Johny Mac at American Partisan talks about getting his 2020 garden started in The Kung Fu Virus 2020 Victory Garden. He’s in the cold zone 5, so while his dates for doing things may not apply to your zone if you’re in a warmer or colder zone, the things he does would be similar. You can find your zone on the USDA plant hardiness zone map, but you may also want to talk to a knowledgeable neighbor. You may live a micro-terrain that makes your garden area slightly warmer or cooler than what the official zone for your larger area is.
I am a man that believes in insurance so I invest in many different kinds; auto, boat, house, life, and food insurance come immediatly to mind. Yes food insurance and the way things are today with the Kung Fu Virus I am starting to wonder what will happen with food availability in the future. Well no worries, as I invest in food insurance by growing approximately 80% of our yearly need of vegetables in our garden.
I have written an article or two about this subject in the past and am being told to do it again by the good Lord. What I am going to share works for us in our area. I live in zone 5 which means that the last frost for my area is around May 21st. Nobody in my area plant above ground seedling’s till Memorial Day weekend because we have experienced frost up to that date. Just look at the photo header taken this past Saturday morning at 0700 hrs eastern.
Below ground vegetables like, carrots rutabagas, beans, etc can be planted around the end of April here. I reserve my raised beds, which I have three for early lettuce and radish crops because the raised beds soil is warmer and if there is going to be a frost I can cover those beds easily. The above mentioned vegetables I sow directly in the soil but because my farming season is so short, I start above ground seeds inside typically around St. Patrick’s Day.
I only use heirloom seeds and keep seeds from one year to the next. Folks in our group trade same specie seeds every year to keep the strain vibrant. I start out growing inside with tomato seeds then move to sweet peppers. The peppers seem to take the longest to germinate. Once I have those seeds started I move to cucumbers – Pickling and salad of course. I found the easiest way to start the seedling’s is to poke a hole is foam egg cartons, add potting soil, and place 1 to 2-seeds in each nook then cover with a light layer of soil. Then put the egg cartons in plastic trays under my growing lamps with cellophane over to keep the soil warm and moist which acts as a mini hot-house. Depending on variety, the seedling will start to show themselves after 7 to 14-days. Once the seedlings have sprung from the soil I remove the cellophane from the plants.
2020 Seedlings
Once the seedlings have lost their baby leaves I transplant the seedlings into Solo cups. I do not know why but the plants like the Solo cups to grow in. I keep the cups year after year so I get my moneys worth. The bottom of the Solo cups I perforate with my pen knife so they drain. Once the seedlings have 2-sets of leaves I only water the plants from the bottom. Since I have perforated the bottom of the cups I keep about 1/2-inch of water in the pan and they self water themselves. Doing this helps to develop a great root system. By the beginning of May, I move my trays of plants to a makeshift green house outside. At night I have an electric heater that has a thermostat to keep the temperature in the green house at around 68 degrees F. By mid May I do not use the heater anymore and allow the plants to harden.
Memorial Day Weekend 2019 – Seedlings Ready to plant
While this is going on I get the garden and raised beds ready for planting. In early April I rototill the garden. Once tilled I clean out the manure from the chicken coop. The manure collected in April is just enough to spread around the garden and till into the soil. Depending on the weather I hand turn the soil in the raised beds and toss my lettuce, radish, cilantro, and dill seeds onto the soil. The seeds are followed with a light raking to set the seeds. By Memorial Day we start to have fresh salads. If frost is predicted it is very simple to drag an old sheet over the plants to protect them.
Right after I plant my salad seeds, I plant potatoes and rutabaga seeds. I use the tire method for the potatoes to make taking care of them a lot easier. The rutabaga seeds get planted about 6-inches apart and 1/2-inch deep. Then I cover the rutabaga seeds with two sheets of 50# 48″x 8′ newsprint paper with slits in the paper to match up with each row of rutabaga seeds planted…
If you’ve followed the writings of Mountain Guerrilla’s John Mosby (or other reading in insurgency or counterinsurgency), then you will already be familiar with the concept of the auxiliary. In this article at American Partisan, Johny Mac also writes about the auxiliary. Auxiliary typically refers to the portion of a population which provides clandestine support to an insurgent or guerrilla force or to underground resistance. With certain politicians talking about sending national guard troops to forcibly search and take people’s property (and, of course, destroy those who “do not comply”), these topics are getting active discussion in these “United” States.
John Mosby has written about both the underground and the guerrilla in his two volume Reluctant Partisan series. He also talks about the auxiliary in those books, but it does not have its own volume as of yet.
With the continuing events happening within the Washington DC Inner Loop and in states around the country, my worst fears of civil strife are sadly coming to fruition. Yesterday, I sat there sipping my morning cup of coffee watching Senate Leader McConnell’s response to the two articles of Impeachment passed Wednesday night in the US House and realize frosty times are ahead. After all, sometimes drastic measures are needed to save the patient being wheeled into the trauma center.
The Rubicon has been crossed for me. I am done writing letters to my legislatures, the men and women I voted into office to uphold the US Constitution and represent my voice. All my focus now will be directed towards the training I will need for the up and coming conflict (s).
Many of the readers here are in a similar situation as I am. Looking ahead, I will be 64-years old in 2020 and what can someone my age or older do when civil conflict comes knocking at my door you may ask? You like I, need to focus on becoming part of The Auxiliary.
The first time I read about The Auxiliary was over at SurvilvalBlogwritten by Hugh James Latimer. The article really got me thinking as to what part I would play in my community during a civil conflict. It will not necessarily be running a gun, although I can do that. Heck, I can give many millennial’s a run for his or her money in that respect. No, running a gun will not become my role in the up and coming conflict. My role will be one of The Auxiliary. Let’s look at what that means for me – Maybe you too.
First, it means an honest assessment of my strengths but more important, my weaknesses. Once I determine my strengths, I need to get out there and train the folks who understand their weaknesses and are seeking their own training.
Second, I need to get out there and address my weaknesses by seeking out additional training from others willing to give it. Whatever the cost will be in money or time, it will be worth it. Are you willing to do this or is your normalcy bias going to guide your future?
I will continue my training with NC Scout and his platoon of trainers along with other trainers that offer classes not just in running a gun but in; Preparedness, medical, radio, Intelligence, physical training, et cetera. Then I will offer my acquired skills to help the folks who will come late to the party…
JohnyMac at American Partisan is starting a series of articles on living off the land. His first installment is on the topic of gardening.
…This series of articles will cover gardening, protein raising, spirits making, among other fun things that you and your group will need to do to survive. Since we are now in harvesting time the first item will be about gardening.
I know the topic of gardening isn’t as exciting as the new XYZ carbine review however, if you think you are going to survive a job loss, economic downturn or even a SHTF scenario without food you are truly mistaken…
Let’s first talk about hitting the mountains and living off the land, ala Jeremiah Johnson. I will use my AO area as an example because it is truly rural.
We are located in a small hamlet surrounded by thousands and thousands of miles of woods among mountains and more mountains. The town of 500 or so is about 5-miles away and the residents are made up of farmers, blue collar workers, retired, and unfortunately living off Uncle Sugar too. If things went south everybody would be hunting and fishing. You must ask yourself, “how long would the critters living in these mountains last?” I remember one of the old timers here telling me that the deer and bear really didn’t come back into these hills in any kind of quantities post the Great Depression until the late 1960’s.
Once the deer, bears, and other four-legged critters were hunted out what will one do? …How many of us could gather the needed vegetables from the surrounding area? Once someone learns that you can eat cat-tail roots everybody will be digging around the ponds in the area. Again, how long will cat-tail roots last before they go the way of the game.
My point is that you nor your family will not survive. Therefore we have a garden. Not just for food today, but to practice growing food tomorrow…
Our garden is approximately 1,800 sf and is made up of raised beds with seedlings, and seeds planted directly into the tilled ground. The research that I have done is it takes about 900 sf at our latitude per person to grow enough veggies for one person. The current goal is to grow 80% of the veggies that we eat within a year. The best to that goal has been 70% due in part to the fact the vegetable garden is self-tending. We do not spend a lot of time weeding, watering, or general maintenance. I know though that if our garden was the only source of food, we would be in that garden every day weeding and doing general maintenance…
Johny Mac at American Partisan has an article up at American Partisan on making your own NVIS antenna. A near-vertical incidence skywave (NVIS) antenna is used in the high frequency (HF) spectrum from around 1.8MHz to 10MHz in order to cover an approximate radius/range of 300 miles. HF is usually used for long distance communication around the world, and most antennas are built to maximize range, but those antennas can often cause the radio signal to skip or make a gap in the range from about fifty to three hundred miles. The NVIS antenna redirects the radio signal in such a way that it covers that gap at the sacrifice of the longer distance contacts. This makes the NVIS antenna ideal for communications during a regional disaster.
If you do not know what a NVIS antenna is and why it is a great addition to your antenna farm, go and read these four articles. The first being from NC Scout titled, Near Vertical Incidence Skywave – Simplified, then NVIS I, NVIS II, and NVIS III authored by Key Pounder and published on NC Scout’s site, Brushbeater.
At a 100,000-foot level though, a NVIS antenna is a dipole antenna that has a steeper transmit angle than a traditional horizontal flat-top dipole antenna and is located closer to the ground at between 8 to 15-feet Vs. a traditional 1/4λ height; let’s say 30 to 60-feet over tera firma. This allows you to transmit to other stations closer to your AO that you may skip over using a flat-top horizontal dipole antenna. Think of the skip bounced off the ‘F’ layer of the ionosphere being 25 to 50-miles Vs. 200 to 300-miles. The German Army developed this procedure during WW II to communicate with troops via the airwaves closer to the transmitting station.
Traditional dipole antenna radiation Vs. NVIS radiation
I started out building my NVIS antenna using the directions posted on the DX Engineeringsite as my blue-prints for the project. Although you can buy a kit from DX Engineering, I had plenty of hardware around the redoubt so I decided to save a few bucks. Below is my Mise en place for this build. Hams are the true scroungers of this earth…
Johny Mac at American Partisan talks about getting his 2020 garden started in The Kung Fu Virus 2020 Victory Garden. He’s in the cold zone 5, so while his dates for doing things may not apply to your zone if you’re in a warmer or colder zone, the things he does would be similar. You can find your zone on the USDA plant hardiness zone map, but you may also want to talk to a knowledgeable neighbor. You may live a micro-terrain that makes your garden area slightly warmer or cooler than what the official zone for your larger area is.
With the continuing events happening within the Washington DC Inner Loop and in states around the country, my worst fears of civil strife are sadly coming to fruition. Yesterday, I sat there sipping my morning cup of coffee watching Senate Leader McConnell’s response to the two articles of Impeachment passed Wednesday night in the US House and realize frosty times are ahead. After all, sometimes drastic measures are needed to save the patient being wheeled into the trauma center.
Lower Valley Assembly 