Seed Jet and Giveaway

Hello All I hope everyone is having an awesome week! I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you about an exciting new twist on your typical run-of-the-mill seed train, but first let it be known that I have nothing against your traditional seed train. I have taken part of many of them as well as one-on-one trades but the the one thing I dislike about seed trains was the amount of time it took to get the seeds (depending on your spot in line it could take a few weeks to a few months to get it). Then there is the cost (on a seed train that has a lot of people you could be spending $15 dollars or more just to ship it to the next person!) and in reality you may only be getting a few seeds. Many seeds you will miss out on since they will be added after you get the train. Let's not forget the hassle of keeping track of who has the seed train, when it was shipped from one person to the next or not knowing if it has been lost.

With one-on-one trading you are sending a few seeds to many people which can really add up especially if you are including a self addressed stamped envelope to receive the seeds back and you are handing your address out to many people which could or could not be a concern for you. Think about the amount you may spend on 10 trades with sending a SASE for return. The cost of one stamp both ways would be $.90 then add in the cost of two envelopes, let's say $.05 each for a total of $1.00. Now if you multiply that by 10 trades you are looking at $10.00 and you are not even guaranteed that you will receive your seeds in return!

Well, we hope to remedy the majority of those issues with the THE SEED JET. Our goal is for you to get a variety of seeds in a timely manner, less expensively and with timely updates on where your seeds are. THE SEED JET is not designed to profit in any way. Any participation fees requested are designed to cover the cost of supplies and shipping charges...so you save money, get a variety of seeds fast, and the seeds are double-checked to make sure they arrive safe and are of great quality. Any leftover fees will be used in giveaways once accumulation allows.

Basically how it works is:

1. Become a member of The Seed Jet on Facebook.

2. Sign up for one of the trading sessions (The Seed Jet #1 or The Seed Jet #2).

3. Pay the participation fee.

4. Send in your seeds to a central location once the Jet seats have been filled and you receive the address to send them to.

5. The seeds will be received at the central location, you will be notified of their arrival, and the seeds will then be checked, divided, and labeled in individual baggies to be split among the remaining passengers and their seeds will be split with you and the other passengers.

6. The return packages with the seed varieties will be shipped out to all the passengers and you will be notified that they are on their way to you.

7. Once you receive them back, you should contact the coordinator to let them know they arrived safely.

This is a pretty simple process! You are only spending the participation fee, one stamp and one envelope for multiple trades! Let's say the Jet has 11 seats (you plus 10 others). You will be sending 50 seeds of one type. The participation fee will be $3.00. So you are spending $3.00 plus one stamp, $.45, and one envelope, $.05, for a total of $3.50 for 10 trades!!! Plus you are guaranteed to receive your seeds and that you are sending your information to a secure location because the participation fees are paid through Paypal. That is a savings of $6.50 for each person on the Jet!

The Seed Jet is run by me, Ronnie @ TheSmallTownGardener, and my wife, Serena. If you have any questions you can contact one of us on Facebook. To join The Seed Jet and get more details on how to participate follow the link below: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheSeedJet/

In celebration of starting our first jet we are currently giving away a Japanese Hori Hori Garden Tool! If you have not heard of this handy-dandy tool you are missing out! It is the Swiss army knife of gardening/hunting/fishing tools! It has:

Bonsai collecting tool

Metal detecting tool

Multi-purpose garden tool

Hunting, fishing tool

and it comes with a heavy black vinyl plastic sheath and belt loop!

The stainless steel blade is very sharp and concave shaped for scooping soil and other materials. Because of its sharpness, it is excellent as a general purpose sporting knife. An indispensable tool for digging in the garden. It cuts and scrapes weed, roots and vegetables. Master gardeners love it. Comes with a heavy black vinyl plastic sheath and belt loop. You need to try it for yourself to appreciate what a great garden tool it is. 6 1/2-inch blade, 11 3/4-inch overall length. Made in Japan Some uses: Weeding, cutting roots, transplanting, removing bonsai plants from pots, sod cutting, dividing perennials, metal detecting, collecting and more. This tool can be considered the Swiss Army Knife for many outdoor uses from gardening, collecting, digging, sawing, chopping, measuring to untold other uses including but not limited to hunting and fishing.

You can receive many entries in the giveaway! Just follow the instructions below. The giveaway will be closed once both Jets are full so take advantage of the daily Twitter entry by tweeting the giveaway to maximize your chances!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Hey guys & gals, many of you have asked what I do to get my soil ready for the spring and fall so I decided to put a little something together to share with you. I took a lot of advice from helpful friends and added in my own research to come up with this recipe and it has done wonders for me this year.

First, you need to have compost. Now I am not going to be a compost snob and say you must make your own. I know some people can't do it for whatever reason...not enough space, neighborhood regulations and so on...that’s okay, but if you really want the good stuff check Craigslist or call a local farm. Most of the time they have very good composted manures that are very cheap!

When I start to fill my beds (4x4 square beds and the long ones are 3x12) with compost and composted manure I also add peat moss, mushroom compost and 4-6 cups of Dolomite lime mixed in very well. If it's available to you, you can also add vermiculite or perlite which will help hold in moisture and make the soil lighter. Just make sure you mix everything in evenly.

Next I gather all the plants I plan on planting and the amendments I add to the soil when I plant them. I mix these amendments in a bucket with 50% compost so that I can put 2 cups of the mixture into each planting hole before adding in the plant. The recipe you should use is: ½ cup Dolomite lime ¼ cup rock phosphate ¼ cup Epsom salt ½ cup dry molasses ( also works great at keeping ants out of the garden) 2 cups Texas green sand 2 cups garden tone ( Most of the items I found at the local farm/feed store or at any of the big box stores. You can also order them online)

After adding the amendments and the plant, be sure to water it well and that's it! Just remember that sometime in the middle of the growing year take the same mixture and scratch it in around all of your plants to give them an extra boost! I am sure there are many ways to improve your soil but this is what works for me. I hope this will also help you to grow a strong and productive garden. If you have any questions regarding this recipe or the methods I use please leave a comment below or you can contact me directly at Thesmalltowngardener@gmail.com .

How It All Began.

If a couple years ago some one told me I would be growing a garden I would have thought “LOL, ya right...you must be crazy!!!” But here I am growing a family garden in my back yard!

You are probably wondering “So how did you get started growing a garden?” Well, It all started last year when I lost my job. I was at home and my wife and I had just started really getting into watching YouTube. You may be thinking “Come on man, get with the the times...everyone uses YouTube!!” Not us. Instead we spent every chance we got playing a certain popular online MMORPG that I shall not name but WoW...did it take up my time!

Every day we would come home and play. Our weekends were spent running dungeons, grinding gold and goofing off with friends and really doing nothing but gaining weight and becoming hermits. Then my wife saw a YouTube channel of someone gardening and said "Hey! You need to check this out."

So, I sat there and watched it and thought, “Okay, this is kind of entertaining.” We ended up watching at least 35-40 gardening videos that night. After a couple of days of watching more of the gardening videos, my wife and I decided to give it a try! We thought “Why not?” We could be growing lots of our own food, eating better, getting exercise as well as lots of fresh air! If we see we can't do it then at least we can say we tried.

So the adventure had begun, we went to the local Big Box store and came across a book on square foot gardening so we picked it up along with some of the items it suggested. We bought the wood, soil and amendments we would need. Some items were easy to find like peat moss and mushroom compost but vermiculite was no where to be found. After calling around to many places we ended up finding it at a farm & feed store a couple of towns over. So we hopped in the car and made the trip to pick up three big bags.

When we arrived back at the house we ventured into the backyard that we rarely ever stepped foot into. Heck!, we didn't even want to mow it for crying out loud and yet there we were starting to grow a vegetable garden!?! Even the neighbors looked at us crazy like “What are you guys doing outside?” and “Who are you??”

We began by cleaning up the backyard and making the square foot gardening boxes from the directions in the book we picked up. Once we placed them where we wanted, we mixed the soil and filled our boxes. We basically followed the book or the videos we watched on YouTube. The rest we played by ear.

I will tell you this...my wife and I, who were known for being techie nerds, was out of our element playing in the dirt. Sure, we both grew up with parents that had a small garden from time to time, but we never really grew anything on our own and never really gave it much thought. Yet, there we were hundreds of dollars invested in wood, soil and plants.

To keep track of our achievements and failures, I bought a video camera to make videos to post on YouTube and The Small Town Gardener was born.

The first year was rough, we had flooding followed by 71 rainless days along with temperatures of over 100 degrees. You can go back and watch some of the videos and you will see some of the plants that looked pretty scary, however, it did not stop us. We persisted through over-watering, under-watering, and picking off all the leaves for some strange reason and ya' know what? We had a great time and learned a lot!

When we were not working in the garden I researched everything I could by making a list of all of the plants we grew and read up on them, talked about them with other YouTube gardeners and watched all the videos I could about them.

I found that many people don't share everything they know or they think that what they do know is not worth sharing. I also found out which soil amendments work well in the garden and which ones don't. Am I an expert? Nope! And I don't think I ever will be but, I can tell you this...You can make it work for you if you choose to take the time and listen.

I am here to show you what I have learned so far and the rest we can learn together. We will learn from the good, the bad, and the funny, we might even meet some great friends along the way.....Oh, and in case you were wondering I no longer play online games anymore. Instead, I spend time with my lovely wife and kids and play in the dirt :)