If you're serious about growing your own food and have a bit of land and access to timber then I'd highly recommend building hugelkulture mounds. You basically bury logs in the ground then build a raised bed on top of them using smaller bits of wood, compost, and soil. The logs act like giant sponges that hold moisture and feed the soil as they break down. Soft wood like cotton, apple, and poplar will break down quicker than hard woods and some wood should be avoided all together like black walnut, locust, and conifers unless they're already heavily decomposed. I've built a couple of these and the plants thrive in them. Watering is minimal once established with some of the larger mounds not needing water at all over the entire growing season.
Absolutely, forgot about those. Also, if you're using fresh wood that hasn't had time to decompose you need to add a thick layer of green material like lawn clippings on top and around the wood. As wood decomposes it can tie up nitrogen and keep it from your plants. The grass helps the wood break down faster and spares more of your soil nitrogen for your crops.
Its also not a bad idea to build these in the late summer or fall so they have time to sit and "cook" over winter. After snow melt or spring rains they'll be saturated and ready for planting.
The great thing is this method can be adapted to most any size and shape, even container gardening in something like a 15 or 30 gallon fabric pot. If logs are too big then use sticks and other pieces of woody debris or hardwood chips. Add a small amount (10% of total soil volume or less) of bio char and some mychorizae supplement to the soil and you'll have incredibly fertile soil for years.
Also, to any new gardeners, I can't overstate how important a good mulch layer is. I don't mean the dyed and bagged stuff from the store but an actual organic layer of material on top of your soil. Bare soil loses moisture very quickly so a couple inches of straw, wood chips, leaves, and so on not only stops evaporative water loss but also insulates and feeds the top soil over time.
birds, mostly. The thorns are sharp as fuck. I used to live somewhere there they grew wild in the ditch out front, and those bastards will poke through blue jeans
Yep! Same with the thorns on lemon and orange trees. The thorns can get to be over 2 inches long that start out green and flexible but harden into a wood and are sharp as needles
you know, I was thinking of growing lemons indoors (we still get a bit of frost now and again where I live), but now I'm not sure if it's a good idea, lol.
If you decide to grow them from seed it would take a few years for them to mature and set flowers. Meyer lemon trees can usually be picked up at your local nurseries and are specifically sold as indoor lemon trees. https://www.plantingtree.com/products/meyer-lemon-tree
The links are just to give you the info on plants and is not anbendorsement of the website since I have no experience with purchasing anything from them.
Depending on your plant hardiness zone you might also look into growing fig trees. They produce a TON of fruit when they have full sun and some of them can even tolerate Michigan winters too. The only thing with figs is that they do not ripen off the tree and have to be fully ripe before you can pick them. Figs can be dried, frozen or canned for long term storage. https://www.plantingtree.com/products/chicago-hardy-fig
I'll look into it, thanks. Dunno if I can grow anything or not (like I said, black thumb. I killed freakin' peppermint three or four times..), but I appreciate the suggestions =)
Like I said, I've got a black thumb, so I'll have to take your word for it, lmao.
regarding the blackberries, they grow wild here in texas at least, so I don't imagine they'd be too terribly hard to get established (they'll actually take over if they can help it), and the berries are quite abundant.
Oh yes every farm used to have blackberry bushes and mulberry. Once my neighbor's iguana pet burst out of the screen, and he was in the blackberry bush of my senior neighbors who planted all this in WWII, Iggy was chowing down. The vet said keep his diet of low sugar fruit going.
Add asparagus if you like it. Once it is established you are done. It comes back every year. I’ve got two raised beds dedicated. I get a cutting in late spring And another in fall.
Sometimes I eat it off the stalk it tastes so good fresh.
Also you can buy bulk garden soil at most landscape supply stores.
Some other perennial veggies include rhubarb, cardoon, leek (Babington's Leek), welsh onion, Egyptian walking onion, perennial kale (Taunton Dean kale, Daubenton's kale, Ethiopian kale (for warmer climes), Sutherland kale), Oca - a New Zealand yam with lemony flavor, Jerusalem artichoke.
Carrots are hard to germinate, easy to grow. I recommend trying them again. After sowing, water well and cover with a board or cardboard or we use silage tarps. This speeds up the germination so you aren't waiting for 2 weeks wondering are there carrots? Weed thoroughly and you'll get some great carrots unless the soil is uselessly compacted (often they can still fight it) or crazy with rocks. Compost fixes all soil types, organic matter. Once you grow your own carrots not only will you feel like a real pro, you'll never have a better carrot. I like early nantes types, Adilaide and Mokum are best tasting and fast growers.
Paw paw do grow well but if you want to see the fruit, you have to beat the birds and squirrels. My grandmother planted paw paw to keep the animal losses to the other fruit trees.
I've never had luck with carrots. Not even going to try this year lol. Stinging nettles grow wild in my yard, I found out the hard way why they're called that.
I have a green thumb and a lot of passion in backyard gardens. I’m a big fan of this thread.
For those interested or new to gardening, do your research! I made so many mistakes along the road because I didn’t have the patience to do research and I dove in head first. My mistakes ruined growing seasons, cost me a lot of money in r&d, and turned a hobby/passion into a job.
Work smart, not hard! There are many of us who have made ALL of the mistakes so you don’t have to. And if you don’t learn a hundred new things during the season, you are either an absolute expert or you’re not paying enough attention.
If you don’t have a lot of space, you can grow in large pots (make sure you are set up for drainage & irrigation). The possibilities are endless, but a good garden requires a great gardener. Nurture and care for your plants and they take care of you.
If you have logs lying around- hugelkultur. If you have lots of sticks, biochar. Charge and maintain your soil like a living battery of nutrients. Without nutrients you might as well eat paper. Compost everything organic- food, paper, etc.
Great post. Hook up with a local Deck Builder Contractor and use their throw-away free lumber. I am putting in a few more raised beds this year and the lumber is waiting for me to pickup. Just be sure to get a very good ground cloth for weeds. We grow 90% of our veggies for 4 families. It is hard but very gratifying work. Start now and if you are depending on a garden as a primary food source have a way to protect your crops from hail storms until you have canned enough to last an extra year or 2. If you are on telegram check iceagefarmer—they have several subgroups that help a lot of people garden (I think they are on Gab too).
If you have compost piles (which you should have), it's almost effortless to grow pumpkins. They have nice nutritional and culinary value and superb storage capabilites.
Good ol' cabbage. They will thrive in clayish soils, but require regular and careful watering. Most vulnerable during early stages of development, and also have excellent storage capabilites (in a cold room)
What a legend of a post. Just getting in to gardening and I now have a bunch of things on your list I want to try. Thank you for sharing - this is gold.
There are lots of different things out there. So much depends on where you live and if you have the ability to do outdoors vs growing inside. We just started with seeds to see how they would do and have learned along the way. Start with something easy like kale or lettuce.
Basically, find out what grow zone you are in first. This way you will know what grows well in your area and how early you can plant it. Also grow season lengths and how long it takes a plant to bear food is something to keep in mind especially up north. (Sorry I'm assuming you're in US).
I recommend starting small and starting with foods you like to eat that work in your grow zone. For your first year, I also recommend not starting from seed even though it's cheaper, but entirely up to you. It's hard to harden off baby plants, or it is for me anyways. Easier to start seeds directly outside for me.
You'll want to assess how much space you have and how much sun that area gets. Get plants that work in full sun or part shade depending on your available space.
For small spaces, look into square foot gardening or container gardening. Some examples, tomatoes and peppers like one plant per square foot. Cucumbers are two per square foot, but they need something to climb. There is even hay bale gardening. Something called companion planting is also really helpful to know eventually. Like beans with corn so the beans have something to climb, or basil with tomatoes because the basil keeps the tomato worms away. Marigolds to keep out rabbits.
If you're just tilling up a square patch in your backyard, be sure to till in some sort of fertilizer or compost before planting or putting down seeds. You want the soil fairly loose. If you're doing a bed above ground or container planting, fill with some good compost.
Some plants like acidic soil or non-acidic soil better, but I wouldn't worry too much about all of that right away. Just something to keep in mind if a plant doesn't do well one year. Also, some plants like a lot of water and others don't. You can kind of tell by keeping an eye on them. Better to water in the morning before the heat of the sun. In the evening promotes fungus growth over night.
To begin, I recommend starting off with a 4 x 4 ft area. This is nothing fancy and requires daily watering with a sprinkler or soaker hose. We used cement blocks filled with cheap compost from the local dump, and put herbs around the outside in the small holes. Put shorter plants on the east side to get morning sun. This example would be mostly full sun. Do something like 4 tomato plants in 4 of the square feet. Some tomato varieties cross pollinate, so best to stick to one big variety and one cherry variety if your want them. Put them on the furthest west row. If you want peppers, do 4 pepper plants in another 4 square feet. On the next row. There's half your garden (8 square feet). You'll want tomato cages for the tomatoes and peppers. For each additional square foot (8 left), you can pick a variety of the following per each square foot:
4 bean plants (bush unless you have a trellis)
9 onions
9 spinach
6 carrots
16 radishes
2 kale
2 potatoes
2 cucumbers
1 sweet potato
4 garlic
1 melon
1 egg plant
2 basil
2 parsley
1 oregano (this will spread!)
There are so many more! Do a quick image search for square foot garden planting guide!
What can you teach us about growing the basics for self sufficiency like potatoes, carrots, corn, broccoli? Are those the crops you'd recommend?
Would it be viable to use city parkland as farmland (assuming it was a community effort that was also protected by the community from joggers) after the SHTF?
Potatoes are easy peasy. Prepare your soil, create a furrow, put down your potatoes (I get best yields with whole potatoes not cutting them up), cover them. Once they are up 6-12 inches hill them up. I spread compost in between the beds, till that, and then rake it up to hill them. Once they die back they are ready for harvest, even earlier if you want baby.
Germinate carrots in weed free soil watered well under a board or tarp. Weed well. Sow them thick even a half inch, germination rates tend to be under 90%.
Corn takes up a ton of space and a lot of nutrients and has a lot of pests, I don't bother but it can be grown easily with good fertility and cultivation and protection from deer and raccoons and bugs.
Broccoli is another heavy feeder and can be tricky for timing depending where you live. Get the right variety for the time of season and water consistently to avoid bolting. I would get some insect netting for broccoli, those cabbage moths lay tons of eggs and the light green caterpillars are hard to spot until they do a lot of damage.
Sunflowers are good for remediating land as the accumulate heavy metals. Make sure you discard or better burn these types of crops away from future garden sites to remove contaminants.
Grow all the food, nothing is too difficult. Permaculture and market gardening are good search terms for sustainable and intensive growing practices.
It sounds like potatoes and carrots are locked in! I never knew about growing carrots under a board until now - I had to research it but it's great advice!
When green vegetable would you recommend other than broccoli for nutrients, given broccoli sounds tricky?
Can you name any other important, nutritious vegetable that is relatively easy to grow for people interested in prepping?
Make sure to keep an eye on those carrots, you'll want to remove that board as soon as they are emerging from the soil as baby leaves to they get sunlight. Check every day after 5 days I'd say, but be ready to wait as long as 10.
Kale and Swiss chard are very easy to grow and nutritious for sure. Spinach is a good one but takes more seed to get a volume of food from.
The best nutrition comes from wild plants. So learn about chickweed which is out now, lambs quarters, and amaranth as I've seen commented on this thread.
Canning, pickling, and fermenting will keep your food preserved for months so make sure your growing some tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, cabbage, green beans and peas to put up.
Snap peas and green beans are easy, cucumbers are easy. Green leaf lettuce/romaine is like growing grass. Good choice. Potatoes take forever and need a lot of space, or deep deep pots. If not you’ll end up with baby potatoes.
I am planning to add potatoes to the garden this year. I am all out of space in the raised beds and was looking into trying to grow potatoes this season via the tower method.
Basically you add a stake in the ground, secure some sort of mesh wire/fence to make a 2-3' high tower, line the bottom/sides with straw, add 4" of compost/soil/medium to bottom, layer 4-6 potato chucks around the edges, followed by a 6" layer of straw. As the leaves grow upward, you add more straw until the growth reaches the top of the tower.
Not sure if anyone here has tried this method. I would love to hear some feedback.
Ha ha ha, I was hoping for advice like this because sweet potatoes are awesome, delicious and nutritious.
Can you share any more advice about growing sweet potatoes? Do they suffer from any diseases that can be easily cured? Do they produce a similar yield as regular potatoes?
Every once in awhile Ill dig up a rotten sweet potatoe.
Worms are more of an issue, but if you have a ton, they can't get them all. Also, most blemishes can be cut off.
Just make sure to have pleanty of space for them. Like their own 8 x 8 garden bed. Hight of the summer is when theyre at their sweetest, but I wait till fall cus its hot for digging and Im not big on sweet lol
I find regular potatoes don't do as well for me. They grow more like a bush and all the potatoes are under one bush. They're also more suseptible to being sickly and pest
So they are best grown in a pot. Like, their own 5 gallon pot where they can be managed a bit more. Also their leaves aren't edible.
When you harvest there will be a bunch of tiny little sweet/reg/potatoes. Just replant those for the following year.
Corn requires several plants - like I wouldn’t do under 20 personally. Takes up a lot of space and requires a lot of water. Personally, I have about 50 farms growing sweet corn nearby, so I find the local farmers corn is great.
Less so if you grow the "three sisters" together like the natives did/do: Corn interplanted with pole beans (which will grow up the corn stalks) and vining squash (which will cover the ground between the corn stalks).
Personal experience on raised beds. They dry out way too easily and require a lot more watering. Having a dense soil may be an issue but ours is considered second best in the world.
Seed saving is key
Tomatoes: use heirloom or you’ll get a different variety. Remove seeds and liquid. Let ferment in a covered cup for two weeks. Rinse and dry on wax paper.
Peppers. Use fully ripe fruit. Remove seeds
Lettuce and other greens. Let bolt. Also some herbs as well.
Carrots are biennial so let a couple stay in the garden and next yr you will get A fluffy ball of seeds.
Beans and peas. Let dry on the plant and remove the seeds from the pods
Onions. Plant a variety like walking or egyptian onions you’ll get green onions and smaller bulbs. Chives too are good as they return every yr
Squashes are the whores of the garden and cross pollinate so if you save seeds only plant one variety and away from neighbors. But squash seeds are good parasite cleanses and very nutritious. Save and eat
Garlic. Plant fall before
Potatoes save for next yr planting
Melons. Save the seeds
Flowers too. Always nice to have some beauty.
And so on. Your own seeds will germinate more quickly than any purchased.
Oooo. Exciting! I love garlic so the more the better! My garlic always is a tad wimpy so this past yr I left it in the ground another yr. Just to see what will happen? I may plant a separate bed to let sit yr after yr. Like my walking onions and then just take maybe half each yr. Not sure if that’s recommended? If anyone has thoughts I’d appreciate advice.
You must live in a cool place. Of your list I could grow amaranth and lamb's quarters. I can grow okra and peppers, those are easy, not bothered with pests except great hornworms on peppers. Peppers are perennial until they get frosted. Squash family is great unless they get mildew, so keep them off the ground with a trellis of some sort. Potatoes in containers work, they need fertilizer. Only tomatoes that have worked for me outside in the desert are the cherry variety. My advice is hang out at garden shops in your area and get local tips.
Raised beds definitely reduce the weeds. Worms do the best composting of food scraps, yard scraps, etc.. I keep in garage thru winter in big plastic tubs.
Potatoes grow well with little care. Most root vegetables are best as less bug problem. Cucumbers and Okra don't seem to have much bug problem. Not sure that a hog will eat a cucumber.
"It's difficult and as a programmer by trade I also want to maximize laziness by minimizing labor."
❤️
Are you me? 🤣 I'm also a programmer and I've not had a ton of success, yet. But I am trying new things this year and have some beds and hoping to get some good growth this year.
Making compost is very easy. Clippings from your lawn, can supply easy to break down nitrogen. Old crispy leaves bring carbon. Add water and stir every couple days. I even urinate in mine for highly bio available nitrates. Regular fertilizer works too as food for the microbes but i like to pee on things. Youll see the pile cooking in 24 hours sometimes
A little urine never hurt anything!! If he's still set on peeing in your raised beds. dilute it 1:5 or 1:10 with clean water. Continual use of raw urine could be a little hot
The Kratky process is a passive hydroponic technique for growing plants. The plants are placed in a net cup and are suspended above over a nutrient-enriched water reservoir. This method is a non-circulating approach. It does not require any use of an air pump, or air-stone, electricity, added oxygen, or any other electrical or manual equipment.
What Grows Best With the Kratky Method?
In general, small plants with short growth cycles work best. The best place to start is with leafy greens.
Here are some plants that are famously easy to grow with the Kratky method:
Kale
Spinach
Any type of lettuce
Bok Choy
Collard greens
And the list goes on and on, there are many plants well-suited for Kratky hydroponics.
Broccoli is another great Kratky project. While it needs more water and grows more slowly than other brassicas like kale and collard greens, you can get some great yields of broccoli in a super simple Kratky system.
Along with leafy greens, another class of vegetables works exceedingly well with Kratky—and that’s herbs.
Great post! Thanks for all the tips. My yard is nearly full shade that gets worse every year as the trees grow, so I'm down to just a couple of very small spots of sun. I was using the "The Garden Patch" grow boxes that have the water reservoir on the bottom that the top layer of soil sucks up, and it's "square foot gardening" type of spacing, so you can cram a lot into a small space. If I put those things on a roller, I can follow the sun spot and get something out of them this year. However, I prefer the taller raised like yours because we have a bunny problem.
The first time I used the grow boxes - I had more sun back then - and, good lord, the growth of these plants was insane. My tomatoes were easily 7 foot tall. Everything was prolific. As long as I kept the water reservoir filled, the plants were happy. One week gone on vacation in July ruined that though. I should have had someone fill up the water while I was gone.
We bought these safe-for-water drums (I think they were used to hold honey at one point) and a rain catcher downspout attachment. We've never used them, it's just for "a rainy day" so to speak lol. Pun totally intended.
Anywho, so I'm wanting to garden but my shade is so bad I don't think it's going to work. I researched "shade tolerant veggies" a couple of days ago and this is the list I found: spinach, chard, leaf lettuce, peas, radish, potatoes, bush tomato, bush bean, basil, cilantro, parsley, green onion. So if I get wheels for my boxes (or if I go even higher off the ground with a design like yours, which I love by the way), I should be able to get enough sun for some produce. My neighbor graciously offered to let me use a part of her sunny backyard as well. I can keep both our families in fresh veggies this year!
A few questions: is the base of the beds elevated off the ground? If so, how elevated are they? Also, what did you fill the beds with and where do you get your seeds.
An easy way to get into gardening and be successful is to buy or make Earth boxes. We have 13 of them and I can grow anything in them here in Central Florida, as long as I chose the correct growing season. There are lots of DIY versions for these boxes on YouTube. Tomatoes go nuts in them.
I love home gardening in raised beds, but keep in mind almost all crops are seasonal, take 90 days to harvest and have limited yield windows. I would just go buy a ton of canned veggies and stored them, while I garden insurance.
Good info, thanks for sharing. I'm going to try sweet potatoes for the 1st time this year. Along with the tomatoes and peppers and cukes I've done before. Also doing red potatoes. Also new this year will be some squash. I hope.
I also have rocky, clay soil. I'm doing "budget" raised beds as it were by using storage totes for some of my plants. Also recently saw a YT video with a great idea. DIY Gardening containers for less than $1.00: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ff3803qInY
For soil I use mostly potting soil, but I fill up space in the bottom of the container with pine cones (I have lots of those) and then old grass clippings.
Great post. I physically can't do all this labor, so am trying grow bags this year on my lanai. Determinate tomatoes that shouldn't grow too tall; lettuce in the fall then will branch out. Not expensive either.
For those looking on building raised beds and trellises out of wood, I found a budget friendly method where you use regular stock lumber that does not contain harmful chemicals and is mold/weather resistant.
Originally I bought 8 of those cedar 4'x4' raised bed kits and connected them together to make a bed in the shape of an "E". Cedar tends to hold up better in the elements and with ground contact then stock lumber but the prices are ridiculous. Lowe's wants $20 for one 2x4. Two years ago, I think it was $11 per 2x4 and I used these to build trellises.
This year, I want to add fruit cages around 4 of the beds to prevent the birds from eating the strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries. I purchase 2"x"2x8' furring strips, laid them out flat, made a batch of really strong black tea and used this as a stain. Once fully dried after a couple of days outside, I sealed them with a mixture of 2 parts canola oil and 1 part apple cider vinegar. So far I am happy with the color of the wood and it ability to repel moisture as a good number of these posts will see ground contact.
There are many community gardens where some grow vegetables and you can volunteer and learn from others. Our town has raised beds with different groups in charge of specific areas.
If you're serious about growing your own food and have a bit of land and access to timber then I'd highly recommend building hugelkulture mounds. You basically bury logs in the ground then build a raised bed on top of them using smaller bits of wood, compost, and soil. The logs act like giant sponges that hold moisture and feed the soil as they break down. Soft wood like cotton, apple, and poplar will break down quicker than hard woods and some wood should be avoided all together like black walnut, locust, and conifers unless they're already heavily decomposed. I've built a couple of these and the plants thrive in them. Watering is minimal once established with some of the larger mounds not needing water at all over the entire growing season.
Also avoid willow trunks and branches, as they will sprout even if they've been "dead" for a long time. Then you'll have a willow forest.
Absolutely, forgot about those. Also, if you're using fresh wood that hasn't had time to decompose you need to add a thick layer of green material like lawn clippings on top and around the wood. As wood decomposes it can tie up nitrogen and keep it from your plants. The grass helps the wood break down faster and spares more of your soil nitrogen for your crops.
Its also not a bad idea to build these in the late summer or fall so they have time to sit and "cook" over winter. After snow melt or spring rains they'll be saturated and ready for planting.
I love willow trees. So will your kids.
No. What loves them in my neck of the woods is moose. Which you want nowhere near your garden!
Wow, never heard of this method before! Wish my yard was big enough (and sunny enough) to do things like this. Someday!!
The great thing is this method can be adapted to most any size and shape, even container gardening in something like a 15 or 30 gallon fabric pot. If logs are too big then use sticks and other pieces of woody debris or hardwood chips. Add a small amount (10% of total soil volume or less) of bio char and some mychorizae supplement to the soil and you'll have incredibly fertile soil for years.
Also, to any new gardeners, I can't overstate how important a good mulch layer is. I don't mean the dyed and bagged stuff from the store but an actual organic layer of material on top of your soil. Bare soil loses moisture very quickly so a couple inches of straw, wood chips, leaves, and so on not only stops evaporative water loss but also insulates and feeds the top soil over time.
Mother and stepfather figured out if you put the potatoes on top of the soil and cover them with straw, they come out less knobby and more uniform.
I've a black thumb, but yeah...
Also, blackberries will grow wild and can also act as a deterant from someone coming onto your property (sharp, nasty little thorns).
Don't animals get at them?
birds, mostly. The thorns are sharp as fuck. I used to live somewhere there they grew wild in the ditch out front, and those bastards will poke through blue jeans
Yep! Same with the thorns on lemon and orange trees. The thorns can get to be over 2 inches long that start out green and flexible but harden into a wood and are sharp as needles
you know, I was thinking of growing lemons indoors (we still get a bit of frost now and again where I live), but now I'm not sure if it's a good idea, lol.
If you decide to grow them from seed it would take a few years for them to mature and set flowers. Meyer lemon trees can usually be picked up at your local nurseries and are specifically sold as indoor lemon trees. https://www.plantingtree.com/products/meyer-lemon-tree
The links are just to give you the info on plants and is not anbendorsement of the website since I have no experience with purchasing anything from them.
Depending on your plant hardiness zone you might also look into growing fig trees. They produce a TON of fruit when they have full sun and some of them can even tolerate Michigan winters too. The only thing with figs is that they do not ripen off the tree and have to be fully ripe before you can pick them. Figs can be dried, frozen or canned for long term storage. https://www.plantingtree.com/products/chicago-hardy-fig
I'll look into it, thanks. Dunno if I can grow anything or not (like I said, black thumb. I killed freakin' peppermint three or four times..), but I appreciate the suggestions =)
Like I said, I've got a black thumb, so I'll have to take your word for it, lmao.
regarding the blackberries, they grow wild here in texas at least, so I don't imagine they'd be too terribly hard to get established (they'll actually take over if they can help it), and the berries are quite abundant.
Oh yes every farm used to have blackberry bushes and mulberry. Once my neighbor's iguana pet burst out of the screen, and he was in the blackberry bush of my senior neighbors who planted all this in WWII, Iggy was chowing down. The vet said keep his diet of low sugar fruit going.
man, your neighbor must have been pissed by the time he got hold of that iguana. those thorns hurt!!
Add asparagus if you like it. Once it is established you are done. It comes back every year. I’ve got two raised beds dedicated. I get a cutting in late spring And another in fall.
Sometimes I eat it off the stalk it tastes so good fresh.
Also you can buy bulk garden soil at most landscape supply stores.
Some other perennial veggies include rhubarb, cardoon, leek (Babington's Leek), welsh onion, Egyptian walking onion, perennial kale (Taunton Dean kale, Daubenton's kale, Ethiopian kale (for warmer climes), Sutherland kale), Oca - a New Zealand yam with lemony flavor, Jerusalem artichoke.
Carrots are hard to germinate, easy to grow. I recommend trying them again. After sowing, water well and cover with a board or cardboard or we use silage tarps. This speeds up the germination so you aren't waiting for 2 weeks wondering are there carrots? Weed thoroughly and you'll get some great carrots unless the soil is uselessly compacted (often they can still fight it) or crazy with rocks. Compost fixes all soil types, organic matter. Once you grow your own carrots not only will you feel like a real pro, you'll never have a better carrot. I like early nantes types, Adilaide and Mokum are best tasting and fast growers.
Try sweet potatoes. Super easy. Doesnt mind clay soil. You can eat the leaves cooked. Taste kinda like spinach.
They make pretty vines, good for growing on fences.
Theyre so hardy I mow them to maintain them and it doesn't bother them lol
Also egyption walking onions are hardy and come back every year. I plant them in my bulb flower garden because why not? :P
Comfrey and Tobacco grow themselves.
Don't forget about plum trees.
Somebody said pawpaw trees grow pretty well. Can't speak from experience tho.
Depends where you are. Mountain pawpaw works well in temperate climate, while pawpaw is better in tropics.
Paw paw do grow well but if you want to see the fruit, you have to beat the birds and squirrels. My grandmother planted paw paw to keep the animal losses to the other fruit trees.
Going with a no-tools raised bed for potatoes this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmHUhGMVdEg
I've never had luck with carrots. Not even going to try this year lol. Stinging nettles grow wild in my yard, I found out the hard way why they're called that.
I have a green thumb and a lot of passion in backyard gardens. I’m a big fan of this thread.
For those interested or new to gardening, do your research! I made so many mistakes along the road because I didn’t have the patience to do research and I dove in head first. My mistakes ruined growing seasons, cost me a lot of money in r&d, and turned a hobby/passion into a job.
Work smart, not hard! There are many of us who have made ALL of the mistakes so you don’t have to. And if you don’t learn a hundred new things during the season, you are either an absolute expert or you’re not paying enough attention.
If you don’t have a lot of space, you can grow in large pots (make sure you are set up for drainage & irrigation). The possibilities are endless, but a good garden requires a great gardener. Nurture and care for your plants and they take care of you.
If you have logs lying around- hugelkultur. If you have lots of sticks, biochar. Charge and maintain your soil like a living battery of nutrients. Without nutrients you might as well eat paper. Compost everything organic- food, paper, etc.
Great post. Hook up with a local Deck Builder Contractor and use their throw-away free lumber. I am putting in a few more raised beds this year and the lumber is waiting for me to pickup. Just be sure to get a very good ground cloth for weeds. We grow 90% of our veggies for 4 families. It is hard but very gratifying work. Start now and if you are depending on a garden as a primary food source have a way to protect your crops from hail storms until you have canned enough to last an extra year or 2. If you are on telegram check iceagefarmer—they have several subgroups that help a lot of people garden (I think they are on Gab too).
If you have compost piles (which you should have), it's almost effortless to grow pumpkins. They have nice nutritional and culinary value and superb storage capabilites. Good ol' cabbage. They will thrive in clayish soils, but require regular and careful watering. Most vulnerable during early stages of development, and also have excellent storage capabilites (in a cold room)
I have incorporated my chicken coop bedding into my soil, it makes the most beautiful, black soil you can get! I heavily mulch everything with it now.
What a legend of a post. Just getting in to gardening and I now have a bunch of things on your list I want to try. Thank you for sharing - this is gold.
Can anyone recommend a guide/book on vegetable gardening for beginners? The easy to grow plants, and tips, but simple, not pages and pages of detail.
There are lots of different things out there. So much depends on where you live and if you have the ability to do outdoors vs growing inside. We just started with seeds to see how they would do and have learned along the way. Start with something easy like kale or lettuce.
Basically, find out what grow zone you are in first. This way you will know what grows well in your area and how early you can plant it. Also grow season lengths and how long it takes a plant to bear food is something to keep in mind especially up north. (Sorry I'm assuming you're in US).
https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/
I recommend starting small and starting with foods you like to eat that work in your grow zone. For your first year, I also recommend not starting from seed even though it's cheaper, but entirely up to you. It's hard to harden off baby plants, or it is for me anyways. Easier to start seeds directly outside for me.
You'll want to assess how much space you have and how much sun that area gets. Get plants that work in full sun or part shade depending on your available space.
For small spaces, look into square foot gardening or container gardening. Some examples, tomatoes and peppers like one plant per square foot. Cucumbers are two per square foot, but they need something to climb. There is even hay bale gardening. Something called companion planting is also really helpful to know eventually. Like beans with corn so the beans have something to climb, or basil with tomatoes because the basil keeps the tomato worms away. Marigolds to keep out rabbits.
If you're just tilling up a square patch in your backyard, be sure to till in some sort of fertilizer or compost before planting or putting down seeds. You want the soil fairly loose. If you're doing a bed above ground or container planting, fill with some good compost.
Some plants like acidic soil or non-acidic soil better, but I wouldn't worry too much about all of that right away. Just something to keep in mind if a plant doesn't do well one year. Also, some plants like a lot of water and others don't. You can kind of tell by keeping an eye on them. Better to water in the morning before the heat of the sun. In the evening promotes fungus growth over night.
This website sells amazing seeds and has some really good tips: https://www.seedsavers.org/learn#garden-planning
To begin, I recommend starting off with a 4 x 4 ft area. This is nothing fancy and requires daily watering with a sprinkler or soaker hose. We used cement blocks filled with cheap compost from the local dump, and put herbs around the outside in the small holes. Put shorter plants on the east side to get morning sun. This example would be mostly full sun. Do something like 4 tomato plants in 4 of the square feet. Some tomato varieties cross pollinate, so best to stick to one big variety and one cherry variety if your want them. Put them on the furthest west row. If you want peppers, do 4 pepper plants in another 4 square feet. On the next row. There's half your garden (8 square feet). You'll want tomato cages for the tomatoes and peppers. For each additional square foot (8 left), you can pick a variety of the following per each square foot:
4 bean plants (bush unless you have a trellis)
9 onions
9 spinach
6 carrots
16 radishes
2 kale
2 potatoes
2 cucumbers
1 sweet potato
4 garlic
1 melon
1 egg plant
2 basil
2 parsley
1 oregano (this will spread!)
There are so many more! Do a quick image search for square foot garden planting guide!
Had to come back to this. Some things I mentioned before were from personal experience. Currently reading "The Backyard Homestead" and learning a lot.
What can you teach us about growing the basics for self sufficiency like potatoes, carrots, corn, broccoli? Are those the crops you'd recommend?
Would it be viable to use city parkland as farmland (assuming it was a community effort that was also protected by the community from joggers) after the SHTF?
Compost compost compost.
Potatoes are easy peasy. Prepare your soil, create a furrow, put down your potatoes (I get best yields with whole potatoes not cutting them up), cover them. Once they are up 6-12 inches hill them up. I spread compost in between the beds, till that, and then rake it up to hill them. Once they die back they are ready for harvest, even earlier if you want baby.
Germinate carrots in weed free soil watered well under a board or tarp. Weed well. Sow them thick even a half inch, germination rates tend to be under 90%.
Corn takes up a ton of space and a lot of nutrients and has a lot of pests, I don't bother but it can be grown easily with good fertility and cultivation and protection from deer and raccoons and bugs.
Broccoli is another heavy feeder and can be tricky for timing depending where you live. Get the right variety for the time of season and water consistently to avoid bolting. I would get some insect netting for broccoli, those cabbage moths lay tons of eggs and the light green caterpillars are hard to spot until they do a lot of damage.
Sunflowers are good for remediating land as the accumulate heavy metals. Make sure you discard or better burn these types of crops away from future garden sites to remove contaminants.
Grow all the food, nothing is too difficult. Permaculture and market gardening are good search terms for sustainable and intensive growing practices.
AWESOME!
It sounds like potatoes and carrots are locked in! I never knew about growing carrots under a board until now - I had to research it but it's great advice!
When green vegetable would you recommend other than broccoli for nutrients, given broccoli sounds tricky?
Can you name any other important, nutritious vegetable that is relatively easy to grow for people interested in prepping?
Make sure to keep an eye on those carrots, you'll want to remove that board as soon as they are emerging from the soil as baby leaves to they get sunlight. Check every day after 5 days I'd say, but be ready to wait as long as 10.
Kale and Swiss chard are very easy to grow and nutritious for sure. Spinach is a good one but takes more seed to get a volume of food from.
The best nutrition comes from wild plants. So learn about chickweed which is out now, lambs quarters, and amaranth as I've seen commented on this thread.
Canning, pickling, and fermenting will keep your food preserved for months so make sure your growing some tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, cabbage, green beans and peas to put up.
Snap peas and green beans are easy, cucumbers are easy. Green leaf lettuce/romaine is like growing grass. Good choice. Potatoes take forever and need a lot of space, or deep deep pots. If not you’ll end up with baby potatoes.
I am planning to add potatoes to the garden this year. I am all out of space in the raised beds and was looking into trying to grow potatoes this season via the tower method.
Basically you add a stake in the ground, secure some sort of mesh wire/fence to make a 2-3' high tower, line the bottom/sides with straw, add 4" of compost/soil/medium to bottom, layer 4-6 potato chucks around the edges, followed by a 6" layer of straw. As the leaves grow upward, you add more straw until the growth reaches the top of the tower.
Not sure if anyone here has tried this method. I would love to hear some feedback.
Sweet potatoes.
Omg, they take over. I let them grow into my yard and mow them with the lawn mower and it doesnt phase them one bit.
They make a nice vine and pretty flowers so a fence would be a good place to plant the..
You can eat the leaves too. Has to be cooked a bit but good. Kinda like spinach.
I had a huge harvest last year. I just buy Sweet potatoes from the grocery store and plant all different kinds. Whatever works.
Ha ha ha, I was hoping for advice like this because sweet potatoes are awesome, delicious and nutritious.
Can you share any more advice about growing sweet potatoes? Do they suffer from any diseases that can be easily cured? Do they produce a similar yield as regular potatoes?
Every once in awhile Ill dig up a rotten sweet potatoe.
Worms are more of an issue, but if you have a ton, they can't get them all. Also, most blemishes can be cut off.
Just make sure to have pleanty of space for them. Like their own 8 x 8 garden bed. Hight of the summer is when theyre at their sweetest, but I wait till fall cus its hot for digging and Im not big on sweet lol
I find regular potatoes don't do as well for me. They grow more like a bush and all the potatoes are under one bush. They're also more suseptible to being sickly and pest
So they are best grown in a pot. Like, their own 5 gallon pot where they can be managed a bit more. Also their leaves aren't edible.
When you harvest there will be a bunch of tiny little sweet/reg/potatoes. Just replant those for the following year.
Edit: 5 gallon pot is fine. Idk why I said 10 lol
Corn requires several plants - like I wouldn’t do under 20 personally. Takes up a lot of space and requires a lot of water. Personally, I have about 50 farms growing sweet corn nearby, so I find the local farmers corn is great.
Corn is a waste of space and resources for small scale farming
Yep, it’s more or less a fun conversation piece when friends come over.. too many pests to deal with. I leave corn to the professionals.
LOL! "yes, that's corn" .
Yep, pretty much! Lol
Less so if you grow the "three sisters" together like the natives did/do: Corn interplanted with pole beans (which will grow up the corn stalks) and vining squash (which will cover the ground between the corn stalks).
Personal experience on raised beds. They dry out way too easily and require a lot more watering. Having a dense soil may be an issue but ours is considered second best in the world.
Seed saving is key
Tomatoes: use heirloom or you’ll get a different variety. Remove seeds and liquid. Let ferment in a covered cup for two weeks. Rinse and dry on wax paper.
Peppers. Use fully ripe fruit. Remove seeds
Lettuce and other greens. Let bolt. Also some herbs as well.
Carrots are biennial so let a couple stay in the garden and next yr you will get A fluffy ball of seeds.
Beans and peas. Let dry on the plant and remove the seeds from the pods
Onions. Plant a variety like walking or egyptian onions you’ll get green onions and smaller bulbs. Chives too are good as they return every yr
Squashes are the whores of the garden and cross pollinate so if you save seeds only plant one variety and away from neighbors. But squash seeds are good parasite cleanses and very nutritious. Save and eat
Garlic. Plant fall before
Potatoes save for next yr planting
Melons. Save the seeds
Flowers too. Always nice to have some beauty.
And so on. Your own seeds will germinate more quickly than any purchased.
Oooo. Exciting! I love garlic so the more the better! My garlic always is a tad wimpy so this past yr I left it in the ground another yr. Just to see what will happen? I may plant a separate bed to let sit yr after yr. Like my walking onions and then just take maybe half each yr. Not sure if that’s recommended? If anyone has thoughts I’d appreciate advice.
I did the same!
You must live in a cool place. Of your list I could grow amaranth and lamb's quarters. I can grow okra and peppers, those are easy, not bothered with pests except great hornworms on peppers. Peppers are perennial until they get frosted. Squash family is great unless they get mildew, so keep them off the ground with a trellis of some sort. Potatoes in containers work, they need fertilizer. Only tomatoes that have worked for me outside in the desert are the cherry variety. My advice is hang out at garden shops in your area and get local tips.
Get some lady bugs, real lady bugs not those damn Asian beetles, to get rid of aphids.
I made mine out of cinder blocks, and grow herbs and things in the holes of the block. Not as beautiful, but very practical.
Thanks, very interesting. I grow a few things in pots in a lazy way, radishes are so easy and fast.
Raised beds definitely reduce the weeds. Worms do the best composting of food scraps, yard scraps, etc.. I keep in garage thru winter in big plastic tubs.
Potatoes grow well with little care. Most root vegetables are best as less bug problem. Cucumbers and Okra don't seem to have much bug problem. Not sure that a hog will eat a cucumber.
Thank you for posting this, much appreciated.
you really should incorporate fruit, nut, and seed trees in to your system, the sooner you plant them the better
nice, also pretty sure goats eat kudzu
"It's difficult and as a programmer by trade I also want to maximize laziness by minimizing labor."
❤️
Are you me? 🤣 I'm also a programmer and I've not had a ton of success, yet. But I am trying new things this year and have some beds and hoping to get some good growth this year.
Making compost is very easy. Clippings from your lawn, can supply easy to break down nitrogen. Old crispy leaves bring carbon. Add water and stir every couple days. I even urinate in mine for highly bio available nitrates. Regular fertilizer works too as food for the microbes but i like to pee on things. Youll see the pile cooking in 24 hours sometimes
A little urine never hurt anything!! If he's still set on peeing in your raised beds. dilute it 1:5 or 1:10 with clean water. Continual use of raw urine could be a little hot
Fantastic post! All should copy and save this info.
lambsquarters is great picked young
"you can turn a nazi skull into a flower pot" -Cotton Hill
Kratky method aka set it and forget it!
The Kratky process is a passive hydroponic technique for growing plants. The plants are placed in a net cup and are suspended above over a nutrient-enriched water reservoir. This method is a non-circulating approach. It does not require any use of an air pump, or air-stone, electricity, added oxygen, or any other electrical or manual equipment.
What Grows Best With the Kratky Method? In general, small plants with short growth cycles work best. The best place to start is with leafy greens.
Here are some plants that are famously easy to grow with the Kratky method:
Kale Spinach Any type of lettuce Bok Choy Collard greens And the list goes on and on, there are many plants well-suited for Kratky hydroponics.
https://whyfarmit.com/kratky-method/
Broccoli is another great Kratky project. While it needs more water and grows more slowly than other brassicas like kale and collard greens, you can get some great yields of broccoli in a super simple Kratky system.
Along with leafy greens, another class of vegetables works exceedingly well with Kratky—and that’s herbs.
Great post! Thanks for all the tips. My yard is nearly full shade that gets worse every year as the trees grow, so I'm down to just a couple of very small spots of sun. I was using the "The Garden Patch" grow boxes that have the water reservoir on the bottom that the top layer of soil sucks up, and it's "square foot gardening" type of spacing, so you can cram a lot into a small space. If I put those things on a roller, I can follow the sun spot and get something out of them this year. However, I prefer the taller raised like yours because we have a bunny problem.
The first time I used the grow boxes - I had more sun back then - and, good lord, the growth of these plants was insane. My tomatoes were easily 7 foot tall. Everything was prolific. As long as I kept the water reservoir filled, the plants were happy. One week gone on vacation in July ruined that though. I should have had someone fill up the water while I was gone.
We bought these safe-for-water drums (I think they were used to hold honey at one point) and a rain catcher downspout attachment. We've never used them, it's just for "a rainy day" so to speak lol. Pun totally intended.
Anywho, so I'm wanting to garden but my shade is so bad I don't think it's going to work. I researched "shade tolerant veggies" a couple of days ago and this is the list I found: spinach, chard, leaf lettuce, peas, radish, potatoes, bush tomato, bush bean, basil, cilantro, parsley, green onion. So if I get wheels for my boxes (or if I go even higher off the ground with a design like yours, which I love by the way), I should be able to get enough sun for some produce. My neighbor graciously offered to let me use a part of her sunny backyard as well. I can keep both our families in fresh veggies this year!
Here in the Northeast I'd recommend potatoes, peas, and some form of legumes. Except for the legumes they grow extremely well.
Awsome post. Thanks for sharing your experience!
A few questions: is the base of the beds elevated off the ground? If so, how elevated are they? Also, what did you fill the beds with and where do you get your seeds.
Where I live, our local grocery store and hardware store carry seeds. I also use SeedsNow.com and burpee.com.
An easy way to get into gardening and be successful is to buy or make Earth boxes. We have 13 of them and I can grow anything in them here in Central Florida, as long as I chose the correct growing season. There are lots of DIY versions for these boxes on YouTube. Tomatoes go nuts in them.
I love home gardening in raised beds, but keep in mind almost all crops are seasonal, take 90 days to harvest and have limited yield windows. I would just go buy a ton of canned veggies and stored them, while I garden insurance.
Good info, thanks for sharing. I'm going to try sweet potatoes for the 1st time this year. Along with the tomatoes and peppers and cukes I've done before. Also doing red potatoes. Also new this year will be some squash. I hope. I also have rocky, clay soil. I'm doing "budget" raised beds as it were by using storage totes for some of my plants. Also recently saw a YT video with a great idea. DIY Gardening containers for less than $1.00: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ff3803qInY For soil I use mostly potting soil, but I fill up space in the bottom of the container with pine cones (I have lots of those) and then old grass clippings.
Great post. I physically can't do all this labor, so am trying grow bags this year on my lanai. Determinate tomatoes that shouldn't grow too tall; lettuce in the fall then will branch out. Not expensive either.
Thanks for all that. I’ve never heard of half of those plants and what’s a bolt?
Bolt is a plant going to flower for seed. They tend to taste very bitter.
Mary's Heirloom Seeds.com has a bunch of great information on your zone and what to plant. Making plans for our raised beds using this site.
For those looking on building raised beds and trellises out of wood, I found a budget friendly method where you use regular stock lumber that does not contain harmful chemicals and is mold/weather resistant.
Originally I bought 8 of those cedar 4'x4' raised bed kits and connected them together to make a bed in the shape of an "E". Cedar tends to hold up better in the elements and with ground contact then stock lumber but the prices are ridiculous. Lowe's wants $20 for one 2x4. Two years ago, I think it was $11 per 2x4 and I used these to build trellises.
This year, I want to add fruit cages around 4 of the beds to prevent the birds from eating the strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries. I purchase 2"x"2x8' furring strips, laid them out flat, made a batch of really strong black tea and used this as a stain. Once fully dried after a couple of days outside, I sealed them with a mixture of 2 parts canola oil and 1 part apple cider vinegar. So far I am happy with the color of the wood and it ability to repel moisture as a good number of these posts will see ground contact.
There are many community gardens where some grow vegetables and you can volunteer and learn from others. Our town has raised beds with different groups in charge of specific areas.