Preparedness University

(Homeschooling Page has been updated.)

My BFF lives in New Jersey. Every summer she packs up and heads down to Amish Country in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and comes back with tons of really great stuff. I have often joked (threatened?) that I should send/lend out my kids to Amish Country for the summer to learn how to work on a farm.

So imagine my surprise to find out there really IS such a place! It's called Preparedness University and it is run by Jim Kennard, who runs the Food For Everyone Foundation, based on the principles and techniques of Jacob Mittleider. 

I am so envious. I've been toying with the idea of using their weekly feed in my garden. If you go to Growfood.com and go to their "shop" tab, there's a Mittleider gardening book update you can get for free, and you know how I love free.

I was surprised to see that you can use the Mittleider method in regular row and dirt gardens. That was news. I thought it always had to be sand and sawdust boxes; so that's pretty cool to find out otherwise. I'm a little more comfortable using the weekly feed now that I see it can be used to actually build up the soil along with the compost and Back to Eden wood chips I'm already doing. The Natural Mineral Fertilizers-Micro Nutrient Mix is only $13.95. That's pretty inexpensive. You combine it with 25 pounds 13-13-13 fertilizer you can get at a big box store, and 4 lbs of Epsom Salts (a grocery store), both of which are also pretty inexpensive. 



I've been impressed by the healthiness of the plants I've seen grown using that weekly feed. I asked one person how he's been handling bug issues, and he said he hasn't had any. Now, I'm not saying I'm going to be bug-free if I do it, but at this point: I'll try anything. If I can just get rid of the freaking aphids, I'll consider myself blessed beyond belief.

In the next couple of days I'm going to be stocking up on strawberry plants and a bunch of other vegetable plants, and I've started growing my potato slips. I'll order some of this Micro Nutrient Mix as well and maybe, just maybe, I'll be successful.

Next summer: Preparedness U !