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Funny, just got a large bag of spinach, for a thanks, for fixing a rototiller. Put 5 servings in the freezer . One for dinner
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I'm just finding my earth mother phase
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I came of age in the 70's so I already went through my earth mother, back to the land phase of life. Plus my parents were rural depression babies so saving, doing it yourself, reusing and preserving is a familiar part of my heritage.
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Oldageisnotfun, yeah I'm sure I will find some projects similar.

I did force myself to learn knitting last year, made a scarf at least . 😆

I tried to keep up with that stuff, but it just made more depressed or angry, not being able to find time .

And that wasn't worth it.
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Anxietynacy, lovely isn't it when we plan things in life and we have to put things on halt. Maybe at some point you'll start again. If not the those projects, news ones :) Definitely with you on the caregiving and having to change priorities, change course. I'm counting on many paths to nirvana :)
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Oldagenot, I was slowly getting into all that, leaning things like making candles, soap , canning, loved it , it was fun.

Was handy when covid happened I was pretty stocked up.

Then Mom got old 😆 and that all went out the window. .
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cwillie & Anxietynacy. Thank you! love your responses. Agreed trading is good as is the storage. I've seen many videos on storage of fresh produce. I love the mason jar in hot water technique, someday I can envisage a ladder full of stuff, hopefully homegrown ;-) but yeah, it seems like a lot of work and all year round.

I think if you can make several batches of various items by doing the canning storage maybe get ahead by a year worth of food, then it might start getting a little downhill from there? because you make a batch, eat a batch, and keep that cycle going. Living off-grid must be the best feeling in the world? ok maybe second best feeling in the world.. :)
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It's all about having prime soil fertility and a large acreage. Plus even the off grid folks will still trade amongst themselves - I've got a bumper crop of potatoes and you have a plum tree, let's make a deal - and shop for things they can't grow themselves.

Of course the things that yield the best and are easiest to grow are usually the things that are dirt cheap to buy in season.
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Oldagenot, oh I hear you, I have friends that do it. Give us a lot of there left overs 🙂

I don't think people understand how much time and effort and brains it takes.

Every September I buy 100 ears of corn , cut them and freeze them. Just ran out last years storage.

That is about all I can handle.

We just love are local farm corn. Even that feels overwhelming.
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Never enough yield :-O How do these off-grid folks do it? to have year round food.
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🌻🌻🌻
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🪲🪲🐛🐛
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🍅 🍅 🍅
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🌱🌿☘️
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I've been reading about people getting amazing yields for decades but those YouTube farmers/gardeners are not fooling me, most of them are all talk and very little evidence to back it up. I have never had much luck with container grown potatoes of either type, I consider myself successful if I get one or two meals for my efforts.
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send - if you grow 100 lbs of sweet potatoes from your slips , I'll fly down and eat them with you!!! Once having been away for on holiday, I came back to a "jungle" of potato shoots in my corner cupboard, I think I grew a few for house plants.

My gardening these days is confined to the balcony and my indoor plants which are adjusting well. I am growing oat seeds in an old roasting pan to give Rocky some greens. Despite tenting saran wrap over the pan to keep the moisture in, the seeds have not germinated as well as I would like. However I did get some green blades growing and put them down for her and she munched the lot and pulled up a few. But she likes it and goes out for a taste daily except yesterday which was too hot for her.

We also have an elm tree seedling growing in a decorated watering can, With temps here in the 90s I'm watering the oat grass and the elm seedling daily. It will need to get planted out at the lake this fall.
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The reluctant gardener here.....

100 pounds of sweet potatoes from slips of one potato!
That's a lot of pressure.

Videos said to change water every two or three days.
I have already failed.

However, this should be fun, right?
These suckers are growing by themselves.

There are so many so-called slips, I could have a 5 ft. x 5 ft. garden.
Planting in the morning, or very soon into available square planters.

Thanks Cwillie, I will do that!
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Yes plant your slips now Send!
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The sweet potato sat there long enough to grow straight up. It grew about 18 inches tall, but no roots.
Then I put a piece of cut potato in a jar, some water, and it grew roots. Took them outside on the porch.

Two of the jars have leaves, one jar does have roots but it looks also like moldy, and the cloudy water smells.

Should I plant them in dirt now? And throw away the moldy sweet potato?

I feel obligated to continue this growing stuff, but will it end with new potatoes?

I could adopt them out.
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Whine away! Does a body good! Sometimes :-)
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Tillage radishes are a popular cover crop here but peanuts not so much, although I do have some planted by the squirrels occasionally!

I'm just whining because where I grew up all we had to do was till the ground and toss in the seeds or plants and we got very good yields, now I'm planting in areas where the topsoil has been stripped away and no amount of compost and peat moss seems to replenish that, it will take decades.
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CWillie, have you tried planting peanuts or dikon radishes? I live where the soil is rock solid and that's what we use to break it up and soften it.

Or maybe passive composting in that area for a year?

Jjust some thoughts knowing exactly how you feel.
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I don't do TikTok either, but when you start to dig a little for verification or question where some of this stuff comes from it always seems to lead there, or to one of the other click bait sites like X or Instagram.
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It might have, not sure but sounds like a tic tok thing, I don't do tic tok.
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It originated with TikTok, right? Every weird bit of news or advice I've come across seems to be something somebody made up and posted there, and no matter how outlandish you'll find hundreds of people who claim it's all perfectly true 🙄
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CW, there is a strange thing on the news about literally burring your old cotton underwear, and the more deteriorated the underwear is the better the soil is. 😂
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I dug my garlic today and although the tops looked fantastic I'm disappointed with the size of the bulbs. But then when I was digging I saw how despite my attempts to improve it my soil is still basically hard builder's clay, so it's no wonder I can't get anything to yield well there... sigh, I sometimes wonder why I bother.
But hope springs eternal, I've planted some bush beans where the garlic was in hope of taking advantage of the big rainfall we are supposed to get from the remnants of Beryl.
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Teddy bear sunflowers are short and smaller and they look like big puff balls of sunshine when blooming. I planted them 2 years ago and the all died. Better luck this year 😁
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I have a beautiful teddy bear sunflower starting to bloom. 🌻 🌞
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So my red breasted grosbeak, sits on the window ledge, looks at me in the window, flys away. I bang on the window to get the starlings off the feeder and the grosbeak comes back.

I swear can birds be that smart?

I'm getting so many new varieties of birds this year. 😊
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