Well this year I expanded my garden, but it is still small considering what we really need.

And this year is the second year that I have had to replant grean beans. Once they come up, they do good, but it usually takes a couple of plantings.

Now the contigency plan.

Yesterday we had three major down pours and it washed out - you guessed it, my newly replanted green beans, and some small pepper plants.

For our canning, we were planning on going to the farmers market and buying what we can not plantf. My point here is, if you are not at a stage in your gardening and canning where you can get buy on just what you grow, you might want to double up on your farmer market canning as there simply are no gaurntees with gardening.

Just a thought.

FireStorm

It is hard being a farmer FireStorm. There are so many factors that are involved.
If it isn't the weather being to hot, or cold, or dry, or wet, it can be bad bugs, or not enough fertilizer. Usually it is a combination of things.
Everything I planted last year, the drought killed! It was an eye opener because if my life depended on that garden then I would have been in serious trouble.
I can agree with you in doubling up on everything from what you grow to what you can. You just never know when the bottom will fall out

I recommend buying up some freeze dried foods. Growing your own is a lot more of a challenge than we realize!

AT least have something on hand that you can rig up easy and quick when it first starts. The many who don't have but maybe several days worth of stuff will PANIC! At least have you something set up till you set up your game plan.

My biggest short run is our water supply. We only have a dozen cases of them 24 bottles of water in plastic containers. That could last a month and half if rationed? But, after that it is TOUGH.

I keep seeing everyday about so much stuff fixing to snap over in the Middle East. SYRIA is about to cause the whole thing to erupt. IRAN with their military in SYRIA makes things a bit less stable.

None of this is simple ole M1 Garand or MP40 anymore. These boys over there are packing some HEAT that weighs in @ the Kiloton and Megaton capacity. Plus wishing to go to Paradise as they scream, "ALLAH AKBAR"!

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Here are some pictures of my garden after the storms we received on Tuesday night. My poor zuchini plant is questionable if it will survive. At least I was able to get one off it before the storm hit. Thankfully we don't have to depend on the production of the garden to eat at this point and time, but if we did it could all be wiped out in such a short time. On the plus side I have now reached over a year's supply for a family of 4 of food storage so if something does happen in the future we will have a little bit of a buffer to get us through!

We had more high winds last night so it now looks like the corn is a total loss along with the pole beans that I have planted with it (good thing I have more beans planted in another location in the garden). I should be able to salvage the potatoes though. Everything else looks to be ok for the most part. Even my loaded up tree's faired pretty well. I lost about 30-40 plums from the two tree's but since they are both loaded that isn't really and issue, the peach tree's only lost a couple so I am pretty happy with how everything faired.
Tonight the husband and I will be fencing off a section of my neighbors pasture (he asked if our animals could graise on it to cut down on his mowing) so we can turn our goats and horse out on it. The neighbor even mentioned we might get a cow to split. This would put my youngest daughter over the moon. She has been wanting to raise a cow for FFA.

Well I got lucky and it looks like my corn is going to make it. I went out to the garden over the weekend to spread some grass clippings in the garden to mulch and start pulling the corn that was all bent over from the rain and wind and what do you know if was all coming back up! It's a good thing since it already has small ears of corn on it. My potatoes are all but ready for me to start pulling out of the garden so I think I will be busy canning them up in the near future! Life is good when the gardening gods smile on you!

RR I hope it all recovers.

I am not sure if I am going to need to replant one more time or not. Either way, I am going to put down some water flow deterent on the top and side edge of my garden now.

FireStorm

FireStorm, I was really thinking that my Zuchini wasn't going to make it, but it is still producing and seems to be doing okay so far. If worse comes to worse I can always replant this fall. Since I planted my pole beans in with my corn I thought I was going to loose it also so I planted some beans on a trelis so now it looks like I will have plenty of beans to can up this year if we don't have anything else tear through the garden. What are you going to use for the water flow deterent?

I seen on TV about that water flow stuff. Sorry not a gardener. Your garden is flat. A lot the ones on TV have small hills where everything is planted. I couldn't tell you how to do it, but this does seem to solve the problem I think.

Here is a picture that sort of shows what I am talking about.




Here is a couple instructional videos. Dunno if it helps.



Link To Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhFpUUK7M9E

This second one is a bit fun to watch. The guy is likely also a prepper.



Link To Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoIMXRNVeWg&feature=fvwrel

This was pretty cool too. I have kitty litter buckets & will try one. Maybe I will not survive off of meat and wild greens! The family will be happy at that.



Link To Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qldyP4Lh3eU