Mid-week Miscellany

After my posting a copy of the FBI prepper flyer last week, the DHS visited my blog. It appears they googled "FBI Prepper Flyer" and that was the exact filename of my picture.  They didn’t stop to look around the blog as far as I can tell (I have stats).

Indeed the noose is tightening all around, even if I seemingly got off easy this time. I can't let it intimidate me from disseminating the truth, though.

I fear that the snotty municipal regulations against residential food gardening are a test.  Soon we may see the backyard garden become illegal all over.  Although if there is a famine I can't see how they're going to stop people.  The only good excuse would be widespread radioactive fallout.  Oh wait, that's already happening, but they're not telling anyone.  Use a Geiger counter on your food.  Even if you grew it.

Even if they don't outlaw private food growing, if there is a famine then you will have to worry about neighbors stealing your crops.  Guerilla gardening is an answer.  Also, learn about crops people are not used to seeing.

I tested some garbanzo beans I got at Restaurant Depot and tried to sprout them.  They plumped up but didn't sprout.  I suspect they have an anti-germination chemical sprayed on them. Grr.  So one could take the lentils, garbanzo beans, any beans that are edible raw from there and soak them, and eat them raw, but not get any greens off them and not be able to plant them.  I wonder if adding rooting hormone would help, not for eating but for making it grow in spite of the germination retardant? That's my next experiment!

Update 2/12/13: the garbanzo beans DO sprout.  You have to soak them for 8 hours, then rinse them, and leave them without the standing water.  (It's ok if they are damp, but not swimming).  Then rinse them twice a day.  They sprout in a few days.  I was doing it wrong.  Also, the amaranth mentioned below grew, and it yielded seed, but that was a lot of leaves and raggy looking weeds just for a handful of seeds that wouldn't even make a patty cake.  Better to also grow something with more seed to weed ratio, unless you want something people think is just a weed.  Depend on it more for the greens, or for feeding chickens.

In the name of finding crops people won't know, and being able to grow sprouts, I went to Whole Paycheck yesterday and bought some organic beans for sprouting/planting and some organic amaranth seeds.  This plant looks like a raggy kind of grass, but you can eat the leaves and the seeds, and chickens like it.  I suspect most people would not recognize it as a food plant.  It does get kind of tall, so I'd probably have to keep harvesting the tops to keep it shorter.  My friend and I have been talking about guerilla gardening for next year to increase the amount of land we have to garden on.

Both amaranth and quinoa get to 6 feet high if you let them.  Or taller.  If you guerilla garden those, you want to make sure it's where nobody ever mows and the building/weed inspector doesn't see it from the street, even if you are trimming them to keep them shorter. I suppose this is also true of any food plant, since a lot of them get to a few feet high.

By the way, they've found radioactive feminine napkins that were produced in Fukushima.  It's not just food from there that's radioactive.  So use the Geiger counter on personal care products too, just in case.  Wouldn't want to fry your petunias.