Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 1:52 am Post subject: Self-Sufficiency Garden Part III....A Must Read!!!
Hi all,
I just came back from the city to check up on my perma-culture Garden. Incredible changes have been noted in my blog. The bio-diversity of the garden has absolutely exploded. My garden is now like this miniature edible jungle. I took very detailed notes and entered it into my blog. For anyone who is interested in starting an organic garden here in the north east, this is a must read.
Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 2:50 am Post subject: Re: Self-Sufficiency Garden Part III....A Must Read!!!
xerces wrote:
Hi all,
I just came back from the city to check up on my perma-culture Garden. Incredible changes have been noted in my blog. The bio-diversity of the garden has absolutely exploded. My garden is now like this miniature edible jungle. I took very detailed notes and entered it into my blog. For anyone who is interested in starting an organic garden here in the north east, this is a must read.
That's nice but,.......can you live on it 365 days a year?
Ok,I'm done being an asshole(for this thread).
Take time to find out what all the wild plant foods are in your region,and then build a permaculture garden based on that.
I'm still working on mine(along with more traditional[F'd up] "urban"agriculture).
Books on wild plant foods for given regions/states may be a bit pricey,but I'm sure they'll be worth their weight in (inedibal) gold during a crisis. _________________ "Switzerland is small and neutral.We need to be more like Germany,ambitious and misunderstood!" Futurama
"As for the dieoff of 5E+09 people - not a problem, so long as I'm not one of them." Jack
Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 6:27 am Post subject: Re: Self-Sufficiency Garden Part III....A Must Read!!!
Whatever happened to plain old, back-breaking, hard-working G A R D E N I N G ?
I've planted enough onions and potatoes to get me through the year, with simply a spade, a rake, a few buckets, last year's compost pile and lots of grain bags as mulch.
Next comes peppers, tomatoes, beans, etc.
Just live in your garden for the summer. That simple.
The garden in those pictures looks like it will produce a nice crop of . . . ideas. _________________ "By the time individuals discover that remaining resources will not be adequate for the next generation, the next generation has already been born. " David Price
Joined: Apr 04, 2007 Posts: 79 Location: England- UK
Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 7:43 am Post subject: Re: Self-Sufficiency Garden Part III....A Must Read!!!
I think your garden is a good start. It's amazing how productive even a small bit of land can be.
What you have to make sure is all the food doesn't come at once (often summer)
You want leaks and cabbages for the winter.
Rasberries/strawberries (not easy!)/blackberries/rhubarb/sloe/crab apples for jelly and jam (remember you need sugar cane as well)
A sweet chestnut tree can also help you get through the colder months. It's amazing how many chestnuts they drop.
And this is a city garden? You'll need to be on your guard with the 12-guage.
If I were you i'd get the hell out of there ASAP. But anyways your garden is a good starting point.
Joined: Sep 12, 2005 Posts: 275 Location: Victoria, Australia
Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 9:05 am Post subject: Re: Self-Sufficiency Garden Part III....A Must Read!!!
A very pretty little garden indeed.
It's a bit sad to see so little vegetable and so much grass. I'd have preferred to see much less grass and more edibles.
I went to your blog - as you wanted - and noted that you had planted eggplant behind the corn and beans. Are you aware that these guys get really big and like some space to spread.
Also when using corn as a climbing frame for beans I found that you should plant the corn at least 4 weeks before the beans. Beans grow much faster than corn. I actually gave up on this practice, as I found that beans did much better on a climbing frame.
At the moment it looks like you have a nice basic start to a vegetable garden, but will have to work hard preparing the soil and planting to have a useful garden.
Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 10:25 am Post subject: Re: Self-Sufficiency Garden Part III....A Must Read!!!
[quote="BastardSquad"]
xerces wrote:
Hi all,
I just came back from the city to check up on my perma-culture Garden. Incredible changes have been noted in my blog. The bio-diversity of the garden has absolutely exploded. My garden is now like this miniature edible jungle. I took very detailed notes and entered it into my blog. For anyone who is interested in starting an organic garden here in the north east, this is a must read.
That's nice but,.......can you live on it 365 days a year?
Ok,I'm done being an asshole(for this thread).
Take time to find out what all the wild plant foods are in your region,and then build a permaculture garden based on that.
I'm still working on mine(along with more traditional[F'd up] "urban"agriculture).
Books on wild plant foods for given regions/states may be a bit pricey,but I'm sure they'll be worth their weight in (inedibal) gold during a crisis.
I was actually attempting to do exactly that. This is my second year in the self-sufficiency experiment. Basically the thought was to obtain as much food as possible from hunting, fishing, gardening, and gathering(on a hobby basis). I kept a very detailed tally of exactly what foodstuffs were acquired, how much, and how much nutritional value it represents. And this was all recorded on the blog.
Perhaps it was just me, but last year, gathering turned out to be rather ineffective for me. But a single square meter garden and 2 containers yielded over 100 lbs of food. So this year, I quadrupled the garden, and am scaling back in the gathering aspect of it.
Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 10:34 am Post subject: Re: Self-Sufficiency Garden Part III....A Must Read!!!
TT wrote:
A very pretty little garden indeed.
It's a bit sad to see so little vegetable and so much grass. I'd have preferred to see much less grass and more edibles.
I went to your blog - as you wanted - and noted that you had planted eggplant behind the corn and beans. Are you aware that these guys get really big and like some space to spread.
Also when using corn as a climbing frame for beans I found that you should plant the corn at least 4 weeks before the beans. Beans grow much faster than corn. I actually gave up on this practice, as I found that beans did much better on a climbing frame.
At the moment it looks like you have a nice basic start to a vegetable garden, but will have to work hard preparing the soil and planting to have a useful garden.
Hah! Thanks for the advice . Though I do admit after the fact that the title is a bit much. Still, it was late when I wrote this post.
The crop trinity was something new that I tried out this year. One thing worth noting is that certain breeds of pole beans seems to fit the corn much better than others. Additionally, the eggplants are beginning to spreading out of the confines of the garden bed and cover up exposed areas beyond it. As long as the corn/bean combination remain higher than the eggplants, I think it should be ok, but that's just from what I read.
Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 10:51 am Post subject: Re: Self-Sufficiency Garden Part III....A Must Read!!!
Jack wrote:
killJOY wrote:
Whatever happened to plain old, back-breaking, hard-working G A R D E N I N G ?
Umm...you're suggesting really hard work. No one wants to do that!
And they won't do it, until driven into the fields by famine, the whip, or at gunpoint.
Seriously.
Gardening isn't easy work, BUT there are ways to make it less back-breaking.
I tried to apply some techniques gleaned after reading a couple of books that Ludi recommended. One thing that seems to work really well is close cropping of beans and potatoes, they both inhibit each other's pests to a degree. Designing a canopy system is enormously beneficial as well, it basically allows the crops themselves to providing scaffolding, fertilization, pest control, and moisture retention for you. From what I read(and from my limited experience), this type of gardening would yield more food than conventional gardening, though it would not yield more of one type of food(e.g just potatoes or corn).
Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 4:33 pm Post subject: Re: Self-Sufficiency Garden Part III....A Must Read!!!
xerces
I think you are to be commended. You're trying out different crops, different ways of planting, seeing what type plants do well next to each other. You're tracking your results, etc. It's all good in my book.
Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 12:13 am Post subject: Re: Self-Sufficiency Garden Part III....A Must Read!!!
xerces wrote:
Perhaps it was just me, but last year, gathering turned out to be rather ineffective for me. But a single square meter garden and 2 containers yielded over 100 lbs of food. So this year, I quadrupled the garden, and am scaling back in the gathering aspect of it.
When I said to look up native wild plant foods,I wasn't talking about foraging(though that option is still on the table for me depending on how things go),I meant you should try to incorperate native,wild plants into your permaculture garden.My reasoning here being that they are the best adapted to your environment.
A handful of years ago this really dark green grass started popping up in my yard in early spring.After a few weeks they would be covereved in beautiful white flowers,and then die a couple weeks lator.Each year there are more and more.
I never minded if they might be harmful to my lawn because they were so pretty and were gone so soon.
Turns out they're wild onions native to my region! Native Americans made good use of them.
Whodathunk? _________________ "Switzerland is small and neutral.We need to be more like Germany,ambitious and misunderstood!" Futurama
"As for the dieoff of 5E+09 people - not a problem, so long as I'm not one of them." Jack
Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2007 3:01 pm Post subject: Garden Update
Hi all,
I harvested 14 pounds of lettuce from the garden today. Additionally, the garden was raided by children last week, 10% of the corn crops are lost. 3 Potato plants have been significantly damaged but has since then recovered completely. I have realized that potatoes are a far safer staple crop than corn in these parts.
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. Though I do admit after the fact that the title is a bit much. Still, it was late when I wrote this post.
