Currently there are people struggling to make ends meet and that makes life unpleasant and stressful.
In situations like this I remember the old saying, ‘Make every post a winning post’.
From what I see every thing is increasing substantially in price, rates, insurance and food where incomes are not increasing to cover all the outgoings. In situations like this one tends to ‘clutch at straws’ rather than make a firm stand of the situation.
The Depression of the 1930s was a defining period in New Zealand history. It had its own vocabulary – swaggers and sugarbags, relief work and sustenance, the Queen Street riots and special constables – that was all too familiar to those who lived through that tumultuous decade.
Home owners and farmers were better equipped back then to handle the food problem with home owners having quarter acre sections and those that lived through those times had in the years following big vegetable gardens along with chickens and pantries full of preserves and jams, pickles etc.
They were well prepared for hard times and had food on the table even if their pockets were empty.
Nowadays we don’t have a good size sections but for many still a bit of land for gardens and a lawn likely as well.
Now my readers will be in one of two situations; their home owned or rented will be on land which can be made more productive and reduce the cost of living.
Many will be either renting or in retirement villages where there is little land available or no opportunity to grow much food stuffs. There is always an answer to any problem.
Many years ago at a time when there was hardship again, I suggested that there would be elderly people living in homes where there is land to garden and likely vegetable plots that now grow weeds as the people are not able to garden as they used to.
I am sure that many of the people in that circumstance would be happy to see fit person come in and plant up vegetables and share the produce.
If you don’t have land then utilise someone’s land that they are not using. How do you find someone that has land and cant garden? There is through the internet the ‘Neighbourly bulletin boards’ which are free to advertise on.
Also there is Grey Power offices in most places which have good contact with elderly people that you can approach and they maybe able to match up for a good arrangement.
People with land and gardens also may not be utilising all the land they have and can increase their food growing areas by turning lawn into productive gardens.
I have seen in the past older Chinese people owning or renting a place where all available land front and back was in highly productive vegetable gardens.
I can tell you it looked far better than green lawns that you have to mow at a cost of time, labour and fuel expense.
In days gone by one would have a good sized area of lawn at the back to play cricket or football with the kids, those days have gone, by and large, kids grown up moved on or back living with you as they cant afford to buy a house and rents are too dear.
They maybe interested in learning the skills of gardening and muck in producing good healthy food at a very low cost in money terms but a higher labour input.
Which is good exercise, you get some free vitamin D from sunlight (as long as you are sensible by gradually increasing exposure time) and throw away those harmful sunscreens that prevent you gaining free Vitamin D.
Also you get some exercise through gardening and can save on gym fees.
Growing your own food naturally has the biggest savings of all. It reduces the outlay of buying unhealthy commercially produced food.
Grown naturally with minerals and elements then you are growing health bombs which will improve your current health and help prevent future ailments which are expensive and not nice.
You will live longer and healthier and have a better chance of not losing your marbles later in life.
Hopefully I have sold you on the idea of saving money and being much healthier.
There is also much satisfaction when sitting down to a meal which all the vegetables you eat have been picked truly fresh out of your own garden.
You will find they are very filling, ‘taste out of this world’ and you do not have to eat much to feel satisfied which will means better weight control.
Your motor mower eats grass you don’t! So dig up a lawn area that gets a reasonable amount of sunlight.
We are now into a new growing season and this is the very best time to get gardening.
A bit of exercise with a spade or shovel you cut squares the size of your spade blade and lift the turf and turn it upside down back into the ground leaving exposed dirt and buried grass which will rot and become food for your vegetables you plant.
Sprinkle garden lime over the soil and leave for a week or so then lightly rake to make the soil friable.
Alternative to digging up your lawn; then do the cardboard garden which I suggested in my latest book.
It involves more expense as you need to buy a few bags of compost but a lot less labour and it is instant. What you do is get a stack of cardboard boxes from some retailer such as a supermarket that throws them out.
Cut them so the whole thing will lay flat and cover the area of the lawn you want to make into a garden. It is a good idea to start off small with area about a metre wide and about 4-5 metres long or as many metres long as you wish.
You can always increase as you become more enthusiastic.
It is a good ideal to leave lawn around the perimeter of the plot which will become walking areas to attend the garden from; instead of actually walking on the garden and compressing the soil.
But dig a trench about a half spade deep around the perimeter to create a mote which will help with drainage during wet times and also separates the garden from the lawn for mowing.
Now whether you have dug or card boarded the new veggie plot you are ready to plant.
You could go out and buy seedlings but instead why not buy a couple of packets of seeds instead?
You get more plants for your money, you have a lot of seeds which you can plant for succession and anything grown from seed in the soil it is going to mature and will be far superior to any seedling you transplant.
I would suggest any of the following seeds to start off with if you are newer to gardening.
Silverbeet, lettuce and spring onions. There is one product I suggest you invest in and that is our Magic Botanic Liquid (MBL) because it is the best natural gardening product you can invest in for great healthy vegetables quicker than otherwise.
You take some seeds out of the packets and the plants I have mentioned are good size seeds and easy to handle.
You look at the planting spaces that are suggested on the packet and you put two seeds together at that planting space. You push the seeds into the soil a centimeter deep and then you spray them with MBL (made up in a trigger sprayer) then cover the seed with a little soil.
Keep the area plant moist with light watering and in next to no time the seeds should germinate if they are viable seeds.
Now if only one germinates then no problem if two germinate you allow them to grow till they are about 3 cm tall and the with a pair of scissors you cut the one that is not the best one off at ground level and leave the foliage laying on the soil so the root system left and the cut foliage to become the initial extra food for your plants left to grow. Now with the MBL in the trigger sprayer you are going to spray your seedlings once or twice a week till all has been used up then make up a fresh batch.
You will have a lot of seeds left in the packets so to ensure they are kept good for future planting simply put into a small glass jar with a lid and then store in the fridge.
Later on when your crop has reached maturity and you are harvesting you will judge which plant is the best and not harvest it instead let it mature and go to seed.
When the seed is ripe you will pick and allow to dry in a saucer on windowsill indoors and then put into a plastic bag with name of vegetable type and the date then they go into the glass jar in fridge also for future use.
At that time any original seeds purchased can be given away to family or friends. You now have your own seed bank of seeds that have grown on your land and are already superior to any that you can buy.
You will repeat this every time you grow a crop from your own seed to obtain a new generation of seed even more superior to the last generation.
Next week I am going to show you how to obtain the best food for your plants without spending any money buying plant fertlisers. So stay tuned and be more self sufficient and healthier.
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Image credit: onehundredseventyfive
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