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).
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" .
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).