Ambergris

Has anyone bought/used the bulk seed container this site sells?

 

http://www.emergencyseedbank.com/

 

The bundle includes: "23 varieties of highest yielding crops. Some 37,000 seeds total – enough to plant 1-acre victory garden." The cost is $139, +S&H I assume.

 

The guy who operates it guarantees his seeds and offers a 365 Day/110% money back guarantee.

 

Sounds real good, and would like some feedback before I make any kind of investment like this.

 

Also, does anyone know of a high-yielding corn? I have a relatively small area to plant and would like something that gives more than 2-3 ears per stalk. Any planting suggestions would be welcome too.

Most of these collections are ripoffs. Say you have room to plant eight of these kinds of seeds, and half fail utterly, while only a quarter do well. You're more likely to get a refund of only the percentage of the whole package that failed, rather than the percentage of planted seeds that failed. Meanwhile, what kind of time, space, effort, and soil amendment expenses have you run up, with no hope of refund? Say this collection has onions. Are they long-day onions (suited for northern latitudes where summer days are very long) or short day onions (suited to latitudes like most of the Deep South, close to the Equator)? Or do they include both, meaning hundreds or thousands of onion seeds that will be useless to you? There are day-neutral onions, but they don't do nearly as well as onions tailored to day-length. Also, consider whether the person meant highest yielding per plant, or per square foot/yard. A vine that rambles all over the place might produce twice as much as a bushy vine that doesn't take up but a third of that space. Which works better for your situation?

"Highest yielding" normally means hybrid. I strongly recommend some hybrid seed for an emergency garden, simply because the chances of producing enough food to pay for the space and inputs (work, fertilizer) are much higher. I also recommend some open-pollinated (heirloom) seed for sustainability. You just don't plant your heirlooms to compete with your hybrids--if you plant hybrid cucumbers, no heirloom cucumbers but you can plant heirloom tomatoes.

For high(er) yield without going the hybrid route, find a catalog that specializes in seeds for your climate, and choose what you will actually grow, store, and eat. Johnny's is the first go-to catalog for New England, while Southern Seed Savers is better suited to Georgia growers, and Native Seed Search for the Southwest.

Another route is to find smaller seed collections tailored to your desires. I have been very happy with the Botanikka collections, some of which you can design yourself. http://stores.ebay.com/mnrsales For seeds specially packed for storage, look at Park's with its little foil inner envelopes. Parks sells heirloom and hybrid, but no GMO. This is the Park's seed site with "assortment" typed in. http://www.parkseed.com/gardening/store/TextSearch?storeId=10101&SearchUnion=Y&CustSearchText=assortment&x=0&y=0

For a first garden, or a first garden in a new climate, I would never suggest trying more than six kinds of crop. Fewer is better. When you get an eye for what those plants look like happy and unhappy, and how to cure the unhappiness, you can expand. In my area, for the summer, I'd suggest summer squash, okra, eggplant, cherry tomatoes, and peppers for a planting guaranteed to weather any gardening errors. In other areas, green beans and Irish potatoes might be better bets.

Two to three ears per stalk is very high-yielding for ordinary corn. I've heard of six-shooter corn with six ears, but I've never actually seen it growing. Do you want feed corn, popcorn, baby corn, or sweet corn? Baby corn you get many ears per stalk, but of course they're only as big as a man's thumb. You might want to redefine the question from ears per stalk to ears per square yard. The smaller corn varieties, that only go 4-5 feet tall, have smaller ears but can crowd more stalks to the square yard than types with stalks twice as tall.

Jerky and onions today. I like to dry one bag of onions whenever they go B1G1. My sons toast the dried onion slices and then whizz them in the spice grinder for toasted onion powder. We use a lot of onion chips and onion powder, and that stuff mounts up.

http://lifehacker.com/#!5653113/seal-plastic-bags-with-old-bottle-caps

How to seal plastic bags with old bottle caps.

TMC, my favorite slug control is to lay down a board. Pick it up a day later, and let the chickens eat the slugs clinging to the bottom side.

People around here recommend Viking (redskin) and Kennebec (brown).

Commercial growers grow by the row method. The cans are for when you don't have the room or the water for rows.

One thing you should also know is that early potatoes, like Yukon Gold, don't make layers of potatoes as you add more soil into the barrel.

Great work, everyone!

Make sure they are food grade. Some stores will tell you everything is, and some will tell you nothing is, when the truth is some of their buckets are food grade and some are not. Stick your head in it and smell. Do you smell petrochemicals? Your food will soak up that smell and get nasty. Buckets you get from a deli are fine. Food grade buckets have a 2 in the triangle on the bottom, and are usually either clear, translucent, or plain white. Not all white buckets with a 2 in the triangle are food grade, though. That's why I like to get deli buckets!

You will have to either get an airtight seal or seal the food in a bucket liner to make it last a long time. White flour just won't last more than a year in a bucket before it goes funky. White rice is good for a long time. Brown rice goes bad in less than a year, unless kept cool. White sugar might turn into a bucket-sized brick, but won't go bad. Whole wheat (not cracked, not ground into flour, not rolled, whole!) will last many years if you keep it cool. Whole wheat flour goes rancid in as little as a few months. Salt does not go bad. Oil goes bad surprisingly fast, even if kept in a cool room or basement. Plain cheap pasta stays good a long, long time. 30# fills a 3.5 gallon bucket. Whole grain pasta goes rancid.

We got some gamma seals, which are expensive screw-on lids, for the buckets of stuff we rotate through fastest: flour, rice, sugar, black eyed peas, corn meal. When a bucket goes empty, it's filled from the oldest bucket of the same we can conveniently identify.

Someone here was talking about using soda bottles. This has caught my imagination and I will probably be trying it for peas and beans.

You're way north of me, so your day-length changes are dramatic.

Make sure you're only feeding fish to the young growing chicks. When my laying hens get into the cat food or the fish-cleaning area, we can tell by the taste of the eggs. You can also tell by the taste of the pork when a pig has been raised largely on fish, so I'd be wary of raising meat chickens on too much fish.

Drove across town, $7 in gas round trip, but used a pile of coupons there to get $37 of groceries for $11. While we were on that end of town, we visited a Goodwill store we don't usually get to; found a bagel-friendly toaster and the loose-weave cotton blanket my son likes.

Cleaning for a Reason

If you know any woman currently undergoing chemotherapy, please

pass the word to her that there is a cleaning service that provides FREE

housecleaning - once per month for 4 months while she is in treatment.

All she has to do is sign up and have her doctor fax a note

confirming the treatment. Cleaning for a Reason will have a participating

maid service in her zip code area arrange for the service. This

organization serves the entire USA and currently has 547 partners to help

these women. It's our job to pass the word and let them know that there are

people out there that care. Be a blessing to someone and pass this

information along.

http://www.cleaningforareason.org/

When I switched to Firefox I stopped having that problem.

At the bent can store I scored four cans, about 1.75 lbs each, of dry whole milk for $2.79 each. They had some plastic bags about the same size of dry nonfat milk; maybe those will still be there come payday.

I have heard somewhere of an organization that provides free housekeeping assistance for people on radiation therapy. You might look up whether it's available in her area. One less thing for her to worry about.

I think I've finally got the hang of couponing.

Got 6 200-ct bottles generic Benedryl,

6 headbands,

two generic Vaporub jars,

a 40-ct box of nitrile gloves,

60-ct jar guaifenesin/dextromethorphan pills,

96-ct pseudoephedrine,

24-ct ephedrine,

5 32-oz bottled 91% isopropyl alcohol,

1 24-oz bottle ethyl alcohol,

6 32-oz bottles hydrogen peroxide,

ichthammol,

Bacitracin,

Abreva,

12 double-rolls TP,

and a jug of Tide HE

for $45.21.

You can freeze them whole (set them blossom-end down on a biscuit pan and freeze, then wrap and bag) or measure puree by the cup, adding a little lemon juice, and freeze in zipper-lock bags.

Persimmon Cake

Beat together one stick of butter, two cups brown sugar. Beat in two ex-ex large eggs (or half a cup of banty eggs, or two extra-large eggs and a spare yolk or white), plus two teaspoons vanilla, plus juice of half a lemon. When fluffy, stir in pulp of four large or five smallish Kaki persimmons. (Remove any grotty-looking dark seeds.) Stir in two cups of self-rising flour, a quarter teaspoon of baking powder, and either two teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice or up to a teaspoon of some cool spice mix you've been looking for a place to use. (Ras el hanout? Five spice? Warning--if you're experimenting with something that might be potent, take it very lightly so you don't make a block of chicken food out of this cake.) Stir in a cup of chopped pecans if you have them and like them. Stir in a cup of raisins or chopped dried figs if you have them and like them. Bake like pound cake. It's heavy and good.

Thank you!

Where can you get it in 50# buckets?

I sometimes take a rosemary-based blend for low thyroid. I can't say I've noticed any difference in my energy level, though, and it gives me awful gas.

Cat, when they reopened the old Cuban base, they found 30-year-old soda in glass bottles. By all accounts, it was great. I bet it was. The old stuff had real sugar and more carbonation than is used now.

Some people swear by white grits to get rid of ants. I've also tried cinnamon and finely ground pepper, which sometimes work.

NeedyMeds is a 501©(3) nonprofit with the mission of helping people who cannot afford medicine or health care costs. The information at NeedyMeds is available anonymously and free of charge. http://www.needymeds.org/free_clinics.taf?...st&state=la

Social Security, Medicare, and disability benefits 800-772-1213

Medicare and Medicaid www.CMS.gov

Louisiana, Jefferson, New Orleans, Tulane, etc:

Government help/guidelines for how your insurance is treating you: www.dol.gov/dol/topic/health-plans/

The Amputee Coalition has a page of information on how to appeal denials of medicaid etc. http://www.amputee-coalition.org/fact_shee...ssist_orgs.html

AIDS Patient Assistance Programs(AIDS Treatment Data Network) http://www.atdn.org/access/pa.html

Compassionate Allowances (Social Security Administration) http://www.socialsecurity.gov/compassionateallowances/

Eye Exams, Glasses, and Surgery

Prescription Drugs

Roche Patient Assistance Program (Cellcept)

(800) 772-5790

Novartis Patient Assistance Program (Cyclosporine)

(888) 455-6655

Novartis Transplant Reimbursement Information (Neoral)

(877) 952-1000

Astellas Patient Assistance Program for Organ Transplant (Prograf)

(800) 477-6472

Abbott Patient Assistance Program (Gengraf)

(800) 633-9110

Wyeth Patient Assistance Program (Rapamune)

(877) 472-7268

* The Medicine Program assists people to enroll in assistance programs that provide prescription medicine free-of-charge to those in need. Mailing Address: P.O. Box 4182, Poplar Bluff, MO 63902-4182. Telephone: 1-866-694-3893. E-mail: help@themedicineprogram.com. Website: http://www.themedicineprogram.com.

* Partnership for Prescription Assistance (accesses hundreds of programs for you) Telephone: 1-888-477-2669. Website: https://www.pparx.org.

People with Medicare who have diabetes can get a dilated eye exam.

Medicare will pay for an eye exam to check for glaucoma once every 12 months. Patients must pay 20 percent of the Medicare-approved amount after the yearly Part B deductible. Telephone: 1-800-633-4227. Website: http://www.medicare.gov

State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) Telephone: 1-877-543-7669. http://www.insurekidsnow.gov/states.asp

Diabetes http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/financialhelp/

Kidney problems http://kidney.niddk.nih.gov/kudiseases/pubs/financialhelp/

Chronic Pain http://www.painfoundation.org/learn/resour...ial-issues.html

TRICARE (formerly CHAMPUS) for active duty and retired members of the uniformed services, their families and survivors. (303) 676-3526

www.tricare.osd.mil

Medicare Phone Number (800) 633-4227 www.medicare.gov

Arizona's AHCCCS and/or KidsCare Medicaid programs. to apply for coverage call (602) 417-4000

Arizona CoppeRx® Card can help cover prescription costs Call 1-888-227-8315

Dental care and craniofacial problems, including getting into a clinical trial, http://www.nidcr.nih.gov/OralHealth/Popula...CostDentalCare/

list of dental schools http://www.ada.org/267.aspx

National Organization for Rare Disorders http://www.rarediseases.org/programs/medication

Partnership for Prescription Assistance 1-888-4PPA-NOW (1-888-477-2669) https://www.pparx.org/en/gethelp

Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (800) 955-4572 http://www.leukemia-lymphoma.org/all_page?item_id=4603

Patient Travel and Lodging

The Healthwell Foundation for the underinsured: http://www.healthwellfoundation.org/

Prescription help--hundreds of links! https://www.rxhope.com/Patient/ProgramList.aspx

mental health care:

Whey can be used instead of water in baking or as part of the liquid in making oatmeal. Dogs, cats, and chickens love it. There's also supposed to be a kind of cheese made with it.