Black Nightshade fully identified

After consulting many websites with descriptions, I have determined the Black Nightshade I have is American Black Nightshade (Solanum americanum). The two easiest factors to aid in this identification is that the green berries are speckled with white (or near white lighter green than the rest of the berry) and that the leaves (young and mature) do not have any red or purple coloration on the under sides. I had some plant experts look at pictures and identify it as Eastern Black Nightshade, but I ruled that out due to no red or purple on the under sides (otherwise they are nearly identical). Another thing I have learned is that these plants are NOT the same as Belladonna (I thought they were). As it turns out, Belladonna is a native to europe and is a bit removed in the family tree. It is in the Nightshade family but is a cousin to the Nightshades growing in the USA (unless, of course, a true Belladonna is brought to the USA). However, due to the close relation and close appearance to each other, there are a lot of Nightshades (often referred to as Deadly Nightshade) who inherit the reputation of Belladonna.

Anyway, the evidence I have found has reinforced my contention that the Black Nightshades should be treated just as tomatoes. All greens and green fruit have toxic levels of solanine in them (which supposedly can be cooked out of them) and ripe fruits no longer have toxic levels of solanine. This is subjective. If you were able to eat a huge quantity of Black Nightshade fruit, you may get solanine poisoning. But, the same is true of ripe tomatoes and potato tubers, and likely peppers, eggplant and other Nightshades commonly eaten all around the world.

Scary Black Nightshade weed!

Well, not scary to me.

A few weeks back I noticed a "weed" popping up in the pot in which I was growing my chickpeas. I decided to let it mature to see what it was. Well, after getting used to ignoring it (and its color blended in with the chickpea plants) I realized it was flowering and had been doing so such that it also had young green berries/fruits. So, I took some pictures and set about identifying it.


What is a weed? Well, you could say there really is no such thing. One person's weed is another person's valued plant. So, it is only a matter of being wanted.


Luckily, I had been very intrigued by potatoes and tomatoes being related to each other (and peppers and tobacco and eggplant...and the Black Nightshades). I had also found out that there were supposedly edible variants of this feared witch's plant bred decades ago to be edible due to lower levels of Solanine (the same poison in green tomato fruit, tomato leaves, potato leaves and green tubers, and all other greens and unripe fruits of plants in the "Nightshade family"). The edible berry variations of this supposed deadly are called Garden Huckleberry (not really a Huckleberry), Wonderberry, Sunberry, Jaltomato and Chichiquelite Huckleberry (again, not really a Huckleberry). Nobody truly knows which of these are different names for the same variation and which ones are truly different variations from each other.

I began to smell a rat here. I suspect those supposed edible berry variations of a supposed otherwise deadly toxic berry plant are not really that special. I suspect ALL OR MOST nightshade plant berries are edible when RIPE.

So, I have kept going back to Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and thinking about getting one or two or more varieties that are supposedly edible, to give them a try. But since I have a volunteer of some sort of Black Nightshade, I will now begin my investigation with it. I still have to wait for ripe berries to see what color and how large they are and then try tasting it and waiting for 24 hours to see if I get a cramped stomach or drop dead. :)

Mine is one of these species or varieties (there is still disagreement whether each of these is truly a different species and which may be hybrids as well): Solanum americanum (American Black Nightshade), Solanum ptycanthum (Eastern Black Nightshade), Solanum nigrum (Black Nightshade), Solanum retroflexum, Solanum scabrum or even some other species or variety.

Raised Bed Greenhouse: Day 7

Both varieties of carrots have now sprouted. Thus, everything in the raised bed greenhouse has now sprouted. Looking good.

Raised Bed Greenhouse: Day 3

Turnips and bok choi are now sprouting. This mini greenhouse is working great for late planting. Of course I still have to get the carrots to sprout and get to a decent harvest. :)

Raised Bed Greenhouse has sprouts after 2 days!

Success! The radishes are sprouting already. I am anxious to see what is next. Likely the turnips or bok choi as the carrots typically are slow to germinate relative to brassicas (mustard/cabbage family).

Fall Crop Garden - Raised Bed Greenhouse

Since I learned a few things with my front porch (mostly container based) gardening this Spring and Summer, I am actually feeling disappointed that I cannot continue growing sweet corn and several other things. However, there are good crops I can still plant that are called Fall crops (meant to be harvested during Fall). Now, I am not getting into pumpkins, squashes and gourds, though those are typical Fall crops. I am just not into these foods. What I have done, though, is Saturday I created my first real raised garden bed (about 40"x40" internal bed dimensions) and placed it in my back yard in a spot that gets full direct sun until about 1:30 PM. I plan on creating more raised beds in my back yard as I can get to it and spend the money. I am using concrete blocks rather than wood. I also decided to create a cheap greenhouse out of it by using 2 foot and 3 foot stakes, some 3 mil plastic (from a 10'x25' roll), a hammer and a staple gun. The temperatures inside the greenhouse are 20 to 25F higher than outside temperatures when in the sunlight and 10F higher when shaded. See the picture below.


For this experiment I planted elephant garlic, two varieties of 5 to 6" carrots, Cherry Belle radishes, Purple Top turnips, and two varieties of bok choi (aka bok choy, pak choi, pak choy, Chinese mustard, or Chinese cabbage). Bok choi is a brassica/cabbage which is a miniature loose head cabbage.

Pretty much any carrot or brassica (cabbage/mustard family -- mustards, kales, collards, cabbages, bok choi, turnips, radishes, kohlrabi, brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, etc.) crops do well for Fall crops. The garlic is also something that should be put in the ground as you would for a Fall crop, but they are not going to be harvested this Fall, rather they will be dormant and wait to get going on their own when next spring arrives.

Garden results: Chickpeas and Lentils

When I first posted about what I was growing this year I mentioned chickpeas and lentils. I got these out of bulk food bins at a local grocery. I stuck them in the ground and half expected no growth (due to chemical treatment, GMO, or radiation treatment). However, I had 100% germination and they grew great! In fact, I would say these are two awesome home garden legumes that people ignore. What I did is planted 3 or 4 seeds in a cluster only an inch apart in 3 gallon pots. They both grew to a height of about 12 to 18".

The Chickpeas (also known as Garbanzo Beans) grew a bit top heavy so I surrounded them with a sort of cage of 10" decorative wire fencing material to assist in keeping the plants upright. Very much like a typical pea, the pods quickly grow to full size and the bean/pea inside slowly grows to maturity. I found a good way to check the maturity of a Chickpea is the same way I do with Peas. At night, put a bright light behind the pod and see the shadow of the bean/pea inside. Now, if you want full maturity beans/peas, just wait until the pod turns yellow instead of green (just as you would wait for a pea pod to get bumpy and hard). However, just like peas, I prefer immature Chickpeas. They have a more tender texture, are a bit more watery and a different taste than matured beans/peas. It all depends upon your preference and your planned use (I love fresh green veggies and don't like many cooked). Of course, Chickpeas are one of the more versatile crops as well, dried mature Chickpeas can be used as a flour or as a cooked or raw bean once soaked in water and non-dried and young beans/peas are good raw or as a bean as well.

The Lentils are interesting too. Much like a typical pea plant, Lentil plants have tendrils. Since I planted 3 or 4 seeds in a close grouping, they latched onto each other to form a thick bramble bush cluster. I did not give them any support, as I did with the Chickpeas, because Lentil plants are much lighter (very thin stems and branches and tiny leaves). The pods look like miniature pea pods and have from 1 to 3 beans/peas in each one. Again, like peas and chickpeas, I prefer lentils young and raw. But once mature they can easily be harvested and dried in or out of the pods and become the hard little discs you see in the grocery after only a couple days of open air drying. Lentils do not require a light to examine, just look and feel how flat the pods are and you can see and feel when they are being filled in with 1 or more beans/peas.

For both Chickpeas and Lentils, the proper full maturity harvest time is to maintain the plant with proper care until it decides to die. Once it dies and browns, it is time to harvest. Pretty much the same as if you desire full maturity peas or beans (legumes) of any kind.

Garden results: Carrot, Onion, Lettuce, Pea, Bush Bean, Strawberry, Garlic

These crops I have been harvesting for some time now. They all grow easily and are easy to take care of. The only problems I had were some carrots were too close to each other (make sure they are thinned out properly), the lettuces bolted (sent up a seed stalk) and thus stopped producing nice edible leaves and the existing leaves flavor went nasty (all this happened during the week we went over 90F and I did not properly shade them), the final problem I had was growing the bush bean variety I did in a pot that was not spacious enough for the plants to have a good root system and thus did not grow very large and did not produce many beans. This whole season has been about trying things and learning what is good to do and what is not.

So called health care reform

Okay, I guess it is time for some politics.

I feel all of the points of debate, when it comes to this "reform", are actually a distraction from the most important two things being pushed and supported by both democrats and republicans. These two things are very important to think about and consider how they impact your freedom!

1) A core piece of this (again, supported by both dems and repubs) is using some sort of unified national (government?) digital (computer database) system for all medical records. This allows the state to know all of the details about you as a living organism. To put it another way, even if you are within a private health care insurance policy, your records will still be in this system overlorded by big brother.

2) Obama even repeated this tonight in his speech to the joint houses of Congress. Companies AND INDIVIDUALS will be REQUIRED to have health insurance, as he said, just like people are required to have auto insurance. Excuse me? Is this MY body and life or am I owned by the state? What if I don't want health insurance? Again, Obama even said this as well, I will be fined. Beside this being ABSURD, I am left to wonder, how will the state know whether I am insured or not and how will they impose such a fine upon me?

Put these two together and how is this anything less than a system to turn the United States into a completely managed society where all people are enrolled into a federal/global system and tracked and monitored by big brother? Excuse me. Am I a child, are we all children? Do I not have my own free will? To use the words of pro-choice activists: It is MY CHOICE, is it not? Or does such a concept only apply to abortion rhetoric?

As already noted, these provisions have bipartisan support. Why? Because these are the core global authoritarian goals which both major parties are working toward. A system of total management of our lives. How can it be characterised any other way when what we are talking about is our bodies? Our individual freedoms and right to privacy are soon to be a vague past memory. Something our grandchildren will have a hard time believing we ever had, as they are taught how barbaric things were back before Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was realized.

Garden results: Tomato

My tomatoes are still ripening on the vine. I decided to pick the nicest one tonight. This 4 inch beauty is great! Shown next to a quarter and a 1 oz. silver round, for size comparison. Keep in mind I used no fertilizers and no pesticides other than garden safe snail bait. I also did no specific compost or manure addition. Tomatoes typically can triple the amount of fruits and produce much larger fruits if you're willing to add supplemental nourishments to the soil. I wanted to stay nice and simple this year, just to see how things grew this way so I have some baseline organic gardening wisdom to start out with.

Solar cooked potato

We had a clear sunny day today so I decided to foil wrap a smaller 3.5 inch long potato from my harvest, popped it into my 3 qt. granite ware roast pot, stuck that in an oven bag (twist tied shut) and placed all of this into my homemade solar cooker. I placed the cooker out at 1 PM and brought it in and took out the potato at 5 PM. This gave the potato 4 hours roasting at between 190F and 210F. I took out the potato, cut it in half and mashed it up. It turned out firm but thoroughly cooked. I think any less time it would have been under-cooked, and 1 or 2 more hours at around 200F would have softened it even further. I consider a 4 hour acceptable result for a medium sized potato to be quite good from a simple cardboard & aluminum foil solar cooker and I am quite happy.

Garden results: Potato

I have two faux half wine barrel planters with Kennebec white/brown potatoes growing in them. They seem to be wanting to die off but I have kept the greens alive with frequent watering. Taken about two weeks ago, this is a picture of my very green and healthy potato plants and a small frog enjoying the sun.

I noticed in a farmer's almanac that a few days ago was designated as potato harvest day. So, I have now harvested one of the potato planters and will harvest the other one in a week or two (maybe even wait longer). The potatoes I harvested were from small 1 inch roundish pearl potatoes to small baked potato sized and shaped to large fat 6 inch diameter, somewhat spherical, monsters. Total yield was about 8 pounds. I think I will use raised beds and better mounding from now on.

9/4 update
I got 3 large servings of mashed potatoes from just 1 of the large potatoes of this harvest. :)

Solar cooked corn

Yummy! I just finished cooking, in my homemade solar cooker, two ears of sweet corn for about 35 minutes. I included about 4 oz. of water that had been pre-heated to about 200 F in a black ceramic mug. The temperature inside my GraniteWare 3 qt. pot (inside an oven bag) was 210 F within the first 10 to 15 minutes. The corn is awesome and tasted better heated this way than in stove top boiling water.

My first homemade solar cooker

This is my homemade solar cooker built based on a variant design of the CooKit solar cooker. It was built with aluminum foil, water based non-toxic project glue, and a 48"x36" school project cardboard display board like this one (of course any cardboard or wood or even plastic with some rigidity will work). It took me within an hour to make. More information about the CooKit solar cooker and variants can be found here. In my initial test this week I filled a black ceramic coffee mug with 8 oz. of room temperature water (70F) and placed the mug (along with a thermometer in the water) into a plastic bag (not a high temperature oven bag -- I did not have any yet, I do now). Then, I placed this into the center of the solar cooker on a sunny day at about 2pm. Within about 20 minutes the water was at 150F (pasteurized). Within another 10 or 15 minutes the water was up to about 210F (just under boiling) and the plastic bag was melting. I have not yet tried more cooking experiments with this cooker as we've gotten a lot of clouds and some rain in the past few days. I am planning more testing of this cooker including more water heating, cooking some dinner rolls, bannock bread, maybe some eggs, and other things...maybe some of my corn.

Using Solar Power Generators

As I have mentioned earlier, these so called "solar power generators" are small solar power systems and are NOT designed to power anything and everything just because they have AC outlets on them. Additionally, it is always better to use 12VDC powered items because DC-to-AC inverters waste power doing the conversion from DC to AC. An added bonus to using DC is that appliances are typically designed to use less power so they can be used safely in vehicles and not damage your battery or alternator. With this in mind, I advise everyone using small solar power systems to use them for powering DC appliances as much as possible and use AC appliances as little as possible.

To find 12VDC appliances think like and shop like a boater, RV camper, trucker, etc. I've linked to a couple of sites with appliances along these lines in my Useful Links section. Anyone with a Solar Power Generator should probably spend the $25 to $30 to get a 60 to 120 watts max. DC mini toaster oven like this one. Which can warm, cook, and pasteurize water (if needed). Pasteurizing water kills 99.99% of pathenogens and requires about 150 F (no need to boil).

Now when it comes to powering a computer, I recommend a low power notebook or netbook computer. I also recommend not using the power brick (as they call them) which is a transformer converting AC to DC. If you use this power brick to power your computer from your battery bank of your solar power generator you are converting DC to AC and then AC back to DC. Both of these conversions waste power. That doesn't sound too smart. So, go online to eBay or elsewhere or to Radio Shack and get the proper DC power adapter with an output of the appropriate DC voltage, current capabilities, and plug connector for your computer. This is far more efficient. The same goes for your cell phone and other electronics, get those DC power adapters!

Solar Power Generator Systems

Here are the systems I have put together to try out solar power as a means to power some things during power outages and maybe even on typical normal days (when viewing the images keep in mind, for scale, that the battery pack units are about the same physical dimensions -- about 15" wide). Note that small solar power systems cannot handle large power drawing appliances and they are not intended to be used for this. You do NOT want to try or expect to be able to cook much with a small solar power system or do much cooling other than very small coolers that have low power draw because they do not use refrigeration compressors, but these do not maintain typical refrigerator range temperatures well either.

These small solar power systems are intended to power radios, lights, low power TVs and DVD players, power/charge personal electronics (cell phones, MP3 or MP4 players, etc.) and batteries, computers (lower power desktops or nettops, notebooks or, even better, netbooks -- I'll address low power PCs some other time), small fans, security systems, etc.

The following types of appliances are HUGE power drawing beasts and will NOT work well or at all on small solar power systems: ovens, stoves, hot plates, microwaves, air conditioners, large fans, refrigerators, larger kitchen appliances, hair dryers. It is math, investigate the power an appliance draws and determine for yourself what would happen if you tried to run a certain appliance on a small 20 to 30 amp-hour battery through a 400 or so watt inverter. These things CAN be run using a solar (or wind) powered system, but such systems have HUGE battery banks and inverters and cost $5,000 to $20,000, while these systems shown below cost only hundreds of dollars.

480 Watt AC, 28 Amp-Hour, 60 Watt/4 Amp Solar System

• 60 watts 15 VDC solar panel array (4 x 15 watts) -- about 4 amps at full power
• 7 amp max. DC Solar Charge Controller
• 480 watt (continuous max.)/600 watt (5 min. max.) AC inverter, 28 amp-hour portable battery pack/jump starter (with built-in AM/FM radio and 5 watt light), includes built-in 2.5 amp max. DC charge controller for charging from AC outlet (or DC source), 12 amp max. charge/discharge current through DC accessory socket
• Can attach 1 or more external batteries to unit using jumper cable attachment to increase available amp-hours

* * *

400 Watt AC, 19 Amp-Hour, 30 Watt/2 Amp Solar System

• 30 watts 15 VDC single solar panel -- about 2 amps at full power
• 7 amp max. DC Solar Charge Controller
• 400 watt (continuous max.) AC inverter, 19 amp-hour portable battery pack/jump starter (with built-in 5 VDC USB power port, AM/FM/NOAA radio and LED light), includes built-in charge controller for charging from AC outlet, 5 amp max. charge/discharge current through DC accessory socket
• Can attach 1 or more external batteries to unit using jumper cable attachment to increase available amp-hours

Garden results: Sweet Corn

Easy to grow. Have had no real pest problems. At least one ear had a baby ear inside with it. If I had known, I would have let the double ear go for at least another week because the younger ear was not good to eat (at least as far as I was concerned).

I grew only ten corn stalks (about six feet tall) in a small landscape area in my front yard. I wish I had grown ten times more!

AMAZING taste. Fresh, blanched, or however prepared. 'nuff said.

Garden results: Turnip

FACTOID: Turnips are in the cabbage family.

Turnips take about two to three times as long as radishes to mature, about 8 to 9 weeks. Of course they are quite a bit larger and have a different taste and texture. I've harvested one batch of turnips (purple tops) this season while they were a bit on the small/young side because I wanted to taste fresh young turnip roots. I can tell you they were sweet and juicy. Unbelievable compared to the often over mature and/or wilting (non-fresh) turnip roots I normally find in grocery stores these days. I have a new crop still growing. This time I have purple tops and red rounds both growing. One set of purple tops got too hot during a warm weather week in July and seem to have stopped growing. However, the other set of purple tops (planted alongside the red rounds) are growing fine. Turnips are more likely to get attacked by pests than radishes, as they are a large sweet root which is also a bit softer than a radish root and don't have that radish sting. I have run into a little bit of a problem with slugs/snails and even small ants attacking turnip roots. A bit of slug bait takes care of half of that and growing in a good size container rather than the ground seems to have remedied the ant issue. Just like it's cousin the radish, the leaves are good as greens. Just as with radish roots, turnip root skin is also easily peeled. I do not know what turnips are like that go to seed, as I have not had any do so.

FACTOID: A type of turnip called a "rape" is grown for it's seeds to make cooking oil out of, canola oil to be exact. Until a couple months ago I had no idea canola oil was from turnips seeds! (Rape may be more of a kale. I've never grown it.)

Garden results: Radish

FACTOID: Radishes are in the cabbage family.

Radishes mature quickly, so they are fun to grow and a few seeds may be a good addition to any survival pack (along with some seeds of other fast growing crops). Though they are not something I normally seek out to eat, I enjoy eating them out of my garden. The typical radishes mature in only 3 to 4 weeks and so you can have many plantings and harvests per season (Spring and Summer). Additionally, there are Fall/Winter varieties too, though they tend to grow slower. There are several things to say about radishes.

• One thing I discovered is that at least some plants do not like growing near radishes. Tomato plant growth gets stunted, the leaves get spotty and your tomato fruit yeild is reduced. So far, this is my only personal experience with this issue. I do not yet know of other non-complimentary situations.
• Many pests do leave radishes alone and so they are sometimes used around other plants to keep pests away (as are onions). Though I have encountered the occational leaf eating small green caterpillar. Caterpillars do love cabbage greens afterall. On the plants I had that went to seed, something did enjoy some of the pods as well. But, I have not had a single pest attack my radish roots.
• Another thing to be warned of is the distance between radish plants. If they are too close together they will not even begin to produce the large edible root you want, instead they quickly bolt (send up a flower stalk). In this situation they seem amazingly like an entirely different plant.
• Along with the mention of bolting, an interesting thing is not well known by many people. The seed pods produced by radishes that have bolted and gone to seed are very edible and are like a one to two inch uniquely flavored and very juicy/oily green bean. There are even varieties of radishes grown specifically for their seed pods/green beans. These are typically called rat-tail radishes and produce longer pods of six or more inches (some supposedly up to 12 or more inches).
• I found the inital two sprout leaves (pseudo leaves) of radish plants are tasty amd juicy when plucked before they dry up, additionally the regular leaves are also very edible and some people use them as salad greens. They are fuzzy on their under side, this is not pleasent to some people but for those that like steamed or otherwise cooked greens, I am told radish greens are fine.
• Thus the radish plant is entirely edible and fast growing. The only exception to this would be woody roots from going to seed or becoming too old and the stiff and woody flower/seed stalk (bolt).
• Flavor of radish root varies with age and watering routine. I have grown some that tasted nearly the same as a turnip and some that were sweet and some had a mild radish sting while others a very strong radish sting.
• For those that do not like radish root skin, I found fresh radish roots are fairly easy to peel by hand (like you would an orange).
• Radish roots store well in cool environments (like a crisper bin in the refrigerator, a proper root cellar, or even in a water tight container kept in a cool stream/river/lake), and last even longer if the greens are cut off.
• I found radishes to be easy to grow in pots/containers.
• Claims of larger sizes (over 1.25") seem to be inaccurate or my larger varieties just would not grow to their expected sizes due to being grown in containers. I'll be trying the 2 to 4" varieties in the ground next time. I have not yet tried growing the *very* large Asian varieties.

What have I been growing?

This year I have been introducing myself to urban gardening. I live in a house which faces SW and has minimal freedom to plant a garden in an optimal sun exposed location (which would include a south or southwest area of my yard (meaning the front or side yard)). Now in an emergency period I could rip out my lawn and garden in these locations, but right now that is not a good idea. Of course I could garden in my back yard (better security and no neighbor complaints) but it does not get the best sun exposure. However, next spring/summer I do plan to experiment with some gardening in the back.

So, this year I began planting a little later in the spring than I should have. I planted a few things in landscaping areas in my sun exposed front and side yard and a few things in pots/containers ranging from 6" pots, 24"x6" window planters to faux half wine barrel style large planters. I placed these on my front porch/patio (which is fairly small).

Here is my list of what I planted (non-hybrid preferred), many of which were chosen for small size and some for short harvest time, others don't meet my small or fast criteria but are either necessities (Onions) or are curiosities (Kohlrabi). As you can see some are not typically grown in home gardens.

• Radish -- cherry belle - champion - purple plum - german giant - crimson giant
• Turnip -- purple top white globe - red round
• Kohlrabi -- white vienna - purple vienna - superschmelz
• Carrot-- parisian market - little finger - babette [hybrid] - bolero [hybrid]
• Onion -- pacific pearl - sweet spanish yellow utah jumbo - red globe - copra [hybrid]
• Tomato -- early girl [hybrid] - oregon spring
• Lettuce -- prizehead - black seeded simpson
• Sweet Corn -- early sweet casino [hybrid]
• Pea -- little marvel (bush/dwarf)
• Bush Bean -- dragon tongue #
• Lentil -- green (from bulk bin at grocery)
• Chickpea (from bulk bin at grocery)
• Potato -- Kennebec #
• Strawberry
• Garlic -- hard neck and soft neck
• Melon -- {attempting some watermelon and musk melon, not worth mentioning yet}
• Spinach -- {crop failure, not worth mentioning}

Regarding TV shows "The Colony", "Survivorman" and "Man vs. Wild"

Now, just to start off with here I want to say this: I enjoy watching these shows. I learn something from each show. It may be how to make a fire or a shelter a certain way, how to climb down a small cliff with vines, how to not do something stupid Mr. Grylls does, or how to make a wood gasifier. Here are a few complaints about these shows that have been on my mind (besides Mr. Grylls' stupid and dangerous behavior at times).

Regarding "The Colony"...

• Why is this show set in a setting of an industrial park with tons of industrial equipment and such around? How realistic is this? Why not show how a small neighborhood or apartment/condo community would come together to divide up duties, make life as normal as possible where they live, provide security for themselves and survive?
• Why not address the reality of guns existing in such an aftermath situation and the proper use and concerns associated with weapons and mauraders (rather than gawking, food throwing monkey like raiders)?
• Why not address troops (domestic, UN or otherwise) trying to force their will upon an unwilling group of survivors?

In general...

• Why is the issue of dealing with human waste never addressed (other than the basically urban situation on "The Colony", which goes as far as "good thing the toilet flushes!")?
• How about some basic sheltering in place and some real homesteading type educational programming?

Welcome to my online notebook.

I'll be using this blog to post thoughts, information and details about various issues and topics regarding things such as survival, self-sustaining (self-reliance and self-independence) concepts and experiments, projects, etc. I may also include news information and perspective that I feel is important.

In general, I have an interest in creating enough personal wisdom to know I could live a comfortable and productive life on my terms and without undue dependence on corporate entities and government services. To these aims I have, for the past year, been gardening vegetables (imcluding some unconventional crops), building and using small solar power systems, creating home-made solar cookers/water pasteurizers, planning for low power use living, building "bug-out" packs, camping and more.

I welcome and hope for discussions in reader comments.

Again, welcome!