Being the here-to-fore unsuccessful gardener that I am, I decided to do something different this year with my gardening attempt.
Man, has it paid off big time.
1. Someone turned me on to the "Back to Eden" gardening concept. While I've found it needs more water than Paul states (he lives in the Cascades in Washington state...don't they get like 2 inches of rainfall every week of the year??), nonetheless, everything else is exactly as he says. Minimum upkeep, dresses the soil. If you check out my gardening page, you'll see some older posts about the back yard. I erred and just put wood chips straight down in that one. It didn't fare so well. So as I am creating compost, I'm going to move the chips around lay some compost down, re-lay the chips so I can actually use that space.
Side note: I learned from that mistake and put compost down on the front yard first, then wood chips (gardening page has pictures.) Oddly enough, I have a smaller front yard area which I had covered in sweet potato peelings one month. I covered it with wood chips and stuff has grown there consistently without problem. Go figure. (Yes, I know the SP peels add nitrogen to the soil.)
2. I talked DH in to letting me tear up the front yard and plant a garden there. It faces south and gets 12 hours of sun. Unobstructed sun until I was forced to put up the varmint fencing, now 1 interior foot running the length of the street side fencing is cast in shade 6 hours a day.
DH's stipulation was I had to plant things that "looked like flowers" out there. In other words, no tomatoes, no corn, nothing obviously food. So I planted "green" stuff: broccoli, kale, beets, cucumbers (which can look like ground cover), grapes (so far, no fruit, so it's definitely in the green foliage category), beans.
I realized one day that I had grown a juicing garden by accident. Everything I was growing, I could juice (ok, we cook the broccoli.) This is important! DS18 and I did a juicing detox last year for two weeks. He has such severe allergies, and we want to get him clean. We both felt SO much better during that two weeks and after, that we promised to stick with it, even if it was only a once a day juice.
We found out we were (a) 'eating' more nutritiously (b) felt full due to the fiber content (c) had more energy, (d) DS had far less allergy symptoms.
Needless to say, that got expensive in a hurry, especially in our current circumstance. So I was thrilled to realize I was growing everything except the carrots ! It doesn't take a lot of electrical energy to juice. I could run a whole day's worth of juice in short order. If I really cared, for prepping purposes, I would buy or make a juicing PRESS, which would be energy independent.
I use: 3 stalks of Kale, 3 stalks of beets, 4 carrots per person. Carrots are such space hogs that I buy 50# of them a month in bulk for $6. If I wasn't using carrots I would substitute 2 stalks of celery and 1 cucumber for the carrots, both of which I can grow successfully in the front yard. In case you are wondering, beets average 7 stalks per beet. I generally use half a beet in a juicing mix if I don't use beet stalks.
So one beet plant would be enough for 1 juicing adventure per day, for one person or in other words, 1 beet plant would be enough for a week for 1 person. Math translation: 52 plants for a year's supply for one. More math: beets need a foot of space to grow (square foot gardening.) A four month supply, enough to get through winter, since beets are a fall crop, for my entire family would take up one side of my entire front yard 4 feet by 20 feet.
The other side of the yard is an additional 4 feet by 20 feet. Here, I would (and do) grow kale, cucumber and celery. Kale needs very little space to grow. I've grown both Winterbourne and Lakota. A single stalk provides enough Kale to last 1 person for a month if you're juicing.
What's the prepping point? I don't know that I will ever be able to grow enough food to be self-sustaining for my entire family if we are eating it. But I am pretty sure based on our results so far, that I can grow enough to be self sustaining, to juice because it is much more nutrient dense. In other words, I can use/grow less, use less energy (than cooking) and feel more full.
I have home canned chicken, rice and wheat stored. Combined with our juicing garden, I think we will be well set if we keep it up and are consistent. Your thoughts?
Denise- You asked about quinoa. Interestingly enough, I just put out new quinoa to start some seedlings last week. I scattered them in a layer of compost rather than planting them 1 by 1 in peat pellets like I normally do.
ReplyDeleteAt present, I am only getting about a 20% germination. I know that has more to do with HOW I cast the seeds versus the seeds themselves. Sigh. So that means next time I need to go back to the 1:1 method, where I get a 95% germination rate.
I planted 6 quinoa plants last season in an area which only got about 3 hours of direct sun a day. They grew to medium height. I was able to harvest about 4-6 cups of quinoa I think.
I planted about 32 quinoa plants at the community garden. The gophers ate most of them. Aphids killed the rest. So plan on buying Lady Bugs when your plants get to a decent size. I had one loan plant come up as a volunteer this summer. Because it was in mostly shade, it only grew about 2 feet tall, but that was enough to give me about 3/4 cup of quinoa. I used 1/2 cup in a cooking demo I did, and saved the rest to plant.
So I would say, conservatively, if you are growing quinoa in full sun, which is a must, and it grew to full height (about 5-6 feet tall) you could expect about 4-6 cups per plant? Maybe. I will know more after what I have growing now reaches maturity.