Self-Sufficiency Made Simple

By: Jo Flintham
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  • Summary

  • Self-Sufficiency Made Simple podcast is here to share practical tips and hacks helping you overcome confusion about how to grow your own yummy food, keep healthy and happy chickens and even venture into the world of bees. And, do it all in your own backyard. Your host Jo Flintham from SoH Farmlet is all about making things simple, fun and easy in the garden. With many years of food growing experience and lessons, Jo shares how to start where you are with what you have to create your own self-sufficient source of food in any space and enjoy an endless source of homegrown goodness.
    Copyright Jo Flintham
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Episodes
  • #31 We have exciting news

    #31 We have exciting news
    Oct 9 2023
    This is it!! The last episode.. Booooooo, BUT, where there is some exiting news... YAYAYAYA.

    Find out what is happening and how to keep listening to informative, fun and supercharged discussions and interviews.

    Appologies in advance for the audio quality. We had some tech challenges and we just ran with it. That's just life sometimes.
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    15 mins
  • #30 Big Picture Garden Planning

    #30 Big Picture Garden Planning
    Dec 19 2022
    This is the last episode for 2022.. I feel like this year I have achieved so much but haven’t even scratch the sides at the same time… anyone else feel the same? This week I am working on my goals for 2023. We have some big plans for SoH Farmlet including starting a fortnightly food swap where it’s a bring what you can take what you need no money food swap. A produce swap where people can come and have a cuppa, cake, conversation and go home with a stash of fresh goodies. Self sufficiency for me isn’t about being a solo crusader, it’s about doing what you can with what you have. This means learning from others be it books, YouTube, courses, podcasts or just having a chat to someone, it’s observing, testing and measuring, failing forward over and over and over until you work it out, and it’s sharing what you have and what you know with others. I have to admit that I’m not usually one to get overly involved in community groups as I don’t have the mental bandwidth to deal with the drama that can sometimes come with them. But, one of my goals in 2023 is to connect with more likeminded people to learn from them, add value where I can and have more fun. I have in the last few weeks joined my local community garden and am looking forward to getting involved and meeting other garden nerds. I am actually really excited which I’ve surprised myself with. For the last ep. of the year I thought I would share with you my process for big picture planning my garden. I used to try and plan from big picture all way way down to the small details of each garden bed, each fruit tree which ended up with me either getting stressed that I can’t follow it because it’s too rigid or throwing it out all together and going way off track. I now use a set of basic principles to work out what I can achieve. This allows me the flexibility I need to change for unplanned events like crazy weather or if I need to be away from the garden for a while or purely if change my mind, which will absolutely happen.It gives me a framework to work within. I have found so far this has been pretty effective in preventing me going off on garden tangents like buying a heap of plants on a whim and not having a plan for them. I have killed so many plants that have languished in pots for way too long waiting for me to plant them out. And I admit, I still have some.. I did say it’s pretty effective, not fool proof. The principles I use are broken into 2 Tiers Tier 1 How much time do I REALLY have to dedicate to my garden. What resources do I have or need. Ie Help, cash, seeds/plants, items I can reuse/upcycle, swap Growing vs infrastructure - what can I get growing and what needs more work Tier 2 What do I like and want to eat What do I know grows well What will improve my soil By applying these I can break down each section of the garden into what need attention and then plan for when I can give it the attention it needs. For example I am still working on building fenced garden beds that stop rabbits from pillaging and also allow the chickens to be directed over beds at the end of the season. I have several of these yet to build but there is no way I can do them all in one go. I don’t have the time, budget or endurance. But I know I can build 1 in 1 day. I Also know that I need make compost for each bed and I know I can build a hot compost in one day that will be ready in about 3-4 weeks. These garden beds are all no dig so I need to laying paper or cardboard down, cover it in soil and compost and add mulch on the walk ways. I know that doing this part is achievable over a weekend. If I give myself 4-6 weeks to build a single bed ready to plant, I can have them all finished by the end of the year and if I factor that my amazing husband will most definitely help me with these then we can have them finished sooner. But this isn’t our only garden project. I still have maintenance of the orchard, food forrest and planting annuals in prepared beds. I break these down using the same principles. For example one of our annual beds needs some soil love. I can add a green manure crop now and then let the chickens trample it down over autumn and winter ready for spring. Minimal effort and time on my part, massive boost for the soil plus extra forage for the chickens. In another bed I recently planted eggplant seedlings and added generous amount of lettuce, rocket, corn salad and a mix of flower seeds. The leafy greens are planted thick to act as a living mulch and the eggplants will shade some out so I can pick leaves. Flowers will attract beneficial bugs, look pretty and I can pick a few here and there for my vase. The orchard needs the grass to be maintained. I can knock this down over the a few afternoons each month. I can then continue planting fruit tree guilds to help manage the grass overgrowing into the fruit trees, increase diversity, boost soil health, create habitat and about 1000 other benefits. I can get one done a month....
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    18 mins
  • #29 5 Ways Guaranteed to Improve your Soil Health

    #29 5 Ways Guaranteed to Improve your Soil Health
    Dec 5 2022
    Ps… I got quite excited recording this episode and there’s a lot of ‘you knows’ and ‘ums’ and ‘sooo’ please do your best to ignore those,🙏 It's the 5th Dec so that means ‘ Happy World Soil Day!! Today is the day you get a pass to totally nerd out on your friends and talk all day about soil. Fun facts to share around with your non gardening friends. There is more living organisms in a tablespoon of healthy soil that there are humans on earth. The largest living organisms isn't a whale it’s a fungus that is found in Oregon USA and it’s the size of 1665 football fields, is estimated to be between 200-800 years old and is mostly made of carbon. Another fact is that is not so fun is that it is estimated that the world topsoil will be depleted within the next 60 years and some even say it's as little as 30 years. That shit is scary. So this week I was planning to do a super short episode because I spend the weekend doing a plant based bush survival course where for 2 whole days we learnt about edible wild plant, bush medicine, survival tactics, tracking, natural fibre rope making, fire starting and lots more. My body is battered and bruised but I am feeling a hugely renewed sense of connection to the earth. But because it’s World Soil Day I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share a few things that can help you improve your soil. I am by no means a soil expert. I am learning from others and am still making a bunch of mistakes and learning from these as I go. I can share though that early next year we will have a really cool guest on to share her knowledge about soil and compost. This lady knows her shit… especially in compost. So make sure your episode notifications are on or you check in every few weeks so you don’t miss it. But for today you and I are going to chat about 5 ways you can support the soil web in your own patch by looking at 5 ways guaranteed to help you improve your solid health. Even if you just did one of these things you will see improvements. First one is Increase organic matter. Organic matter is anything that was once upon a time living or has come from a living thing. Another way to say it is anything that contains carbon compounds that were formed by living organisms. Parts of or whole plants, grass clippings, manures, dead bodies.. I’m not suggesting to bury someone in your backyard but the beloved pet you buried under the tree added to the organic matter. Feathers, wool, fur, hair, bones, kelp, paper, algae, fungi, all of these break down and add to the organic matter. Compost is a great way to decompose these so that the nutrients can become plant available and the compost adds overall structure to the soil allowing for moisture retention and oxygen to reach roots. It also helps maintain a stable PH level. Chop and drop is a great way to add organic matter right at the source. When you plants are spent don’t pull them out, instead chop them off at or slightly below ground level and chop them up into smaller bits and leave them to break down. You can also add mulch, leaves and aged manures to your garden directly. Depending on what manure you use you may need to go easy on it to keep a good balance. Second way is to stop using pesticides and herbicides. Yep. STOP. I know it’s disheartening when your hard work is getting eaten by bugs or it seems like you are forever battling weeds but I 1000% promise you if you are using pesticides and herbicides you are doing way more harm than good. Keep the bugs at bay through companion planting. Plant things that attract beneficial insects that eat the buggers that are attacking your plants. Plant other things that will either attract the pest and use these as sacrificial plants or plant deterrents. To give you an example, if you struggle with aphids (who doesn’t from time to time) then plant things that attract bugs that love to snack on aphids or plant things that aphids love to each away from your prized patch. Nasturtium and a range of other plants can act as an attractant drawing them away. This year my dandelions were covered in aphids and ladybugs were loving it. Yet there were zero on any other plants even the ones growing only 30 cms away. The episode on companion planting will give you a few more ideas too. You can also remove bugs by hand. Laborious but better than chemicals. Blasting them with water can be quite satisfying too. Remove weeds by hand. Grab a weeding tool that is suitable for your garden and weed types that will cause the least amount of disturbance. Or chop them off and use them for compost or weed tea. I would only chop and drop weeds without seeds otherwise you have just effectively planted the weed you are trying to remove. I learnt this the hard way. Another great way to suppress weeds is to plant green manure crops during garden downtime. This has loads of benefits like minimising erosion of bare soil from wind or rain, adding nutrients back into the soil through nitrogen ...
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    23 mins

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