Your Questions About Gardening

GardenersCardiff answers:

The five answers before me are all correct – save seeds, home processing

but they forgot a few things like

electricity – use a wind jammer or a nacelle
heat – wood, coal, gas, propane, corn to burn for winter heat and cooking foods, or processing foods, heated water
soap – need wood ash and lye to make it (you can’t make lye, it has to be purchased)
clothing – especially shoes
salt and sugar for processing

the only thing you addressed was food – your physical needs aren’t addressed – lumber is another, got a saw mill in the back forty?

Unless you live on a tropical island you will never be self sufficient – our modern lifestyles can’t promote it – unless you are willing to sacrifice every thing including your car you won’t be able to do it

your first goal is to drop off the grid

no electricity purchased, no gasoline purchased, no natural gas purchased, no credit cards used – this is extremely difficult to do for 99.0 percent of the people – so that means no more computers, phones, television, electronic banking,

you have to earn cash some how and you still have to pay into taxes and social security

just because you want to be sufficient doesn’t mean uncle sam will forget who you are

we personally grow 75 percent of what we consume for food, but we can’t grow cotton to weave in our climate, we can’t grow sugar, we can’t produce salt, we need these things to live

the amount of acreage you need to be totally self sufficient is large and you will need help to maintain it, hired help that will want paid – so that takes away from being self sufficient – you aren’t if you need help doing it

a balance has to be met – one family member has to work a job for money and taxes and insurance, the other family members work to maintain the homestead, growing food and maintenance of the land, there are a lot of chores to be done, to many for one person, a generator is used and a wind jammer, but the generator need diesel, you can produce it but you need a home refinery to do it and the cost outweighs the usage, clothing is purchased second hand so it is cheaper, there are a lot of different things that have to be done to live this lifestyle

hey maybe you can read up on the amish lifestyle – they aren’t even self sufficient – but some of them are way closer than any of us

GardenersCardiff answers:

Yes hot humid Summers an usually mild winters are good for many crops

a local expert is Dan Gill, Times-Picayune garden columnist

you can email him here with any questions you have
dgill@agcenter.lsu.edu

GardenersCardiff answers:

The Mating Game (1959)
starring Debbie Reynolds, Tony Randall and Paul Douglas
IMDb synopsis:
Tax collector Lorenzo Charlton comes to the Larkins’ farm to ask why Pop Larkins hasn’t paid his back taxes. Charlton has to stay for a day to try to estimate the income from the farm, but it isn’t easy to calculate when the farmer has such a lovely daughter, Mariette.