Sunday Stroke Survival: Balance and Picking Peaches

Yesterday was my #3 daughter's 36th birthday and today is the 32nd anniversary of my mother's death. So it's kind of a bittersweet kind of day.

Since my first stroke I get some rather intense vertigo looking up. It's better than when I first had my stroke. Then, I couldn't look up or down without getting thrown off balance even a six-inch deviation of looking away from midline brought on the intense tilt-a-wheel sensation along with nausea.

I retrained my middle ear and brain connection by doing head rolls (looking at all points of the clock face) while seated. I actually used a clock on the wall initially positioned six inches above my line of sight. Initially, just that slight movement brought on the dizziness, but I kept at it by doing this exercise several times a day. When it didn't feel like I would fall out of my chair, I moved the clock position to correspond to my height standing and worked the exercise again. While seated, I expanded the exercises by moving the clock six inched below my midline. Whenever I could do the exercises without setting off my vertigo, I'd move the clock another 6-12 inches.

It's taken quite a few years to get where I do not get that sensation at all while looking down. I do get some when I have been looking down for a while and suddenly looking to midline. But it's only a matter of closing my eyes for a few seconds to realign my sight. Unfortunately, I've not have the same success with looking up. My maximum of looking straight up is a foot. Any distance greater than that the vertigo returns in full force.

Here's my dilemma and possible solutions. The peaches are ripe on one of three peach trees. They have to be harvested which means I have to look up and pick them. The peaches that hang within eye level or lower are no problem, but that's less than a quarter of them. All the rest are above my one foot line of vision. Now even I won't climb a ladder without support. If it requires a ladder, I'll have Mel pick them, or let the squirrels and birds have  them.

If I had two functioning hands, I could grab a branch and pull it lower to harvest, but I don't.  If I didn't get so dizzy when I looked up to the point of falling, it would not be an issue but I do. The idea of falling under a peach tree, feet from anything to assist me standing up is not ideal. Especially when the mechanism of the fall is disorientating vertigo. The mulch under the tree is damp to several inches of slick chipped leaves and wood, rotten fruit, and ants galore. A combination sure to make up an unstable foot placement for rising.  Will this stop me? Y'all know me better than that.

I sat on the porch swing and pondered the situation.  I've read about this homesteader who thought no fruit is ready until it falls from the tree. He put several thick layers of mulch under his trees to cushion the fruit, somewhat, when it fell. He just picked up whatever fell from the trees. That's all fine and dandy if you wanting only fresh eating or have planted harder fruit like apple, oranges, or rambutans. But fruits like figs, berries, and peaches are delicate fruit. They'll bruise badly if allowed to drop.

It doesn't work if you want to preserve the harvest unless you have a whole orchards of single fruit trees. It will take 2 to 3 peaches skinned, and cut into slices to fill a pint jar, and a canner load (water bath) is 8 jars. Most small homesteads have less than 20 fruit trees total. Plus if you wait until the fruit falls from the tree, it's too soft to can or freeze, it's overripe by those standards. My grandfather had twelve living children. He planted a cherry tree in honor of their births. At maturity, these trees produced more cherries than a family of FOURTEEN could eat in a year.

So back to my problem. I could take a big stick with a hook on the end to pick the fruit. This way I could stand at a distance making it within my one foot height restriction. I still might try this. Have you every tried controlling a long stick with one hand? The farther the stick is away from the body the harder it is to control. Let alone with a single hand. Plus, the fruit would hit the ground causing an unusable bruising spot that would have to be cut out while processing.

From there, my thoughts traveled to a more elaborate method. If I could somehow weight the stick, thereby hooking the branch, the weight could drop the fruit down where I could pick it without having to look up. I just have to figure out what to use for a weight. Maybe I could tuck the stick under my affected arm and slowly push it through as the branch lowers. But then, I'll end up with the peaches in my face.

I know I'll figure out something to get some of the peaches harvested for the pantry. They aren't particularly sweet nor large, but they are definitely peachy this year. But they are ours and the first time more abundant than the squirrels and birds can eat. They'd make some excellent jam. I can still go down the road to E.D. Grier's orchard and buy a half bushel of gorgeous peaches for slicing and canning.

Any of y'all have any ideas of how I can pick my peaches? I still have cherries to pick in a few weeks and apples to follow.

Nothing is impossible. 

Sunday Stroke Survival: Taking a Stroke Break

Imagine my surprise when Vergie at the top of our driveway called that she had a package for me. It was my power supply for my computer! It arrived Friday instead of Monday as promised.

This summer is proving to be more hectic with the garden and orchard than I thought it would be. A meager green peas harvest aside, the rest of the garden is proving to be kicking my hinny with its care, harvesting, preserving, and the heat.

Yes, the Georgia heat of summer is upon us finally. It only took until June 24th into break the 80s. Since then, the garden has exploded with growth both good and bad. So I'm taking a break from writing about strokes. There's no news anyhow. I'm still in a holding pattern for my new AFO and stuck changing out my current AFOs during the day to get anything accomplished. Even with that by 7PM, I'm done and all my AFOs hurt my foot.

I've harvested almost three bushels (120 lbs) of green beans already! I met my quota, and then some for a year's worth of green beans canned (104 jars), and froze a lot for later combination canning like for vegetable soups, French fried, and pot pies, etc. The rest of the green beans I'll pick is for fresh eating and seed until the first heavy frost kills the plants.

The next major harvest will be tomatoes, corn, and squashes. The tomatoes I'll wash, core, cut any bad spots, placed in 2-gallon bags, and frozen until this winter. The squashes will be washed, bagged, and frozen until we want to use them. I rarely can summer squashes because they are mostly water and become mush. I plan to can zucchini bread. It's baked in canning jars and sealed. It'll stay fresh this way on the shelf for a year or more. I've got two cases of wide mouth canning jars set aside for this purpose. They will join the two cases of jars full of banana bread I canned earlier in the spring. It's mighty handy when we want something sweet for breakfast or something sweet anytime.  All I have to do is pop a lid and serve it. I also use zucchini for my relish recipe (6 pint jars) instead of cucumbers.

I'll be canning/dry storing potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, garlic, and other items. I'll be fermenting
kimchi and sauerkraut. I'll be or am dehydrating and freezing peppers and herbs (40 lbs so far). I'll be mixing my spice blends. Picking and processing cherries, peaches, and figs for later enjoyment into jams, jellies, butters, whole fruit, and pie fillings. The list goes on and on. That's only the spring/summer harvests with the fall harvest of apples, cabbages, daikon radishes, ginger, turmeric, seed stock, dent corn to go before the frost. The kicker is that I don't have the stamina of two years ago. But slowly, I'm getting it done. One step at a time. I'm just hating the fact that I'm slowing down and only part can be blamed on my AFO woes.

I've planted another six cucumber plants this week. The previous three drowned. I need the cucumbers to pickle into dills and bread and butter pickles (12 jars of each). Of course, I'll need to pull up some garlic and onions, and let them cure for a week before I can start pickling. I'm just praying I have enough cucumbers before the first frost kills off the vines. But I'll also need grape leaves and fresh dill. So it's imperative to pick these and can my pickles before the frost.

I'll also have to wait until some of my celery to bolt so I can use the seeds and still have some to plant for next year. Home canning with your own produce is a hurry up and wait game. It all depends on Mother Nature.

The second one I completed

One good thing came about from my computer being down for almost two weeks. I built up the dexterity in my left hand some what. I downloaded an aps for a paint by numbers. I had to use the pen/stylus that came with my phone to "paint" the pictures. It's a far cry from painting or drawing free hand like I used to, but it was a way to exercise fine motor skills with my damaged left hand. Being it was on my phone I could only zoom the picture so big so some of it was pretty difficult and took a lot of focused concentration. It surprised me how much it took and it was actually challenges me enough to hold my attention. I've decided to at least one a day for the rest of the year. Who know where this will lead.

Nothing is impossible.

Law of Diminishing Return and Age

There's a direct correlation between the Law of Diminishing Marginal Return and your age. I found this out a few weeks ago. Oh, what a difference just two years makes as you grow older. To reinforce the matter, I just had another birthday yesterday. Whoppie! Hoop-de-do! Not really, but I won't go into it here.

As is usual for me, I was prepping the garden for planting. My original thought was to just till it all under. But on closer inspection, much to my dismay, I took a good look at some of the weeds in the garden. Some of the weeds propagated by sprouting new plants along the string of roots. To till these weeds would equal an explosion of the weeds in my garden. Think weeds on steroids. I had no choice but to weed it by hand carefully pulling whole roots of these obnoxious weeds.

Mel's thought was to put weed killer all over the area undoing my four years of labor and expense building this five times larger area of organic garden than she initially had. I just wasn't having that. I am so much healthier with less allergic reactions by eating chemical free.

Mel hates weeding so she decided to plant fresh eating vegetables is self wicking, 5-gallon buckets this year. She thinks it will be easier on her. Me, I'm planting the old fashion way of dense, companion planting in a cross between row planting and square foot gardening techniques. That's how I grew 100% of our needs in tomatoes, corn, herbs, garlic, and green beans that has lasted us 18 months in 2017 on less than 1/4 acre. So I have to pull some weeds. I'm out in the sunshine, communing with my Heavenly Father, doing what I always dreamed of doing. Our approaches to gardening are different, but that's okay.

Getting back to the subject at hand. The law of Diminishing Marginal Return states...

The law of diminishing marginal returns states that, at some point, adding an additional factor of production results in smaller increases in output. For example, a factory employs workers to manufacture its products, and, at some point, the company operates at an optimal level. With other production factors constant, adding additional workers beyond this optimal level will result in less efficient operations.  www.Investopedia.com

In the chart above at the beginning of this post, I use age as an additional factor that impacts production. On my urban homestead in my 40s, my garden grew to 1/2 and acre. Then, I hit 50, While I still produced the same but over a longer period to get it done, my family dynamics also changed due to marriages and grandchildren. By my mid 50s, I started having strokes impacting my production further. I went back to a 1/4 acre garden again which was fine as an empty nester. The strokes continued to occur, but my stubbornness wouldn't let me sway away from my goal of living the most organic, self sufficient lifestyle I could.

Now, I'm in my 60s for a few more years. In pulling the dandelions, plantains, wild violets, grasses, wild strawberries, and assorted other weeds from my garden which is much less than 1/4 acre, I'm hit with more diminishing return on a daily basis.

Monday, I pull four 5-gallon buckets plus a 3-gallon bucket of weeds. The 3-gallon bucket feeds the bunnies (2) and chickens (17). We do have 15 more chickens and 24 quail, but they are too young for the fresh greens.
Tuesday- my lower back and thighs are a bit worse for wear, I pull two 5-gallon buckets plus the 3-gallon bucket of weeds.
Wednesday- I pull a 3-gallon bucket and a 5-gallon bucket. I've gotten only a little over half the garden done.
Thursday- I pull a 3-gallon bucket. I had a doctor's appointment 36 miles away so the rest of my day is shot.
Friday- is today. I've managed the 3-gallon bucket already, but the rest of the day remains to be seen. I'm hoping that the rest of yesterday will enable me to pull more. At this rate, it will be summer before I get my garden weeded. 😒

Meanwhile, I've planted the corn, green peas, and green beans. It's been so gorgeous outside, I couldn't not be outside. It's not hard work. It poking a hole with a stick, dropping a seed in the hole, and using the stick to cover it up. No bending involved. I can plant four to eight seeds before I ever have to move my feet. I made mine out of a stick we had in the yard. I painted the depth on the pointed end in 1/2" measurements, and then vanished it to protect it. The numbers are big enough for me to see without bending over. I've got another one  with inch spacing. On the opposite end, I screwed a piece of 1x2 to tamp the seeds down. Need is the mother of invention. The stick can also double as a cane if I need extra balance or lean on to admire what I've accomplished.😄

I know the garden will eventually be planted. I'm too stubborn to allow anything less. We've got to have a fantastic harvest this year to make up for the dismal failures of last year. But the law of diminishing marginal return and age are working against me.

Nothing is impossible.

Sunday Stroke Survival:Too Pooped to Pop

 

This song about sums up my week

Standard YouTube license

As we do every year in the garden, I start the prep for the next spring. So I've really been too pooped
to pop. While the weather is nice and not raining, I've been taking advantage of it.

My schedule looks something like this...

The sun rises about 6:30 so there is plenty of light by 7. I've already fed the inside pets and myself. I put on my new new AFO and go pick the rabbits' daily ration of clover, plantain, grasses, dandelions, and poplar and maple leaves. Then, I'll talk to each one while I dole out the goodies.

1 row almost finished

 I'm off to the garden I'm flattening boxes and spreading them out over the unplanted sectioned of the garden aka walkways. I'm being careful to over lap the boxes by at least 3" all the way around. This gets tricky because all the boxes are different sizes and thicknesses. Soda can boxes (24 can and 12 pack variety) are the easiest because flattened they are fairly big. The only problem with the soda boxes is that they are slick when wet. I've fallen more than a few times. They are also thin cardboard so it takes more of them to make the 1"-2" layer that worms love unlike Amazon or USPS boxes.  The ultimate easy box was the one the water heater came in. It covered a big space. But I can't afford this kind of purchase that often. Then, I'll grab the water hose and wet it all down. I do this twice. The next layer is straw or hay, spread it 6"-10" thick. I'll usually take a thirty minute break every hour because with the new new AFO,  I can't stand and move more than that. At the very most it's two hours until the correction pain gets the better of me.

I'm ready for a serious break. I get Mel up if she isn't already. She's a night owl. I prepare a pot of hot tea. Even though we aren't in England, it's tea time. I'll fix her breakfast and for me a snack cheese and crackers, or peanut butter crackers to go with my tea. I'll also prep dinner if it goes into the crockpot. Mel and I will chat a bit about what is going on today. It's time to change back to my old AFO.

 I'm back at it laying cardboard and straw. Mel is using the tractor to clean all the deep bedding in the rabbit barn. In between manure runs to the in garden compost pile by the peach trees, she manhandles a bale of straw/hay into the garden area and put it where it needs to go so it's easier for me to break down.  Another hour's worth of work done.

The temperature is at the day's high (90s). I call a stop to my garden work during the hottest part of the day. Mel keeps working because of her later starting time. I've already sweated so much that it'll take two full 16 oz glasses of ice tea before I'm able to urinate. Not that I haven't been drinking during my breaks. It's just that hot and my back is screaming at me for all that stooping. I get myself cleaned up. A quick sponge bath to cool off and bring my smell down a bit. Now, I'll do the shopping and/or doctor or PT appointments. The air conditioning sure feels good in these places. We don't have it at home. Just box or ceiling fans. Or I'll just sit by a fan and do some computer work until it cools off a bit outside. I may grill dinner, or if I'm out and about grab something like a pizza or burger for dinner, or serve dinner I've prepared about 3ish PM. I might even catch a nap. I switch back to the new new AFO.

After dinner, it's time to head back to the garden. I'll continue laying cardboard and straw/hay until dusk. I'll check on the rabbits one final time. I'll refill their hay bins with Timothy grass to nibble on during the night. Mel handles the water and empties the pellets into the bin to keep the rats out of it . It's just too much trouble for me to do. I figure division of animal care  and all that. It makes sense, right? I switch back to the old AFO.


By 7PM, we both fall into our respective chairs in the screened back porch. Our back porch is set up in summer mode now complete with TV and DVD player. We'll turn on Netflix and watch a couple of shows or a movie. I'll have my knitting or spinning. Mel will be rolling cigarettes or crocheting. We are both exhausted after a full, busy day, but it ain't over yet. Laundry has to be done so it can hang on the line in the morning. Clothing needs to be folded and put away. Bedding has to be changed. The inside animals need to be fed and loved on. The floors need to be swept, mopped, and vacuumed. Blogs need to be written or edited for me. For Mel, it's editing videos or programming software.

By 10 o'clock, I've taken my last meds for the day. I've showered. A full fledged shower with scrubbing every inch of my body. I'll play a game or two of Canasta or a word game while I wait for my meds to take effect. Then, I go to bed. I'll sleep for four to eight hours depending on whether the spasticity pain, or my bladder, or leg cramps wakes me up.

And then, I start my day again. I will say that the second and each later day, I'm slower doing and have to take more breaks because my body is screaming at me more. My age and living post stroke isn't helping me either. At least it's done now. I'll just have to water, weed, and harvest the garden when needed. Oh then, there's the preserving the harvest, but that's another story.

That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger, yeah right! It came close. I'm just thankful it wasn't my old 1/4 acre garden!

Nothing is impossible.

Sunday Stroke Survival: AFO Woes, Weather, and Other Stuff

As you can guess, I was hard pressed to talk about one thing this week. So much and so little has been accomplished.

The garden has been planted. All that's left to do is busy work like weeding until harvest time. But I can't because of the rain. I do get out to pick dandelions, clover, strawberry and black berry leaves, and grasses for the rabbits. I'm picking grass seed heads for the corralled hens too. This takes me about an hour each day. That's including feeding and loving on them.

My AFO still isn't right. I'd gotten up to three hours a day wearing time in the new new AFO. It still rubs my ankle bone. It can be down right painful too. If I just sat around all day this wouldn't be a problem. But I have a fairly active lifestyle. I'll burn up 6,000  steps in a few hours between the animals and the garden. On sunny days, I'll round off 10,000 steps by including the orchard. But I haven't been doing that lately. I'll be up on my feet for an hour in the new new AFO and then spend the next  30 minutes on the porch swing to rest my foot and ankle.

At around 2:30 of the three-hour mark finds me on the swing watching the spinners and the hummingbirds because it's too painful to stand up. The wind spinners were a birthday gift from a YouTube viewer who made them from soda cans. I just love them. I set my phone alarm for the three-hour mark. I usually am counting the minutes until I an swap out AFOs. But that's not really helpful because the old AFO is the device that caused my foot fractures. Even with the adjustments, that old knife stabbing pains return after a few short hours. So I'm stuck sitting more than I'd like.

Even with the extra padding in the new new AFO, it still isn't right. It still causes pain, but my foot alignment is correct. In talking to Hanger, at yet another appointment, my foot is so far out of whack that any correction will cause pain. So we are at an impasse. Do I give up alignment and a normal gait, or do I go back with to the poor posture, limping gait of the old style AFO? I'm hoping the intrathecal baclofen trial works on the leg spasticity. Eventually, I may just get rid of this AFO.  I'm still waiting for that appointment.


The weather has been, in a word, wet. It has rained every day for three weeks. There is only about a two-hour window each day that it isn't raining fairly hard. I said I'd never complain about the rain again after the drought of 2016, but I'm close. I guess it's a God's blessing kind of thing because I can't be up and doing outside. I'm glad I opted for building double width rows of raised beds in the in-ground plantings. At least the water has somewhere to go instead of drowning my seeds. Building these rows with a shovel and a rake was no easy job for one-handed me, but each 5' long row was accomplished. I could make two rows a day until all six were made. I'm glad I took the time. Gone are the days that I did six 30' rows a day... ten years ago. I'm thankful for this little garden plot instead of the old 1/4 acre garden. It's official. This was the wettest May in the history of this area.

I do have to say that living post stroke has been anything but boring. Every day there is something happening. Whether I fall, sometimes several times a day, or just preparing dinner are adventures. Attempting to make do single handed and not using my dominant hand to boot is challenging. I've finally quit trying to do trying to do something with my right hand first. It's only taken six years.  Not that I don't use my right arm and hand, but they now play a supporting role instead of a first response reactor.

The difference between learning and relearning

Living post stroke is a learning curve every single day as you try to regain your old life. Everything I try to do is part of this curve unless I've conquered it prior and have repeated it a dozen times or more. But isn't that true even if you haven't had a stroke? Yes, but living post stroke is relearning how to do it with impairments. Trying something absolutely new can be daunting post stroke. But it's a break from relearning. Sometimes, the frustration of learning something new is better than the frustration you get from relearning how to do something. I'm always on the lookout for these gems. Pinterest is a great place to see new crafty things I might want to try. I'm the type of person that sees something she likes and tries to make it. This year I tried spinning plarn to knit market bags. In the garden, I'm always trying a new plant or two each season. This year, it's tomatiloes. You never know what you can grow well until you try. In some small way, it makes me feel "normal" because everyone gets frustrated trying something new.

I've temporarily stopped working on the cookbook. I'm just too busy with the rabbits, garden, and orchard. I'll pick up working on it in the late fall after I put the garden to bed for the year. Next year's garden will be changing. Garlic and onions will be planted around the apple trees in succession planting because they'll keep pests away. I'll be planting leeks seeds in the fall as a first time crop to overwinter in the garden. Napa cabbages will be in the fall garden so all the ingredients for kim chi will come from my garden. Wohoo!

Nothing is impossible.

Sunday Stroke Survival ~Adaptive Gardening

Here is the southern US of A the weather grows warmer. Actually it's barely gotten below freezing a couple times this winter. We're in the tan-orangy colored section. I've missed my garden since my stroke. Being a prepper and survivalist since birth, it seems an insult to injury not having fresh produce outside my back door. But this year by gosh and begorrah, I've started gardening again.

I've had higher grocery bills and allergy attacks galore since I lost my garden last year with my stroke. What I've paid out in doctors, medicines, ointments, shots, inhalers, and oatmeal and baking soda since I had my stroke in allergy relief made me have to try.  For our financial health if not for our physical well being.

Before, I religiously practiced the three-sister method of gardening (an old American Indian method)- corn went in first, pole beans or peas climbed up the stalks with squash planted underneath. No need for nets or back breaking weeding. Three crops in one two-square foot of space. It saves time, saves space, and saves in labor since each crop will pull different nutrients from the soil to grow. In between each planting grew marigolds as a pest deterrent and it looked pretty. You see I organic garden. No pesticides other than organic or homemade and no commercial fertilizers even if they say they're organic. I also plant heirloom or certified organic seed. No GMO nothing for my family.

When I wanted to break new ground for a garden bed, I would buy bag of potting soil. I use Jungle Growth Mix for commercial soil because it's organic if I don't make my own. I came across this idea watching this youtube video and thought what a novel and productive way of clearing a new space for my ever enlarging garden. I started five or ten years ago with a 6' x 6' square (approx. 2 meters square for you non-American folks). The grass underneath dies while you produce crops. No longer would I have to cut through sod before I hit the rich, good earth and promote the earthworm population at the same time. Grass would always muck up my tiller blades making a mess. I thought it was kind of a neat idea at the time so I tried it.

Since my stroke, I can't use my tiller. It takes two good working hands. So the prospect of having my half acre garden would have to wait until I got my arm back. Meanwhile, I have been suffering allergy attacks from store bought foods and the all over my body outbreaks of hives because of the chemicals commercial farmers used. I've been miserable these past months since we've gone through most of the frozen food stuffs I've put by in stores. We do love our veges.

My nephew offered to build me some raised bed planting boxes, raised bed types if I supplied the materials. Now you know me, I'll squeeze two cents into a quarter with it kicking and yowling all the way. There just had to be a cheaper alternative. It wasn't just the wood and nails, but the dirt needed to fill these boxes I was balking at. Plus they were permanent. I don't know about the rest of you stroke survivors out there, but I feel the deficits I now face are only temporary. A bump in the road of life. Nothing should be permanent when adapting.

Granted, we could get the dirt from the fish pond we are digging on our property, but then I'd have to have multiple trucks loads of it brought from the property to my home. For something temporary? Because it was convenient for me? Nope, I figured there had to be an easier and cheaper way.

I found one. Milk crates. I had used them previously to build a potting bench out of them. Why couldn't they work for a raised bed garden. Most large restaurants (schools & hospitals) have large amounts of them just stacked up just collecting dust. The milk companies forget about them and just bring more. The same thing goes for those large plastic racks for bread. They'll give them away for free if you ask for them. This is where being a former chef paid off. <g>

I'm talking about the commercial grade, heavy duty crates not the dollar store knock-offs. The knock offs just can't handle the weight. For single patches I used an inverted, large, plastic trash can as "legs." for seedlings and shallow rooted crops. The bare spot underneath where the grass dies, will be cleared for planting roses because I love teas with rose hips, a huge source of vitamin C.

I stacked the milk crates three high and placed them off to one side of my back patio. It's mobile and can be broken down into nothing. The grass doesn't die underneath so no harm no foul. When and if we decide to sell this property, no one would be the wiser except for my neighbors. Yes, I'd still have to buy bags of Jungle Growth Mix but I'd do that anyhow for my lettuce patch or enlarging my garden. The soil after growing season is over is put into the compost bin for next year's garden fertilizer.

It works! Not on the scale of my half acre garden but it will produce, given the space constraints, fresh food and plenty to put up for later use. Can I still do my three-sisters method of planting? Yep or at least I'm going to try it. Now corn grows five to six feet high so harvesting it could pose some problems, but the stalks will stay in place until the bean and peas finish harvesting. I guess my bigger grandsons or granddaughter on a step ladder would work for harvesting the corn. I did plan ahead and made them only two crates high for this patch.

How do I make the soil deep enough? I stacked three bags on top of each other and just cut the plastic bag away in the center. It works for turnips and potatoes. Of course, there are always my handy-dandy 5 gallon buckets to plant root crops in. Placed on a milk crate, of course. That how I plant my horseradish anyhow. In case you didn't know, horseradish has an extremely invasive root system.

I tried out those planting bags and those Topsy-Turvy planters a few years ago with strawberries, and tomatoes so I'll do it again this year. They hang from my grandchildren's swing set my, now, unused clothes line, and my gazebo.The only problem I have with the Topsy-Turvy and tomatoes is that the tomato plants can grow eight feet in length. Unless I hang it from my roof..it will drag the ground, so much for ease in harvesting. Notice the picture to the right? The device in higher than the door frame in the background.

So for at least this year my garden is growing above ground in extra raised bed. I'll have to let you know the yield I get.  For my raised bed garden I did place my bags onto a bread rack for more stability. I used 21-1.5 cu. ft. bags of Jungle Growth Mix, 36 milk crates, 4 bread racks for my mini garden. The seeds I culled from my garden from an earlier harvest. For any stakes my neighbor has a mini forest of bamboo. For the cost of the growing soil about $100. I'll get possibly a 150% of my investment back.

How much would I pay for a gym membership in a year to use their exercise machine? Gardening is an excellent form of balance and physical training plus the meeting my nutritional needs to boot. It also saves me in more doctor visits and prescriptions. It's a win-win situation.

Now for the video I watched to learn how to garden in a bag. I didn't use the frame or string and used a screwdriver to poke the holes. :o)