Quote of the Week

"The whole point of the system is to bribe you with the leftovers of what they have stolen from you in the first place."

~Stefan Molyneux

Outside The Box Spring Gardening Ideas (Permaculture)

Spring is upon us, and any greenthumb worth his salt has already planned out this year's garden and is probably nursing seedlings that are ready to be planted and/or planting right now.  Below is a list of ideas for some side projects you might consider to give your garden that little something extra this year.

Learn Lashing to Make Your Own Garden Trellis
This is a great article that will give you the basics of lashing.  The best resource I have found for lashing has been the Boy Scout Handbook.  It is a treasure trove of basic knowledge and is available at a minimal cost.  Additionally, you should look into past copies of the Scouting Handbook.  They span the last century and contain a ton of forgotten knowledge.

Build a Vertical Garden with Recycled Plastic Bottles
Put those new lashing skills to the test, or use a wire frame to create a vertical garden!

Along the same lines as the above linked article is the sub-irrigated planter.

Space Saving Vertical Earth Gardens
Here is another take on the vertical garden.  This one uses PVC pipes connected in a downward spiral. Just water the top and let gravity take care of the rest!  You can collect your water in a bucket at the bottom and reuse it, or for a more technical design, set up a small electric pump in the bottom collection tank for hands free, zero maintenance irrigation.


Taking the pump idea one step further, you could add some fish to your water reclamation tank for a small aquaponics system.  Grow a few plants to feed the fish and this forms a closed system.  There is no need to fertilize, the fish do it for you!  Permaculture at its finest!

Hopefully the last few links and pictures will be enough to get your creative juices flowing.  Systems like this can even be set up indoors for year round gardening and fish harvesting.  If there are any designers out there who want to tackle a little project like this, I would love to see what you come up with!  Send step by step pictures and a brief instructional writeup, or a link to your own YouTube video to sgtjarhead@galtsgulchorbust.com.  I will publish your genius right here on Galt's Gulch or Bust!

10 Seed Starting Tips

We are a little late into the season for this article.  Seeds should have been started indoors last month, but for any procrastinators out there who prefer a late autumn harvest, this article gives sound advice.  My only recommendation would be to modify tip number nine and use a natural fertilizer.  Liquid from a small worm farm will produce the same results as a commercially available chemical.  The old adage about food "If you can't pronounce it, don't put it in your body" applies to gardening as well:  "If you can't pronounce it, don't put it on your food."

Repurposed Dresser to Garden/Potting Bench

Have an old beat up dresser sitting around?  Why not convert it into a potting bench?  I love what they have done here!  The piece looks beautiful.  I am not as much concerned with beauty as I am with utility, but they went the extra mile and made it look nice.  With minimal tools and material you could do the same!  No dresser?  Check craigslist for a freebie.  Its going to end up in a landfill anyway, so you might as well put it to good use.  Be sure to scroll all the way down and take a look at both versions of the potting bench.  One uses picket fencing for a backing, the other uses chicken wire.  I like the chicken wire design better because of its utility, but the picket fence design is more aesthetically pleasing.

Milk-Crate Farming In The City

Low on yard space?  You can still have a large producing garden that makes use of the space you have available.  Take a look at what the folks at Milkwood are doing on urban rooftops!

And finally, I will leave you with a photo of some pallets that have been repurposed into raised bed gardens.  I love this idea!  It keeps everything neat and tidy in rows.

Its getting warmer, get out and do something different this year.  You may be surprised with the results!

See you at Galt's Gulch!

Executive Order - National Defense Resources Preparedness

I just got the news on this today, and I was planning on writing a lengthy post on it, but I think you can figure out for yourself why this is so bad.  In terms of evil, this is up there with the NDAA and SOPA.  I have been doing some fact checking and reading blogs and news articles from across the political spectrum.  The left has taken a pseudo-supportive stance by stating that this just reauthorizes an order that was already in place.  If that were so, then what is the need for a new executive order?  The right, thus far, has been pretty mute.  I am sure the talking heads at Faux News will be all over it soon, but not until it blows up on the web and we make it real news.  I am sure Rush, Hannity, and the other members of the neo-con arm of the propaganda machine will eventually come out against it; but remember that they supported the Patriot Act and other nonsense.  If Bush had signed this executive order, Rush would have found a way to make the ensuing shit sandwich seem palatable.

I am interested to see what the knuckle heads on the campaign trail for the republican ticket are going to say about this.  Surely they will all oppose it, but I wonder how they really feel about it.  This gives a lot of power to their future cabinet members.

The best synopsis I have read is this blog post at Spellcheck.  Short and to the point, it gives you all the need to know information and the ramifications of this presidential action.

Read the full text of the executive order on the white house website, and decide for yourself what this could mean for you and your family.


See you at Galt's Gulch!  The time to start moving is approaching sooner than you might expect!


*****UPDATE*****

I just received an email from the political editor at BeforeItsNews.com

Apparently, they broke the story and he has asked me to link to this article as well.  I highly recommend reading it.  It can be found at the link below.

Obama Executive Order: Peacetime Martial Law!

News From Around the Interwebs

Federal Reserve to Take Propaganda to the Classroom

The Policy That Prevents Prostitutes From Carrying and Using Condoms

New Communications Technology That Does Not Require Satellites or Cables

Government First Health Care a Risk to Well Being

The Coming Medical Ethics Crisis

American Morlocks: Another Civilian Massacre and the Savagery of Our Soldiers

The Absurdity of Raw Milk Prohibition 

Ugandan's Reaction to Kony 2012

Battle Raging on Capitol Hill Over Concealed Carry

Co-Founder of Kony 2012's Invisible Children Arrested For Public Masturbation 



See you at Galt's Gulch!

Quote of the Week

"Since human thought can calculate in minutes what it takes light to travel in one year, it may be that thought itself expands outwardly in all directions at a speed even faster than light... As the networking accelerates humanity into a spherically embracing, spontaneous union, yesterday's locally autonomous, self-preoccupied governments are left in the exclusive control of yesterday's most selfishly successful and entrenched minorities... The networks' people, observe that the TV era governments are corrupt, wherefore they spontaneously abhor and abstain from further voting. Gradually discovering that the networking abandonment of the voting booth was the true cause of their claimed 'overwhelming majority,' the incumbent administration, fearful of a potential rejective voting tidal wave of the inter-networked world people, will probably try in vain to block networking.  Because networking is apolitical and amorphous, it has no 'cells' to be attacked, as did the communism of former decades.  The fearful sovereign nation politicos will find that trying to arrest networking is like trying to arrest the waves of the ocean."

~R. Buckminster Fuller, Grunch of Giants, 1983