Self-Sufficiency Garden Part III....A Must Read!!!

Ludi

Very nice little garden, xerces! The plants look very healthy. Looks like you have some room to expand. I'm wondering why the garden is outside the fence....?

Don't bother with corn in such a small space, stick with potatoes. Potatoes produce more calories per square foot than almost any other crop. You might want to try hardy yams, which are perennial and look like vining weeds.
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xerces

Garden Blog Update!

Harvested 1/2 pounds of green onions today. The entire garden is now grown to almost chest height and flowering like crazy!!!

http://backtowilderness.blogspot.com/

skyemoor

I'm seeing similar results in those beds that I started employing companion planting in. The light is so crowded out that weeds hardly have a chance at all, and are easily plucked.

We didn't get a chance to do our 3 sisters due to the late hard snap and accelerated planting schedule, so it's good to see it in action here at PFTF.
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xerces

I pulled in 73 lbs of potatoes from the garden. 2.5 square meters of land was cultivated for potatoes.

http://backtowilderness.blogspot.com/

Ludi

That looks like a very good yield per area, xerces!
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deMolay · Intermediate Crude Joined: Sep 04, 2005 Posts: 698

Excellant. Ignore the backstabbers. Be proud of your work. Thing is you have learned a lot and thanks for the pics.

SpringCreekFarm · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 03, 2006 Posts: 890

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Wednesday

Looks like paradise to me, I love your barn.

Are you far enough away from the industrial part of Ontario?

SpringCreekFarm · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 03, 2006 Posts: 890

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Kfish · Tar Sands Joined: Mar 31, 2006 Posts: 92

Re: potatoes being safer than corn - I've always thought that the green potato tops looked exactly like weeds. I can recognise quite a few types of ~~weed~~ inedible plants, and tell potatoes apart from them, but every time I look at my potatoes, my mind says, "Damn, that looks like a weed!"

Having a yard full of ~~weeds~~ things that don't look like food could be a useful strategy in some of the more hardcore SHTF scenarios. Given the general state of knowledge in this area, anything that isn't obviously food (corn, apple trees) is called a weed. Your wild onions are a good example; potato tops, sweet potato vines, choko / chayote, amaranth and most herbs look to the untrained eye like things that need poisoning. Come zombie time, the 'redneck's yard' might get a lot less attention than the Garden of Eden down the street. Add a rusting car (doubles as a greenhouse?) for added effect / strategic cover!

My lazy way out is perennials. Fruit trees, passionfruit, choko / chayote vines. Potatoes are the next best thing as far as return for effort goes. Also melons and other annual things on vines like pumpkins don't need the sort of weeding and care that carrots etc. will. Not that effort in itself is a bad thing, but some forms of vegetable are easier to raise than others and it makes sense to maximise your garden's EROEI.
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RedStateGreen

Beautiful gardens!

I'm really impressed at how much food you're getting there in the pictures. What's your secret?
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SpringCreekFarm · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 03, 2006 Posts: 890

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BobWallace · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 01, 2007 Posts: 187

Raised beds can make gardening an easy undertaking. After building your soil for a couple of years you can garden with nothing more than a hand trowel. Forget tillers, shovels and hoes.

Invasive weeds such as grass that spreads via underground runners can be easily controlled by establishing 'no-grow' pathways around your beds.

I use old carpeting (installers are glad to give it to you - saves land fill costs for them). Flip it upside down, tuck it under the bed frames, and cover it with wood chips (free from tree trimming companies).

I've used cardboard but it breaks down after a year or two and needs to be replaced.

The weeds that do sprout in the pathways are quickly eliminated with a quick pass of the hoe. They can't get their tap root through the carpet.

After a couple of years you've got excellent compost in your pathways. Just shovel it into the beds and replace with some fresh wood chips.

And the wood chip pathways means the end of muddy shoes.