Prepping for emergencies?

[Josh]

Hand sanitiser is hazmat and has limits on how much can be packed into a single location, so it’s the kind of thing you’d rather not be stockpiling or moving large quantities of (unless you want your building to burn down).

[ohio jones]

We also have 3 raised beds for vegetables and an herb garden. Lasagna gardening makes it easier.

Could you share your secrets? I've never been able to raise lasagna, when I tried it in the pasta.

[Josh]

We also have 3 raised beds for vegetables and an herb garden. Lasagna gardening makes it easier.

Could you share your secrets? I've never been able to raise lasagna, when I tried it in the pasta.

I’ve successfully raised spinach (for my famous spinach lasagna recipe), but the pasta and ricotta cheese has remained elusive.

[mike]

We also have 3 raised beds for vegetables and an herb garden.

Herbs are really fun and relatively easy to raise. Herb plants are cheap, can be grown in pots or in the ground, and it's super cool to be able to just go out on the patio and snip off some fresh cilantro or parsley for a recipe. Buying fresh herbs in stores is really expensive, which makes growing your own that much more rewarding.

[Ken]

We also have 3 raised beds for vegetables and an herb garden. Lasagna gardening makes it easier.

Could you share your secrets? I've never been able to raise lasagna, when I tried it in the pasta.

As I tell my students, Google is your friend! https://www.google.com/search?q=lasagna+gardening

[JohnHurt]

We also have 3 raised beds for vegetables and an herb garden. Lasagna gardening makes it easier.

Could you share your secrets? I've never been able to raise lasagna, when I tried it in the pasta.

As I tell my students, Google is your friend! https://www.google.com/search?q=lasagna+gardening

I will be trying "no till" farming this year, much like lasagna gardening. We raise sheep and have about 40 large round hay bales in the paddock to feed them through the winter. This makes a large compost pile that I usually turn under with a plow. But I want to try "no till" this year and see how that works. If you have experience with this, let me know.

My friend told me that after about 3 years of no till, all of the weed seeds on the top layer die, and there is very little weeding to be done, that is, if you never till the soil from that point on.

There is also a "Ruth Stout" method where you cover the ground with hay, and you don't have to weed your garden. More info on YouTube, of course.

I am envious of anyone with a raised bed. I am trying to find a cheap solution, like cutting down cedar posts, notching and stacking like Lincoln Logs, then cover the inside with 2 or more layers of chicken wire. I would like to have a bed tall enough to work easily. But metal raised beds are very expensive.

There is something called "Hügelkultur" that I think would work inside a raised bed. You put old stumps and rotting wood in the bottom of the bed, covered with other organic matter, with the soil on the very top for the seed bed. It wicks the water up from the ground. I would like to try that, there are several people on YouTube with good results. And I have a dead tree I need to take care of - and I don't want to fill the bed with dirt as that will just compact.

If you want to talk about your raised beds, I am interested. Have a great day.

[Bootstrap]

We also have 3 raised beds for vegetables and an herb garden.

Herbs are really fun and relatively easy to raise. Herb plants are cheap, can be grown in pots or in the ground, and it's super cool to be able to just go out on the patio and snip off some fresh cilantro or parsley for a recipe. Buying fresh herbs in stores is really expensive, which makes growing your own that much more rewarding.

And who wants to run to the store when you want fresh herbs ... just remember to plant the herb garden close to the kitchen door.

[Bootstrap]

There is something called "Hügelkultur" that I think would work inside a raised bed. You put old stumps and rotting wood in the bottom of the bed, covered with other organic matter, with the soil on the very top for the seed bed. It wicks the water up from the ground. I would like to try that, there are several people on YouTube with good results. And I have a dead tree I need to take care of - and I don't want to fill the bed with dirt as that will just compact.

If you want to talk about your raised beds, I am interested. Have a great day.

I have three raised beds plus an herb garden.

The first one uses cinder blocks because I had a lot of cinder blocks and I figured I might as well use them. The soil is a mix of rich humous from the forest, compost from the kitchen, and composted leaves. When I told a friend about it, he asked me if it wasn't a lot of work. Sure, I said. Then he told me how much soil he thought I had moved - it was more than a ton, I can't remember if it was more than two. At any rate, the soil is rich, things grew very nicely, for some reason the zucchini did not do well. I mean, how can anyone fail at zucchini? But I'm here to tell you that it is indeed possible!

The other two combine lasagna gardening with Hügelkultur. I used cedar boards on the outside, the bottom layer is cardboard, then grass clippings, then a layer of leaves, repeating the layering up to the height I wanted. For the last layer, I used 3 inches of compost instead of grass clippings on one of the beds so I could plant it this year. You can add soil or compost at the top and plant it immediately or wait 3 months or so for it to settle down. The third bed is currently dormant, but I am thinking of hauling a layer of rich humous so I can plant it this weekend too. I am all out of good compost at this point.

If the coffee shops were open I would be using more coffee grounds. If I had a good source of manure I would certainly be using it.

I grew up in a family that lived in a rural part of the country, we had a huge garden and beehives, we also made maple sugar. I had bees when I was in college, but I haven't been gardening much for decades except for herb gardens, which we have always had. We also had 35 chickens at one point where I am living, but my work required enough travel to make that difficult. We have always composted - why would you send that to the dump instead of using it to enrich the soil?