Category Archives: Gardening

Gardening, Prepping

Survival Medicine: Cayenne Pepper

Prescription meds and over-the-counter medications may or may not be available in a given economic collapse, but you can always grow your own medicinal herbs or even source them in the wild. If you could only have one medicinal herb in your survival bag it should be cayenne pepper. It’s an anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and a sterilizer. It’ll warm you up, boost your metabolism, and energize you all at once. Cayenne pepper adds spicy heat to improve the flavor of all foods. It’s even beneficial, not harmful, for your digestive tract. The active ingredient, capsaicin, is what’s responsible for all the benefits. Lately, even the medical world is giving credit to capsaicin. A product called “Sinus Buster” is a popular over-the-counter sinus medication that is capsaicin based. As an aside, Sinus Buster even claims to chase away headaches. But you don’t need to buy Sinus Buster to chase away headaches or clear your sinuses. Grow your own cayenne peppers and make your own medicine!

Source: Grow You Survival Medicine: Cayenne Pepper – The Organic Prepper

Gardening

The Age of Asparagus

It’s the dawning of the age of asparagus went the old cartoon.

Every year our asparagus patch wakes up and starts to shoot out tasty nutritious sprouts. Our little patch has been producing now for over 7 years, and every year like to return of the warblers, the asparagus returns with the first warm days.

Gardening

Box of Lettuce

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We always start our seeds at the beginning of January, so that tomatoes and peppers can get an early start.  Especially with tomatoes, we want to get the going early, so that we get a tasty crop before the excessive heat causes them to stop producing.

This year we took and old plastic container and grew lettuce. We’re using Burpee Bibb lettuce. It’s been very successful indoors. (See pic.)

Right now, we have three kinds of lettuce, cilantro, two kinds of tomatoes, tobacco, Aji peppers, basil, parsley, and kiowa growing. Today, we’ll be in the 70s, and finally the roaring winds of the last few days have turned to a delightful calm.  Lovely…

Arizona, Gardening, Off Grid Living

Rainy Saturday at the Ranch

It’s a rainy Saturday morning, so that means gathering up every available 5 gallon bucket, pail, and even a plastic garbage can or two in the hopes of collecting the coveted premium –  rain water.

Although our well water tastes great, it does have about 350 parts per million of mineral content. This tends to give the water a slight alkalinity. For the most part it hadn’t seemed to hinder growth, but we were amazed at the difference that filtered or rain water made with our indoor plants.

In addition to rain water, we’ve been using a Berkey filter for the times when there is no rain. We also add a balanced liquid supplement varying between more nitrogen based, and adding potash & phosphorous as well.

At the moment inside, we have Black Krim & Yellow Pear tomatoes started, lettuce, Aji peppers, Peruvian Kiowa, Turmeric, Cilantro, and tobacco.

In the garden, we have three kinds of lettuce, cilantro, asparagus (soon!,) and I hope to start peas, spinach, and arugula this weekend.

We have a lot of seeds, and my darling spouse is always complaining that I buy too many seeds, but if we had to live off the garden, they would be a Godsend.

Yesterday, the Yucca food bank had big bags of spinach, so today it will be pureed and frozen for later use. Spinach is excellent and makes a great part of many ranch meals.

Here’s some pictures of last Falls’ indoor Yellow Pear tomatoes: