Fellow blogger Sara Dainese, who I recently met on a social networking site, is growing food on her porch and patio with great success.  Since some of what I talk about here at SHTFGarden involves gardening without a lot of space, it’s refreshing to see someone who’s actually accomplishing that.

Her recent blog post Self-Sufficiency while living in a town? Yes you can! talks about how she utilizes her space, what she’s growing, and has some great photographs (the one here included) of the garden in action.

Well worth the click to read!  Go here to see it.

Note: This isn’t exactly on topic with SHTF Garden, but it is relevant as some of the upcoming topics we’ll be discussing include keeping container gardens.  This article comes from one of my other sites, HiddenHealthScience.com.

A lot of energy in today’s American society is put into “cleaning” our homes.  In my opinion, we over clean and focus too much on sanitizing everything around us.  We have immune systems and body defense systems for a reason, folks.  I’m not saying to let new and interesting bio cultures grow in your bathtub and toilet, but I think 90% of what tends to get doused with “germ killing” cleansers would be just as clean if we just used a wet rag to wipe it up.

One of the areas where many people seem to be putting their focus is the air in their homes.  Elaborate, expensive air purifiers and filtration systems are being sold to people with more money than sense and for those who can’t afford those, there is a thriving market of scented air freshener products to add wonderful chemicals to the air in our houses.

Here’s an alternative that is better for you, for your family, and on more levels than just improving your olfactory experience around the house: houseplants.

There are a lot of plants that work very well as air purifiers.  These include popular ferns like the Boston Ferm, palms like the Areca, the ever-useful Aloe Vera cactus, and the most popular houseplant of all time, the Spider Plant.  There are many more houseplants available for air purification and, truth be told, nearly all living plants purify the air in some way.

On top of that, houseplants improve our moods and make us happier.

So.. how many houseplants do you keep?  Find out more from this NASA study and from this Wikipedia list of plants and soils for air filtration.