Gardening to feed the Family?

[Wannabefree]

Look into companion planting and late varieties as well to get the most out of your garden. I'll have two crops of several things this year, and you can plant basil in your tomato rows per companion planting guidelines to save on space and produce more per square foot of ground.

I am reading a series of books called Foxfire, and they say you can DRY green beans. I dry a lot of tomatoes for sauces and such rather than canning and they take up a LOT less space by preserving that way. They also do not lose as much nutritional value as when they are processed during canning and blanching at high heat. LOADS of things can be dried and they are MUCH easier to store dried. Unlike freezing and canning dried foods can be completely free to get to storage point. No canning, no refrigeration, just time and sunshine

Then there is the option of digging a root cellar, or burying produce in barrels which are lined with straw etc. which is basically a root cellar of sorts, just smaller. You can store lots of things in root cellars or barrels.

 

[lwheelr]

Green beans store longer if blanched for 1 minute before drying. Many veggies do. You don't have to with onions, garlic, peppers, celery, or carrots.

Potatoes require cooking until they look clearish. Too little, and they turn black in storage and are inedible. Too much, and they get crumbly in storage but are still fine to eat.

 

[Marianne]

What about contacting your local extension office and see what info they have there for gardening and preserving in your area? You probably have a pretty short growing season, don't you?

I'd check online for 'make your own _______' recipes. I know I've said it a million times here, but wow, there are so many things that you can make from just a few basic ingredients. I make almost all my convenience food mixes.

If you have chickens, you have eggs and frittata recipes rule! Oh, I read about a guy who would water down an area and throw a board or piece of plywood on top. A few days later when he removed the board, there'd be gobs of bugs for the hens to chow down on.

Dried beans are pretty cheap, so I don't mess with trying to grow my own. (I grow green beans, though.)

Ditto on the keepers like potatoes. You can make all kinds of stuff with them besides the obvious like breads, lefse (flour tortilla looking things), snacks like potato chips. I'll make lefse using leftover mashed potatoes, then brush the tortilla looking thing with oil, top with garlic salt or whatever and bake for snack chips. You can dehydrate them for later use in scalloped potatoes, casseroles. Don't wash the spuds before storing or they'll send up shoots sooner.

And since every crop of zucchini and summer squash is a bumper crop, I'll grate fresh zucchini into salads, and slice little baby yellow squash into salads. There's tons of salad dressing recipes online using garden veggies like cucumber salad dressing, etc.

 

[freemotion]

Grow your herbs for your spaghetti sauce, and make pizza sauce, too. It is just a marinara sauce with more herbs, at least that is how I make it. Oregano is a perennial so you will have it always. Plant now and let it grow, harvest around now next spring.

Plant garlic in the fall. Plant onion seeds this July to get sets to plant early next spring.

Plant more herbs! Easy to dry and store.

Plant greens....when you blanch them to freeze, they really shrink down. Plant kale if you like it....it can be harvested under the snow. Plant it even if you hate it....you can harvest it under the snow for the hens.

 

[FarmerChick]

dehydrating as mentioned is another good way to preserve.

I bought dehydrated full size bananas from a health food store I sell my soaps.....and they were absolutely delicious. talk about curb your sweet tooth!!

 

[Farmfresh]

Dried beans are pretty cheap, so I don't mess with trying to grow my own. (I grow green beans, though.)

and since every crop of zucchini and summer squash is a bumper crop, I'll grate fresh zucchini into salads, and slice little baby yellow squash into salads. There's tons of salad dressing recipes online using garden veggies like cucumber salad dressing, etc.

I used to have the same philosophy about dry beans, then I realized how much nitrogen those bean plants could be fixing in my soil! Now I grow dry beans as a fall crop.

I am also jealous of all of the people that have zucchini to spare. The one insect pest that we have in abundance is squash beetles.

Gardening to feed the family?

I started keeping track - what is it that we actually EAT?? How much in a month? How much in a year?

Then look at which of those items cost the most to buy (like the salsa or spaghetti sauce) and which is the hardest to find as a high quality item (my black raspberries) and try to grow those things first. They give you the biggest bang for your time and effort.

The rest of the ideas and suggestions are great as well.

 

[Marianne]

Farmfresh, you are right about the nitrogen fixing. I haven't had much luck with fall crops in the past. I guess I figured I had enough nitrogen with the chicken poo. The hens always do the after harvest cleanup in the garden.

I hate squash bugs!! Last year wasn't a bumper crop year. I got just two lousy little squash before the bugs got the plants. They took out the pumpkins and were all over the rhurbarb, too.

Overall, it was a terrible garden year. If I had to grow everything we needed to eat, we would have been starving in January.

This year I'm going to bypass the usual soapy water insect killer and buy some Neem to get the squash bugs. War time....

 

[BarredBuff]

I also find dried beans to have much more taste than canned beans. So I give them a

 

[Icu4dzs]

Do you have a dehydrator? I don't use one, but am looking into it.

Dehydrating apples and bananas would be great for having your own snack food later - better than chips.

You could try dehydrating some onions - though I've heard it's best to line the trays with something and set the dehydrator outside while doing this.

There's all sorts of things you can dehydrate and use it for soups and stews and such.

Eat beans and rice/ beans and potatoes.

Make your own bread.

Grow your own mushrooms.

Grow and process your own poultry - chickens/turkeys/ducks.

Make your own soap. It doesn't have to be the fancy stuff you buy with goats milk and all the other stuff. All you really need is olive oil, lye, a soap mold and a box in an out-of-the-way place to cure it.

Can you raise your own pigs? cows? That's good eattin'.

I agree with dehydration. It is a process that only requires energy to start but not store food. Once it is properly dried, it will store for quite a while and takes up MUCH LESS SPACE than freezer or canned. (if space is at a premium for you)

There is one website where they have accumulated 15 recipe's for dried foods as a meal. They make 24 packages stored in mylar bags and have 365 meals with repeats only once in 15 days.

When you dehydrate, it is a good thing to have some screen material (?fibre glass? vs plastic) to put on the trays. It will prevent all the very little pieces that result after drying from falling through to the bottom of the dehydrator.

You can build a dehydrator fairly easily if you don't want to buy one and if you use the "solar power" approach, it is really cheap to operate!

Buy a grinder, don't buy flour. Wheat will store indefinitely if kept dry and sort of cool. You grind what you need for your bread and then you won't have a spoilage problem.

I agree with processing/raising your own fowl. If you eat their eggs you will eat a lot more often than if you eat the chicken, but then they do get older and stop laying...some times. I've had chickens that laid for 5 years without stopping so I'm not sure what to tell you about that. Take good care of them, keep their environment clean and free of disease and they will live quite a while.

An incubator is INDISPENSIBLE for sustainable living. You can make your own chickens! This too, is relatively easy to build and only needs one 100 watt light bulb for the heat source but you need a thermostat to control the temperature. I wish I had gotten one some years ago.

Get some good books on gardening. Unless you are an expert, (and I certainly am not) folks who write the books are way better able to help you do a good job and prevent loss of your produce.
Dick Raymond wrote a great book "The Joy of Gardening" or close to that. He does a great job and it has lots of pictures and process.

Hope this helps.

//BT//
Trim sends

 

[Veggie PAK]

I just did a blog post about "Modified Intensive Gardening Combined With Succession Planting of Our Pole Beans" that you might find interesting. By changing the method of planting I increased the potential output of my green beans two and a half times of what it was last year in the same space. So far this year I've planted 1,440 Fortex green bean seeds in my back yard in a city.

Take a look. You might like to give it a try.

http://www.backyardorganicvegetables.blogspot.com/

I think canning is one of the best ways to ensure food for your family for when times get harder. I'm going to learn dehydrating next.