New Potato Harvest, about 80 days after planting

The Plant and Forget Method at 4-20-19, about 80 days after planting.

Well, today is the day that I found out if the “Plant and Forget Method” for potatoes really works, it does, and I am very pleased with the results!

This photo is the plant that was blown over from a recent wind storm. It’s still growing and is healthy enough to produce full-size potatoes at die-off harvesting. A couple of weeks ago it did have two flowers on it which typically indicate the time to harvest new potatoes.

Here is a view of the top with the vines cut-off and as you can see, none of the potatoes were at the surface avoiding green potatoes.

I turned the bucket upside-down and removed it. It clearly shows the roots were uniform and happy.

The soil was soft, fluffy and easily broken apart to find the little gems inside.

Here’s the yield = 3.0 lbs.

The larger potato is one of the seed potatoes and not included in the total weight. It’s probably good to eat as it is still firm.

For a size perspective here’s a few in my hand.

My thoughts:

How do they taste? Perfect, moist, crisp and crunchy!

This method was far too easy, and I like easy!

I feel potatoes are a must have food crop in any survival garden as they are good to eat, a comfort food, being used in many dishes. The plant and forget method is especially useful if you have a remote bug out property and can’t visit it often to maintain the crops.

Link to how and what I did to grow these potatoes:

https://livingprepared.blogspot.com/2019/01/growing-potatoes-no-hilling-method.html

RV Trailer Tires, CHINA BOMBS?

I personally had two RV Trailers, a 26-foot trailer, and a 30-foot 5^th wheel and experienced repeated blow-outs on both. It was very troubling as I am very fussy about checking and maintaining tire pressures and trailer loading including weighing the trailers to be sure I was within load limits. The worse part is none of the blow-outs occurred in a convenient place. One was in the middle of a mile long bridge and pouring rain. I limped to the end of the bridge where I could pull over to change the tire. Needless to say, the shredded tire flopping around destroyed my plastic wheel-well trim. My towing speed I try to hold 60-62 mph (generally the speed of the traffic in the right lane) and limit the length of travel to about 100 miles a day. I’m not alone with tire failures of RV’s. If I buy another trailer the first thing I will change will be the tires. I’ll get rid of the 15-inch and put on 16-inch light truck wheels and tires.

See the link below for the video for why the tire size change:

“Why we switched from ST (Special Trailer) tires to LT (Light Truck) tires”.

Video by: Long Long Honeymoon

Link to video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2P32UczhZ4

Good Boy!

Garden Wind Damage

The point of this post is, if you have or depend on a survival garden for food you never know when Mother Nature can wipe out a year's worth of food in minutes with hail, torrential rains, flooding, etc and all are unpredictable.

The other day we had 30mph winds with gusts to 35mph. My tomatoes and pepper plants were not damaged because they were either staked or in cages. Those plants survived because of the caging and staking, however one of my two potato plants (not caged) in buckets experiment had the vines knocked down. Will this plant survive and produce potatoes? I intend to leave it as is and see. Hate to think what would happen if I had a 100-foot row of potatoes growing and this happened!

The bucket/plant on the right survived the winds just fine, but the bucket/plant on the left was knocked down. I intend to leave it as is and see how the plant responds, maybe it will be fine. Also, this is the plant I intended to harvest ‘New Potatoes’ from and that should happen in a couple weeks or so.

Another photo from above showing the damage.

Hard Wheat Grain Prepared as a Cereal? Yes!

Another way to eat Hard White Wheat Grain:

When all of a sudden you find your favorite supermarket has only 50% of what they normally stock on the shelves and you find yourself eating almost daily from your long term stored foods to make up the difference, your region or the country is in deep trouble. Isn’t this what we’ve been prepping for!

Imagine for a moment, you are living in Venezuela today where your Socialist Dictator, or in our case the Dem’s, are purposely restricting food distribution leaving you little to eat. Your family and friends have already lost 20-30 lbs of weight and there’s no end in sight. It’s too late to wish you had prepped more.

Some of the common dry bulk foods Preppers store are Wheat Grain, Beans, Rice and Pasta. When it comes to preparing Wheat Grain to eat most will think wheat is to be milled into flour and used in common flour-based recipes. However, there is another use, it does make a great bowl of hot, tasty and nutritious cereal.

If you’ve been a thoughtful Prepper you will have wheat grain in stock (a 5-gallon bucket of wheat grain will yield 40, 2-cup cooked meals). In fact you should have a lot of wheat grain as it is the most important dry bulk food to store. The reasons are, you can mill it into flower to bake common breads, biscuits, pancakes and anything that has flower as an ingredient, providing you have a grain mill. But like some people I know, they have some wheat grain but yet to purchase a grain mill. So without a mill your ability to bake breads, etc is gone. What to do with the grain if you don’t have a grain mill or your mill is broken? You can make cereal from it! The taste and texture is quite pleasant with a hint of oatmeal taste, slightly chewy and very filling. It is far better than eating nothing. Serve like oatmeal with butter or a pinch of sugar or a drizzle of honey.

How I prepare wheat grain kernels as a cereal:

The preparation is very similar to cooking rice, but takes about twice the cooking time unless you pre-soak it.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Wheat Grain
• 3 cups water
• (basic ratio, 1 part grain to 3 parts water)
• ½ tsp salt
• yields 2 cups cooked

Directions:

• Rinse the grain first, it keeps the grain from foaming.
• Add grain to a pot.
• Add water
• Add ½ tsp salt
• Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer and cover with the lid.
• Cover and simmer for 45 minutes or until grain is soft and chewy.
• Remove from stove and drain off the small amount of excess water and serve.

1-cup of wheat grain yields 2-cups cooked.

Notes:

• Simmering/cooking for 45 minutes will consume more propane than heating a can of soup or frying SPAM etc. Propane may be scarce.
• If planning ahead you can soak the grain for 10-12 hours first. This will shorten the cooking time to minutes, such as ‘just heat and eat’.
• Rinse the grain before cooking, this reduces foaming while simmering.