How to Grow Potatoes in a Trash Bag

Step 1: Prepare the Seed Potatoes

About a week before planting, place seed potatoes in a warm spot. When the sprouts that form are about 1/4" to 1/2" long, the potatoes are almost ready to plant. Cut large seed potatoes into chunks about 2" wide. Each piece should have at least two sprouts. After cutting the seed potatoes, let them sit at room temperature for two or three days.

Step 2: Prepare the Bag

Use a pair of scissors to cut several drainage holes in the bottom of a 30-gallon black plastic trash bag. Roll down the sides of the bag and fill about one-third of the way up with potting soil. Place the bag in an area of the garden that receives full sun.

Step 3: Plant the Potatoes

Dust the seed potatoes with agricultural sulfur to protect against fungal diseases. Plant the seed potatoes by burying them, eyes pointed up, about 2" deep in the soil. Water well.

Step 4: Add More Soil

When the potato plants get about 6" to 8" tall, it is time to add more soil and straw to the bag. Add enough soil so that just the top few leaves poke through the dirt. As the potato plants grow, continue to unroll the bag and add more soil. Keep the potatoes well watered but not soggy.

Step 5: Harvest the Potatoes

One clue that the potatoes are almost ready to harvest is that the leaves will yellow and the foliage will die back. At this point stop watering and leave the potatoes alone for two or three weeks so that their skins toughen up. To harvest, slit open the side of the bag to release the potatoes.

http://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/how-to-grow-potatoes-in-a-trash-bag/index.html 

Surviving the Collapse of our Nations Vulnerable/Fragile Food Supply Chain

Think of the riots that have occurred in American cities over such things as a controversial legal case and you can easily conjure up the scenario that would result from a severe food shortage that has no end in sight. While people living in rural area areas would at least have a chance to survive a disaster by growing their own food, those living in urban areas would not have access to any reliable food source whatsoever.

After all the food in the city has been looted and consumed, people will leave the cities en masse, crowding into the rural areas and competing for the scant food resources still available there. As shown in history, food shortages quickly lead to widespread civil unrest, riots and protesting towards the TPTB (the powers that be). Being prepared for a severe food shortage is easily achieved by storing adequate amounts of non-perishable food items that are readily available, inexpensive, and easy to store. Although there is much debate on what’s exactly best to store, I recommend you store both MRE’s and items such as beans, wheat, rice, garden seeds, honey and olive oil but always remember: have a variety of foods.

http://www.urbansurvivalnetwork.com/featured/surviving-the-collapse-of-our-nations-vulnerablefragile-food-supply-chain/

Using Bottles For Inexpensive Water Saving Irrigation Yet Achieving Maximum Yield

My plan is an alternative to underground irrigation, which I cannot afford.

Bottle Irrigation for Onion Seedlings

I punch a tiny hole in the bottom of a 5 liter plastic water bottle, bury it about 1/4 to 1/3 in the soil and plant the seedlings out, each in close proximity to a bottle, as shown on my photo.

Take care: that hole in the bottom of the bottle must be real tiny, otherwise the water will leak out too rapidly. I made the mistake of making several 2mm holes in each bottle, but the bottle drained empty almost as soon as I had filled it. Eventually I found the ideal size of the (ONE) hole to be that of a thick needle. It takes about 45-60 minutes to drain into the underground soil.

Onions growing!

Initially I water the young seedlings as usual also, as on the photo of the lettuce (and of course this goes for all the others e.g. pumpkins, watermelons, tomatoes, etc.). When I consider that the roots are well-established, I only fill the bottles every second day or so - depending on the weather, rain etc.

Gideon harvesting big onions

My method of watering: Starting at one end of the garden, while the one bottle is filling (from the garden hose, of course) I uncap the next bottle to be filled. When I transfer the hose to the next bottle, I replace the cap of the previous one and uncap the next one to be filled. And so I continue throughout the garden. But do take care: Do not cap the filled bottles tightly, because it needs some air in order to drain. Cap the filled bottle very lightly, because if you leave the cap off, snails and other insects will enter the open bottle and eventually block your draining hole.

Big radishes Gideon grew

To leave the garden hose filling the bottle while I cap and uncap the others, I have found it handy to have a normal fitting which normally connect the hose to a tap, at the open end of the hose filling the bottle. This prevents the hose from (annoyingly) slipping out of the bottle being filled.

Look at that cabbage

I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly I can now water my whole vegetable garden. Comparing this with how I previously spent precious time (and water!), I realized that I am saving lots of water. I do not have an all wet garden surface, from which much water evaporates into the air.
As a further bonus, after I have started this method of watering, I have had bumper sized crops. To boost even this, I plan to "plant" my bottles on top of a good application of worm compost - a hobby (compost worms) that I have recently started.

http://growyourowngroceries.org/using-bottles-for-inexpensive-water-saving-irrigation-yet-achieving-maximum-yield/

Prepare For Longterm Instability and Hardship

By: Tom Chatham

Unlike the normal business cycle that allows for a recession every few years to clear out the mal-investments and keep the system functioning properly, the current cycle has been artificially induced with money that has unseated the foundation of good financial practices and caused a series of bubbles that must pop at some point. When this happens the business cycle will be heavily damaged and will take many years to reestablish some type of normalcy.

If you think of a cycle as a pendulum swinging back and forth, you must realize that the further it swings to one side, the further it will swing to the other to balance itself. That is what we must realize with the current bubble boom in the financial sectors. The further out of balance they get, the further they will need to swing back to preserve equilibrium. When these bubbles finally pop, the offsetting swing will be monumental. A normal recession of a few years will be exaggerated to a multi-year disaster.

These are the type of conditions that usher in depressions of long duration. This bubble induced mania is far beyond anything experienced in human history and will result in an equally disastrous financial contraction destroying paper assets and making hard assets desirable and difficult to acquire in the aftermath.

In this type of situation, hard assets and a wide knowledge base are as good as it gets. The ownership of capital equipment that produces necessary consumer goods and the ability to finance yourself internally combined with sufficient knowledge to use these resources will provide a safe harbor to get through the difficulties that arise. Becoming your own bank requires the ability to store financial assets such as precious metals and diamonds that have universal value. This is one of the few ways to store wealth that can survive such market destruction.

Usually when market destruction such as we are about to see occurs, the government goes to war in a vain attempt to preserve itself. This causes even more destruction of hard assets and economic freedom that are required to repair the economy. The government often sees this as creative destruction where production is destroyed and must be replaced causing more work and resources to be expended. Destroying labor and hard commodities may spur the economy in the short term but you cannot get wealthy by destroying your limited assets. Unfortunately for the government the economic chaos that will follow the next economic crisis will insure the war economy will be insufficient to spur the economy and return the population to prosperity. The financial system will likely tear itself apart making any sudden recovery impossible.

The result of government and wall street actions will likely result in a multi decade era of depression and hardship that many will be lucky to survive. The government knows this and has increased its internal policing ability to control the population during this turbulent time. In many cases the government will pose more of a threat to the people than the economic conditions.

The only way to see this crisis through to the other side is to have the ability to care for yourself and your family with a minimum of outside help. The more self sufficient you are the better your standard of living will be during this time. The ability to store some wealth in hard assets that you can use such as equipment or weapons and ammo or in precious metals will enable you to get through the difficult times. It is important that you understand that this crisis will not end in a few years but will continue for a substantial amount of time and you must be prepared to act longterm.
 
This means having the resources to maintain your lifestyle longterm and having sufficient supplies such as food or food production capabilities, medical supplies and sufficient ammo to protect life and limb as the situation dictates. In regard to these things the average person is likely to underestimate the amount of resources they will need to get through a long crisis. When it comes to things such as ammo the average person does not realize how much ammo they can use if they are suddenly forced to defend themselves on a daily basis from hostile forces. A protracted gunfight can consume several hundred rounds of ammo in a single day.

It is with these things in mind that the average person needs to determine what their resources are and insure they are rationed to get through the crisis. This is especially important of non-replaceable resources. Planning for disruptions for two or three decades is not overkill at this point. Those that are best prepared for the future difficulties are most likely to get through it in tact and in the best physical and financial shape.

http://projectchesapeake.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/prepare-for-longterm-instability-and-hardship/

Food Storage Calculator Spreadsheet – Free Download

 

If you have been interested in Prepping for more than two minutes, you have heard that you need to have a plan for food storage in case of disaster. Food is one of the most important items preppers can obtain that will keep them alive but so many people do not have more than a few days of food in their pantries at home. We shop for food often and buying extra food isn’t viewed as odd or deviant (yet?) like some prepper purchases but for one reason or another most people only keep the basics on hand and believe that if needed they will just run to the grocery store to pick up last minute items. Unfortunately, you have all seen photos of shelves stripped bare at the first mention of an approaching storm. What if your city was impacted by the recent earthquake? This one was relatively minor, but if there had been more damage, would you have enough food to last until service was restored and the grocery store replenished? What if there was an Ebola outbreak and you were forced to stay in your home for a month. Would you have enough food to last or would you travel out possibly risking exposure?

Ensuring you have a food storage plan is one way to prevent your family from being the ones running down the grocery store isles searching for anything still left. Actually, when we have inclement weather it never fails that my wife will ask me to stop by the store on my way home. It isn’t that we need any food because we have stocked up plenty to last several months at a minimum. No, she wants me to get single items for a recipe or one ingredient that she might need in a few days. I swear it’s just to hear me complain about the lines in the stores of all the panicked people looking to stock up before whatever event we have coming (usually a snow storm) hits us.

Free food storage calculator spreadsheet.

You shouldn’t need to go to the store and a good food storage plan will help you. The first step is to understand what you need in terms of the specific foods and there are lots of websites with a food storage calculator out there that will help but you can’t really customize them. You are forced into taking their food recommendations. I have taken the liberty of creating my own food storage calculator spreadsheet for the readers of the prepper journal. The advantage of this one is that you can play around with the quantities and even add new items to your list and adjust the numbers of people and duration you want to have food stored for. The spreadsheet is open and free for you to use. If you don’t want to store Pearled Barley, just change the food storage spreadsheet to something you do like to eat. Want to keep track of your canned spaghetti sauce? Just add it to the sheet! The only requirement is that you need to be able to open and manipulate an Excel file.

All you have to do is to enter the number of people you are stocking up food for, then the number of months you want to have stored. It isn’t fancy, but it is a simple tool you can download and use to calculate your own food storage in your home. The spreadsheet will give you the average recommended quantities of food and you can add how much you have on-hand. Once that is done, the spreadsheet will let you know how much of any particular item you still need to purchase. You can use this to generate your shopping list and Boom! You will be on your way to securing your families food needs for the next disaster. You can download the free food storage calculator spreadsheet right here.

If this is helpful, we also have a free Ammo Inventory spreadsheet that you can download, add to this one and keep track of multiple supplies on one spreadsheet.

http://www.theprepperjournal.com/2014/08/26/food-storage-calculator-spreadsheet-free-download/ 

Drug Resistant Tuberculosis sufferer Goes AWOL in California

Image iStock/Thinkstock

Augustin Zeferino, a 24 year old suffering from drug resistant TB has decided to stop treatment, putting everyone who comes into contact with him at risk from the deadly disease.

Santa Barbara County Public Health officials have admitted he hasn’t turned up for treatment for at least the past two weeks. The threat is serious enough for a warrant for his arrest to have been issued.
Drug resistant TB is treatable, and curable, but the treatment can take up to two years. Recently Eduardo Rosas Cruz was arrested in Fresno for refusing treatment for the same disease.

The only power Health Officials have is to use the courts to try and isolate the patient from the public. Up to this point they have not been able to locate the missing 24 year old man. They are doing everything they can to find him and ensure the health and safety of the public. This disease is very serious and Public Health official hope to find him before anyone else has a chance to get infected.

Spread by droplets, that is from coughing and sneezing, it’s vital that this man is found as quickly as possible. With ‘flu season’ just around the corner drug resistant TB could become a huge problem in a very short space of time. Untreated the disease can be fatal, particularly to those with a weakened immune system. Lung scarring and respiratory problems often plague TB sufferers long after recovery from the disease.

 

(source)

Delivered by The Daily Sheeple

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Contributed by Chris Carrington of The Daily Sheeple.

 

 www.thedailysheeple.com/yet-another-health-emergency-drug-resistant-tuberculosis-sufferer-goes-awol-in-california_082014#sthash.iq4equBx.dpuf

California’s Drought Has Reached a Grave New Milestone

NOTE FROM SUZANNE: Oh my gosh!!!! Folks, this is the town I lived in before moving to Norton!!!

 

The residents of the San Joaquin Valley are facing an ominous crises due to California’s drought. Unlike most communities in the drought stricken state, the unincorporated town of East Porterville isn’t just running low on water. For some residents, they’ve completely run out.

At least 182 of the 1400 households in the town have run out of well water, prompting the county to provide 12 gallons of water for each resident that is facing water scarcity. With the help of the Red Cross, the bottled water was supplied at the cost of 30,000 dollars, and is expected to last 3 weeks. For some residents, the shortage is just too much.

East Porterville resident Angelica Gallegos fought back tears as she described being without water for four months in the home she shares with her husband, three children and two other adults.
“It’s hard,” she told The Bee. “I can’t shower the children like I used to.”
Farmworker Oliva Sanchez said she still gets a trickle from her tap, but dirt started coming out with the water about a week ago.
“I try to use the least possible. I’ll move if I have to,” she said.

If you can believe it, the number of properties with dry wells may in fact be higher. Some residents are afraid to report these issues for fear of being evicted by their landlords, or possibly having their kids taken away by CPS.

As insane as that sounds, it may be the least asinine part of this whole situation. Perhaps it’s fitting that these folks are receiving their aid in the form of bottled water, because nearly every water bottle company is situated in some of the most drought stricken places in California. Apparently, California is one of the few states that doesn’t protect groundwater usage, so corporations are free to bottle it up from the local springs or the municipal water supply.

It’s total madness when you really think about it. These companies are still bottling up precious water so it can be sold across the country. And there isn’t even anything special about it, since nearly half of all bottled water is nothing more than tap water. In parts of the country where people do have plenty of water, they can buy California’s dwindling supplies at a significantly higher price than their tap water, even though it is essentially the same thing. As reported by Mother Jones:

Despite the fact that almost all US tap water is better regulated and monitored than bottled, and despite the hefty environmental footprint of the bottled water industry, perhaps the biggest reason that bottling companies are using water in drought zones is simply because we’re still providing a demand for it: In 2012 in the United States alone, the industry produced about 10 billion gallons of bottled water, with sales revenues at $12 billion.

Perhaps running out of drinking water isn’t the only major milestone of this drought. We have now reached the same situation that countries like India have been dealing with for decades, where the Coca Cola Corporation can build a bottling plant that soaks up all the groundwater from the region, leaving the locals high and dry. The drought is showing Californians what it’s like to live in a third world country for the very first time.

http://www.thedailysheeple.com/californias-drought-has-reached-a-grave-new-milestone_082014#sthash.y8U1hFsd.dpuf