Grow it Yourself, Make it Yourself

(Potential savings: hundreds of dollars
each year)
Growing your own food and making
your own furniture are quickly
becoming lost arts. Many schools
no longer offer classes in shop or
horticulture and many people have
become so detached from hand work
skills that these techniques really are
becoming almost unknown in some
circles. Fortunately you don’t need a
lot of knowledge or tools to do basic
gardening or woodworking. The best
thing is, you can save a lot of money
growing your own food and making your
own things.
Gardening
Vegetable gardening is probably the
easiest of all types of gardening and
can be as simple as planting a seed
in the ground, watering it, weeding it
and harvesting the result. However to
make things turn out better we offer the
following points.
1) You don’t need many tools to start. To
prepare the soil you can rent a garden
tiller, or hand dig it in the spring with a
spade or large mattock. You will need
a soil rake to smooth out the soil and
remove the clumps of sod, rocks and
roots. You will need a hoe to make
furrows and to remove weeds during
the growing season. And you will need
a long handled shovel and fork for
harvest. A wheelbarrow also comes in
handy to move soil, rocks and fertilizer.
2) If the soil is high in sand or clay you
will need to add lots of organic matter
like peat moss, compost or composted
manure. Most plants really like to grow
in highly organic soils.
3) If your garden area is a bit wet, make
raised beds for the plants by shoveling
out walkways and piling up the soil in 3’
wide and 20’ long beds. This will drain
excess water from the growing area.
Don’t work the soil when it is too wet or
it will get all clumpy as it dries out.
4) Add some 7-7-7 all purpose fertilizer
to the growing area. Follow the
directions on the package and don’t
over fertilize or you will burn the plants.
5) Buy seeds and plant them according
to the directions on the package. Don’t
plant them too deep or too shallow.
Don’t plant seeds that like warm soil
(like squash or pumpkin) too early when
the soil is cold or they may rot before
they germinate. You can also borrow
the excess seed (what they don’t plant)
from your rich neighbors.
6) Keep the planting area well watered
until the seeds germinate. Then water
regularly if it isn’t raining enough.
7) Remove all weeds around the plants.
The weeds compete for water and
fertilizer and will adversely affect your
plants if allowed to grow. Weed every
other day. Weeds grow at tremendous
rates. Don’t wait a week or they may
take over the garden.
8) Watch out for bug infestations. Many
can be controlled by hand picking (like
potato bugs) or spraying with a mix of
water and vegetable oil (1 part oil to
50 parts water with a couple drops of
liquid dish soap to make the two mix
together).
9) You may need to put a small fence

around the garden if you have animal
pests like ground hogs or rabbits. 3’ high
chicken wire works well for this.
10) Harvest the vegetables at their peak
and then dry, pickle, freeze or put in cold
storage what you cannot eat.

Woodworking
Even simple woodworking skills will
save you a tremendous amount of
money. For woodworking you will need
to make a larger investment in tools
than your investment in gardening
tools. However most of these tools will
probably last your lifetime, depending
on the quality and the frequency of
use, and they will certainly pay for
themselves many times over.
Starting with the ultra basics:
1) Having a hammer, a set of
screwdrivers, and a drill lets you do
such things as hang pictures and mount
spice racks or shelves on the wall.
2) Add to that a hand saw (get two,
a large saw with coarse teeth to cut
fast and a smaller saw with fi ne teeth
for making smooth cuts when building
things. And get them with the fast
cutting Japanese tooth pattern), a tape
measure, a level and a square. These
will give you enough to repair the rotted
back stairs or build a simple dog house.
3) If you want to build furniture you
will need many more tools including a
router, a sander, clamps etc.
4) If you like rustic furniture and
structures you are in luck! With this you
don’t need many tools or as much skill.
Sometimes called greenwood building,
it is as simple as cutting branches in
the woods, and then bending them and
joining them with simple mortise and
tenon joints. One company (Lee Valley
Tools - www.leevalley.com ) even sells
tools specifically for this.
5) If you want to try your hand at fine
furniture making, take a few night
courses in the subject to improve your
chances of success. Generally you can
make furniture for a fraction of what it
would cost in a retail store.

Scrooge