Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Around the Campfire => Topic started by: sleek on January 23, 2023, 02:10:13 pm
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I'm trying to reduce the impact of inflation and supply chain issues I have been raising chickens for 3 years now for eggs. I don't have the heart to slaughter them for meat however. I have been playing around with a 40x40 garden and have had some success. I have a have a half acre available to me.
So, many folks talk about gardening to get off the grid, but nobody talks about what to grow for a balanced diet. I'm in Northern coastal nc. I'm curious what folks ideas of what to grow would be. My biggest requirement is that whatever I grow can also feed my chickens, and dogs. Hate for scraps to go to waste.
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Here we like potatoes, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, onions, chives, dill, peppers, tomatoes, peas, sweet corn, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, rhubarb, cucumber, spinach, garlic, muskmelon, cabbage, lettuce, radishes along with some fruit trees. Apples, cherries, peaches, plums and pears.
I think you’ll get pretty good well balanced meals from them. If you wanted more protein you could plant some edible beans like black beans, navy beans, kidney beans, garbanzo beans.
Good luck with your garden Sleek. I hope you post some pictures as the seasons go by.
Bjrogg
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Man BJ, that should feed a guy well . I use to raise a big garden but got to be more trouble than it was worth trying to keep the deer/ground hogs and other varmints out, the last year I raised one I spent all summer babying it and got 0, >:( now I just buy from the farmers market. ;) :) :)
Pappy
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I think one consideration is what kind of food storage methods you plan to use, I freeze, can and dry what I produce. I vacuum seal most of the stuff I put in the freezer.
I grow a summer and winter garden.
I don't grow root crops like potatoes, beets, onions or carrots to store, living alone I only cook a couple times a week so I buy potatoes and such. I do cook a lot of meals where I produced everything but the onion and seasoning spices.
Here is an example, squash, okra and green tomatoes fried together, kale, turnips, Kentucky wonder pole beans with onion and chanterelle mushrooms picked out of my woods and deer minute steak, I bought the onion I used, the rest I grew or shot.
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Another thing; I have put tons of manure in my formally poor soil to build it up, with the manure comes every weed seed in existence, so many that I can't possibly keep ahead of them so I plant through black plastic. The plastic keeps the weeds at bay as well as retaining moisture so I don't have to water my garden even through a drought.
I didn't have deer problems until about 10 years ago at which point they started eating my garden to the ground, it was time for an electric fence to keep them at bay. I have trained the deer; they don't try to jump my fence and keep a wide berth around it. A low strand will keep the coons out of your corn as well.
I have built up my ground over the years to the point that I need very little fertilizer, that is a hill of white scalloped squash in the foreground. My garden is 20X60, I give away 10 times more than I use myself.
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I have similar thoughts as the previous replies. Grow what you actually eat or like. I pick vegetables based on being able to collect seeds for the next year. Been doing a garden and chickens/turkeys for 6 years. I stopped canning. I prefer to freeze or dry store.
My 2023 garden will be garlic, beets, onions, black beans, green beans, potatoes, tomatoes, green peppers, zucchini, cucumber, lettuce and carrots.
The chickens/turkeys can have everything out of the garden except garlic and onions. It's reported to be toxic to them. The occasional onion that's made it to the chickens was never touched. The birds love anything with seeds, especially zucchini and spaghetti squash. I leave my lettuce bolt at the end of the season and toss them a whole plant. The birds also get an entire tomato plant or zucchini vine. The only thing that actually makes it to the compost bin is the woody vine itself.
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I tend to grow things that are fairly easy to grow up here but can be expensive to buy
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Sweet potatoes grow well in Eastern NC and are tasty, nutritious and easily stored.
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Tomatoes,green beans and hot peppers are my mainstay here. We dry and grind the peppers or roast and freeze them. Tomatoes become salsa,sauce or just frozen in bags.(Gonna use some of that in tonight's jambalaya.) Green beans get frozen as well. Sweet corn we just buy from a farm up the road, that way they have to deal with the coons...
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Tomatoes,green beans and hot peppers are my mainstay here. We dry and grind the peppers or roast and freeze them. Tomatoes become salsa,sauce or just frozen in bags.(Gonna use some of that in tonight's jambalaya.) Green beans get frozen as well. Sweet corn we just buy from a farm up the road, that way they have to deal with the coons...
Tell me more about the ground peppers. What do you do with them, how do you store them, how long do they last, how do you dry and grind them?
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Sweet potatoes grow well in Eastern NC and are tasty, nutritious and easily stored.
Those are high on my list to grow. I tried yellow potatoes a few years ago and grubs ate them. I'm thinking about trying the stacked tire idea or some other raised bed solution to hopefully get above those pests, and reduce the amount of space they take up when growing.
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I have similar thoughts as the previous replies. Grow what you actually eat or like. I pick vegetables based on being able to collect seeds for the next year. Been doing a garden and chickens/turkeys for 6 years. I stopped canning. I prefer to freeze or dry store.
My 2023 garden will be garlic, beets, onions, black beans, green beans, potatoes, tomatoes, green peppers, zucchini, cucumber, lettuce and carrots.
The chickens/turkeys can have everything out of the garden except garlic and onions. It's reported to be toxic to them. The occasional onion that's made it to the chickens was never touched. The birds love anything with seeds, especially zucchini and spaghetti squash. I leave my lettuce bolt at the end of the season and toss them a whole plant. The birds also get an entire tomato plant or zucchini vine. The only thing that actually makes it to the compost bin is the woody vine itself.
I need to find a solution to canning. It's so darn expensive, and takes up lots of storage space. I can make a solution to storage, but the costs of jars, wow. As for freezing, I don't want to have to rely on power to keep my food. My meats will be frozen, but thats all I want to deal with. I'm considering freeze drying. A buddy has mentioned splitting the cost of a freeze dryer.
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Another thing; I have put tons of manure in my formally poor soil to build it up, with the manure comes every weed seed in existence, so many that I can't possibly keep ahead of them so I plant through black plastic. The plastic keeps the weeds at bay as well as retaining moisture so I don't have to water my garden even through a drought.
I didn't have deer problems until about 10 years ago at which point they started eating my garden to the ground, it was time for an electric fence to keep them at bay. I have trained the deer; they don't try to jump my fence and keep a wide berth around it. A low strand will keep the coons out of your corn as well.
I have built up my ground over the years to the point that I need very little fertilizer, that is a hill of white scalloped squash in the foreground. My garden is 20X60, I give away 10 times more than I use myself.
I'm bagging and saving my chicken manure for future usages, fertilizer and possible black powder recipes. I am trying to figure a way to build a collection tray under their roosts to collect it.
Weeds are a pita, I tried laying straw down after transplanting my seeds last year. Combine that with walking the rows daily to pick weeds that made it through and my feet killing them by constantly walking them, the weeds weren't a problem for once. I'm hoping last years straw tills into the soil well this year and doesn't hurt anything. 40x40 is a bit much for plastic, but I will be doing several smaller beds and I'm leaning towards plastic for them.
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Here we like potatoes, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, onions, chives, dill, peppers, tomatoes, peas, sweet corn, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, rhubarb, cucumber, spinach, garlic, muskmelon, cabbage, lettuce, radishes along with some fruit trees. Apples, cherries, peaches, plums and pears.
I think you’ll get pretty good well balanced meals from them. If you wanted more protein you could plant some edible beans like black beans, navy beans, kidney beans, garbanzo beans.
Good luck with your garden Sleek. I hope you post some pictures as the seasons go by.
Bjrogg
I will certainly keep the thread updated as I go. I have a few goals, where I make all the meals for one day a week with only what we grew, then try to do one week a month with nothing but what we grew, and so on to see how sustainable we can really get.
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I started a patch of asparagus 4 years ago, I'm going to have to move them, they just aren't doing well there. And I will be making that patch much bigger. I'd like a couple 4x8 beds of it.
Also I have blackberries and blue berries started. I'm going to hedge my blueberries as a property border and hopefully get about 25 of them, the blackberries I have vining on my chainlink fence. I'm going to plant a good sunflower patch for seeds and their roots I keep killing my artichoke every darn time but I will get those right eventually. I want to use them as property border ornaments. We are also a big fan of prickly pear cactus fruits and the pads. I have 7 of those started but plan to do up to 20 of them, again, as a property border. It should help keep rabbits, cats, and dogs out.
I want a grain, and fortunately my wife can cook up some good quinoa. Looking into it one plant will give a head of half a cup of seeds. So I will be planting a lot of that. I'd like enough to last a year, and I can share that with my chickens as well. That will be a fun adventure.
I have wild muscadine grapes growing I'm trying to tame on the edge of my woods. I've been trimming around them, and will build a trellis come spring. These price both black and green grapes. The black are amazing in jelly and the green is a good wine grape.
As soon as I have my back half cleared of woods, I'm going a fruit orchard, and that will do well for lots of easy eats, for both us and the chickens. Unfortunately that's an expense I can't afford yet and is a future goal. I do have an olive tree, two avocado trees and a lemon tree started for the greenhouse I am planning probably in the fall.
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Tomatoes,green beans and hot peppers are my mainstay here. We dry and grind the peppers or roast and freeze them. Tomatoes become salsa,sauce or just frozen in bags.(Gonna use some of that in tonight's jambalaya.) Green beans get frozen as well. Sweet corn we just buy from a farm up the road, that way they have to deal with the coons...
Tell me more about the ground peppers. What do you do with them, how do you store them, how long do they last, how do you dry and grind them?
The wife just slices the peppers lengthwise then puts them on baking sheets overnight in the oven on Warm, the lowest setting on our oven. She says she drys them till they are brittle then removes some of the seeds before grinding them in one of those small coffee grinders. We just pour the powder into a mason jar and keep it in the pantry out of the sunlight.
We also found one of those circular food dehydrators at the Goodwill store this Fall and she used that for peppers as well as tomatoes. It worked real well and the dried tomatoes are like those "sun dried" ones at the store.
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Good luck with the project. Sounds like you your off to a good start with some good experience and ideas. YOu may want to do a soil sample and send it off to the county extension services to get it tested just to have some knowledge of the nutrients you have starting out. And you will want to be able to net those blueberry plants to keep the birds out when they get big enough to start cropping them.
Lots of work , but i'm sure your aware of thet. Hope to have a good growing season.
Mike
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Another thing about black plastic, I have used it in my garden for 39 years, now that the weather has warmed, I find it warms the soil too much for some seeds to properly germinate. Green beans don't germinate well through it now, spinach germination is terrible, crops like okra, squash, tomatoes and cucumbers love the heat.
I am branching out this year and putting a 2' strip of landscape fabric down the rows to keep down the weeds but will still let the soil breathe and stay cooler. I will cover the big bare areas between rows with plastic.
The thing about plastic is the price is tied to oil prices, being an old guy, I pay the price so I don't have to do any weeding.
One good thing I found out about my plastic; I only planted half the garden the first few years after my wife died, I let the unplanted side grow up in crabgrass that I kept mowed. With this ground left bare, every winter I would have an invasion of flea beetles that would destroy my turnip patch in a few days. The larva come out of the soil, turn into tiny flying insects and go to work on my greens.
It took 3 or 4 days for the flea beetles to do this to my turnip greens. There is something about rough turnip leaves that they can get a grasp on, they have a harder time holding on to slick leaves like kale and collards but can do significant damage to these crops as well.
(https://i.imgur.com/HsAXJRn.jpg)
When I started covering up my whole garden with plastic again the heat killed all the flea beetle larva, no more pests in my greens.
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Plenty of good seafood in that area of NC to supplement your veg supply. Big bears down there too. One good size bear would give you plenty of meat and plenty of fat to get you through too.
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I'm going to plant a good sunflower patch for seeds and their roots
what do you use the roots for?
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I'm going to plant a good sunflower patch for seeds and their roots
what do you use the roots for?
They taste amazing. Like water chestnuts.
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Regarding canning supplies, keep an eye out for estate sales, garage sales, etc. You will probably need to buy new lids, but you might luck out and run into unused ones in those places.
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The Face Book Market Place is a good place to pick up canning jars, most folk seem to think they are gold and in short supply then price them higher than new, there are really good deals that come up every now and then.
If the deal is good enough, I don't care how dirty they are, one trip though the dish washer and they are good to go. One thrift shop had 46 qt jars that had been stored in a dirt basement for sale for $6, they were really dirty. I mulled over driving over to get them for a week and they were gone when I called about them.
I bought this used shelving unit for $60 the other day, I have it bolted to the block wall with Topcon screws so it won't move. The surplus place that had them said they had 1500 of them, I waited a month before I drove by to pick one up, they only had 2 left. The bottom line; if you see a deal, you had better jump on it, you are not the only one stockpiling food and looking for supplies.
(https://i.imgur.com/SlFdzP2.jpg)
This shelving unit is a beast, being an old guy, I had to move it to my basement door with my tractor.
(https://i.imgur.com/R2vWwwx.jpg)
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Eric's advice on storage are very important. A lot of your yeg will carry you into the winter.
Thanks Leroy