Sprouting Basics

Seeds

When I first began thinking in terms of serious prepping, I considered my gardening options. Here in the wilds of Wyoming, we have a very short growing season. In my particular situation, I also live at 7,000 feet altitude. It can snow any day of the year.  Even though it is now early July, we can end up with nights in the high thirties or low forties.  It can literally snow any day of the year up here.

Cleaning Your Seeds

Seeds harvested from your garden come in two forms:

They are either wet seeds or dry seeds.  Depending on what kind they are determines how you clean and save them.

Global Buckets

Three years ago I found this link and started making my own global buckets.  For those of you who have limited gardening space or live in a harsh climate, this is the ideal set-up. 

These are especially important if you live in an arid climate. They use 50% to 80% less water!

http://www.globalbuckets.org/

Where I live it can snow any day of the year.  But lugging 5 gallon buckets of dirt and plants into the house is not possible for me. This mint is grown in a double-kitty litter bucket.  The pipe is where you pour the water in.

If you live in a situation where you need to be on the go, traveling or  bug-out, then these containers enable you to take your garden with you.

Patriot Nurse Suburban Container Gardening

Several years ago I stumbled across a series of youtubes by the Patriot Nurse.

Here is her youtube on container gardening. I think it’s especially important because many of us either live in the city or in an area where we do not have land for gardening. This is an excellent example of container gardening. Notice you don’t need fancy containers.

She practices companion planting and intensive gardening. She also has an interesting composting system.

Herbs Harvesting Chart

I highly recommend How to Dry Foods by Deanna Delong.

She has a great list for growing herbs. Here is the chart for when to harvest and what parts to use.

I grow most of my herbs in one-gallon self-watering containers. I have no garden space, and since we live in a very cold climate, I can easily bring my plants inside when I need to.

Harvesting Seeds

Seed harvesting and cleaning techniques fall into two main categories according to whether the fruits and seeds are dry or wet when mature (actually, a third category exists of seeds which will die if dried out after maturing... see Preparing Seeds for Storage).

Seed Saving Handbook

This is a very important resource. Do keep it somewhere so you can find it. http://howtosaveseeds.com/index.php

Linda's Note: heirloom seeds are antiques.

• They are not modern hybrids, but come from the ancient plant stocks.  They are important because hybrids, although they may be prolific, extra-large, more colorful varieties, or whatever… tend to be more susceptible to disease and disaster. 
•  Additionally, hybrid seeds are either incapable of reproducing at all, or incapable of reproducing themselves. Each successive generation must be re-created in the laboratory garden or test tube.
• Today, it’s hard to know whether or not a seed, plant or crop is a natural one or whether or not it has been genetically altered. If you are concerned about the as yet unknown and untested consequences of genetically altered foods, you will want to grow your own from heirloom seeds.

Here is a brief synopsis

of some general information you need to know.