Quick and easy Window Shelves to grow plants.

Sue from http://suesgardenjournal.blogspot.com/ gave me the idea about this post. For sometime I have been trying to utilize every piece of useful space to grow veggies in my sun room. With a little creativity I came up with this workable design that can be added to any window.  .

This is how I did it. I cut two 2x4s approx the length of the window. Most windows are framed and it should be easy to anchor them right next to the windows with screws. When that was done I installed my brackets. The ones that are shown, I bought from Ikea you can pick them up here for $2 a pack. So I bought 3 packs for what I wanted to do.

After installing the brackets to the 2x4s, I added the wooden shelves. The shelves are 1 foot wide and 4 feet long. I purchased each plank for $7 at lowes. They are not anchored in although they could be. Since I use them for plants I sprayed the top portion with a protective base of paint to repel water. These shelves have absolutely been great and I am currently using them to germinate seeds through the window. Each shelf costs approximately $10 to make. Just a simple design for some practical work

Support your Habit, Sell some plants

This year I am taking this homesteading thing to another level. In another post I mentioned I had a seed addiction and it's only getting worst. So over the past few months I have been given some thoughts on how to supplement my passion for growing vegetables. I have decided to sell vegetable plants this spring. Although I will not become a millionaire selling vegetable plants I can offset some of the cost incurred by my sporadic need for seed. I have a sun room with southern exposure and it works great to start plants from seed. This year I have purchased several seed trays to start my seeds. 

Why does this make perfect sense? Many people love to grow vegetables especially where I am from. But many of these people don't have the means to start their plants earlier. Tomatoes have to be the most popular fruit to grow in the spring through summer. But in the summer in our region Tomatoes shut off because it's way to hot for them to have proper pollination, nevertheless, they pick back up towards the end of summer and produce all the way out to December. So if someone wants to plant tomatoes from seed in my area they will often wait until mid to late march to put seeds in the ground. Give or take 90 days to see the first fruits depending on the variety and that puts the plant right smack in the heat of summer. So here is where I come in. Germinate seeds from January, February time period and with the proper set up even earlier and raise strong plants that are ready to be transplanted in the spring with only a few weeks away from bearing the first set of flowers.

Pricing is a sticky subject, but as you peruse through catalogs and local markets you can get an idea for what the pricing should be like per plant. I am under the notion that people should not undercut the market by cutting the prices of plants drastically. The majority of Bonnie Plants sell for approx $4.00 at the local markets this year I will sell one plant for $4, two plants for $7 and three plants for $10.

Specializing in Heirlooms has drawn alot of interest in my plants this year and growing varieties from different parts of the world has seem to cause alot of interest as well. All in all this has gone viral and I could only wish that I can make a living from this. Who knows where this will go but as for now it's alot of fun.

 Advertising, plants is very easy by using craigslist. Also my local flea market has booths for $5-$25 that can be rented on the weekend. Well it certainly looks like I'm going to be that guy. Spending his weekends under a huge a umbrella with a Hawaiian shirt and sipping on some iced tea selling vegetable plants. I'll probably find something from American Eagle because whatever I do it has to be sexy, even if it involves selling vegetable plants:)

Grow $700 worth of Food In 100sqf

Click here to read the article.

As the year starts I have been giving a lot of thought to how much of an impact I want to make on my garden this year. I started searching around the web to see how I can translate my garden growth into dollars and cents and thier is really nothing that stands out except the post above written in the Mother Earth column. I will start to catalouge how much veggies cost per vegetable in another post so that I can translate that into money. I will have to call up mom and tell her that she was wrong; Because Money does grow on trees:)

Instead of a steak try some Lamb

Pictured here is a Grilled Lamb Shoulder, with fresh string beans dressed with roasted almonds, baked plantains and a baked cream ziti with prawns. Many people don't like lamb for one reason or another. The only reason I can come up with is that lamb tends to have a gamier flavor than beef. I have found this to be true with leg of lamb rather than shoulders. I have found that lamb shoulders placed on the grill seasoned with salt and pepper can't be touched by anything else. I love my steaks, especially a nice rare boneless rib eye. But even that rib eye has a tough time competing with the tenderness of a grilled lamb shoulder.
Lamb for what it's worth is powered punched with all 8 essential amino acids and a 3-ounce serving provides 43% of an adult males protein. An added benefit for me to purchase lamb more than I do beef, is the price. The price of a tender lamb shoulder averages around $1.90 - $2.15 per shoulder where I purchase them. I have seen considerable savings switching to lamb for my red meat source.
Also there is the fat issue; lamb has less fat content than beef. So with each cut you will get a much more leaner piece of meat than compared with beef. Me personally I love fat, lets be honest fat adds flavor. But nonetheless, since I am trying to train properly and eat right "MOST" of the time having lamb on the menu has been a great choice.

Rainwater Collection System

With all of this rain that we have been having in the past few weeks I have been giving more than a serious thought on how to utilize this resource. There are many discussions on recycling rainwater for use in the garden that just reqiure you to add downspouts to your rain gutter and tie them into some sort of barrell that can store the rain water for later use. However, im leaning more towards the purification aspects of rain water so that I can use it for in the home, mainly turning it into potable water that can be used to drink. This type of set up would require a purification system equipped with a few gadgets like UV Lights, skimmers and filters.

I was intrigued by the idea from bumbling around on the net searching for the "How to dos" of rain collection and came across a few sites that explained how many gallons of water you can collect from your roof from just one 1nch of rain. For example: if you had a roof that measured approx 1000 sqf you can collect approx 560 gallons of rain water if it rained an inch and that could take place over a few days a few weeks or as in my case every day for the past few weeks. Now look at the numbers if you had a roof that was approximately 2500 sqf; if it rained 1 inch, you can collect approx 1400 gallons of rainwater from 1 inch of rainwater as measured from the guide posted on this websitehttp://www.greenbuilder.com/sourcebook/RainwaterGuide2.html

It has been estimated that we use approx 69 gallons a day for our water needs. With a rain collection (purification) system I can tap into a resource that I don't have to pay for after the expense of putting together. But putting it together is where the gravel meets the hardball. Because these things are not cheap, nevertheless, with the benefits its really not all that expensive. Some of the companies that I have researched estimate the cost for a purification rain water collection system can run you from $4000 to as much as $10,000 for a really good sophisticated system.

With a little bit more reasearch and keeping my eyes open for a good deal, I will oneday add a purification rainwater system to our urban homestead, but I know as soon as I do, Murphy is going to have his way and there will not be a drop of rain in site when I ever do get this thing installed.

Rainwater collection purification sites:
http://www.raintankdepot.com/
http://www.rainwatermanagement.com/design.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9974362-54.html

Being Debt free is the Key for true Self-Sufficientism

We can talk about all the dirt, gardening, worms, compost and Veggies and If we are in Debt up to our Knees we can not truly be Self-Suffcient. The very premise of Self-Sufficientism is the ability to be free.

With todays economy in the tank and banks struggling to keep their noses out of the extremely deep water; their is a need for individuals to take personal responsibility of their actions to get out of the grips of what has held them back.

Debt is a retro-virus that reappears in other forms and causes us to change our habits and contort our lives to fit in the disfiguered cookie mold that debt has designed for us and therefore we can never be free when we are slaves to debt. For anyone aspiring to be truly self-sufficient they will really need to address this issue in their life first.

The best thing that my wife and I have done was to pay our vehicles off. It is amazing how not having a carpayment can be. It was difficult but we knew the benefits of not having a payment. Secondly, we chose to not live on credit. We budget for everything we do. If we can't afford it than it was not important. But more importantly we were able to save money by budgeting our money. Having a savings is key to financial freedom for those rainy days and emergencies that will take place of what a credit card will do. Im not saying we don't have credit cards, we do. but we never use them. Our budget has enabled us to be free of debt besides paying for our mortgage.

The ultimate step in the right direction for us to pay off of our mortgages and just pay taxes on our home and utilities and if I have my way. I won't pay for any utilities. My longterm plan is to purchase a rain water collection system for drinking water and install a solar roof for electricity. i would love to have a wind turbine but my neighbors may protest but as we approach armegedon im not going to care what they think.