to raise a small farm, live a completely organic, self sufficient lifestyle and to be able to spend as much time together as possible. My best times in life have been with him, so spending more time with him will only make for more of my best times, right? ;-)  We are both gaining our individual dream AND our dream together with this one home. It will be mortgage free, solar powered (no utilities) and will feed us completely. Anything we cannot grow or raise, we can trade or sell to acquire what is needed (or wanted).
The ideal behind building a modern "homestead" is not to go without. It's to build the life that you want, within your abilities and means. It doesn't mean not working hard. Trust me, building a house, growing gardens and raising animals takes a lot of hard work, but the work is different. I am not punching a time clock each morning. I am free to schedule my time as I see fit. It's hard work: It's just working hard for myself and my family instead of working hard to make someone else wealthy, or to make their business succeed. I don't plan to go without even the slightest luxury: our home will be a smart home, with home security, wireless everything, and hopefully the latest technology (as my ability and budget allow) The thing about a homestead is being prepared for anything, so along with all the modern technology we plan within our home, we also know how to do without the luxuries, so should the unlikely happen, we can still have fresh bread without my fancy wheat grinder or bread maker (or even my kitchen oven). Or my husband can still build his machines and equipment without his fancy CNC equipment, he knows how to do these things manually as well. Before we could fly we had to learn to walk, and to us that means knowing how to do things manually in an automatic world.
Are we "preppers"? Nah, not really. We are not preparing for the collapse of society as we know it. That could, and probably will someday happen, but that is not why we are living as we do. Anything can happen: We can lose our jobs (even temporarily would cause us hardships), we could suffer a medical emergency or a natural disaster. I simply call us realists or survivalists. We are a team: It's us against the world. Are we odd, yes possibly, but I would rather be odd now, and never need my skills, than to be normal now and wish I had learned these skills later. I have not missed a thing in life by taking the time to learn this. I have a wonderful set of friends, a beautiful healthy family and a life that I created of my own will...
So far we have the driveway and garage site cleared, and there really isn't much to show, yet.....

This is our journey, so.....Until later
Have fun playing in the dirt today.