The first year I decided to develop a self-sufficient garden, I caused some huge mistakes.
First, I studied the seed catalog on an empty belly. All the yummy information made me purchase so many varieties that weren’t suitable to grow in our climate. Now, I browse the seed catalogs after dinner!
Second, I decided to grow everything I would usually purchase. Supermarket produce is notoriously bland. However, the sheer variety of veggies is difficult to duplicate in a home backyard. I immediately understood that I needed to grow for my climate and seasons instead.
Third, I didn’t consider the harvest timing. Excellent heirloom, indeterminate tomatoes produce over an extended duration rather than maturing at once. So I had to do little quantities of sauce all summertime. Also, what did I think I was going to do with 1150 P of watermelon in a week?
After growing vegetables all wrong, I’ve fine-tuned my studies. I also learned that there are some key differences when planting for self-sufficiency rather than only for pleasure
So here are 9 tips to start being more self-sufficient in vegetable
1.Plan Sufficient Space.
Our yearly veggies garden is around 1/10th of an acre and gets nearly 1/3rd of our food. The remainder of our food includes eggs, duck, shiitake, and perennial fruits and veggies produced on two extra acres.
Depending on whom you question, what you consume, and your growing techniques, it takes between ¼ to 2 acres of well-controlled, fertile ground to serve a family of 4. You can begin little and expand yearly. However, if food self-sufficiency is your purpose, then be practical in your space planning.
2.Start with Staple Crops
Pick Easy-Storing, High-Calorie Crops: Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Winter Squash.
Staple crops, those that will produce most of your nutrition and calories, are the basis of a self-sufficient garden. Before the delightful descriptions get you carried away, understand what you need to grow to feed the fam.
Depending on your growing area, you may be able to get a couple of plantings of potatoes in late February and early June. I plant 80 plants total and end up with around 80,000 calories from potatoes.
Sweet potatoes need a warm climate. I plant those in mid-May and produce them in early October. Because they demand more extra room than potatoes, I simply plant 60 sweet potato plants. That makes us about 144,000 calories. If you consume the leaves, you will get more nutrients and calories!
3.Succession Plant for Endless Produce: Beets, Carrots, Turnips, Radish.
In addition to high-calorie easy-to-store staples, improve your yields by growing nitrogen-scavenging root veggies. You can plant turnips, beets, and carrots in 60-75 days. Salad radishes can be available in 22 days, and big radish similar to daikon demands about 60 days.
With succession planting, you can have a constant stock of these veggies from approximately 6 weeks after your last frost through to two weeks after your first frost. Stretch this even longer with cold frames and row covers.
These 4 crops also have delightful greens. Beet greens can be used like spinach. Turnip and radish greens are deliciously fermented. Carrot tops combine parsley-like taste and minerals to bone stocks.
4.Don’t Forget the Leafy Greens for Great Nutrition
although they don’t consider for many calories, leafy greens give numerous nutritional benefits that I consider them a staple. We plant a salad bed that combines come and cut lettuces and a host of heat and cold hardy alternative greens.
For great outcomes, plant these for constant harvest rather than aiming for large heads. It demands extra seeds and a little more support. Nonetheless, then you can consume a salad every day.
5.Maximize Space: Onions and Garlic
the author of How to Grow More Vegetables, John Jeavons, quotes to onions and garlic as “calorie crops.” Separately, they don’t have a bunch of calories. Nevertheless, you can densely plant them, so you plant a lot in a tiny space.
Utilizing John Jeavon’s planting method, you can easily fit 1343 onion or garlic plants in a 100 square foot planting area. I haven’t prepared yields like that yet. Nevertheless, I have become close by growing my storing onions on 5-6 inch centers and then densely interplanting spring onions throughout the bulb onions.
I collect the spring onions as needed for cooking, from April to June. Then, if the storing onions start forming bulbs, they have loads of space to grow into softballs.
Garlic is excellent for food self-sufficiency because you grow it in the fall and harvest in early summer. After you harvest, you still have loads of opportunity to replant those beds with summer and fall veggies. Soft-neck types also give you garlic scapes for fresh eating.
6.Grow Field Crops: Corn, Sunflowers, Legumes, Wheat.
Field crops” are crops that don’t require enormous care after you prepare the soil and water until the seedlings are tough. They manage to develop in long rows rather than beds. Ours are dry beans, corn, wheat, and sunflowers.
We prefer to grow the dry beans with the corn, so the corn stalks act as natural trellises. Sweet corn is excellent, but not beneficial enough for us to grow. Corn cross-pollinates easily. To collect seeds from corn, we stick to producing corn for meals.
Mammoth sunflower’s heads are the size of big plates and the seeds are plentiful. We consume some, but we also plant the seeds for our chicks as a wintertime protein source.
You want at least an acre to grow meaningful amounts of wheat. Nevertheless, hard winter wheat is an excellent nitrogen scavenger and grows well after corn. It’s a great use of land in off-seasons and also provides few calories to your diet.
7.Choose Your Non-Staples Wisely
After you have decided on your staple crops, you can combine in some foods just because you like them. Several people see tomatoes as a staple because they are pleasing, multi-functional, and can be water-bath canned for easy storage. From a self-sufficiency view though, they are calorie-light, use up a lot of room, and can be high maintenance.
We plant often paste tomatoes for salsa, sauce, and condiments. We additionally plant cherry tomatoes for salads. If we become entirely self-sufficient, tomatoes would be removed. plant what you like, but be willing to change things to more staples if necessary.
8.Healthy soil?
it means healthy plants that are better at resisting diseases and pests, reducing the need for harmful pesticides.
9.mulch.
Keep garden vegetables from getting dirty by spreading a 2-inch layer of mulch (untreated by pesticides or fertilizers) around each plant. This will also help keep the weeds down.