What to plant...

**Tootsiepop254** · 02-07-2014, 02:40 PM

Its what most of us ask ourselves every year.

My goal is to feed myself completely from my garden (excluding meat products). With that goal in mind, a complete garden list escapes me. What would YOU plant, and when, if your only food came from your garden?

Maybe we can have some fun with this.

**Grizz123** · 02-07-2014, 02:58 PM

A wide variety of hot and sweet peppers

**Rick** · 02-07-2014, 03:49 PM

You had better have a very large garden if you intend to subsist off of it. Remember that you only harvest a small portion of food at a time until you reach fall. You'll have a lot of one item at a time. For instance, you'll have lettuce early but not tomatoes or potatoes or corn. Then you'll have lettuce and tomatoes but not potatoes or corn. Then you'll have tomatoes but no lettuce potatoes and corn and so on.

Beyond that I'd have to tell you to plant only what you and your family will eat.

**hunter63** · 02-07-2014, 04:06 PM

Study up on preservation methods,.... canning, drying, cold storage.......freezing (may be a problem if power is out).

**SlowRide13** · 02-07-2014, 04:18 PM

Originally Posted by hunter63

Study up on preservation methods,.... canning, drying....

+1
This is essential. In my opinion, these skills, and the equipment needed are the #1 hole in most people's "prepping."

As for the question, for me it would be planting mostly starches (corn, potatoes, beans, turnips) in the garden and foraging for greens (and creating "guerilla gardens" with wild edibles).

Edit: I didn't put the live links in this post. They magically appeared

Re-Edit: Well, now the links disappeared... Weird.

**CNL** · 02-07-2014, 04:58 PM

It is amazing just how long fresh veggies stay good if kept at a good temp and humidity. Carrots, beets, potatoes, cucumbers, peppers, will all last months without anything special needing to be done besides a proper cold cellar. Past that canning is absolutely essential, and after that drying.

It has been awhile since I had to depend on a garden but some of what i remember are:

Tomatoes
Carrots
Beets
Beans Green and yellow
Peas
Lettuce (forget name but was leaf not head, you just pick as you need all summer)
Potatoes
Sweet potatoes
Various Squash (depends on your conditions)
Green peppers red as well but that is just a well ripened green not a seperate species :P
Chile peppers
Timebombs
Jalapeno
Too many herbs to list
Onions
Ginger
Garlic
Ginseng (requires special care such as shade nets and takes 6-7 years before ready). This was not to eat for us it was to sell and well worth the time investment.
Cucumbers
Broccoli
Blueberries
Raspberries
Strawberries

If you plan for the future and place little appletrees around your garden at least say a distance of 10-15 feet you can train the branches so they grow toward eachother and you can form an amazingly strong and dense fence of apple tree branches around your garden which will keep deer, elk, etc out of your garden. it looks awesome and supplies you with all the apples you could ever eat.

Bout all i can remember for now.

**Rick** · 02-07-2014, 05:33 PM

Some of the foods automatically are posted with links. They link to a garden web site Chris also owns.

**crashdive123** · 02-07-2014, 07:41 PM

Originally Posted by CNL

It is amazing just how long fresh veggies stay good if kept at a good temp and humidity. Carrots, beets, potatoes, cucumbers, peppers, will all last months without anything special needing to be done besides a proper cold cellar. Past that canning is absolutely essential, and after that drying.

It has been awhile since I had to depend on a garden but some of what i remember are:

Tomatoes
Carrots
Beets
Beans Green and yellow
Peas
Lettuce (forget name but was leaf not head, you just pick as you need all summer)
Potatoes
Sweet potatoes
Various Squash (depends on your conditions)
Green peppers red as well but that is just a well ripened green not a seperate species :P
Chile peppers
Timebombs
Jalapeno
Too many herbs to list
Onions
Ginger
Garlic
Ginseng (requires special care such as shade nets and takes 6-7 years before ready). This was not to eat for us it was to sell and well worth the time investment.
Cucumbers
Broccoli
Blueberries
Raspberries
Strawberries

If you plan for the future and place little appletrees around your garden at least say a distance of 10-15 feet you can train the branches so they grow toward eachother and you can form an amazingly strong and dense fence of apple tree branches around your garden which will keep deer, elk, etc out of your garden. it looks awesome and supplies you with all the apples you could ever eat.

Bout all i can remember for now.

What are timebombs.......other than the things that go boom after the timer gets to 0?

**Tootsiepop254** · 02-07-2014, 07:58 PM

Interesting. I would have never considered ginger or ginseng. Also curious (and wary) about time bombs.

**Tootsiepop254** · 02-07-2014, 08:00 PM

What about grains? Any value in growing your own grains, or would you guys consider it too labor intensive a product?

**CNL** · 02-07-2014, 08:16 PM

Timebombs are a hot pepper :P Not to hot and with an amazing flavor. For grains I think you need to go fairly large scale in order to make it worthwhile but that's just speculation on my part.

**Tootsiepop254** · 02-08-2014, 01:26 PM

Aah! I thought we were planting booby-traps to keep people out! Peppers sound much tastier!

**COWBOYSURVIVAL** · 02-08-2014, 04:27 PM

I am going to take a little different approach this year. I am going to plant groupings here there and everywhere on my 8 acres...instead of tilling a plot. Can anyone suggest helpful tips to be successful doing it this way?

**Lamewolf** · 02-08-2014, 04:56 PM

You can get some meats from a garden too, but you either have to set traps in the garden or guard it at gunpoint to do so !

**LowKey** · 02-08-2014, 05:35 PM

If you have kids, beware of any booby trapping. We have digitalis that comes up as a weed. Looks surprisingly like lettuce when young...

How much land do you have for tillage?
Grain is a space taking endeavor. You don't want it in your garden unless you have half an acre you can plant just in the grain of your choice. Same goes for corn. If you plan to plant dent or flint with the idea of drying it for corn meal. If you are in a challenging climate you can plan on maybe 50-100 bushels per acre of hybrid, heavily fertilized, sprayed-for-bugs varieties. The heirloom varieties produce far less and less than that if grown organically. Corn is a heavy feeder and needs a lot of water. Always plant grains in blocks, not rows. They are wind pollinated and need density over neatness.

When planning your garden, think in terms of 3 years so you can rotate your beds. You should think in terms of what grows in what and who needs what fertilizers. For instance, in one bed, I'll trench in a bunch of manure pretty deep and rake the soil back over it. Then plant squash, pumpkins, cukes, peppers or broccoli/cauliflower (heavy feeders). The next year I'll till up the organic matter and plant either onions/carrots or tomatoes. The third year is beans and when harvested the plants are cut, leaving the roots to rot. Always leave legume roots to rot. The fourth year I trench and start over.

Of course there are the yearly additions of compost and side dressed manure but that's pretty much the basics.

I grow mostly only things I'll eat. I also practice a lot of companion planting. Carrots and onions always go in the same bed together. Even though I hate radishes, I plant em with the cukes to keep the bean beetles away. I let the pigweed grow to give the flea beetles something to love more than my seedlings. On the occasions I've tried corn it does pretty well to put a cover crop of clover under it. I don't have the space for it but need to keep reminding myself about that.

The last thing I'd ever plant around the garden are apple trees. They are deer magnets. Those rats with antlers can jump just about any fence if they are inclined so why tempt them. The orchards around here have all invested in 12' high fences strung on a mini version of telephone pole uprights. That's put a lot of deer into neighborhood gardens. I've been considering a hawthorn hedge, done UK style but just haven't had the wherewithall the last couple years to do it. Well, that, and the town would probably consider it a "fence" and want a permit fee.

If you have land and want to plan for the future, look at what native plants can be grown in your area. I don't know CA flora too well.
If you don't have animals it's going to be tough to get production out of a small plot to make enough to feed yourself year round unless you fertilize the snot out of it. And haven't I been hearing CA has water issues? Could be a problem for anything you decide to grow.

Around here I do edible landscaping. The nut trees and paw paws are still probably several years from producing but the crab and cherry trees produce a year after planting. Though it takes a hellacious number of cherries just for one pie, I have 2 trees that should produce well this year. The blueberry bushes are just starting to establish (3 years). The bed of blackberries went rampant last year and produced very well. This year the raspberries I planted as window access deterrents will be giving their first crop. The strawberry bed is going to more than double this year with the runners I flatted up last year. There are two clumps of rhubarb out there too. They don't always harvest together but Rhubarb freezes well.

I have a bunch of stock hazelnuts I potted on and will be putting out in a clump in the front yard this year (less likely for the squirrels to get them there.) Cranberries make a great ground cover when they are happy. I planted grapes on the chain link fence last year. They will hopefully move in this year.

This year I'm digging a bed to plant jerusalem artichokes and making a potato trench away from the regular garden. I tried potatoes in the garden as an under crop but found the leaves are pretty toxic to anything growing around them. Those things even killed the "goshdarn violets" I haven't been able to get rid of anywhere else and nothing wanted to grow along that fence for another whole season.

I like to grow pumpkins and squash along the fences. By the time they are ready to run, the deer and rabbits won't touch them so I feed the vines through the fence out into the yard. Bury the nodes every three feet with some compost so they'll sink roots and they do great out there.

Grow vertical when you can. For beans, think about pole beans. Peas need fencing or trellising. Cucumbers do well on trellises rather than running on the ground. You can grow small pumpkins or melons up a chain link fence if you use net hammocks to support the fruits (I grow the smaller sugar pumpkins and the naked-seeded pumpkins.) Melons have to be short season here so I stick with the small charantais if I decide to waste my time. Has to be a hefty fence though.

Greens grow everywhere and in stages planted a week apart. Usually on the edges of raised beds to keep them in place. Sometimes as a quicky crop between rows. You can get a harvest of lettuce out before beans get large enough to shade em out. I even plant the red leaved varieties in the front flower beds. Since that's where the digitalis seeds in, that's why I plant the red leaved lettuce. If you like radishes, nothing grows quicker than those things.

If space is limited, some things can be crowded. Broccoli doesn't mind being jammed in pretty tight. Carrots and onions do pretty well together in alternating rows or blocks. You can grow carrots 3" apart instead of 6", onions far enough apart to bulb. Be sure to grow "Keeper" types. Some root veggies store better than others. The other thing you can try is an early season planting of something like broccoli than a midsummer planting of short-season string beans.

I like doing potatoes in trenches so they can be earthed up as they grow. I plant potato sets in the bottom, fill the trench about 6"deep with rotted hay then another 3-4" of dirt. As the plants grow up I alternate hay and dirt until the trench becomes a mound about a foot tall. Then leave em to grow. If you do this in a place where you have venomous snakes, I'm told you should be careful when digging up. Snakes like the warmth of the composted hay layers.

Oops. Sorry for the book.

**Tootsiepop254** · 02-08-2014, 05:44 PM

Cowboy -
Try companion planting - some tomatoes with basil here, marigolds and squash over there, ect. Makes the garden look wild and beautiful, and there are some really beautiful flowers that are beneficial as well as medicinal or edible. I plant sunflowers, nasturtiums, calendulas, ecchinasia (sp?)...