Link: Organic Lawn Care For the CHEAP and LAZY! :)

Great article by Paul Wheaton, permaculture expert enthusiast extraordinaire!

Lawn care simplified. Have the best looking lawn on your block with less mowing, less watering and less money. The cheapest lawn care AND the laziest lawn care.

Make sure to check it out :)

http://www.richsoil.com/lawn-care.jsp

New Gear: "SaberCut" Pocket Chain Saw

Another new bit of gear I got is a "SaberCut" pocket chain saw.

It's a 24 inch chain with bi-directional teeth built-in and flat nylon handles on each end. You wrap the chain around the thing you want to cut and pull back and forth to cut it. It comes in a nylon pouch with a belt loop and a buckle closure. The pouch feels a little flimsy but it's not as if some super sturdy pouch is really required for an item like this so it does the job just fine. I should also mention the slight detractor that the nylon handles can sort of hurt your hands if you're pulling really hard, but if you've got some climbing or gardening gloves to give your hands a little extra padding that helps.

I keep mine strapped to the bottom of my right-side backpack strap to have it easily available whenever I need it. So far I've used it on a very annoying woody vining plant in my backyard (approx. 2in diameter) as well as long fallen branch on a hiking trail that I frequent (approx 3in diameter) and both times it worked just fine for my purposes. The saw teeth can bind every once in a while if you're holding the two ends very narrowly though so I'd say it's best to hold them nice and wide for best results.

Overall, it's not a bad item if you need a compact cutting tool, not the best either but does what it's supposed to.

Total weight of case and saw together is 6 ounces.

I got mine at a slight discount for a little under 25$ US at SawTac.com

New Gear: Maxpedition Volta™ Battery Case

So another new piece of gear I've acquired is case to store spare batteries for my headlamp and flashlight. The Maxpedition Volta™ Battery Case is a 1000-denier nylon pouch with a velcro flap closure which attaches to a pack via MOLLE webbing.

Can I just take a pause for a second to say that I love MOLLE webbing? I don't understand why nothing non-military makes use of it's capability to securely attach extra accessories to a backpack. It seems like something that should be more widely used among general hiking and camping gear because there really are a lot of cool little add-on things you can use it for.

Anyway, inside the pouch comes a plastic case which can hold up to 8 batteries of size AA, AAA or CR123. (Apparently if one were so inclined it could also hold 5 shotgun rounds, or even a cell phone or iPod. I actually did put my phone in there once while hiking). The plastic case itself is actually two parts which can be detached from each other. I think I heard it described that some folks use the two sides for "new" and "spent" to keep track, but I don't use that method. I keep it full and just hope I can figure out which ones are spent. I've only had to change a battery out once so far so it hasn't been an issue yet.
I keep 4 spare AAA batteries in one side for my Petzl headlamp and 4 CR123 batteries on the other side for my little Leatherman LED flashlight.
The nylon pouch seems well built, the plastic case is not bad either. It does feel like the two halves of the case come apart rather easily, but if they're in their proper place inside the nylon pouch that won't be any kind of an issue anyway.

Some additional info: There's also a small grommet hole at the bottom of the nylon pouch for water drainage. I'm not sure if the plastic cases are watertight but I'd imagine they'd hold up okay for a short amount of time .
The velcro (or "hook & loop" since I think "velcro" is a specific brand) closure seems to stick out a bit, but it's secure enough.
Also the plastic case fits very snugly inside the pouch. You have to push it out from the bottom side of the nylon pouch to get it out so I'd say it's pretty secure.

I think it ran me about 15$US and I'm comfortable enough with that considering it doesn't feel like something I'm going to have to replace anytime soon.

New Gear: Original S.O.E. Gear Tear-off IFAK

I've been in a mood to re-assess my preps lately and add to them and one thing I bought recently was a new medical pouch to mount on the outside of my backpack. This is my new "Original S.O.E. Gear" brand "Tear-off IFAK" medical pouch.
It consists of a panel that attaches right to my hiking backpack via MOLLE webbing, as well as a separate pouch that velcros on to the panel and is further held in place by buckled retention straps.
The benefit of having all of my first-aid stuff on the outside of my pack is that if I need it I can easily unbuckle the retention strap, grab it by the red handle (which denotes medical) and tear it away from the velcro backing to quickly retrieve everything at once and have it in an organized manner, rather than wasting time digging through my bags to find loose items. It also frees up room inside my bag so it's not so jam packed in there.

As for the contents and storage features, let's start on the outside.
On the outside is a small flat-ish pocket which can be held closed with the velcro that lines the edge. Inside of this pouch I keep a small waterproof pouch which used to be a "pocket medic" kit but I used up most of the contents. you can see this peeking out of the pocket in the image above, or in the bottom-right corner in the image below. Inside of this pouch I keep:

• a multitude of different sized bandaids
• disinfectant wipes
• some tweezers and safety pins that came with the original med-kit.

The inside opens fully in a clamshell design for easy access to all of the contents. Even though my purposes are only basic first-aid and convenience items for hiking and camping, it's still really nice to have everything organized and easy to access.

The top half has three different sized sets of elastic straps, one large pouch, and one small pouch. In this area I keep:

• Sunblock
• Bug repellent spray
  
• ibuprofen (pain relief)
  
• generic benadryl (allergy relief)
  
• hydrocortisone cream (itch relief)
  
• triple anti-biotic ointment
• hand-sanitizer

On the lower half is one large set of elastic bands and a big zippered mesh pocket. I haven't come up with anything to use keep in the large elastic bands yet, but in the mesh pocket I keep:

• two 4x4 sterile gauze pads
• two 3x4 non-adherent bandage pads
• one set of assorted moleskin blister pads
• bite & sting kit (a suction kit for such wounds)
  

A couple of things missing right now that I plan to include are some ace-wrap bandages (such as to wrap a sprained ankle), and some medical tape.

All in all I'm very pleased by the quality of workmanship that goes into Original S.O.E. products. I have no doubt this thing will serve me well on my camping and hiking this coming summer and will be something that will likely outlast me in it's usefulness.

New Gear: Snow Peak Mini Solo Titanium Cook Set

A quick bit about a piece of gear I've purchased and used. I'm going to be periodically posting a lot of these in the near future.
This time it's the Snow Peak brand Mini Solo Titanium Cook Set.

This consists of a small titanium pot with a lid and a titanium cup, both of which fit together for storage, and the two pieces come in a mesh bag to hold them together. Each container has folding handles.
I got to use these items, or at least the cup, on a weekend survival training retreat that I took a couple months ago. We found and picked wild elderberry leaves and wild mint and made tea with them and though we used a different titanium pot to boil the water in, I did use my own cup to drink the tea and I have no complaints. The tea itself was ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS by the way :) Best I've ever had.

In order to maximize the use of space, I also keep some small supplies inside my titanium pot. Inside I keep a 7ft length of twine, an easy-sharpening tool for my blades, a 25ft length of 550 paracord, and two cliff-bars.

Home container garden update

I don't know if this is really an update as I never posted the initial stuff on here, just on my social networking account, but I wanted to post my progress here since I've got multiple images to share.
Today I bought some more containers and potting soil to add to what I'm already growing.

I've tried to start from seed the following vegetables for a fall container garden:
- Carrots*
- Lettuce
- Broccoli
- Cauliflower
- Yellow Onions*
- Bell Peppers*
- Tomatoes*

Those with asterisks* were planted a few weeks ago, but the other three were still sitting in their biodegradable seed trays, drying out and running out of space to grow, and therefore dying. I finally decided to try and save them and bought some containers, rocks for dainage, and potting soil.


This here is the mess I made getting everything done today.
There are two large black containers with Broccoli, Caulifower and Lettuce in them, a small black container with mixed salad greens (which I ate for lunch just before posting this), two long containers with bell peppers and onions, respectively, wich you can't really see behind two are two old fish/reptile tanks which I plan on using as mobile mini-greenhouses if I ever have a large enough space to do so.


I'll spare the images of the broccoli, cauliflower and lettuce plants as they're so tiny and non-green that they barely stand out in front of the potting soil, but here's a picture of the 7/8 carrots I planted. One definitely didn't make it so it's just 7 now. By the way, growing in an old kitty-litter container.


Here above are the bell peppers and below are the Spanish Yellow onions.

I was thinking of growing green onions as well, we use them a lot in our boiled chicken for enchiladas and tacos and whatnot, but I just didn't get around to ordering any seeds so just yellow round onions for now. They'll be good to cut up and put in the rice or ground beef.


Despite the fact that tomatoes are supposed to be a warm-weather crop, mine are doing, very well, better in fact that anything else if the health and size of the leaves are to be any indicator. Thanks to our warm southern california weather, these babies seem pretty happy, even though it's admittedly been getting a bit cold and rainy lately.

They're actually a hybrid bush variety called "Bush Goliath," recommended by Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast which I listen to on a regular basis. They're supposed to be better for container gardening because they grow in a bush rather than vine all over the place and they grow really nice big tomatoes, great for putting on sandwiches and burgers, which is what I tend to use tomatoes for more often than anything else.
Motivated by the success of this so far, I'm planning to grow some other varieties of tomatoes next spring/summer. Varieties better for putting in salads and making into sauce and paste so I can try and make my very own spaghetti sauce, sloppy joe sauce, and whatever else I can think to do with my own organic tomatoes.


Here's the aftermath of the salad I had for lunch. It used to be much bigger (it's actually three separate plants), but this is what it looks like after I've cut most of it off for my salad. It should grow back about 4-5 times before it stops so I've got some more tasty organic self-grown salad ahead of me.
I actually got these salad greens from the community garden I volunteer at.


This here is the remnants of my broccoli, cauliflower and lettuce. I took the best three of each and planted them in larger containers, but these look like they're done for. Either way though, I noticed that the clovers beneath my overturned fish/reptile tanks were growing pretty strong so I decided to water these dead looking guys and stick them underneath to see if I can possibly save them. Fingers crossed.
*******************************
I really would like to plant in the ground, put in raised beds, and do WAY more than this, but as I'm renting all I can do is stick to container gardening. This is good though. I'm learning that I really have to be more attentive to my plants if I want them to do well. I'm lucky I've got as much still healthy as I do have, considering I sort of neglected them quite often as far as watering and I took WAY too long to finally plant these things. Lucky for me I live in one of the most forgiving climates in the country here in southern California and the city I'm in was originally all agricultural land (and much of it still is).

Anyway, just wanted to post about my progress, for my own sake as much as for the interest of anybody else who might care. I'm very happy to be progressing toward my goal of learning to self-sufficiently grow my own food and I'm taking note of every lesson I learn in the process.

Gerber Gator Jr. Machete

So one of the items I recently picked up is the Gerber Gator Jr. Machete. It's a 10" blade and it has a saw blade edge on the back.
I must say that I absolutely love this thing. It's leaps and bounds better than the cheapy 18" one I got from Harbor Freight in terms of weight balance, hand comfort and overall sharpness and chopping power.
The saw blade works very well and the ability to have both in the same tool is really convenient and made chopping up a monster vining bush in my yard into simple work.
The sheath this thing comes with is great too. it's got some rigidity to it and feels durable. The only thing I wish the case had is more capability to attach it to my backpack instead of just the standard belt loop.
This is the "Jr." 10-inch blade model, versus the standard 17-inch blade size. I went with this because I think it's a lot more versatile and easier to swing around. I was able to get into tight places on the bush I hacked down where an extra 7 inches would have made it impossible. The shorter size also makes it much more convenient for me to keep in or on my backpack. While I'm sure the extra weight at the end of the full-sized model would be great for a bit more chopping power, this one has enough weight to it for it's size and it's well balanced enough that it certainly gets the job done very well regardless.
Anyway this thing is great for yard work and I plan on taking it with me the next time I go hiking because there are some fallen branches on the trail I frequent that could use some clearing if someone hasn't got to it first. Also, it comes very nice and sharp but I haven't had to do any sharpening myself yet so I'm not sure how easy that will be. I'm a total novice so well see how that goes when the time comes that it needs it.