7946 MEN Guide to Living on Less

M O R E T H A N A M A G A Z I N E . . . A W AY O F L I F E

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News from Mother

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Earn a Living Doing What You Love

COVER PHOTOGRAPH: ISTOCK/ATTILA HUSZTI

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Find Satisfaction and True Security

Our Quest to Create a Sustainable Farm

By growing our own food and producing our own energy, we’re getting closer to achieving a practical and productive farmstead with a positive net impact on the planet.

These backwoods breadwinners offer guidance for thinking outside the box to make a living in a rural setting or from your home.

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Make Your Own Gas! Alcohol Fuel Basics

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Grab ‘n’ Go Homemade Convenience Foods

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Freezing Fruits and Vegetables From Your Garden

Produce ethanol on a small scale and enjoy the many benefits of this homegrown, renewable fuel.

Need quick snacks and meals? Drop processed, store-bought fare, and opt instead for these healthful edibles that work well in a pinch.

Round out your food preservation regimen! Tap these straightforward freezing tips to turn your garden harvests into sensational, off-season meals.

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Cozy, Affordable and Inspiring Tiny Homes

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Beekeeping Basics: What’s All the Buzz About?

Start small, and you can enjoy mortgage-free living in a handbuilt home.

If you’re interested in raising honey bees but aren’t sure you can commit, here’s a rundown of the equipment you’ll need to get started and the schedule you can expect to follow.

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Want Milk? Get Goats

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How to Raise Chickens for Meat

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The Incredible Versatility of Eggs

Dairy goats can supply your family with fresh milk inexpensively.

The fun’s a bonus.

Don’t just wing it if you’re new to raising meat chickens. Use our guide to fill your freezer with broilers in as little as six weeks from hatch to harvest.

Pastured, free-range eggs can be used in numerous egg recipes, from simple fried eggs and bacon to an elegant soufflé.

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M O R E T H A N A M A G A Z I N E . . . A W AY O F L I F E

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Build Better Soil with Free Organic Fertilizer

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The Food Preserver’s Garden

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How to Easily Grow High-Yielding Greens

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Start a Quick and Easy Food Garden

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A Plan for Food Self-Sufficiency

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Cut Your Food Bills in Half

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Prune for Small-Space Fruit Trees

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Craft These Fresh Easy Cheeses

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Enjoy Fresh Herbs All Year

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Recommended Resources

Avoid expensive fertilizers — here are your best organic options, including two that you won’t even have to pay for!

Boost food security and elevate winter meals by planting extra crops in your plots for canning, drying, freezing and fermenting.

Harvest more food from less space with less labor than ever before using this new ‘eat-all greens’ method.

This season-by-season planting plan for a no-dig, easy-care bag garden features 25 favorite crops.

Enjoy local, homegrown food year-round! Estimate how much to grow or buy, and learn how to achieve food security with these charts and guidelines.

It’s true! You can enjoy more healthful food while spending much less to feed your family.

This revolutionary pruning method will enable you to grow any type and variety of fruit in small spaces. Never settle for an apple you don’t adore or a peach you can’t reach.

Learn how to make fresh cheese and get easy cheese recipes for paneer, mascarpone, chevre and fromage blanc.

Why pay grocery store prices for fresh herbs when you can harvest savory snips from your garden throughout the winter?

Find trusted sources for gardening advice and supplies, wiser-living apps, energy-efficient building materials, solar panels, and more.

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have to equal junk food, and quick meals don’t have to mean a stop at a drive-thru. Some M editors, plus a few of our resourceful readers, rallied together to offer you these fresh ideas for using seasonal produce and healthful ingredients to create simple, make-ahead snack foods and meals.

Pantry Prep and Planning A good first step is to pack your pantry with an arsenal of ingredients you can use to make grab-and-go foods. One smart approach is to buy certain ingredients in bulk, and use large jars with screw-top lids to keep these foods at the ready. Dried beans, whole grains, nuts, dried fruits, maple syrup and honey are a handful of items worth stocking.

Keep plenty of serving-size, freezersafe containers around, so that when you make a big batch of a shelf-stable or freezable food, you can easily stash it. Ideally, for snacks, you’ll want the containers to be small enough so that you won’t have to re-portion foods when you’re hungry or heading out the door — 4- and 8-ounce Mason jars will work well.

Don’t wait until your tummy’s grumbling, you’re leaving for an appointment, or it’s 10 minutes to dinnertime before you think about preparing something wholesome to eat. Carve out a bit of time once a month to prepare freezer-safe or pantry-stable meal and snack recipes, plus a bit of time weekly to prep fridgefriendly morsels.

This weekend, make fresh, cultured yogurt and some nutty granola to pair together all week.

Grab ’n’ Go

Need quick snacks and meals? Drop processed, store-bought fare, and opt instead for these healthful edibles that work well in a pinch.

Edited by Shelley Stonebrook

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erhaps since the era of the TV dinner, “convenience” has reigned king in food marketers’ appeals to consumers. From the overwhelming variety of store-bought snack options to instant meals in boxes and bags, food is always at the ready, and its preparation is largely outsourced. Even homesteaders and advocates of eating nourishing, local

foods may have difficulty avoiding processed, store-bought options when the goin’ gets busy.

But all of this so-called convenience comes at a cost. Additives, stabilizers, preservatives, artificial coloring and trans fats — along with sugar-packed, sodium-stuffed, and refined-carb-loaded recipes — are part and parcel of processed food. In a nutshell, we lose control over ingredients. But convenience food doesn’t

pantry of whole, unprocessed ingredients to combine into whatever she desires based on her recipes, taste buds and available time. The Instant Pot speeds the process of cooking beans, rice, or even a whole chicken or roast. “I can put any of these items into the cooker, set the cook time and pressure level, and then prep the rest of the meal. Within an hour, I can have dinner on the table — even if I forgot to soak the beans!” Kongs says.

A water bath canner and pressure canner will help immensely, too. You can put up seasonal produce during summer and fall, and use any downtime (think winter, when your canner isn’t working overtime) to can beans, soups and chili.

Managing Editor Rebecca Martin cans fruits or vegetables nearly every weekend during the growing season, but never a big batch at a time.

“Smaller batches are less labor-intensive, and you can wedge them into a tight schedule more easily than larger batches that require a full day in the kitchen,” she says. She preserves salsa in her Instant Pot, which can double as a water bath canner. “I just pop in four pint jars of salsa and process them for 10 minutes.

There’s no open stockpot filled with boiling water pumping heat and humidity into the air, so the kitchen doesn’t get uncomfortable, even on the hottest days.”

Freezable Fare Savvy snackers also need to befriend their freezers. “I’m a fan of freezing because it’s fast, doesn’t require special equipment, and preserves the food’s flavor and nutrients,” Martin says. You can easily package many snacks as individual

Get Equipped

FOTOLIA/ANNAMAVRITTA; PAGE 22: FOTOLIA/LILECHKA75

HOMEMADE CONVENIENCE FOODS

Stocking up on snacks and freezer meals made with local ingredients is self-sufficiency at its finest.

Arm yourself with a food dehydrator and a good blender or food processor, so homemade beef jerky, dried fruits and vegetables, hummus and other dips, healthy smoothies, and so much more become readily accessible.

Reader Jennifer Kongs says the two biggest players in her kitchen are her Vitamix blender and Instant Pot electric pressure cooker. Even if you don’t buy these brands, a food processor and a pressure cooker can make any meal more convenient. Kongs grinds grains into fresh flours, makes nut butters, and purées dips, soups and smoothies in her Vitamix. This allows her to keep a

Nutty Energy Bites

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Ingredients

Associate Editor Amanda Sorell adores these • 3 cups tahini energy bites for after-work snacks and pre- or • 1 cup nut butter post-exercise nourishment. A pared-down ver• 2 cups honey sion of Rosemary Gladstar’s “Zoom Balls” • 1 cup dark chocolate recipe (available in her book Rosemary Gladstar’s chips, optional Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health; http://bit.

• 8 ounces shredded coconut ly/1pdB6Om), they’re easy to make and store well • 1 cup chopped almonds or in the freezer. Yield: about 30 snack balls. nuts of your choice Directions: Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Roll mixture into 1-inch balls (make smaller or larger if desired). Try rolling the balls in cocoa powder, or extra chopped nuts or coconut, if you’d like. Store balls in the fridge or freezer. If frozen, pull out a handful and let thaw for just a few minutes, and they’ll be ready to pop in your mouth!

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Nut balls: Fotolia/annamavritta

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Beach-combed whalebone rafters on a tiny house in British Columbia.

Cozy, Affordable and Inspiring

Off the grid, elegant, and on wheels: http://goo.gl/xACLW.

TINY HOMES

Start small, and you can enjoy mortgage-free living in a hand-built home.

By Lloyd Kahn n 1973, we published our first book, Shelter, an oversized offspring of The Whole Earth Catalog that featured 1,000 photos of buildings around the world.

In those days, many people were looking for ways to escape the conventional suit/job, bank/mortgage or rent/landlord approach to housing. In Shelter, we encouraged people to use their hands to

build living space, to be creative, to scale back, to start small.

Like a lot of other ideas from the ’60s, the concept of hand-built homes is popular once again. Tiny homes have been discovered not just by the public, but also by the media.

The mortgage crisis has devastated the housing market in North America.

Huge homes along with huge mortgages were, in the end, unsustainable. Millions of people have had the rug pulled out

Lloyd Kahn embodies the idea that we don’t quit playing because we get older, we get old because we quit playing. Here he is, skateboarding at 73.

Lloyd Kahn is among the most enthusiastic, dedicated, hardworking and athletic — yes, athletic — guys I know. If they were to put a photo next to the definition of “authentic” in the dictionary, it could be a picture of Lloyd.

When Lloyd came back from his tour with the Air Force in the late ’60s, he went to work as an insurance broker. But what he really wanted to do was surf and build houses, and he quickly picked up the habit of doing what he really wants to do.

His first building project had a living roof. Then he built a home in Big Sur from railroad timbers and used lumber. He built geodesic domes for five years, before concluding that they don’t work well as homes. His present home in Bolinas, Calif., sits in the midst of a large vegetable garden, includes a striking 30-foot-tall hexagonal tower and is covered with handsplit cedar shakes.

Today he is one of the world’s leading voices in creative, environmentally sensitive, human-centered building practices. His early books were about domes. Later his passion grew to encompass anything built with creativity and a conscience.

A Lifetime Achievement Award. For more than 50 years, Lloyd has been sharing his passion about building with the world. His company, Shelter Publications, has published his series of unique books that have inspired thousands of us to build our own homes. In recognition of Lloyd’s exceptional contributions to wiser living, MOTHER EARTH NEWS presented him and the Shelter Publications team with a Lifetime Achievement Award in summer 2012 (we dubbed it the “Mommy”). Search www.motherearthnews.com/store to find just a few of Lloyd's books.

— Bryan Welch

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from under them. Wages are down, jobs are scarce and rents are inching ever higher.

We’ve gone through a long period of overconsumption, of people living beyond their means, of houses too big and incomes too small. As we witness the end of a pie-in-the-sky housing boom and enter an era of increasing costs for that most basic of human needs — shelter — a grass-roots movement to scale things back is taking hold.

Texas: Two lofts and a full kitchen and bath in 12 feet by 28 feet.

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LEW LEWANDOWSKI; PAGES 31-35: SHELTER PUBLICATIONS (11)

An Authentic Life, Doin’ What He Loves

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French Pastry 2 Ways This simple dough takes less than 15 minutes to make, and it can be refrigerated and used a little at a time for up to a week. It is the basis of a number of different pastries. Yield: about 20 cheese puffs or 10 large éclairs.

Pâte à Choux (Choux Paste)

Gruyère Gougères (Cheese Puffs)

1 cup milk

11⁄2 cups Gruyère cheese,

1 stick unsalted butter, cut into pieces 1⁄2

teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar (if using in a sweet preparation)

Scrambled Eggs 2 Ways

Pickled Eggs 2 Ways

Mexican Breakfast 2 Ways

According to culinary legend M.F.K. Fisher,

You can pickle any kind of egg. See “The

These classics make a great brunch. For a nice

“Scrambled eggs have been made, and massa-

Many Stages of a Cooked Egg” on Page 55 for

touch, serve salsa, cilantro, grated cheese and

cred, for as long as people knew about pots and

different cooking times. Yield: 1 quart jar filled

sliced jalapeños for garnishing — and tequila

pans, no doubt.” The secret to perfectly pillowy

with about 8 hard-boiled, peeled duck eggs,

eggs is to cook them low and slow to keep the

12 chicken eggs or 20 quail eggs.

proteins supple. Yield: 1 serving per recipe.

Golden Pickling Liquid Gently Scrambled Eggs

11⁄2 cups

cider vinegar

ing sheet. Bake for 10 minutes,

Huevos Rancheros

then reduce heat to 350 F. Bake

reduce heat to 350 F for about

hot that you can’t hold a finger in

wooden spoon. Continue stirring

for 15 to 20 minutes more, until

another 25 minutes, or until

it. As the chocolate cools, beat 2

until the paste does not cling to

puffed and golden.

puffed, golden and firm. Cool

cups of cream until fluffy. Poke a

completely.

pastry bag fitted with a quarter-

11⁄2

cups black beans or pinto beans, cooked

2 to 3 cups enchilada sauce (Find our addictive

2 teaspoons pickling salt

Lard or vegetable oil for frying

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

4 crisp corn or flour tortillas (For a tasty whole-

the top pan doesn’t touch the water. Melt the butter in the pan. Pour in the eggs, and begin

1 cinnamon stick

recipe at http://goo.gl/pLrHe.)

Meanwhile, bring 1/2 cup

in one egg at a time, mixing each

a pastry bag with a 1-inch tip.

cream to a boil over medium

and fill the shell with the cream.

in thoroughly. Your dough will be

Squeeze paste onto a baking

heat. Remove from heat and stir

Dip the top of each shell into the

grain tortilla recipe, visit http://goo.gl/SuAxp.)

thick, sticky and shiny.

sheet in 4-inch-long portions.

in the chocolate until it’s melted.

chocolate, then set the éclair on

Spritz with water just before bak-

Let the mixture cool slightly, until

a serving dish. Refrigerate for 3

Heat beans and sauce in separate pans over

oven to 400 F. Stir cheese and

ing. Bake for 10 minutes, then

it’s warm to the touch but not so

hours before serving.

low heat until the whites are set. On each plate,

large curds intact as they cook slowly. As soon

2 cups cider vinegar

place a tortilla, followed by a fourth of the beans

as the eggs are nearly cooked, transfer them

11⁄2 cups water

and a sunny-side-up egg. Drizzle with sauce.

to a serving dish. Michael Ruhlman, author of

1⁄2

the fascinating technique cookbook Ruhlman’s

2 teaspoons pickling salt

Migas

Twenty, likes to cook scrambled eggs just to the

1 teaspoon whole allspice

Approximately 1⁄3 cup mild-flavored cooking oil

point that they seem to have sauce on them.

1⁄2

Fresh Tips: Using and Storing Eggs

Eggs should be stored with their pointed ends down and should not be washed until just before use. Fresh eggs will keep for several months in refrigeration. Leftover separated egg whites and yolks can be stored in the refrigerator in airtight containers for a few days.

Eggshells are porous, so they take on odors. You may not want to store them next to stinky cheese. You can use this tendency to your advantage, however, by intentionally permeating the shells with an aromatic vanilla bean or one pricey truffle.

Bring eggs to room temperature before use unless your recipe specifically says not to do so.

Fresher eggs usually taste better and are ideal if they are cooked gently. If you need hard-boiled eggs, older ones will be much easier to peel.

cup brown sugar or honey

teaspoon whole cloves

1 cinnamon stick 4 small beets, trimmed and cut into quarters

2 eggs, thoroughly beaten Fill a quart jar with shelled hard-boiled eggs.

4 corn tortillas, cut into bite-sized strips 1⁄2

cup chopped onion

1⁄4

to 1⁄2 cup chopped spicy green chiles

1⁄2

cup chopped sweet red pepper

8 eggs

Boil the pickling ingredients in a medium

1⁄4

then stir the water in a large circle with a spoon.

saucepan. Cover, reduce heat to low, and sim-

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Pour the eggs into the center, and cover the pan

mer for 30 minutes. If making pink pickling

1⁄2

for 1 minute. Remove the eggs with a large slot-

liquid, strain out the beets. Chill for about 20

ted spoon. Food & Wine magazine recommends

minutes, then pour over the eggs and screw on

melted goat cheese on eggs cooked this way.

the lid. Refrigerate the eggs for up to a month.

cup milk cup shredded cheese

In a large skillet, heat oil to medium-high and cook tortilla strips for 2 to 3 minutes, or until crisp. Remove them to drain while you sauté the vegetables in the oil for a couple of minutes.

Fresh Recipes for Fresh Eggs

If you have an abundance of eggs, you’ll need an abundance of recipes. We like these excellent, egg-centric cookbooks: • The Fresh Egg Cookbook by Jennifer Trainer Thompson • Eggs by Michel Roux • The Good Egg by Marie Simmons • The Perfect Egg Cookbook by Alex Barker

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To make cheese puffs: Preheat

medium heat. Fry eggs in hot oil over mediumPink Pickling Liquid

54 THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS GUIDE TO LIVING ON LESS

inch tip into one end of the éclair

to 400 F. Scoop the paste into

motions with a spatula. The idea is to keep

Bring a deep, wide pan of water to a simmer,

To make éclairs: Preheat oven

the spoon. Remove from heat and let cool for 5 minutes. Stir

teaspoon celery seeds

to fold them gently or stir them in figure-eight

Scrambled Poached Eggs

chives into the dough. Drop

heat. Quickly stir in flour with a

4 eggs

1⁄4

To make choux paste: Bring

chopped

dough by tablespoons on a bak-

2 teaspoons brown sugar or honey

1 teaspoon whole allspice

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate,

4 large eggs at room temperature

boil in a saucepan over medium

1 teaspoon butter

another pan atop it or down in it, making sure

21⁄2 cups cream

sunrises. Yield: 4 servings per recipe.

1⁄2

Bring a pan of water to a gentle simmer. Set

1 cup flour

Chocolate Éclairs

milk, butter, salt and sugar to a

2 eggs, thoroughly beaten

cup water

shredded 2 tablespoons minced chives

Whisk together eggs, milk, salt and pepper.

When the onions are translucent, stir in the eggs and tortillas. Gently lift the vegetables and tortilla pieces to let the eggs get evenly distributed.

When the eggs look nearly cooked, turn off the burner, sprinkle on the cheese and put a lid on it for a minute while you go pour the drinks.

— K.C. Compton

The Many Stages of a Cooked Egg Soft- or Hard-Poached Crack a chilled egg into a bowl.

Bring a deep pot of water (or milk, butter, stock, tomato sauce or other flavorful liquid) to a simmer. Swirl the water in a circle with a wooden spoon, then tip the egg into the center. Cover, turn off the heat, and remove with a slotted spoon at the specified time.

Quail: 1 min. (soft); 2 to 3 min. (hard) Chicken: 2 min. (soft); 5 min. (hard) Duck: 3 min. (soft); 7 min. (hard)

Soft- or Hard-Boiled Put whole, room-temperature eggs in a deep pan and cover the eggs with cold water. Bring the water to a low boil over medium heat. When the water reaches a low boil, begin timing. Remove the eggs at the specified time, and chill the eggs under running cold water before cracking and peeling.

Quail: 2 min. (soft); 4 min. (hard) Chicken: 3 min. (soft); 6 min. (hard) Duck: 5 min. (soft); 10 min. (hard) WWW.MOTHEREARTHNEWS.COM

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you can easily collect bagged grass clippings from your neighborhood that are set out and ready to pick up. And many communities make commercial compost from collected yard waste (made mainly from grass clippings and leaves) available free.

So, if you can get free clippings or compost, how much should you use? Here are some guidelines prepared with help from soil scientists at Woods End Laboratories in Maine.

Compost is a great fertilizer. You can give plants an extra boost as they’re growing by applying the compost as a “side dressing.”

Grass Clippings: Just Half an Inch Will Do! provide all the nutrients most crops need for a full season of growth.

Get Compost: More Is Better You can make compost from your yard, garden and kitchen wastes, but if you have a large garden, you’ll probably want more compost than you can make from your own yard. Many communities offer free yard waste compost, or you can find compost made locally at www.localharvest.org (for more specific advice about composting, check out “ Home Composting Made Easy,” at http://goo.gl/Z4tQv).

Compost is a bulky fertilizer that typically contains about 1 percent nitrogen (composted manure is closer to 3 percent

Grass Clippings

FREE!

Alfalfa Meal

$17/lb of Nitrogen

Fish Emulsion Fertilizer

TerraCycle Tomato Food

$112/lb of Nitrogen

$14,000/lb of Nitrogen

How to Compare Fertilizer Prices

Nitrogen (N) is the major nutrient that is most likely to become deficient in garden soils, so you can use it to compare fertilizer prices.

If you’re not careful, you could pay five, 10 or 4,000 times more than necessary to get the nitrogen and other nutrients you need.

Blended fertilizers made from seed meals, manure and other ingredients (sometimes Certified Organic and sometimes not) tend to cost more than soy or alfalfa meal sold at farm supply stores. Also, dry or blended fertilizers are almost always a much better buy per pound of nitrogen than liquid products.

Mulches and Cover Crops The soil’s ability to hold on to nutrients increases as your soil’s organic matter content increases. Organic matter also plays a role in suppressing soilborne diseases while helping to retain soil moisture. Using mulches of shredded leaves, old hay or grass clippings will help boost your soil’s organic matter content as the mulches slowly decompose into compost.

Cover crops planted during periods when you are not growing food crops also help increase the soil’s fertility.

FROM LEFT: FOTOLIA; RICK WETHERBEE; PEYTON BALDWIN (2); PAGE 60: BOTTOM: FOTOLIA/ALISON HANCOCK

Grass clippings are one of the best organic fertilizers. You can find free local sources, and the clippings do double-duty preventing weeds and conserving soil moisture when used as mulch — two things most other fertilizers cannot do. The nitrogen content of clippings will vary, with fresh grass collected in spring from fertilized lawns topping 5 percent nitrogen, while clippings from later in the year or from unfertilized lawns will likely contain about 2 to 3 percent nitrogen. (Avoid clippings from those “perfect” lawns that have been treated with herbicides.)

In most regions just a half-inch of fresh clippings each spring — that’s about six 5-gallon buckets per 100 square feet — mixed into the soil, or a 1- to 2-inch layer used as a surface mulch, will

nitrogen), but one of its advantages is that it releases nutrients slowly, over a period of years rather than weeks or months.

All the while, many strains of fungi and bacteria introduced to the soil from the compost form partnerships with plant roots, helping them absorb or actually manufacture more nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients. Compost also helps soil hold more moisture.

Each time a crop is finished, spread a half-inch layer of compost over the soil.

Twice that much is better, but even a scant quarter-inch blanket of compost will help maintain your soil’s fertility.

Don’t get ripped off — you can put various products to the test by using this simple equation: 1. Multiply the retail price, let’s say $8.95, by 100, which gives you 895.

2. Multiply the weight of the package, say 10 pounds, by the percentage of nitrogen (often about 5 percent), which gives you 50. The percentage of nitrogen is the first number in the product’s “guaranteed analysis.” For example, the “5” in “5-3-2.”

3. Divide the first number (price X 100 = 895) by the second one (weight X percent nitrogen = 50). This is the cost per pound — $17.90 — of the nitrogen in the fertilizer.

The charts to the right show the price per pound of nitrogen (N) for 19 fertilizers. It’s definitely a buyer-beware world out there.

Dry Fertilizers I = Industrial; O = Certified Organic (2015 prices) Product and N-P-K Analysis

Retail Price

Nitrogen Cost Per Pound

Free

$0

Cottonseed Meal (6 - 1 - 1)

$24/50 lbs (I) N/A (O)

$8 N/A

Alfalfa Meal (3 - 2 - 2)

N/A (I) $25/50 lbs (O)

N/A $17

Soybean Meal (7 - 2 - 1)

$22/50 lbs (I) $70/40 lbs (O)

$6 $25

Phyta-Grow Pre-Plant Plus (7 - 5 - 7)

$50/50 lbs (O)

$14

Pro-Gro Organic (5 - 3 - 4)

$22/25 lbs (O)

$18

$8/20 lbs (I)

$20

Fertrell Lawn and Garden (3 - 2 - 3)

$35/50 lbs (I)

$23

Dr. Earth Life All Purpose (5 - 5 - 5)

$65/40 lbs (O)

$33

Peace of Mind All-Purpose (5 - 5 - 5)

$11/4 lbs (I)

$55

Grass (3 - .4 - 2)

Blended Fertilizers

Black Hen (2 - 3 - 2)

Espoma Garden-Tone (3 - 4 - 4)

$9/4 lbs (I)

$75

Bradfield Tasty Tomato (3 - 3 - 3)

$14/5 lbs (I)

$93

Worm Power (1.5 - .07 - 1.5)

$16/3 lbs (O)

$356

Liquid Fertilizers Weights estimated based on a density of 10 lbs/gal Product and N-P-K Analysis

Retail Price

Nitrogen Cost Per Pound

Age Old Organics Grow (12 - 6 - 6)

$18/32 fl oz

$60

Maxicrop (5 - 1 - 1)

$14/32 fl oz

$112

Ferti-lome Fish Emulsion (5 - 1 - 1)

$14/32 fl oz

$112

FoxFarm Grow Big (6 - 4 - 4)

$20/32 fl oz

$133

Earth Juice Grow (2 - 1 - 1)

$14/32 fl oz

$280

$7/32 fl oz

$14,000

TerraCycle Tomato Food (.02 - .002 - .02)

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GRASS CLIPPINGS PHOTO FROM FOTOLIA

Start a Quick and Easy

put on the table and to store, this garden plan will also produce a year’s supply of several tasty herbs, which will attract droves of pollinators and other beneficial insects.

If you’re new to food gardening, your biggest challenge may be planting crops at the right times. A food garden should be planted in phases, so that every crop gets the type of weather it prefers. The following season-byseason instructions for our easy food garden (see the plan on Page 72) show how seasonal planting sequences work. You’ll also find a few labor-saving tips, such as letting pole beans twine up tall sunflowers.

FOOD GARDEN This season-by-season planting plan for a no-dig, easy-care bag garden features 25 favorite crops.

I

f your yard has a space that’s at least 20 by 28 feet and gets full or almost full sun, you can grow enough vegetables to have fresh food all season with surprisingly little effort. Go ahead and dig beds if you’re lucky enough to have naturally fertile, welldrained soil, but don’t let soil flaws stop you from starting a food garden. Instead, use this quick and simple bag-gardening technique.

This method is almost too easy to believe, but it absolutely works! Gardening in bags of topsoil lets you get a garden going today, and offers these additional benefits: • In the course of a season, the topsoil bags will smother the grass underneath them, so you won’t have to dig up and remove the grass sod.

• The bags eliminate aggravation from seedling-killing cutworms, which are

caterpillars commonly found in soil where lawn grass has been growing.

• Bag gardens have few (if any) weeds, because bagged soils and planting mixes are pasteurized to kill weed seeds.

• You can eventually gather up the plastic bags and dig their contents into permanent beds, or just lay down a new batch of bags.

Early Spring

What Can I Grow?

Whether you dig right in or start with bags, you can’t go wrong with the selection of 25 easy-to-grow crops on Page 72. In addition to plenty of fresh veggies to

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By Barbara Pleasant

1. Prepare your site. You can dig beds the traditional way, or you can plant most of your garden in bags. If you’re using bags, you’ll need about 25 40-pound bags to cover the five main beds. See Bed 3 on Page 72 for guidance on how to arrange the bags when starting your garden. Definitely dig the squash bed (Bed 7) and the circular bed (Bed 4), mixing in a 2-inch layer of good compost as you work.

2. Use a utility knife to cut out a large, rectangular window on the upper surface of each bag. Leave the sides and 2 inches of each top edge intact, resembling a picture frame (see illustration, above). Lightly dust the surface of the soil inside the bags with organic fertilizer and mix it in with a trowel. (Skip this if the bag’s label says fertilizer has been added.) Using a screwdriver or a big knife, stab each bag through at least a dozen times to create plenty of drainage holes in the bottom. Plant roots will use these holes to grow down into the soil below the bags.

Mid-Spring 1. Plant onions, beets and early lettuce. About four weeks before your last frost, plant onion seedlings in Bed 1. (To find the average last spring frost for your location, go to www.mother earthnews.com/frost-dates.) Water well

Leave a 2-inch rim of plastic around the edges of each bag to keep the soil from spilling and to help retain moisture.

to settle the soil around the roots. Sow beet seeds half an inch deep and 2 inches apart. Sow some early lettuce in Bed 3.

2. Plant potatoes and peas. Set potatoes 2 inches deep and 12 inches apart in Bed 2, flanked by double rows of bush snap or snow peas. These short,

bushy varieties don’t need a trellis if grown closely together, although poking a few sticks into the row between the plants will help keep them off the ground.

3. Plant greens and herbs.

Plant lettuce, dill, cilantro and chard seeds in Bed 6. Plant chard the same way you planted beets.

Set out potted perennial herbs (oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme) in Beds 3 and 6. Make a second sowing of lettuce and cilantro one week before your last frost.

4. Mulch, mulch, mulch. About three weeks after you’ve planted your beds, thin seedlings to correct spacing (check seed packets) and hoe or pull weeds.

Mulch the garden with grass clippings, hay or shredded leaves.

Choosing the Right Bags of ‘Soil’

Garden centers typically sell a dizzying array of bagged soil mixes and soil amendments, so choosing one can be confusing. To make the task even more difficult, there are no strict standards that define what qualifies as “compost” or “shrub planting mix.” The best way to know what you’re getting is to look beyond the label and examine what’s inside the bag. Some garden centers set aside broken bags of topsoil so customers can examine their contents, or you can buy a sample bag to check out before you buy more.

For most soil-building purposes, a mixture that looks and feels fluffy and has plenty of tidbits of decomposed leaves or wood chips offers more organic matter than a heavier mixture that includes mostly gritty soil. Light-textured composts are usually the best choice for digging into soil as a long-lasting source of organic matter, but for the fast bag beds in this garden plan, look for products that do include some gritty soil. Plant roots prefer a mixture of soil and organic matter to organic matter alone. A bag of such soil will feel heavier than one that’s mostly organic matter, assuming both are equally wet or dry. Ordinary bagged “topsoil” or inexpensive “tree and shrub planting mix” will do Topsoil and soil amendments are sold by weight or volume. For this garden plan, use 25 40-pound quite nicely in any spot where bags, which will each cover a 2-by-3-foot space and you want to set up a new vegprovide ample room for the roots of most vegetables. etable bed quickly.

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