Episode-481- Call In Friday 7-23-10
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It’s Friday again and we are back with more of your questions called into 866-65-THINK, we have some really great stuff today, lots on gardening, choosing a new generator, leveraging a skill set, dealing with visual impairment, prepping in an apartment and more.
Join me today as I answer your questions on…
- Getting a garden plot ready for next season
- Gardening when you are on the road
- Prepping for truckers, what to carry
- Dealing with unproductive peppers
- Tomato blight has defeated many of us in the south
- Square foot vs. bio-intensive gardening what is the difference
- How do you leverage a hobby or skill to increase your preps
- How can you set up remote monitoring of your BOL
- A tip for keeping stuff cold in the freezer during a power outage
- How to choose a good generator for your needs
- When if ever do you borrow from a 401K
- How do the vision impaired prep effectively
- What guns really need to be a left handed version for a lefty shooter
- What do you do when you run out of prep space in an apartment
Additional Resources for Today’s Show
- Members Support Brigade
- TSP Gear Shop
- Join Our Forum
- Survival Seed Bank – (sponsor of the day)
- ShelfReliance.com – (sponsor of the day)
- Work with me on SaveOurSkills.com – Please read and listen fully before you apply.
- Members Support Brigade
- Ron Hood’s Survival.com Magazine
Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.
Off Topic: Dual Survival marathon: Saturday, July 24, 5:00 pm ET to 3:00 am.
I wanted to say thanks to Kelly for her question on utilizing hand skills. I’ve had the same question. For the past few years I’ve used my sewing skills to barter with neighbours for our annual chimney cleaning and inspection, roasting chickens for the deep freezer and fresh eggs.
In exchange for these things I teach their children to sew.
I really like the barter system … it’s a great opportunity to:
1) Not pay taxes.
2) Get to know your neighbours. And
3) grow comfortable in a habit of sharing knowledge and excess with one another before the ‘stuff hits the fan’. That way we can trust and count on one another now … and in tough times.
Hey Jack,
On the tomato blithe issue…
As per your advice on a previous episode of TSP, I decided to plant all but 4 of my tomato plants in 5 gal buckets (obtained free from a local bakery) in order to improve and expand my gardening skills.
So I have maybe 20ish 5 gal buckets with tomatoes planted in organic potting soil, enhanced with peat, mushroom compost, and Miracle grow.
They are producing like mad!
One issue with buckets is watering consistency. Before winter I’ll do a thread on the Forum to go over what I learned, but by using the bagged organic potting soil and the enhancements I have eliminated blithe as a possibility.
Keep doing what you do!
See ya soon.
The brass deflector is milled into the AR reciever now and has been since 1991 at least. When I went thru Parris Island I qualed with one. I had no problems with shooting a regular AR left handed. All the Rifle Instructors told me to mirror them.
Now if you are dead set on a left handed AR, Stag Arms ( http://www.stagarms.com ) makes left handed ARs even a gas piston one.
The Generator/Freezer question got me thinking.
For a long term power outage would coupling a gas motor mechanically to the freezer compressor be better then using AC electricity to turn the compressor. Being able to fire up a dedicated gas motor (think gas powered weed whacker + flexible power shaft) a fews times a day manually to ‘top up’ the freezer be more efficient then having to run a very large generator which would be overkill for background electricity i.e. lighting over an extended outage.
As always, great show Jack. Thanks for reminding us that these are the summer days, and winter is coming — literally and metaphorically. I had posted something on my facebook page that brought harsh criticism from one of my very young relatives. At first I was hurt and concerned about her well-being, seeing that she isn’t aware of the troubled times that we are living in. I believe in positive thinking wholeheartedly, but I also have a strong sense of what is going on around me. Taking care of my family is key, and hopefully my extended family who is watching (and possibly laughing or even sometimes scolding) will start to understand.
@Lweson
God am I and my two ARs old! Funny thing though I didn’t go through much behind you, but we qualified with A1s!
Don’t kill the tomato plants!!! – use neem oil. Neem oil kills the fungus that causes the blight – I had bad late blight, I used a fungicide made from neem oil and water and soap. It was gone in a week and the plants have completely recovered. Neem oil is an organic insecticide/fungicide. You can google the recipe for using on veggies.
Blight is not effected by neem oil, trust me.
For garyb31 (and jack):
Cornell’s tomato disease diagnosis pages are excellent:
http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.edu/diagnostickeys/TomLeaf/TomLeafKey.html
What you will see by clicking some of the symptoms is that they look at lot alike and it is easy to make a mistake in diagnosis.
One of the people who put this together was on another podcast recently and she said they have to test to confirm late blight, that visual symptom ID isn’t enough. Of course they are interested in tracking TRUE late blight cases since it can affect commercial potato crops grown in the area.
The neem mixture might be effective on a condition that looks like late blight but isn’t, ie one of the many fungal invaders that hit tomatoes over the season (including early blight).
Late blight isn’t a fungus though- it is technically “oomycetes”; it is a water mold that is more like algae than fungus.
Late blight is a disaster when it hits and plants suspected of having it should be pulled and destroyed ie burned or put in garbage in sealed bags.
@cohutt, wise words man. The only thing worse than late blight is early, it is a death sentance. Both suck and were not a big problem just a few years ago. For my part I am foregoing tomatoes for a year or two, I will stick to tomatillos, ground cherry, etc. They are doing unbelievable this year. I am going to do some purple tomatillos next season they are supposed to be a lot sweeter.
I will go with bruisers at the farmers markets for tomatoes for a while and better use my space. For canning and drying bruisers as I call them are fine.
I found a great use for my frozen water bottles beginning last week.. my chickens were suffering in the 100+ heat, so I placed a box fan in front of the coop window to pull air from the bottom through the coop. Then I placed a couple of 2 liter water bottles in a pan underneath the coop and added a little bit of water to it. The chickens love laying by the cool pan and sipping water, and as the air is pulled over the cold bottles then up through the coop, it cools the air much like a water cooler. I also froze some 16 oz soft drink bottles full of water and drop those into their main water bucket like giant ice cubes. I have much happier birds now.. 🙂
Jack,
here are some bruisers for you- an animated 3d view of tomatoes infected with late blight.
😉
http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.edu/PhotoPages/Spin/Tom_Spin.html
Jack,
I would love to hear more about your plans for wood gasification electrical generation. I am planning to use a wood gasification boiler in my next homestead to heat DWH as well as water for radiant floor heat. And since this will be an off grid house, using wood gasification for electrical generation would be great! So would love to hear what you are finding out in more detail.
Keep up the great work!
@cohutt,
Not what I meant by bruisers. Bruisers are tomatoes that are a bit over ripe, perhaps have a bruise from handling, etc but are otherwise okay. I have bought a full bushel basket for say 5 bucks on many occasions of them, many times a many are even okay for slicing if you cut a spot off. I find deals like this all the time at farmers markets, same with apples, I dehydrate those.
I am a left handed shooter, I have had not problems at all with semi auto. In fact the majority of my firearms are semi. The ejected brass is thrown far from me. I wear safety glasses as an adult but growing up and firing my Glenfield 60 and Nylon 66 the shells never touched me. Working bolts were always awkward and never intuitive.