Spend one tenth what you do now on laundry soap

It's true; you can spend one tenth what you do now on laundry soap. It costs 30 to 50 cents a load for commercial laundry soaps like Tide, Era and other brand names. Many people report using alternative soaps that work and cost them 2.5 to 3.5 cents a load – and these soaps eliminate the petroleum-based detergents making them better for you and the environment.

As a first timer, it took me 45 minutes to make 2.5 gallons of liquid detergent that will be consumed at ¼ cup per load. That's more than 150 loads of laundry for my investment and I have plenty of stuff left over to make more.

Think about it: corporations have used media to convince us that what our grandparents used (homemade detergents) wasn't good enough. They use pride and status to urge people to use their products, not make their own. Give up some TV time and you save loads of money.

Surprise testimonial while in the store:
My wife thought I was going overboard making our own soap, but last week she agreed to try it and if it didn't work, she would switch back. Good enough. Be bought the three ingredients, 20 Mule Team Borax (a naturally occurring chemical from Death Valley), washing soda (another natural compound) and Fels Naptha soap (as far as I can tell, made from natural ingredients). We placed these in the bottom of our grocery cart away from the foods and continued shopping.

"Excuse me, excuse me – sorry to bother you," a woman in her late 20s said as she stopped us. "I couldn't help but notice what you have there – do you make your own laundry soap?" I said it was our first time and we were going to try it.

"I've been making it for quite a while and it really works. Now my sister-in-law and mother are making theirs too. It really works and saves so much money."

Later my wife accused me of secretly planting the woman there to convince her I wasn't some odd freak of nature trying to make my own detergent.

The recipe:
There are tons of recipes. I used a simple one 1 bar Fels Naptha soap; 1 cup Borax, 1 cup Washing Soda with 1 quart water plus 8 quarts of water.

Steps:
1) Place a quart of water on the stove and boil it
2) While you wait for the water to boil, grate the bar of soap, it will make about 2 cups'
3) Reduce the heat after the water boils
4) Add the grated soap in small amounts and stir until all is dissolved. This takes the longest, about 30 minutes.
5) Add the Borax and Washing Soda, stir until dissolved
6) Add this to a large pail and add 8 quarts of warm water, stir
7) Cover and let sit for at least 24 hours before use. It will gel.

When you get ready to use it, you will need to stir the gel to mix it and measure out ¼ cup per load.

Some things to note:
If you are allergic to perfumes, you can control that by not adding any perfumes to this. If you like perfumes, then add ½ to 1 ounce of essence oil.

This soap doesn't foam or create a lot of suds. Suds don't do the work or the cleaning, the recipe does that. Again, corporate media has convinced people that suds are an important component to cleaning "scrubbing bubbles" who doesn't remember that advertising phrase.

I had never heard of Fels Naptha before but found it in the laundry soap isle of a big-box store and then later at my local country grocer – seems it has been a spot cleaner used for years. The same with Washing Soda, the most common one available is Arm and Hammer. Don't confuse this with baking soda which is very different.

Alternate bar soaps can be used like Zote and Ivory, but the recipes I've found say stay away from the perfumed other brands.

You can reuse your old plastic liquid detergent containers and save space by doling out what you need from the large pail into the smaller more manageable container.

Here's some links with more recipes and blogs with people's comments on them.

10 commonly used recipes http://tipnut.com/10-homemade-laundry-soap-detergent-recipes/
One family's recipe and story, the Duggars http://www.duggarfamily.com/recipes.html
Comments from blog readers about their experiences: http://ihavetosay.typepad.com/randi/2009/03/laundry-soap-recipes.html

Vegetable seed companies succumb to corporate whoredom

As much as we possibly can, we should be examining our values, our locality, our abilities and rejecting corporations in favor of what we know and hold dear to ourselves or family. Even the family garden is paying the price of our inattention to what they are doing to our seed supply. The banks and Wall Street have proven we can't trust others to do what is right for our society as a whole.

The more I delve into the journey of becoming as self-sufficient as I can and move closer to the land, the more I discover the manipulation of corporations in our everyday lives. Oh, I've always seen the obvious: a good example is the commercial on television right now promoting more exploration for natural gas and oil using what looks like everyday people saying how taxes on the industry don't make sense in this economy. Wind and solar threaten their bottom line.

No, it's the subtle things that slipped by me. Like the fact that the big seed companies have now bought up the garden seed suppliers and are reducing the number of seeds made available for even the home gardener. I noticed something was wrong this year when I got my Henry Fields and Gurney seed catalogues. Most of the pictures, names and descriptions of the vegetables were the same in both catalogues. Since then I've learned how Monsanto and other big seed corporations have made these bought up garden seed suppliers.

As a result, in catalogs in 1981, there were about 5,000 non-hybrid vegetable varieties. Today, thanks to these corporate thinkers who count money and push the hybrids their companies produce, they have reduced that number to 600 non-hybrid vegetable varieties. Obviously the corporate whores who work for the suit and ties in these companies think they are doing a good thing. In 2005, Monsanto bought Seminis, another large corporation, and as a result owns 75 percent of the world's tomato seed supply. While garden catalog companies like Burpee may not be owned by Monsanto, they now get many of their seeds from them as a result of the 2005 purchase.


What's next: they'll genetically modify these seeds so they can sell people the chemicals they make and are being used by the millions of pounds on our commercial food supply? For what, corporate profits at the expense of human health, that's the definition of corporate whore – they have no allegiance other than to make money for shareholders – who are the corporate pimps running the world and most of Washington.

Take a gamble, plant a few thing way before you should

I think every gardener should be a garden gambler, plant early gardens and pray.

Don't be afraid to be a garden gambler and plant at least a small portion of your garden early if you have the space to play with. Plants like broccoli, cauliflower, Chinese cabbage, kohlrabi, cilantro, chives and parsley are just a few of the plants you can put out and take a chance on catching a cold night or two.

Farmers always say agriculture is a gamble. Like farmers, we gardeners don't control the weather. If you are a gambler and have a few more plants than you need, put a small number out well before the last freeze date for your area. Gamble, but don't be gambler with a problem – you succeed one year so the next you put everything out: Do that and you have a gambling addiction.

More than 50 percent of the time you will beat the odds and get the few plants you put out to grow. I was a real gambler this year. I put out a few plants when the NOAA weather chart said I had a 90 percent chance of still having a hard freeze. Still, despite the temps last night getting into the mid twenties, the only thing I lost were carrots I transplanted for bunching.

Unlike farmers who can't cover a huge field with newspaper for plastic tarps to protect plants from the cold, gardeners can. The simple act of covering plants will sometime save delicate ones that emerge before the last frost date. Often potatoes will come up early but will die if hit by a late frost.

If you plant early, you are a gambler, but don't cry if you lose your bets.

The 10-minute garden takes shape in two sessions

The ten minute garden continues to be very little work for an amazing amount of space. On two days within the same week I used a pitch fork to break up the soil and pile it into a heap in a four by four foot square bed. Make no mistake, I still have my huge garden, but I just want to see how much a person can do with as little as a 10 minute commitment.

Looking at how much I could do in just 10 minutes, I decided my bed would be a standard 4x8 foot bed and I would use the fork on another day to expand it. Voila! I have a remarkable amount of space with just two 10-minute days – that even surprised me at how little time I had spent.

In all fairness, this requires some plot of dirt that was already bare. Anyone starting with a grassy spot would have had to use 10 minutes to put newspapers down and pour bags of top soil over them to kill the grass, or the previous fall weigh down a tarp or something to kill the grass where the garden could be approached and forked up in two 10 minute periods.

Still, it proves a substantial space can be tilled on a couple mild march days, and the soil heaped up in the middle of a bed. The heaping is very important. It does what farmers do in fields with what is called a field cultivator. The surface area of the soil is raised and the amount of surface area is increased – both create good drying conditions in the spring when not all days are warm enough to dry out flat ground enough to plant.

The sun and spring winds will dry the mound of dirt faster and later it can be shaped into a bed and planted.

The 10-minute garden experiment

So just how much food can be raised in 10 minutes?

We tend to measure our gardens by the square foot – there's even a square foot garden guru, a PBS host and books on the subject. Recommendations of garden footage accompany garden tillers descriptions. Size apparently matters: one of the first things gardeners mention to one another is how much space they tend.

Yet there's no mention of people's most precious commodity – time. The reality is, when a person decides to garden, they envision a space but have no idea how much time that garden will require. That got me to thinking: just how much could I grow using only 10-minutes when the weather was fit to work outside? And I don't mean doing the dirty little 10 minutes-a-day average trick that would mean 70 minutes a week over the season. I mean, hey, I've got 10 minutes, the weather is good, I'll go do some gardening; what exactly would come out of such a plot?

It makes logical sense. Most gardeners don't have the time to spare. Let's face it, we live hectic lives and many gardeners like the idea of growing their own food, but don't want to live every spare minute in their gardens after working all day. That's why I hear way too many stories of people starting gardens, tilling up some measurable space, planting it, then by August weeds have taken over because they over estimated the time commitment needed for the space they tilled. They either scale down their space the next year or abandon gardening altogether because they remember the noxious unsightly weeds.

So how much can grow in a 10 minutes using nothing but hand tools? I'll be sure to let you know . . . maybe.

Raised garden beds beat row-crop gardens hands down

Whether you organic garden or use chemicals, raised bed gardens will out produce old-fashioned row-crop gardens. Garden beds save time, money and are good on the environment too.

In a raised beds you plant the area that normally would be empty between the rows. After the bed is prepared you get more plants in a small space by placing seeds the recommended distance from one another in all directions of the last seed planted, you fill the space solid with plants.

For example, up to 30 carrots spaced equally in all directions can grow in one-square foot of soil; compared that to the six or more square feet needed if they were planted in a straight row. The same is true for onions, radishes, beets or peas.

A row garden six-feet long would require empty dirt on each side of the row for cultivation requiring six-square feet of space to grow the same 30 carrots in one-square foot of a raised garden bed..

I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to weed one-square foot instead of six square feet for the same 30 carrots. Because beds are three- to five-feet wide, they are weeded by hand from each side.

Bed gardens:
Save water because you have less space to water. Plants form a leaf canopy that shades the ground and conserves water.

Shade the ground, making weed germination slow or stop. Any weed that germinates and grows through the canopy, it is easy to pull because it has a much weaker root system.

Use less compost or uses fertilizer if you use non-organic methods

Require no power equipment – you can use shovels and spades to till small high-yielding spaces.

Root systems develop better because hand weeding can be done from each side of the bed, keeping the soil loose because you never walk on and compacted.

Raised garden beds can be constructed from almost any material (video). As you plan your garden this spring, you really need to consider beds, especially if your space and time are limited.

If you've got rotten soil, check this out and get started fast.

Quick organic gardening fix to poor soil in urban gardens

Just moved in and want a garden this spring, but there is none at your new home? Here's a quick and dirty way – pun intended – to get a garden and you don't even have to till up the ground or remove the sod.

Step 1: Locate a sunny spot in the area of the yard you want the garden. Check it morning, noon and afternoon to see how the shadows of your house or other building around it might fall onto the area. It's okay if shadows fall, but you want it to receive light 70 percent of the time.

Step 2: Decide on the size you want. Sometimes it's wise to start small, building only one or two garden beds if you are starting from scratch. A no-till garden will have beds that are four to five feet wide and eight to 25 feet long. Once constructed, you never should walk on them, but will care for them by reaching in from the sides.

Step 3: Construct the frame of the bed. Any material except treated lumber can be used. Many gardeners will use stones or landscaping bricks to outline the beds. Others will buy lumber and make wooden frames – just remember, because the wood isn't treated, you will have to replace the frame every three to five years.

Step 4: Place several layers of newspaper in the bed over the grass. Be sure to cover the corners and edges as the newspapers will be what will kill the grass so you don't have to remove the sod. After the first year, the grass will be dead and you can use shovels or spades and turn the soil over in preparation for the next year.

Step 5: Buy 10 to 20 bags of top soil (not potting mix) and a bag of peat moss. See my story on how peat is a great fast start material. Mix the soil and peat on a tarp or in a wheel barrow and dump it carefully into the bed. Mix enough peat so you have a light fluffy soil mixture at least six to eight inches thick over the newspapers.

Step 6: You are ready to plant. Be sure not to dig too deep if you put transplants in so the newspaper will not be disturbed. Within 45 to 60 days the grass will have died and you can do anything you would with any other garden after that.

Top soil costs less than $1.50 for a 40 pound bag, so this is a quick fix to get anyone going on a garden bed or two. You can expand your garden in the fall by digging more beds and using your own compost to build your gardens – it’s the best route to building a rich garden soil and true organic methods.