Starting Seeds for Homesteading: Everything You Need to Know

[00:00:11] Hello Rye, welcome back to the Survival and Basic Badass Podcast, Kevin and Chuck. Well, it's almost springtime again and well we're back with the spring seed starting episode. Basically getting your stuff ready, different tricks and tips and things that might make your harvest a little bit better this year. Hopefully we have some new ideas you haven't heard before

[00:00:40] and some new stuff and I don't know, get you inspired. The miracle of life, Kevin. Things growing, sprouting up. Yeah, well we do this every year, don't we? Like every spring we at least do one planting. But I mean as a prepper it should be one of your standard go-to's is your garden. Yeah. You know, I think a lot of people overthink it and they think about it being too much of a hassle

[00:01:06] or you know a big time investment. It doesn't have to be though. It doesn't have to be a big pain in the ass. It can be you know 15-20 minutes a day and you know providing you know saving a lot of money honestly because nobody you know groceries are still going up. It's not that hasn't changed. Yeah, they are. That's all I know is the egg production is good at my house.

[00:01:31] Yeah, yeah. I've got a lot of eggs coming into my house too. You know, they're saying for I think it's averaging $4 a dozen now. It's like ridiculous eight some places. It's crazy. I a lot more where I'm at. Yeah, yeah, I just went. Um, yeah, we we just went on vacation for this week. So I'm away and my neighbor like immediately when I'm like, can you check on the house?

[00:01:55] He's like, well, would it be okay if I went in and got your eggs that had you know that are not hatching but better that are laying every day because that would really help. Yeah, more like all right. So we had a kid a steak. We're only a couple hours from my house like two hours not you know a big deal.

[00:02:14] So so we had one of the kids had to go back for appointments or whatever and and went back halfway through and we dropped her off so we can check on the plants and animals and whatever and came back and he's like, well, there's only one person in the house. Can we keep getting eggs for the rest of the week? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's all right. We can do that. Well, how many eggs are you getting a day? How many chickens do you have?

[00:02:39] I we have. Well, there are two different questions, but we're getting about eight eight eggs a day. I think right now still early things are just like every day is a little bit more. Yeah, we have I want to say about 20 chickens probably in that neighborhood. So you're gonna yeah your egg production is only going up as as it gets warmer. Yeah, no, that was it. We we when we were planning on vacation, we just save for a week week and a half and we were able to put four.

[00:03:08] We're a dozen, you know, like we didn't stop eating eggs. We just stopped giving them away or whatever. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, it wasn't hard to get ahead. Anyway, so getting the animals ready. That's a good thing to, you know, setting up the new pens, the new things you want to do. Um, now there's a couple of things to think about. Like one, you know, obviously we'll get into what you want to plant, how, when, whatever.

[00:03:35] We're not going to scrutinize putting carrots on the third day. And, you know, maybe I think they like laid it out in the Bible. Is that a thing? Like, you know, on the fifth day, you know, you do the carrots. But, um, but what would you like to prep? One of the big things is the soil, right? Everyone's like first, I guess first is plant. You need to think at where you're going to lay out your garden. What garden beds you're going to use. Do you do a kind of rotation?

[00:04:04] You know, I know certain plants will, you know, affect the soil and affect next year, things like that. But so you want to decide where everything's going to go. I know one of the early prep things that my wife likes to do is, uh, if you don't do like a set cover crop or different things like that, you want to go out and like, it's not too late in a lot of your colder climates to go out and put cardboard or plastic over the areas you're going to do.

[00:04:32] And just really kill off and make sure there isn't going to be any weeds. And then it's easy to go in and tear. And if you do that for two or three weeks, that's enough to get a good. Right. Right. You know, start. Yeah. When I, when it comes to, to planning out your garden, um, you know, you want to plan ahead because you'd want to be moving your garden every year. I know I had an issue with, um, you know, I, I set up a garden in a nice sunny spot.

[00:04:56] And about two, three years later, the, there was a tree that had grown high enough that it was blocking out all the morning sun. And I ended up having to take the tree down, you know, it was a healthy tree. I would have rather not done it, but you know, um, but you want to, you want to get measurements. You want to, you want to lay it out before you start digging anything and, uh, you know, find a nice sunny spot. Uh, morning sun is, is preferable, but you know, midday sun, afternoon sun's also good.

[00:05:26] And, uh, like you were saying, you know, one of the things that a lot of people do is, is raise garden beds. Yeah. You know, it's great idea, but you only really need to do that if your soil is shed, you know, you can just plant right in the ground. You don't have to, you know, that's a thing. Yeah. You can just plant seeds. Things grow all over the place. So I mean, I don't have to go buy all the dirt at the store and then come back and get, you know, yeah.

[00:05:53] Like 15 yards of, of compost and all that sort of nonsense. And it's just, just a lot. It can be a lot of money. My wife likes to call it working the soil and working the soil is me going to lowest buying 50 bags of compost. Uh, and then carrying them and laying them about the garden. And then she. She can just cut them open and then turn it up and dump it out. Yeah. Working the soil. Yeah. It's not quite like that.

[00:06:19] She actually does a lot of backbreaking work out there, but yeah, it turns out we have some pretty big fields. Yeah. Well, let's talk about, let's talk about soil. Um, so there's two basic types of soil and you're either at one extreme or the other or in between someplace, but it's a, you know, you got clay soil and you got sandy soil. All right. And everybody's kind of in between those two things. Now, uh, clay soil is it's full of nutrients, but it has a poor, poor drainage, right? Yes. It'll hold water.

[00:06:48] Well, you know, if you're in a dry climate, clay soil is great. Um, I am compacted to, you don't want to mix the two. You don't say, well, I have clay. So if I bring in some sand. Right. I know that you can have a big concrete backyard is what kind of happens. Yeah. Well, you can, you can amend clay soil with, uh, or organic material. That's the big thing. And I, I have a big compost bin. It's one of my, my little hobbies on the side is, is composting stuff.

[00:07:15] Um, you know, real easy to do, get a, get a couple of wheelbarrows full every year out of it. So, uh, you know, I'm happy with it. Uh, sandy soil. That's the opposite end of things. It's easy to dig, easy to till. Um, it drains freely, but that means you're going to have to water a little bit more. Also a little easier to weed. I have to point that out. That's true. Right. But it's a little bit less, uh, it's a little bit lower in nutrients. Um, well, you know, as the water runs through and drains through, it takes some of that

[00:07:45] nutrients out with it. So, um, you know, that's, that's your also a good way to amend that's that sandy soil is compost, you know, mix it in there, go for the compost every time. Yep. Yeah, exactly. Um, so one of the things, if you don't know what's going on in your soil and you don't know, you know, whatever is kind of get some outside help.

[00:08:10] So a lot of places, um, have a cooperative extension. Actually, I think every county in the U S I think has a cooperative extension or at least some resources they can get you to on the state level, if not, you know, in your local county. But, uh, so they will actually do free soil testing. Although my wife kind of has the, uh, you get what you pay for with that kind of thing. Um, and I looked on, like, I actually typed in cause I was curious, like here, like we

[00:08:39] know all the people at our cooperative extension where I live, um, on vacation. I was like, well, for the average person listening, you know, I don't want to give you the wrong advice. So I'm like, I just type in local cooperative extension and my computer pulled up the county where I'm at right now. And I typed in soil testing and nothing came up. So I don't know. I mean, I got the cooperative extension. And so the bottom line is you might have to actually make a phone call and talk to people. And if you're like me, probably don't like that.

[00:09:07] I like, I'd rather throw money at a problem than talk to a person, but you know, whatever. So I did go back to the wife and I was like, you know, you're big on soil testing and like that, who would you, you know, recommend? What would you think? And she said, uh, there's a company Logan labs. That's pretty, uh, intense for the hardcore, uh, like good analysis and like that. And I looked it up.

[00:09:33] They're about 60 bucks for their, uh, their soil testing. And the thing is with that is it's super thorough and tells you all the deficiencies and the, like that, but they don't like hold your hand on how to amend it. You know what I'm saying? Like it didn't, it was funny cause it was 60 bucks, I think for the soil testing. And then when I search, how do I analyze it?

[00:10:02] There's another company that for 60 bucks, I'll tell you what to do. And I'm like, oh, you know, like, oh, add these things, you know, per acre or whatever. And I calculate it like that. Now you could in theory, get the free or sorry, the $60 lab test, and then go back to your cooperative extension and be like, Hey, help me through this. What do I do? Right. And usually there's somebody there that can really do a good job.

[00:10:30] Um, they were big on pushing, like get a grant, get whatever. It's funny. They always, as long as we've been here the last four years, my wife's worked very closely with them. And like, it's just kind of a good place for her to network and meet friends. To be honest, like she's not really utilizing a lot of their benefits because their big push is, Hey, get this grant, get this grant, do this, you know, but it's like inviting the government into your property.

[00:11:00] Now, a lot of these people are like her friends and they're cool. And you know, you don't mind them coming over and seeing them, whatever, but it just, it's putting your business out there. I guess that's the, the fear I had. Right. And cause you know, I'm crazy paranoid where tinfoil hat, you know? Yeah. I mean, that's, that's kind of our thing, you know, we're, we're like that. Our, our deal is to kind of be afraid.

[00:11:25] So anyway, you can work with them and see what they'll do, but there's different, you know, levels of involvement that you might want to expose. Anyway, I was going to say a lot of her friends ended up applying for these grants. And a lot of them are like, build the high tunnel, build the greenhouse, and then we'll reimburse you. And then now with a lot of the government cuts and cuts of spending, a lot of the people

[00:11:52] aren't getting reimbursed, even though they were approved. Right. And it was like, ha ha, you spent 12 grand. And now you're kind of stuck. Do do. Yeah. Jokes on you. Sorry. So Logan labs, I'll put a link in the, in the description. Anyway, they're pretty good. I did look, it was funny. There was one called like RX soil that looked great. But when I looked them up, they're like, oh, we're not taking any more this season.

[00:12:20] And I'm like, oh, so that's not really helpful for you guys. Uh, I did see one called grow smart that did it. Um, and they do like have an interactive display. And so the RX soil and the grow smart both like had ways to deal with it. They were not anywhere near as thorough testing as Logan labs. And what I mean by that is they don't test for every element, you know, as many. Right.

[00:12:50] So that list gets smaller and that's something, you know, you need to decide what you're willing to pay for or do. I will say you can spend a lot of money and time guessing and doing the wrong thing. Yeah. And you can buy a lot of, you know, Hey, this great fertilizer, it's the miracle for everybody. Hey, this, you can really go wrong and waste money where doing the soil test might be the

[00:13:20] right answer. Now I wouldn't do the soil test every year or something that kind is ridiculous, but at least as an initial I would. And honestly, maybe when you think you got it, you might want to check back. Hey, I made all these changes. Right. You know, it's been a year, been two years. It did, did anything get better or not? You know, you decide, or maybe you're like, you know what? Now my plants are all awesome. So I don't need to test again. Yeah. Yeah. You do. Right.

[00:13:50] Sorry. That's my tension on that. But now let's talk about, uh, still early in the spring. I mean, we're kind of a little ahead of the game, especially up where I'm at. I'm in zone zone six, I think. And it's a little, uh, little frosty still. Everything's still frozen, still, uh, um, freezing temperatures. So what do we, what do we do? How do we get started? Like I'm, I'm eager. So we're going to talk about, uh, indoor indoor, starting your seeds indoors. Yes.

[00:14:17] Um, can be a little tricky, can be real simple. You can make it easy. I have grow lights. I have some big windows, um, you know, that face face morning sun. And, uh, you know, I just get my, my little seeds going. Everybody has their own little tricks. You know, I've seen people use the egg cartons and fill the little pockets with soil. And, um, sometimes I buy, uh, when I buy like, um, lettuce and it comes in those little plastic containers. Yes.

[00:14:46] You know, I cut those off and fill it with dirt, poke some holes in the side with the needle and, you know, so it drains properly. Yep. You know, good ones for, for starting indoors are, uh, lettuce, tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, peas, sweet potatoes. I, I personally find that cucumbers are better just planting them outside in my opinion. Yeah. That and any like root vegetable, that kind of stuff. You just direct seed.

[00:15:14] You just right out and do it right as it goes. Yeah. Uh, outdoors right now, uh, for a lot of places you can do a cabbage, kale, carrots, onions, heartier, cold weather. Whether, whether, yeah. That's what you're looking for, for, for this early in the season. Um, but, uh, another great thing you can do to get started early is, is cold frames. Um, a lot of people, uh, build these cold frames there. You can make them yourself. They're really easy.

[00:15:41] Uh, protects the plants from, uh, wind, rain, snow, ice, cold temperatures. Yeah. Um, usually something like that. Like you just go find, you know, you go to Craigslist or marketplace and you find used windows, old windows. Right. And you know, you can even use, um, you can even use like clear plastic or plexiglass, you know? Um, I find myself, I get nervous that I'm going to end up slamming that cold frame close too fast and break the window.

[00:16:10] I, it hasn't happened to me yet, but it's still. Right. Or you're like the heavy winds or whatever. Uh, yeah, I definitely do like door hinges when I do them around the frame. And so that way I can fold them like one 80 back all the way over. Yeah. Cause when they're kind of teetering up, you need to have a way to make sure the wind isn't going to catch it and smack it back down again. That's doable, but it's one more thing to plan out. Right. Um, right. Now, like I said, you can use, you can use clear plastic.

[00:16:40] It's not going to work as good as good as glass. Um, you can use plexiglass, but it's plexiglass kind of hard to work with without making a big mess out of it. To get the, the early start. Like we do a lot of things. Um, my wife starts, start seeds. She almost does everything from seed. I don't think we buy like any plants, like as plants, which it makes it hard, but you know, what you got and you know, it under, you understand like that.

[00:17:06] But one of the big things is, Oh no, it's going to frost tonight or Oh no, it's cold. So she'll bring them outside all day and let them sit in the sun. And then, Oh, we gotta, you know, get up and go put them out before it's too hot. And then go get them back in the house before it's another thing we did to buy time. Just like Kevin in the cold frames is I built a greenhouse out of just pallets. And then I took like cattle panel, wrapped it around the outside and then, you know, clear plastic through a screen door on it.

[00:17:36] I think I did it for like 500 bucks, which I mean, it's not free, but it's still not the end of the world either. Right. I think it was, it was maybe even cheaper than that at the time. But anyway, I do have a video that we did that. We can, I'll throw it in the link. You know, I think if you just search prepping badass greenhouse or survival and basic badass podcast greenhouse, it'll come up. You can go through like the little steps, but it's kind of straightforward. Like you look at it and you're like, yeah, I see what he did there. You know, it depends on your ability.

[00:18:06] Right. But I do take you through each thing. Like, Hey, look, I put the cut, the pallets like this and it made it super easy. I did learn some tricks. So yeah, I mean, it is, it is, it is fairly easy to put one together. But you also, again, you want to be conscious of the placement of it. You know what I mean? It has to get direct sun. Otherwise it's not doing what it's supposed to do. And so one of the things like we learned, I live in North Carolina.

[00:18:36] I was in New York with Kevin, you know, forever and then moved down south to escape high taxes and, and ugly people, whatever it is, you know? And so what you, depending how far south you are, turns out direct sun, just cause they put that on the seed packet or on your plant. If you live in North Carolina, they don't mean direct sun. Not direct sun.

[00:19:01] Not like the real, and I imagine if you're in like Arizona or Texas, not bad sun, you know? Yeah. Like a little bit of sun. Um, but yeah, no, exactly. You do want to think of the placement and scope out your yard and realize that, you know, the height of the summer and the, the winter, the sun is actually in different places. Right. Right.

[00:19:25] So you do want to kind of scope that out, like maybe go back to some old pictures of the summer and things like that. And lay it out. One of the things I'm thinking about this year is, is actually digging a hole. I mean, I got a tractor with a bucket, so I might dig a hole and bury it like three feet down to keep the cooler temperature of the earth. And so again, that actually helps you on both ends because it uses the earth to regulate. Right.

[00:19:53] And so you can have less hot when it's super hot, but you can also have less cold when it's super cold because the ground kind of keeps it even. So if I do do that, I'll make a video and show you guys because I know you usually appreciate that kind of thing. But I think I will do that is dig that out. I don't really know where I'm going to place it this year. That's one of my big things. Sure.

[00:20:19] My wife would tell you, I should already been on it and the should already be built with the green for next winter, dude. That's right. I'm way ahead. You're not, but I was way ahead. Right. Exactly. So another thing that we did is like, I went on Amazon and I bought like $30 solar fans. Mm hmm. And put those in the greenhouse to kind of keep the air moving out. Um, cause again, it does get so hot in those like, and that's it.

[00:20:49] You hit the height of the day and it just, you know, you're cooking in there. It'll be 120 or something in my greenhouse. Yeah. Like, whoa. But again, it definitely can extend your CDs season. And I got to say cold frames do so much, especially extending into the fall, um, of buying you more time, but also having it protected. It basically protects you from the frost. Right.

[00:21:15] Um, another thing that's really awesome is, uh, so one of my wife's favorite, uh, seed places is called, uh, Johnny selected seeds. And I think the website is Johnny seeds.com. Um, if you go on there one, she really likes their seeds, which, you know, it turns out germination and reliability, all that stuff matters. Right.

[00:21:37] Um, if you go to growers library and they have, uh, direct seeding guides, I think, and they talk about, you know, planning the garden. Um, let me see quick. I thought I had it ready and now I'm not as, as efficient as I was, but basically they have how to plan out your garden, but they also have, um, the, uh,

[00:22:07] planning tools and sorry. So they have a, um, how to plan and plot your season. There they go. Uh, under plant and planning tools, they have a seed starting date calculator. So this is where it's awesome. So you actually type in your spring frost free date, like your first thing. And it will tell you exactly.

[00:22:34] I'll see if I can share my screen to those of you who are watching it online. That it'll tell you exactly, you know, when you should be setting it out, uh, when you should start the seeds inside, you know, if you're doing that, so you'll have it ready for the right time. And the cool thing is they actually tell you like how many weeks out, you know, it's going to be for each thing.

[00:22:59] They also tell you kind of how much to plant and what type of things, you know, they go through collards and all the different peas and parsley and mustards and melons and lettuce. And, you know, you can go through the cool stuff. So that's pretty awesome. And just something to, you know, think about, uh, to have a calculator that just figures it out is pretty cool. Right. And, and now you have access to things like that. You might not in the future. So it's best to get it done.

[00:23:29] I feel like I have a good idea just off the top of my head in my area because I've lived here and I've, you know, done gardening for long enough, but I know that, you know, some people have, you know, some people are new to this sort of thing. And it's, uh, you know, it's a good resource to have up here. It's usually Easter is my, my last frost. I usually plant some seeds before that. And sometimes I got to replant, but seeds are cheap. And, uh, exactly. Exactly.

[00:23:57] It's not like you do the best you can, you know? And that's now what do you, what's your take on like tilling when you're getting ready for things? Do you tell things, Kevin, do you know, I mean, this is a, this is a great time to, you know, to, to get to work on doing that. What I like to do is, is add the compost, you know, early about this time of the year and, and just dig it, turn it over. Just, you know, dig it up and turn it over.

[00:24:22] Some beds I have that are, you know, year after year, like asparagus, you know, I'm leave it alone. I throw some compost on top and the asparagus grows every year, but the new plant, you know, tomatoes and things like that. Um, I like to really add the compost early and turn everything over, you know, before things get, you know, before things start growing at all. You know, I pull out weeds and things, but really there's not much this time of year, this early in the season. Right.

[00:24:52] My big thing. I mean, I think I kind of go with the happy medium of, you know, a little bit. Cause the big thing is, and I guess, you know, what I always battle with my wife about, cause the deal is I want to go out with the tractor and the tiller and I want to just turn it all. I can make it beautiful brown fields that are, you just put your hand in and scoop up, you know, handfuls and let it drip down, you know, like rain. And I'm like, yeah, this is beautiful.

[00:25:19] But the problem is when you go in and disrupt it like that, you take the whole balance of bugs and things that should be there. Turns out there's good bugs. Like it's not just bad, especially on the more microbial level, you know, and the worms and the things in there. There's a lot of good stuff in the soil. And so when you go turn it all over, you just disrupted their world and made everything crazy where a lot of them die and don't, you know, thrive.

[00:25:48] So the, the balance and the happy medium we have, cause again, I don't want to be out there weeding and pulling every little thing to, I mean, we're talking about like an acre of garden. And it's like, I can't, I can't do it. And then it's like, you just do that by yourself. Then you just go out there and do it. And then you're the bad husband and then you're the asshole. And you don't want to do that. So I'm like, I got this tractor. Let's go turn it over.

[00:26:16] So just, I want to make it tell it's Brown. She's like, all right, go ahead and turn it over. But one time, you know, don't get crazy. Don't dig down and kill everything. And that's the, the balance that you need to do in my world, right. To make my mind happy. That's not everybody's.

[00:26:37] The one trick I might've mentioned this before to you guys, but one of the tricks I love to do is I have a bunch of oak trees in my yard and we have a big fenced garden. At the end of the year, I rake all the leaves and I stack them like a foot high in the garden, like just everything. And then I'll go till it then to kind of put those leaves into the dirt. And then the next year you don't see any leaves. And that's all that free composting happened.

[00:27:05] You know, it is composting, but it's not your traditional sense with the big pile. You know, it's kind of more like a time to work culture. Is that what they call it? Yeah. I think that's more wood too. Yeah. I did a lot of a lot of when I set up my beds, this is actually, you know, I should have mentioned this. When I set up a lot of my beds, I basically dug all the dirt out and drug a bunch of rotting wood out of the, out of the woods and just throw it all in there and do it and put the dirt back on top.

[00:27:33] And that, that would hold, will hold the moisture, you know? So when you have a long dry spell, you know, that moisture will start coming out of those, those chunks of wood and keep your, your soil damp. Exactly. My wife said that there's kind of mixed reviews on that. Now people are starting to look at that as like, eh, maybe it's not that good, but I feel like people have a problem with everything. Most people are stupid. I disagree. I hardly disagree. There you go. It works well.

[00:28:02] I have the answers. So right, right from the source, Kevin, the master gardener. That's right. Um, so it's funny. My wife can't stop gardening long enough to go do the master gardener course. Yeah. I can't leave the garden. Uh, it's funny. Cause we always, I'm like, well, you should go do that. Like, this is your world and you're really good at it. And you know, whatever it's funny. Um, yeah, the, uh, yeah. Korean farming.

[00:28:32] There's a lot of different things to look into. You can go down rabbit holes though. They go forever. Now I hate to say this when everybody's got forest fires on the mind. Cause like, this is like nonstop everywhere anymore. I'm down in the Carolinas, South Carolina was just, you know, all kinds of big crazy and it's nonstop.

[00:28:50] But one of the cool things that you can do if you can pull it off is when you have all that firewood type debris, you know, you cut down all the trees and cleared land and whatever. If you burn that in the middle of the garden, the soil loves all that carbon that you can throw in there. You're doing the decomposing. Yeah. Potassium. And, um, another great thing about doing it that way is, is you're taking care of a lot of the bugs.

[00:29:19] You know, a lot of the, um, a lot of the stuff that I have specific, I have a problem with asparagus beetles. Okay. Asparagus bed. And every year I'll cut everything down. I'll throw a bunch of dry grass and leaves on top of it and burn it all off. And that'll take care of them for the next year. You know, it'll take care of those eggs and stuff like that. Like you were talking about a lot of the stuff that's under the soil in the soil. Yeah. You want to keep it there and the fire on top, isn't going to damage that. No, but it's not a lot of those pests.

[00:29:48] And then as it rains and spreads, spreads all that good stuff from the wood and whatever into the soil, it's just going to be awesome. You know, the carbon after you burn it and you have all that. The word potassium actually comes from the word, the words potash. Um, really? I did not know that. See Kevin potassium. Yeah. So it's bringing out the soil. All right. But yeah, so obviously check with your local burn bands and that nonsense before you do it.

[00:30:16] And Kevin, the whole world is on fire. Yeah. Let me say this. If you're going to light your garden on fire, have your garden hose right there and ready. You know what I mean? Like, don't be an asshole about it, but you know, whatever. I think I cut down, I had like four, I, and it's funny cause I didn't even cut them down. I had four 60 foot trees in my backyard that were big pine trees and I just removed everything and put it in a big pile.

[00:30:44] I had somebody cut it and then I chopped it all up and pulled it away. Right. Just, I was a little like, well, one, I didn't have a 60 foot lift like this guy did. That's kind of the big thing. Right. But he came over and took care of it. I know if I'd had bigger cojones, I would have cut the tree and drop. Yeah, but there's nothing worse than like dropping a tree on your own house and realizing that you're a dumb ass for doing it yourself when you could have just hired somebody that knew what they're doing.

[00:31:14] Exactly. And that's kind of the way I felt. I was like, ah, this could be really embarrassing for me when I have the big awkward in my house. Like, dude, I take down trees all the time and I would take down a 60 foot tree if it was not leaning over my house. You know what I'm saying? Like that's the, you know, turns out. And I'm like, oh, you make it look so easy. I could do this. That's the thing. Like they go up there and it's like, oh yeah, I would have done that same thing. That's easy.

[00:31:43] I guess the big thing was cutting the limbs that make it lean that way. Like if you take half the weight off, that's pulling it over your house and then drop it. It's a lot easier than he was like, that's the key is to. And I'm like, you know what, dude, your job safe. Don't worry about it. I'm not, you know, I said, I'll drop a giant tree in the backyard. I just, the ones that are losing over the house. If you don't care where it falls, if it doesn't matter where it falls, it's fine. But yeah.

[00:32:11] I have some dings in my fence that, you know, I took a chance. I've had to replace sections of two different fence for, for over the years with dropping trees myself. I took a shot, you know, but every year I'm just, actually, I used to think I could get better every year, but now it's like, yeah, I had a good run. And then I've done one or two that like went the exact opposite of how I wanted.

[00:32:39] Um, another thing I was going to say is I watch the show Homesteader Rescue on discovery or whatever, and, and they go through, but like every homestead, they're like, how do you prevent against wildfires? What are you doing about like, everyone's like my house is going to burn down. Wildfires are right around the corner. Like it's just, and so just be careful. Think of the, you know, the different burn bands and things like that. And just kind of pay attention.

[00:33:07] Just be aware of what you're doing. Problem is when you have four 60 foot trees worth of pine stacked up in the backyard, you can't like start that fire and then be like, yeah, it's getting windy now. I need to, uh, slow that down. It doesn't work that way. And so that's, that's where you get into danger. So just something to consider, but I will say cashing in on those leaves and working them

[00:33:36] into the dirt and the soil and doing that. And obviously I do huge compost piles as well. Um, where I am mixing in the eggshells and the, you know, and the coffee grounds and the, what we did, we actually did an episode just on compost about mixing the green and the brown and having that proper balance. There's a lot of neat stuff you guys can get into if you want to dig deep into that. But I would say Johnny seeds does have calculators to lay out your whole garden.

[00:34:06] They do have sections of, you know, Hey, I have a family of four, you know, whatever. It's like a per person plant this many things. My wife would like to point out that, uh, when she plans things, a lot of times when they talk about proper spacing of plants, she kind of doubles it. Just saying. Yeah. You got to get that max growth factor in there. You pack them in there.

[00:34:30] Uh, you know, obviously like a lot of those that you direct seed, you go out and you pick the ones that are, you know, thriving, you leave and you pull out the ones that are not things like that. But I was like, so you just pick it out till they're at the right level. And she's like, no, I still have twice as much in there. Cause you got to get that thing going. Mm hmm. She's like, cause well, the thing is when they're dense, they end up keeping the bugs.

[00:34:55] And stuff like away, like it actually has room to, or no room for bad things to get in there. Her big thing is, is inner. Um, I know you always talk about the three sisters. So like integrating different plants together. Mm hmm. That's really cool. But she does that, but it's not just cause the plants help each other on a plant level. The insects protect each other.

[00:35:22] Cause you'll have different predatory kind of insects that'll keep away the other insects. And it just kind of like takes care of itself. So there's neat things like that. Uh, you guys know, I like that, uh, uh, uh, survival secret garden of survival and secret greenhouse of survival. Right. There's a lot of cool stuff in there about integrating and things like that.

[00:35:46] You guys might want to check out, but I'll put some books and some different things that really make me happy in the show notes. And, uh, some links to the other stuff we did. We also did an episode with, uh, Sonia Gomez, who is amazing at laying out different gardens and food, you know, laying out your property to kind of get the best world out of it. Uh, I, you know, awesome.

[00:36:12] If you can pay for her services and have them like lay out your property, that's even cooler, but also you really should check out the episode. Cause she just gives out so much free knowledge. I know a lot of you guys who are, uh, you know, follow the podcast for a while, really got a lot out of it. And I know I got a lot of positive feedback on that, on really digging in. So if you want to like really nerd out on soil and stuff, we did a lot of that in that episode.

[00:36:40] So yeah, I'll try and put the compost episode, the greenhouse episode, but a lot of good things you might want to check out. So that's all show ideas, uh, email us and questions, concerns, things you want to hear about emails at prepping baddass at gmail.com. Kevin, do you have other concerns this week you need to tell us? No, that's it. That's it. I would like to say there's a couple of books that I've got here. This one is, uh, this actually came from Chuck's wife. She gave it to me.

[00:37:09] So that's how you know it's the right thing. It is packed full of great information. Uh, I also have the, uh, the, the ultimate guide to restarting civilization. This book has a lot of great stuff on, on gardening, planning, crop rotation, that sort of stuff. So if you get a chance, there's definitely a lot of affiliate link. I'll put that in there. That's right. That's right. You should check it out. But all right. No, that's awesome. You guys, uh, you know, that's, I really appreciate it. That's what I'm saying.

[00:37:38] So with that, I would say stay safe and we will talk to you guys. See you guys next week.