Save money,Reduce stress...Try Gardening

[Shadow]

Save money, reduce stress and make tastier meals through gardening

Whether you're a seasoned gardener or just starting to get your hands dirty, these tips will help channel your inner farmer.

Maybe you can’t find local food no matter how hard you try. Or perhaps you want to take your “local and sustainable” goal a bit further and save some money. (Have you, perchance, compared the price of basil seeds against the tiny and costly package of basil at your market?) Or maybe you want to get some exercise and spend time with your kids outdoors while you’re at it. . . .

Well, grab a trowel and get busy!

Save money, reduce stress and make tastier meals through gardening | MNN - Mother Nature Network

 

[Midnight Marauder]

We used to grow ALL of our own veggies when I was a kid. Raised our own chickens, turkeys, beefs and pork as well.

My mornings went like this: Up at 4am, feeding chickens and turkeys, gathering eggs and delivering them to mom in the kitchen, slopping the hogs, feeding the horses and cows, milking the one milk cow we had, making sure everything is copacetic in the area... making sure everyone has fresh water, hay, etc. This was rain or not, snow, ice, wind or not. Every day without fail, school days or not.

Then it was come in, take a bath, have breakfast. If it was a school day, walk 2 miles to the school.

After school it was, check everything out, change out water and hay, if everything was okay? Pick through the garden, deliver the produce to mom in the kitchen... Then go back and feed all the animals again, same procedure as in the mornings. I often think about those days and remember it fondly... We had only 10 acres but really optimized it.

 

[Shadow]

Everyone in my family has always had a big garden (both veggies and roses). Fresh veggies are the best. I have trouble keeping my plants alive though. But this article gave me a good tip...to test the soil. I will have to give that a shot. I even seem to have a hard time keeping the flowers in my front flower bed alive. Maybe there is something in the soil the bulbs and rose bushes don't like.

Patio tomatoes I usually don't have a problem with. And I like to grow them every year.