Advanced Living Environments Farm Research Corporation San Antonio, TX
Growing Your Groceries
"You're gonna be surprised..."
to find out that growing your groceries is far more rewarding than you think.
Growing, harvesting and cooking food that you have grown yourself will show you a new taste for life and respect for the effort it takes to create these bountiful blessings of food. You will witness and take part in spectacular event that are happening around us every moment such as watching as sunlight, water and air converge coalesce and then reshape itself into a growing life form.
Some of you will say "I can't grow anything" or "Every plant I've had has died". Don't worry. All of that doesn't matter and we're going to show you it's very easy to grow vegetables. Once you've mastered vegetables, there is a so much more such as poultry, dairy, eggs, meat and even seafood (aquaculture).
GROWING YOUR OWN FOOD
Additional Information
Learning to grow and process your own food is easy but it isn't an overnight process. It isn't something you want to do under duress or as a response to a major crisis. There is a learning curve and our aim is to make this easy and simple for you. Below is a list, from easiest to hardest, that defines the growers path for learning holistic organic permaculture farming.
- Vegetables
- Fruit
- Eggs
- Poultry
- Dairy
- Milk
- Yogurt
- Cheese
- Butter
- Ice Cream
- Aquaculture
- Meat
What is permaculture farming?
Permaculture is an attempt to best use land so that generations in the future can continue to make use of the land in productive manners, allowing for personal subsistence. It draws from several disciplines including organic farming, agroforestry, integrated farming, sustainable development, and applied ecology.
OKAY! Let's start with 2 Simple Rules:
Rule # 1 - Water is Life!
Rule # 2 - Nature knows best.
What do these two rules mean?
It means that you don't need to worry about the problems you've had in the past. Nature has a way to bring life into the picture. All we have to do it provide the raw materials that are needed and nature will do the rest.
Below is a list of projects that you will be undertaking in the next 8 – 10 growing seasons. That’s a 4 -5 year time span which means while this list looks long, you will have more than enough time to do this. There is a lot of hands on learning that you will need to do, so don’t try to rush through this list. Nature shouldn’t be rushed and the hands-on experience is golden.
1) Build a Raised Bed Backyard Garden
2) Filling with compost and fertile soil.
3) Initial Planting
4) Add Watering system
5) Automating Your Garden with iGrow
a. Solar Option
b. Water control
c. Temperature, Humidity, Soil Moisture, Soil ph Monitoring
d. Remote Cameras
e. Fertilizer control
6) Adding the iGrow water collection
7) Add AquaCulture Farming Chambers
To give you an idea of the time requirements, items 1 – 3 are required in the first growing season. During this time you will be watering and fertilizing by hand. This is an important step as there is a lot of real world learning that will happen in the first few seasons. Growing in raised bed gardens is different than growing on the ground. Watering and fertilizing by hand will introduce you to natural effects the plants have with their surrounding environment. Item 4 should be undertaken the second growing season. At which time you will still fertilize by hand, but water is delivered via plumbing.
That’s basically your first year. Second year, you add the iGrow, which is item 5 in the list above. After this time, the plants will require less of your time (maybe 30min – 1 hr every week).
So, off to our first project:
This is a project anyone can do. If you have already done a full raised bed garden (not a ground level garden), then you can skip this part and move into Automating your Garden with an iGrow. iGrow is an affordable DIY solution that is a Raspberry Pi based, wifi enabled automation system for controlling and monitoring your indoor or outdoor garden. It also comes with a solar kit and pumps in case there is either electric or water pipes nearby.