Sadi Moore

I’ve been raw feeding for six years now and can attest to the great health benefits I’ve seen in all my pets. My pitbull has bad allergies and she’s now the picture of health. We rescued a sickly old mastiff off the side of the road and he’s blossomed as well. My cats are all strictly meat only (bone-in chicken thighs, hearts, liver all ran through the grinder with a couple supplements) but I do add about 10% non-starchy vegetables to the dogs diets. Dandelion greens (plus a root or two), zucchini/squash, pumpkin, kale, blueberries, wheatgrass, broccoli, carrot, etc. with a dollop or two of sauerkraut, I pulverize everything in a food processor and freeze it in ice cube trays enough for a months worth. They don’t have the correct enzymes to break down vegetable matter very well since they usually would only be eating the pre-digested contents of their prey, pulverizing it down into a pulp allows them to extract the nutrients much easier. Their meat and bone I mostly source through a raw feeding co-op for a good price but does require a dedicated chest freezer to store. Beef heart, pork chunks, duck necks and heads, whole sardines, duck eggs, lamb liver, beef kidney, sweetbreads, and pork spleen. If you could get up with a game processor or small local farmer others have had great success getting all the offal and off cuts for cheap (don’t be afraid of some fatty bits), large bones are great treats or chop them down and stew for a couple days for a great bone broth. It’s vital to remember the importance of ratios, approximately 10% of their diet needs to be edible bone (whole poultry or carcass, bone in fish, feet) and another 10% is offal (5% liver then the other 5% another organ such as kidney, spleen, sweetbreads, testes, etc.) Do note that hearts, lungs, and tripe aren’t considered an excreting organ and should be considered as meat portion.
Mind you, I do spend a couple hours every couple weeks to pre-portion their meals into takeaway containers that go in the deep freeze so I can grab a few to thaw in the fridge and feed without having to prep every time. My crew are my beloved pets and I understand LGDs may not be deemed worth the effort to prepare everything like that, but having a few bags of frozen liver, sardines, carcasses, heads, etc to toss them to make sure they’re getting approximately the correct nutrients wouldn’t take much effort or cost. I’ve started researching about raising our own animals for feed, seems that rabbit, guinea pig, quail, and goat would be the easiest and most economical. All except goat could be fed whole so processing would be very easy and all their ratios would be met. Not to mention if you took the time to dress them out a nice protein variation for your own family.  

Daniel, I’m not certain they’d be game for me coming by multiple times for the air layering. No clue how private they are or not, so trying to make this a one and done thing. If the cuttings fail I’ll try and reach out again in the spring to explain they didn’t take and try air layering.
Mark, how moist do you keep the soil? Don’t want to rot them but I’d assume they need to stay pretty damp for the tiny roots to absorb enough. I’m getting a bunch of coconut coir to put in a dozen blueberry bushes, would that be a good substrate to use for rooting, or should it have compost mixed in for nutrients? I’ll be keeping them in the garage to stay a little warmer over the winter, then pop them out in the (hopefully built by then) greenhouse come spring.

My grandparent’s old house had a huge fig tree that grew along one side, no clue as to what variety. I fondly remember spending many a summer afternoon on my grandfather’s shoulders stripping it down, then just as many days in a steamy kitchen with my grandma transfiguring them all into jams. Unfortunately my granddaddy passed away from cancer five years ago, and my grandma just recently passed from Covid. Their house has been sold and I would very much like to reach out to the new owner to request I come prune some branches from that beloved fig tree so I can propagate a few. I’d tried rooting some cuttings a couple times in the past to no avail, but there was no rhyme or reason to it, just snipped and stuck it in a water jug. Since I probably only have one shot at this and it carries so much meaning to me, what would be the best plan of action to get a successful rooting to grow out. I’m in zone 7b/8a around Charlotte NC, so what dates would be best, size of branches to prune, substrate to use, the whole nine... Many thanks!  

Ah yes, my area might be of some help! I’m in southern NC, bordering right on zone 7b and 8a. I could do a small solar panel that would run an efficient space heater through the nights. I’ve also heard that a few moist straw bales inside help to put off ambient heat as they begin to compost. I’d like to get an earlier jump start so my plants are a bit more vigorous and I can grow out some larger ones at a higher cost for those that only want a few and more immediate results. Our farmer’s markets are pretty saturated so any leg up having larger starts to offer would be a plus. Definitely going to be doing a wide variety of tomatoes, plus cucumbers, peppers, mellons, and squash, then swap over to cool season crops late in the summer to help convince people that a fall garden can be just as rewarding as summer.

Unfortunately indoor space in the house is at a premium, I have six cats and they will find any opportunity to squeeze in somewhere to grab anything green. I lost two flats last season despite keeping them in what I thought was a safeguarded location, just to find my fat boy got over the baby gate and climbed up to snack then kicked them off for a nap on the heat pad 😑

I’m starting a tiny market garden next year and want to focus a large portion of my offerings on veggie starts and some fruiting perennials. Not only is my actual ground space limited, being in a neighborhood setting with only an 1/8 of an acre backyard and large dogs that still need their sprint space, but I really want to help encourage other people to grow their own food at home and find some independence in their food supply.

I’ve been trying to focus more time on researching greenhouse do’s/don’ts and trying to come up with a solid plan. From what I’ve seen so far a ready made greenhouse would be out of the budget since I’d need at least a 10’x20’ so I’ll be needing to build something from scratch. There’s soooo many options and everyone seems to swear that their way is the best way, I’m just getting a little bewildered. I really hate diving into a project just to realize things should have been done differently, trying to avoid costly mistakes upfront since this is such a large part of my plan.

Of course my dreams swirl with the fantasy of a victorian orangery bordered by cobblestones and French lavender, but reality screams plastic sheeting quivering noisily in the breeze... So far I’m leaning towards bending cattle panels and attaching to a base frame, but I’d very much like to incorporate automatic ventilation to avoid roasting things when we get sporadic heat jumps, don’t know if that’s feasible with this design though. Is there a consensus of tried and true methods that many of you would agree on? Trying to hammer out a solid plan with no experience is proving a bit maddening. Calling all brains to be picked 🙏🏼

Thank you a hundred times over! This thread has been truly motivating and stoked the flame just as I was hitting another hump of doubt and struggle. My pursuit of the lifestyle you’ve been so successful in cultivating is just now beginning. Life has a funny, albeit sometimes cruel, way of dragging you in and out of the path you truly feel drawn to, but I’m finally scraping up the fortitude to start heading in the right direction. If you have any articles of your journey or would care to share nuggets of wisdom to a hungry mind I’d be beyond grateful. I can’t dump in much capital at the moment and my health leans more towards the work smarter not harder way of doing things if I’m to stay viable, but I am eager, endlessly curious, and honestly just fed up that I’ve let myself slip into my 30’s without making the moves I need to make yet.

I’m just starting to convert, brace yourself, a whopping 2500sq ft (if I fudge the numbers) of lawn into the smallest market garden imaginable. I’ll be building a greenhouse to supplement my humble produce offerings with starts and perennial transplants, and constructing a few mushroom towers to add more variety. I don’t want to delve too deeply into setting up an awful lot of permaculture since I’ll (hopefully) be leaving this haunted property in the sooner-rather-than-later future. I do however want to install just enough where the new homeowner could run with it, or at the very least be able to enjoy or otherwise share with the wildlife for years to come.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed, undereducated, and unprepared at the moment. Although I suppose that’s not too terribly new a feeling for me anyways haha. I’ve only ever had a few raised beds but recently started reading up more on intensive cropping and I feel like it’s a possible gateway to get me to the property that I really could thrive on. Right now it’s all just a flood of scrambling around to figure out the best order of go for everything. Converting red Carolina clay and Bermuda grass infested lawn into a viable growing plot is putting a bit of a damper on things, but I’m hopeful it can be possible. I’ll be collecting vast amounts of leaves to mold overwinter to help provide bulk organic matter, but compost will need to be trucked in regardless. Still researching if a hot house would suffice to care for seedlings properly or if I should invest in the ventilation and structure of something a bit more thought out. Have a huge sweet gum tree that’s about to be cut down since it’s hanging precariously over my neighbors pump house since the last hurricane came through, so I’ll have all the logs I could need come time to start inoculating for mushrooms. My uncle has some decent sized figs he’d propagated for me that’ll be going in the ground soon, but are there any other quick producing perennial crops I could plant and overwinter for a decent sampling come summer? I could do a few more blueberries but they won’t do anything for at least a year or two, what about raspberries or mulberry bushes? Trying to crash course a decent setup to limp me through my first season, but as usual I’m on the losing end of time..

This was wonderful! I’m just beginning to convert my backyard into a (very) small market garden with a greenhouse to grow starts for sale as well. So many questions on the finer details, would love to see some shorter episodes of specifics for different stages of getting things established.

Thank you so much for the input guys! I just purchased my childhood home (long story) and decided to begin focusing on a greenhouse and some gardens to start going to market with. It’s only an acre in a residential neighborhood, but no HOA so if I get on the ball I should be able to make a little something out of it.

I think I’ve got my plan of action. Going to try digging/cutting it out then covering with a tarp for a few weeks, temps are getting back in the 90’s so hopefully it can do some damage in that time. Then pulling tarps back to lay down cardboard and fill enough compost on top of it to grow fall greens. Once they’re pulled for the season then tarps go back on until April. I’ll be buying large silage tarps so there will be minimum gaps for anything to escape through. If I notice many sprouts bursting in next summer then I’ll probably stock up on plastic mulch from here on out..

I’m trying to expand my gardening area another 1,000 sq ft in time to plant more fall/winter crops (borderlime between 7b and 8a), but time has gotten away from me and the clock is ticking down before I miss my window. I’m battling the dreaded Bermuda grass rhizomes and really want to eradicate it well so I’m not forever haunted. I‘d like to use Curtis Stone’s silage tarp method, but I’m afraid it won’t be down long enough to really do the job.


The plan of attack I was thinking is mow it down to the dirt then layer it with cardboard before covering with the silage tarp. That way the tarp can start a heat spike to solarize it some, but the cardboard can at least stay down after I have to pull it off then spread a few inches of compost right on top of that. I do have some Ortho GroundClear that’s rated safe for organic gardening, but if it’s effectiveness on poison ivy is any indication of it‘s killing power then I don’t know if it’d be able to stand up to Bermuda rhizomes either, but could help to start weakening it.. Or agricultural vinegar if it would dissipate in time and not cause too much damage to microbe life. Should I go ahead and invest in a flame weeder? I‘d prefer to not till, but if that’d help kickstart the breakdown process then I could do it the one time. Any opinions or experience with killing off a tenacious Bermuda lawn would be greatly appreciated!