I need to harvest 7 million calories!

[topeka]

Hello Group,

I have been experimenting with my garden to see if it was possible to
harvest enough food to feed my family for a year.

I haven't been doing too well. Last year I planted 250 Sweet Potato plants and harvested about 50lbs of potatoes

At this point I don't care what it is or if I can even preserve it!

I just want to know that if push came to shove I COULD produce enough calories to feed my family.

Simple, easy. possible, massive calories thats all I want!

any ideas?

 

[HiDelight]

I love the title and idea for your thread how funny! I garden to avoid 7million calories!!!!

I think the biggest thing with gardening is you can read anything ...follow anything you see others do ..take advice

but just keep working at it

gardening takes fortitude, practice and time to figure out the best way to do it

you will find no one correct answer but you will find tons of advice for feeding your family well from the garden here ..so good luck to you

also check with your local cooperative ext Master Gardening program to find out what does well where you live and how to plan they are wonderful at helping

 

[patandchickens]

It's a learning experience. Always . If you haven't veg gardened for a lot of years already, I'd suggest not planting too awful much of any one thing but planting a wide variety of different kinds of vegetables, without planting too large a garden.

This will do a lot of different things for you: it will give you mileage with a bunch of different veggies; it will help you figure out what grows most easily in your *particular* soil and climate and with your particular gardening style; it will minimize the effect of individual crop failures; and by keeping the garden smallish it lets you take better care of the whole thing and be more likely to avoid crop failures at *all*.

And, I'd suggest that your variety of different veggies be concentrated on things that your neighbors tend to have good luck with (or at least people in your general region). I could tell you what's the easiest most foolproof thing up HERE (lettuce and beans!) but from your username I'm guessing you have a lot different soil and climate than I do so my experiences aren't terrifically relevant

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Ridgerunner]

In addition to what the others have said, I'd suggest not being too quick to judge based on one year's results. Since you mentioned them, I'll use sweet potatoes to try to give an example of what I mean.

Two years ago I grew Georgia Jet, O'Henry, and White Yam varieties. The Georgia Jets produced a tremendous crop volumewise. The O'Henry's and White Yams certainly did OK but not the volume of the Georgia Jets. This past season, I grew White Yams, O'Henry's, Beauregards and Nancy Hall's. (My wife did not like the texture of the Georgia Jets.) I had a pitiful crop. Part of it was that the deer found my sweet potatoes about the time they started to bloom and destroyed the tops. Really ate them back to not much. Then, from late August until harvest, the ground stayed wet, the weather cooler than normal, and I did not get the hours of sunshine I normally expect. The O'Henry's and Beauregards did a little better than the others, but none were worth the effort. Some did not produce much at all and some rotted in the ground.

I had a lot of things that did not do well due to the unusual weather and some things that did better than normal. I am not using anything from my late summer or fall garden experience this year as a standard but will continue experimenting. That was only my second garden here so I still need to find out exactly what is normal.

The points I'm trying to make are that you need to experiment with different varieties, as HiDelight said get a lot of advice from people with local knowledge, and expect different results different years. For example, for sweet potatoes, some people in certain areas might do better with the 90 day varieties instread of the 100 or 110 day varieties.

Hope this helps.

 

[lesa]

Diversity is the key. Experiment and see what grows well for you. One thing I can always count on is Swiss Chard. It is very easy to grow, not picky and can be frozen and served in a million different ways. (And the chickens love it). It is super nutritious and is easy to add to recipes you already use (stir frys and pasta dishes, etc.) I have a very easy time growing broccoli as well. I was still harvesting it right up into December. Keep trying and you will figure out what will work for you- there is no better feeling than knowing you have grown and stored good, healthy food for your family! Good luck!

 

[Ariel301]

Of course you CAN grow enough food to feed your family. That's what everyone had to do before we got so reliant on the grocery store to feed us. You just need enough space, good soil and climate, and practice. My garden failed miserably last year, and I have been gardening my whole life...but I moved out into the Arizona desert, and our soil consists entirely of sand, rocks, and clay, plus we get no rain and extremely hot temperatures, and starving wildlife raid the garden nonstop...I'm still finding what plants work well here and how to deal with all the issues, but my goal is by next summer to be able to produce all the vegetables, eggs, dairy products, and meat my family needs. (We also raise chickens and goats) We don't really have the conditions or space for growing grain, so we'll still have to buy that, but I want to be as independent of the grocery store as I can.

If you are in Topeka, Kansas as your name suggests, you should be able to have a very nice garden. There's good soil and a nice long growing season there, plus it's not too extremely dry. I'd suggest asking around and seeing what plants grow well for others. I bet tomatoes do well there, when I lived in Oklahoma, our tomatoes always made more fruit than we knew what to do with.

You could also look into cold frames or some sort of greenhouse maybe to be able to grow a few things in the winter as well, things like lettuce that can't really be frozen or canned to save for winter--that way you can have a supply of fresh things all year.

 

[DrakeMaiden]

As others have basically said already, it might help to look at feeding your entire family from the garden as your LONG TERM goal and focus on short term goals that will help you get there . . . .

I think you were smart to choose a tuber to start with, but you might want to try regular potatoes, as they will be easier to start with.

If you can focus on calorie dense foods (like tubers), that might make you feel like you are getting toward your goal faster.

You might also try foods that store well . . . like winter squash.

In my experience regular potatoes, squash, and root crops are fairly easy to grow. But I also would not have a garden that did not include some fresh lettuce.

Good luck!

 

[digitS']

. . . Simple, easy. possible, massive calories thats all I want!

any ideas?

I like the way you think, Topeka . And, welcome to TEG !
Let's see . . . 7,000,000 calories . . . ?? I use this "rule of thumb" that an adult needs about 2,000 calories, each day. There are 365 days in the year . . . This must mean that you have 9.6 adults in your family.

All of our food is darn sweet - lots of calories! And, it isn't just processed food. We've made big strides in turning wild plants into fruits and veggies that are all tender, tender, tender. This is called the agricultural revolution and it began more than 10,000 years ago. So you see, if you claim inheritance from the last 10,000 years of history (and prehistory ), you should be able to grow food for your family.

Tender sweet fruits and vegetables - who doesn't want them like that ?? An apple is 10% sugar. A soda pop is 10% sugar. Cooked broccoli is 1.5% sugar - which, if I did the math right, is about the same as 1/2 teaspoon of sugar per serving of broccoli. And then, the apple is 2.5% fiber, the broccoli is a little more -- and there's lots of vitamins (& fiber) !

Here's a little something about Planning a Vegetable Garden. It's real general stuff - for a general audience - but you may want to follow the links and think a little about what the author has to say about "growing more vegetables in whatever space you have." Do some thinking about "Succession Planting."

But, if you really really want to just get a 1 shot harvest of a ton of calories (which you will then have to figure out how to store for the other 364 days of the year :/) follow the guidance Ridgerunner has on sweet potatoes and try to learn more about them. There's probably no reason why you can't become a sweet potato farmer.

The USDA tells us that 150 hundred weight/acre yield is a reasonable expectation. That would be about 6,700,000 calories per acre. See, you are almost there !!

Steve

 

[Ridgerunner]

I was just using sweet potatoes as an example. There are plenty of other crops you could grow. You just have to find out what is right for your location, your space, your likes, and your methods. I'll admit, I do like sweet potatoes.

 

[digitS']

I hope Topeka realizes that there plenty of other crops to grow, Ridgerunner. Diversity - Topeka - diversity! I like sweet potatoes, too .

This isn't much of an example of diversity but rather production: According to my new World Almanac . . . The US leads all other nations in wheat, rice, corn, and meat exports. So, US farmers produce food for 300 million Americans and "blow everybody else out of the water" shipping these foods out of the country.

The almanac also tells us that there are 988,000 people employed in "farming, fishing and forestry." I could probably break those numbers down somewhere else but let's just say that 1 farmer produces waaaay too much food for 300 people.
It may help to have some idea about our potential . I mean, within the class of agriculturalists!
Gardeners !!

Steve