Prepared – Got Your Wheat, Beans & Rice? So What Are You Going To Eat?!

As we try and stay warm during this cominf cold winter season probably very few of us are thinking of gardens or growing our own food – but maybe we should be!  When God cursed the ground it was for our sake, so when He said we were to eat our bread by the sweat of our brow perhaps He was pronouncing a blessing on us.  At the very least it was instruction on how we were to live, but today too many of us , if we exercise at all, pay to “work out” in the gym instead of working out in the garden. 

It is time to change that!

Great and wise men have said every family should have a garden, and that we should “Grow all the food that you possibly can on your own property…grow vegetables and eat those grown in your own yard.  Even those residing in apartments or condominiums can generally grow a little food in pots and planters.”    Spencer W. Kimball

Evidence all around us points to the wisdom of those words.  Today much of what we eat comes from places we know not and contains things that sometimes harm us.  And a diet of fresh vegetables and fruits would eliminate many of the chronic health problems plaguing our society

I suggest now is a good time to begin preparing for your own garden next spring.   Why?  Because it makes sense to follow wise counsel at any time, but also because like someone recently said, when times get tough you’re not going to want to live just on rice and beans and wheat.

In talking with a motivated Mittleider gardener I asked how he became interested in gardening as an important component of his family’s preparedness regimen, and his answer was both humorous and instructive:

“Years ago my wife and I were going over our Preparedness list, basically taking an inventory of where we were in the process, and I asked her “what are we going to eat”, to which she replied “well, we’ve got wheat, beans, and rice . . . “.  I thought about that for a few seconds and then said “so what are we going to eat”?  She repeated “we’ve got wheat, beans, and rice”, and I responded again “so, what are we going to eat!”

“As we talked about this we decided that we really needed to have an on-going, fresh and sustainable source of nutritious food if we hoped to maintain any degree of long-term health and activity, and so we determined that we had to get serious about growing a garden.”

And here’s “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey would say.  His wife became a Certified Master Gardener, and for 30 years she worked diligently at trying to grow food for their family.  However, until recently their success was very limited, even though they tried every method they could find.   Their amazing success sfter finding the Mittleider Method of gardening is truly inspiring, and it is documented in some excellent short instructional videos at http://www.ldsprepper.com.  I recommend you go there and see for yourself what they’ve done (and what you can do) in the back yard of a small lot in a gated community, with homeowners’ association rules dictating what your yard can look like.

So, what CAN we do in the winter in order to be prepared when it comes time to plant our gardens?  Let me describe several important things you can begin doing immediately:

Certainly, planning next spring’s garden is important.  And the Garden Planting Details Schedule lists most all of the common garden vegetables and then gives you valuable information in 14 categories including when to plant, where to plant, how far apart to plant, whether to plant seeds or seedlings, how long you can harvest, how much yield to expect, and 8 other important categories of information to guide your decisions.  This is available free in the Files section of the gardening groups listed below, as well as in appendix B of The Mittleider Gardening Course book.

Other important areas of planning you should be covering this winter include ways to lengthen your harvest time, and this can be accomplished by growing your own seedlings, and by protecting your plants in the garden. 

Seedling production is surprisingly simple, but requires following closely the basic laws of plant growth.  Soil temperatures must be in the 70-85 degree range for optimum germination and growth; maximum light must be applied immediately upon emergence; soil must be damp but not soaking wet; and plants must be fed a balanced nutrient mix on a regular schedule – preferably with every watering.

Protecting your plants from the cold (and heat in mid-summer) can be done simply with hoops and clear greenhouse plastic immediately over the plants (low tunnel), or using something larger, again with hoops and plastic sometimes called high tunnels.  A third way, costing more but allowing you to grow crops vertically and increasing yields by 4-6 times in a given space, is what I call the in-the-garden greenhouse.  These are built using a set of T-Frames tied together by 2 X 4’s and again covered by clear greenhouse plastic, and they can be used to grow seedlings in late winter/early spring and then to grow ever-bearing crops clear into the next winter.  Gardeners in southern-tier states even use them to grow successfully year-round.

A family of 4 can live out of a garden of less than 1/20th of an acre!  So start planning and preparing now, and expect to have your highly productive sustainable garden in place and growing by the time your neighbors begin even thinking about their gardens.

Short videos demonstrating many steps in the gardening process are available free at. Start there, and if you feel you want to join one of the Food For Everyone Foundation’s free gardening groups to learn more and share with others, simply go to either https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/MittleiderMethodGardening/info or https://www.facebook.com/groups/2304852529528161/

So, what are YOU going to eat when the stores are all closed?  If you’re serious I will give you some very exciting and important details next time.

Preserving your Vegetable Garden Harvest – Eat Garden-fresh for 4-6 Months!

Folks, this one’s a keeper, so turn on your printer and save it in your vegetable gardening library.

With cold weather soon upon us, everyone should be working to save your harvest, either by storing or preserving. Canning, drying, and freezing are good ways of preserving your crops such as beans, corn, peas, peppers, summer squash, and tomatoes. They need to be done immediately after picking, while crops are fresh and tasty. Whether you cold-store or preserve your produce depends on the type of food you’ve grown, your facilities, and your family’s eating preferences.

Cold storage of vegetables such as cabbage, beets, carrots, potatoes, squash, and turnips can give you the best tasting and healthiest food of the four methods (with the possible exception of freeze-drying, if that is an option for you), and may even be the least expensive in the long run. And you can eat every one of these garden-fresh even 4 to 6 months after they’ve been harvested! However it requires some careful preparation, so let’s discuss how best to prepare for and store your fall harvest.

The details of harvesting and properly storing your crops are covered in several of the Mittleider gardening books, including Food For Everyone. All are available at https://growfood.com/shop

Since tomatoes are many peoples’ favorite garden produce, let’s discuss them first. Before the first killing frost, pick all your tomatoes, including the green ones. Handle them gently, because cuts or bruises will cause them to spoil quickly. Fruit that’s close to ripe can be placed on a kitchen counter, out of direct sunlight, and it will ripen in a few days. Green fruit should be placed on a shelf in a cool, dry place, such as your basement or garage. As they begin to ripen you can bring them into the kitchen. Always remove any fruit that is beginning to spoil. We eat tomatoes into January this way.

Most of your other vegetables need more help to keep them fresh. If your garden is very small and you don’t have much to store, you may be able to use an old refrigerator, or a barrel buried in the back yard. However, for those who are serious about providing fresh food for your families, I recommend a root cellar, either under the house or buried outside. A good size is 8′ wide and at least 10′ long. This gives you 2′ for an aisle and 3′ on each side for storage. A shelf on each side is good for things like onions and garlic, which need to be kept dry.

You can set it into the side of a hill or dig a hole 4′ to 5′ deep in a corner of the yard, build the cellar, and cover it with the excess dirt. This will help insulate it and maintain the low, but not freezing temperatures you need. Provide yourself a small door and insulate it well.

Harvest your crops at peak maturity and store only those which are free of disease or damage. Don’t harvest for storage until late fall, since more starches are converted to sugars by the cool weather. Root crops should be picked fresh and stored immediately. Potatoes and squash, on the other hand, first need to be cured at 60-75 degrees for 7 to 14 days. Most produce should be stored at just above freezing temperatures, except winter squash, which does better at or above 50 degrees.

Your root crops will stay fresh and sweet for months if you harvest them with roots intact and pack them in wet sawdust. Cabbage and other brassicas also need their roots. Remove outer leaves, then pack the roots in wet sawdust, leaving the cabbage exposed. Provide separation between crops to avoid mixing flavors, and to keep squash dry.

Potatoes should not be as wet as the root crops. They will do well in temperatures below 40 degrees, but pack them in slightly moist, rather than wet sawdust. Peat moss and sand, or combinations of all three, can be substituted for straight sawdust, but are not as ideal. I recommend you work with your neighbors to find a sawmill, pallet manufacturer, or cabinet shop that uses hardwoods (not walnut!), and obtain a truckload.

Onions and garlic also store well. They can handle cold temperatures but, like winter squash, they do better with humidity only 60 to 70 percent. Therefore these should be up off the damp floor, on shelves or hung from the ceiling. A cold basement can also work, but be sure to provide separation from living areas to avoid the strong smell.

Remember, cold temperatures are essential for good long-term storage of vegetables, but do not let them freeze! Insulate your root cellar well. Good healthy eating to you! More details are at http://www.growfood.com in the FAQ section.

Can I Grow Successfully in Hard Clay Or in Worn-Out Soils?

What Can I do to Grow In My Heavy Clay Soil?

You do NOT have to replace your heavy clay soil with something better, nor do you need to add tons and tons of sand and/or compost.

To start off you simply eliminate all weeds, dig or till the soil, measure and stake your garden area into 18″-wide beds with at least 3′-wide aisles, and make raised, level, ridged beds, as described in the FREE ebook, at https://growfood.com/freebies/ and in all the vegetable gardening books by Dr. Jacob R. Mittleider.

That and just a little bit more. Just add three simple steps beyond the above procedures that apply to ANY soil, and you can have excellent success with your clay soil – without amending it!

1) When you plant seed, use the handle of your hoe or rake to make a straight shallow furrow along the inside edge of the ridges. For small seeds the furrow should be only 1/4″ deep, and for large seeds it should be 1/2″ to 1″ deep.

Mix the seed you’re planting with 100 parts sand and apply evenly and sparingly in the furrow. This greatly minimizes the inevitable thinning that is otherwise necessary.

2) Then, instead of covering the seed with clay soil, cover it with a shallow layer (1/8″ for small seed and ¼” for large seed) of clean sand. You will have much better germination and emergence of your seeds if they don’t have to fight their way through that heavy clay.

3) After planting and after you water your soil-beds, when the soil begins to crack as it loses moisture, apply just a few pounds of sand per 30′-long bed to the cracks in the planting area of each grow-bed and water the sand into the cracks. The sand will fill the cracks and eliminate the cracking. You may need to do it a second time, but this will stop the drying and breaking of your plant roots that cracking clay soil usually causes.

What type or condition of soil must I have to produce the best results?

All types of soil will produce the same healthy, high quality and heavy yield in food crops except land with standing water on it or toxic substances in it.

How is it done? Simply by restoring the essential plant nutrients to the soil.

The water-soluble minerals in soils, which plants use for food, have been leached out of the soil by rainfall and irrigation for thousands of years into creeks, rivers and oceans. This has greatly reduced the water-soluble minerals available in the soil, and thus soils everywhere are less fertile. The floor of every ocean and sea in the world contains these solidified minerals, which were once on dry land.

These same minerals, from rocks mined from the earth, are packaged, inexpensive, and available worldwide for use in your gardens. Their nutrient content is high and accurately determined – almost always far greater than comparably priced “organic” nutrients.

The quality of your soil (or lack of!) will not keep you from having an excellent garden if you follow the procedures outlined on the website and in Dr. Mittleider’s books and videos, and if you feed your plants properly.

A little natural mineral nutrient fertilizer goes a long way toward solving the worst soil problems. And here’s the simplest way to do it.

Get two packets of pre-mixed micro-nutrients from the Food For Everyone Foundation, so that you don’t have to search for the nutrients individually. We ship two 10 ounce packets, each of which is mixed with 25# of 16-16-16, or whatever similar mix is available at your nursery or farm supply store, plus 4# of Epsom Salt (magnesium sulfate) that you can get at any drug store. The Micro Mix is $13.95 for two packets plus shipping. It is the surest and easiest way to assure you have the nutrients you need.

Hard-Pan Clay Soil That Doesn’t Drain – Usable for Garden?

Are you like this person? “We are living in a very bad hard-pan soil area. When I dig a hole and add water, the water will stay for days.”

Many families only have heavy, clay soil in which to grow gardens, and some have asked how to drain the soil so it isn’t too wet to grow in. Following is a little history of commercial clay soil gardening in the USA and Russia, along with some suggestions.

The Imperial valley of California grows some of the most prolific and healthy vegetable crops anywhere in the world. The soil is hard, heavy clay, and before it was drained it was so saturated with salt the crops were very poor.

This condition existed because the Colorado River had for centuries deposited salty water on the land, which evaporated leaving the salt residue. At first the farmers tried applying large amounts of water in attempts to drive the salt down, but the benefits were short-lived.

Finally in the 40’s, the farmers put underground tile drainage systems in, consisting of 4″ drainage pipes buried more than 4′ in the ground at intervals of about 100′, which all led to larger drainage ditches and etc. Today they produce over $1 billion in vegetables per year.

You can also grow great gardens in your clay soil, but if it’s wet or saline you may need to drain it.

In Russia Dr. Mittleider’s students dug drainage ditches 10-12″ wide and 2′ deep to drain a small parcel of “waste” ground loaned to them by the Soviet authorities. It quickly became so prolific and beautiful the authorities gave them 23 acres!

That ground is now the site for the most famous and productive family-based gardening agriculture school in all of the Russian Commonwealth Countries. And millions of Russian families, themselves growing in clay soil, credit the Mittleider Method for giving them self-sufficiency in their food production.

The Mittleider Grow-Beds consisting of level, raised, ridged soil-beds themselves assist in the drainage process on clay soil. But if you have very high rain-fall, you may need to leave the ends open during the rainy season. Beyond that, either open drainage ditches, or buried drain pipes, as described above, will solve your wet-soil problems.

So long as you have plenty of sunshine and access to water, the soil is no problem!

We promise “a great garden in any soil, and in almost any climate.” And we mean it!

If you feel the clay soil is just too hard to work with, and you’d rather not fight it, then build Grow-Boxes and grow your food above-ground. Several Mittleider gardening books show you how, including Gardening By the Foot and Lets Grow Tomatoes. And The Mittleider Gardening Course has a section devoted just to Grow-Box gardening as well.