Tools and technology

Do your kids have "shop" class at their school?

I'm afraid most Americans today would answer that question in the negative. There are still schools that offer something, but their importance has largely been neglected.

Unfortunately, even many home school families fail to provide training in the manual arts. Girls will do some cooking with their mothers or even fathers in some homes that still actually cook. Boys will still try to fix broken things around the home. And of course there are boys who cook and girls who fix things.

My point here has nothing to do with gender issues and everything to do with generations who have grown up thinking their hands were made primarily for the purpose of making gestures while speaking and operating keypads.

What has been forgotten in this madness is that work with ones hands reaches deep into the soul of a child and pulls out that inner creativity and uniqueness.

Not everyone will be a master chef, woodcarver, metalworker, fishing fly maker, luthier, mechanic, inventor, furnituremaker, or whatever. However, every child is uniquely created in the image of God.

Speaking of our Creator, perhaps the most universally accepted doctrine in the Christian faith among all denominations is that God created the world and everything in it.

While there is much debate about the particulars, Christians universally affirm that God designed, and created, and is responsible for all. Not only are we his creation, but we live, breath, ingest, touch, and simply cannot escape his creation. It is quite literally universal.

If we are made in the image of God, and his creative nature is such an integral part of our everything, why have we ourselves ceased to make, create, build, invent, and grow?

If you agree, don't just post this on social media or text a link, go make, create, build, invent, and grow.

Luke

Have you ever paid $10 for a couple of lousy tomatoes? Plenty of gardeners have and out of their own garden!

Gardening isn't farming

One of the great American misconceptions about home gardening is that it is scaled down farming. That might have been mostly true 100 years ago, but today's agri-business isn't anything like gardening.

Modern farming generally means monoculture, extensive reliance on chemicals and commercial seed, carefully planned planting patterns optimized for production and ease of planting and harvesting. It means production over taste and economy over sustainability.

It also means an enormous investment in tools and technology in order to minimize labor and human involvement.

Gardening profitably

There is no standard for home gardens. It is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Remember what I said about not being commercial ag?

A garden in Arizona with limited water availability will look different from a garden on the Oregon coast and those will look different from the New England garden. Even gardens on adjoining land might have very different properties and characteristics.

Interdependence

What you are looking for as you choose a garden plot, decide how to work and plant is interdependence. Some would call it synergy. You want to make what you have work for you.

Things you will have to work with and around might include thin topsoil, dry summers, sandy soil, swampland, particular pest problems, cool days, short seasons, dry summers and so forth.

Some people will have certain advantages such as large quantities of certain types of waste available, rich soil, easy access to water, and so forth.

To make your garden fun and profitable, you need to learn to work with the situation you have.

Contemplate

Before you plant this spring, spend some time in your garden and think about how the trees, sun, soil, terrain, rocks, rain, animals, and resources you have can work together to make your garden more productive with less effort in a way that builds the soil for later harvests.

Suggestions

If you are a new gardener, I would strongly suggest checking out bio-intensive planting methods. As time goes on, you can think about working in some permaculture concepts.

—Luke

Here is a video on desert permaculture in the Holy Land.

This article is a follow up to The #1 key to saving money with gardening.

The #2 key to saving money with gardening is eating more of what you produce.

Reckless planting

Have you ever seen a large garden so full of weeds you can't even walk through it?

Producing more from your garden isn't about reckless planting. A lot of people will plant far more than they could ever hope to eat, get tired of taking care of it, and then let it go.

Calculate

In deciding what to plant, you should make some attempt to figure how much you can actually eat. If you are planting for your neighbors, friends, and family, go ahead and factor that in, but do it on purpose. Feel free to factor in a margin of error for whatever factors you want to consider. Granted, your figures will be very inexact, especially for first year gardeners, but give it a try.

You may find you don't really need 6,000 radishes all ready to eat at once while you do need more than five pound of potatoes to last until Christmas.

Just because there are enough seeds in the packet to plant sixteen rows in your garden doesn't mean you should plant sixteen rows. Plant only about what you think you will eat. When you are finished planting, carefully pack those precious seeds that are left, and you will be able to plant them next year.

Carefully calculating the size of your plantings will save on water, fertilizer, and any pesticides you might use as well as reducing your work load, focusing your energy on the plants you really need.

Time your plantings

Part of profiting from the harvest involves controlling not just how much you plant, but also when you plant it. If you want fresh sweet corn all season, you will have to stagger the plantings and possibly will want to experiment with different varieties with different rates of maturation.

Some plants must be planted very early in the season when the weather is still very cool and others very late after the soil has warmed sufficiently. If you plant too early or too late, you risk harvesting produce that optimal or even loosing a crop entirely. Through much of the US, a fall harvest of short season crops is possible, but will require a lot of watering for many gardens.

Food storage

Eating more of what you produce involves storing it until you want to eat it. I won't go into food storage here, but know that you can refrigerate, dry, can, freeze, ferment, pickle, or just store stuff in a cool place.

Ya gotta eat it

No matter how much you produce and how well you store it, eating more of what you produce, means you actually have to eat it. No matter how much eggplant you grow, if your family won't eat it, it won't do you any good. You want to plant things you like to eat.

Less obviously, there is a lot of difference in flavor between different varieties. For instance, tomatoes come in all colors from red to white to yellow to orange to black to pink to green. In addition, there are different sizes, shapes, and color patterns. Moreover, there is a world of difference in flavors. Other vegetables show similar variety, but to unlock their potential, you will almost certainly want to dive into the world of heirloom seeds. Commercial hybrid varieties don't show nearly the variety and won't let you save seed from year to year.

Of course, eating what you produce isn't the only reason to garden…

—Luke

The #1 key to successfully saving money with your garden is to keep expenses low.

The unique thing about home gardening is that your financial savings are pretty much guaranteed to be less than your grocery bill because no matter how much you produce, somehow, you have to eat it to realize a direct savings.

To save more money, you either have to eat more of your own produce or grow your produce with less money.

Even if you have a large family and are able to cut your grocery bill by half during the harvest months, you might still only save about US$1,000 even in a good year, depending on where you live and how you eat.

Unless you are a vegetarian family with 10 kids who love salads, live in the Pacific Northwest, have a neighbor who loves to give away free compost, and have prior gardening experience, you will likely save a lot less the first year, even before you deduct your expenses. In fact, you would do well just to break even.

My point? Keep your total expenses under US$200 the first year if saving money is your main motivation.

Here are some tips to get you thinking.

Seed and plants

First and most obviously, you will need seed. I would suggest you buy heirloom seed and carefully select a few varieties to try based on your tastes and your region. Learn to save your own seed and then next year, you can swap seeds with other gardeners to experiment with other varieties until you select ones that really do well for you. You can expect to spend at least $30-50 just for seed. You can easily get carried away and spend a LOT more.

You can get cheaper seed at your local discount store if you are willing to get varieties that are factory farmed and generally not quite as appropriate for the home garden.

If you buy plants, your costs will go up dramatically even as your choice of varieties vanishes. If you grow your own transplants, you will probably need a cold frame and a bit of growing skill.

Garden space

You need someplace to plant.

If you must garden in containers, you can get the cheap black plastic pots greenhouses use.

A lot of people will just dig up a spot in their yard. Choose carefully, and find someplace that is well drained, not on top of the septic tank if you have one, gets appropriate sun, is away from tree roots and close to the house. Also, a lot of people have parts of their yard that have better soil than others. Unless you are just wanting to improve a section of your yard, you will likely want to choose an area that has better soil. If you can avoid buying timbers for raised beds, hauling dirt and so forth, this might not cost you anything.

Digging

You need something to dig with. Even the permaculture and Ruth Stout type people will probably want to dig up their soil the first year or even two. For some gardeners, this means a powered rear-tine tiller, for others it means a hand trowel. Most people would do well to get a good digging fork as their first tool.

Personally, I would buy a digging fork before a shovel. It is the best tool available for my preferred system, biointensive raised bed gardening, and is a lot easier to use for ground breaking and double digging of raised beds than a shovel. A shovel is pretty important too, but you could likely get away with just borrowing one from time to time.

A quality digging fork could run you as much as US$60. A shovel should cost less. If you take good care of them, these tools should last for many years.

Transplanting

You almost certainly want a hand trowel. Again, I would suggest quality here. Otherwise, you will end up doing like I do and replacing it every year or so after you bend it. A trowel is useful for transplanting into the garden and working with small plants. It can also be useful for stirring up a small patch of soil for replanting. Most gardeners find this tool indispensible.

Cultivation

You need something to cultivate with. This is highly personal and depends on your gardening style and type of soil. Some people have a favorite hoe. Others use their trowel. Some just mulch and pull any weeds that make it through.

If you are a new gardener, don't sweat it. You will likely go through several tools before you find one you really like for your style of planting, choice of crops, and soil.

Plant maintenance

You have to maintain your plants. This means water, fertilizer, mulch, and soil amendments as well as pest, bird and varmint control.

If you live in a dry area and pay a lot for water, you will want to look for varieties that produce with little water as well as planting methods and spacing that reduce water use.

Having a compost pile can help with your fertilizer needs, but it takes a minimum of several months to make compost. Most manure also needs time to age.

My experience

I grew up gardening, and when I moved to our house here in the Dominican Republic, I wanted to start a garden. To do it, I had to break up a cement pad, pick through cement-like construction fill, haul soil amendments, buy soil, buy boards and cement to fix the borders of the beds, and pay for water.

Even then, I have had trouble growing things and have experimented unsuccessfully with a long list of varieties over the last three years. A few have been very successful, but now we are anticipating a move this summer, so I will have to start all over again.

I have learned a lot and had some fun doing it, but I doubt seriously that I have saved any money.

The bottom line

If you are a new gardener or new to your area and can break even your first year, you are doing pretty well. If you can set yourself up to double and triple your production and consumption the second and third years while spending a very minimal amoung on seed and supplies, you are doing great.

Gardening is a skill that has to be learned, and each gardener has to learn their own garden, build up the soil, figure out what their family will eat and what their local pests will eat.

Of course, saving money isn't the only reason to garden…

—Luke