That would be useful, but I felt outside of the scope of this video. I also have an issue that the protein/calorie/nutrient content can vary significantly within the same crop, depending on the variety, growing conditions, soil, fertility. I think using the 'typical analysis' would seriously understate the actual content of the vegetables that I grow. In addition, I think the main purpose of a vegetable garden like this is to provide nutrients, with a bit of protein and calories on the side, but all of this is too difficult to actually measure in my context.
@@REDGardens Another metric could be grouping crop by specific nutrient (vitamin C, potassium, etc.), but I guess it would be work for next winter ;) Extending metric to items as protein is also not bad idea - with that pea probably would not look so "bad".
yes i also think a calorie measure would be a lot more relevant than just weight/volume - and would help decide what plants to grow in a limited area with the goal self-sufficiency. cukes and greens are great but are calorically negligible. this can be calculated rather easily if measuring edible portion only and crossing it with a publicly available nutrition database. this has been done - proving again and again that fruit and sugar-cane - win big time. i wonder though what it would be in ireland and with your growing methods.
How about a "value multiplier" where you assign a multiplier to each crop based on the average objective value e.g. nutrients, protein, calories and another one for subjective factors like taste, providing fresh food in early spring, effort needed for growing? It doesn't matter how much protein your peas have exactly but they have way more than salad so that should be accounted for. Onions might not have many calories but they are a staple food for a reason. This would obviously be highly subjective but still should provide interesting results. It might be ok to use large parts of your growing space for a crop that has bad yields if everybody wants to eat it.
@@Ultrazaubererger i think calorie info will be the most objective number - and takes into account the "protein concern", as eating sufficient calories of diverse garden whole food sources is extremely unlikely to result in protein deficiency.
Interesting. This video might have been the nail in the coffin for me growing, broccoli, cauliflower, and other brassicas. I've always thought the space to yield wasn't awesome, and seeing your numbers confirms it. While watching this I was thinking self sustainability and was wondering about total calories per meter/per kg yield. A kg of cucumber is going to have significantly fewer calories than a kg of potato. If there was some way to plug that data in and turn it into calories per kg/meter you'd have an idea of which plants may have a larger caloric yield. I love this project.
Broccoli is higher in protein than some other greens. Plus having some brassica family plants and carrot family plants help round out the nutrition from the garden. Our ancestors found them important enough to breed tons of varieties of this family it's probably worth growing some
Brassicas are really packed in nutrients. One could also intercrop tall brassicas like broccoli and kale with lower crops, which could also balance out the effects of the brassica on the soil, resulting in a higher total yield per m².
@@ximono I became a fan of broccolini for this reason. I am more of a tender stem person anyway. When I do drow regular broccoli, I keep the leaves timmed back & under sow on the edges of the bed. No idea of nutrition value of broccolini v broccoli. I don't care.
Including calories is an interesting one. I felt it was outside of the scope of this video, as it would be way too long, but I might look at doing a video about it in the future. My initial thoughts are that calories are not the primary reason for a vegetable garden, as we tend to get most of our calories from other sources, and we rely on vegetables mainly for nutrients (but of course we can get a lot of calories and protein from vegetables). I would also need to rely on the conventional 'typical analysis' for determining the calories, but I know that there is a huge variation in the calorific, protein and nutrient content of vegetables depending on loads of different factors. I would expect (or hope) that the vegetables that I produce would be higher in all of these good things than anything you could buy from a shop, so it seems a bit strange to use data from crappy food to evaluate/justify what I grow.
Note that the most excellent salad turnip is the very same species as, say bok choi, brassicas have the potential to be very productive. Even though the turnip seems to thrive in many garden contexts, other brassicas can be really productive if you have a sort breed for your own conditions. Cabbage and kohlrabi in the right time of year compete with turnips in my garden in the American Rocky Mountains. Broc and Cauli I think are at a disadvantage because even if the plant creates as much biomass as a turnip, its only the flower stock that is top value... that being said they taste excellent and some loss of yield can be accepted. For my garden cabbage and kohl are some of the best crops, because I can transplant em from small trays such that I get a huge yield from modest field time, and they are able to produce a yield in much more marginal areas with much much lest work per square foot. Also both keep for a long time, and are easy to use bulkly. Kohlrabi is better in my book because it is much less vulnerable to cabbage moth worm damage, as they can't get into the headd to frass it up like cabbage. Though cabbage I do prefer to cook with. Turnip whoops both in pounds per bedweeks, but it is direct seeded and vulnerable to pests in some parts of the season.
Cheers for another great video. I'm impressed and envious of your data gathering and analysis. These are skills I definitely need to work on and incorporate into my future veggie gardening.
Great video, everything is made better with spreadsheets, and I enjoyed your consideration of time to harvest. However, it seems silly to me to use weight/area as the main metric for productivity. The nutritional content of legumes cannot be compared with greens or roots in my opinion. I believe the weight quantity should be transformed on a per crop basis into macronutrient data, or even the market price. This would create a metric more like energy/day*area, which would be a unit of energy flux, which is essentially what gardens do - transferring energy from the sun to us. Would you be willing to share a copy of your crop spreadsheet?
Not all energy is equal, though. Our nutrient needs are complex to say the least, as are the nutrients provided by the plants. But I agree that it's worthwhile to at least get some insight into this aspect.
Including nutrients would be interesting, but make it way too much for this video. And, there is the issue of what data to use for those nutrients, as there is HUGE difference between the nutrient content of the crappy vegetables used in the 'typical analysis' figures I would need to rely on, and what can be found in very well grown vegetables - or at least I believe there is. So I think any comparisons I make in that regard will be highly suspect, especially as there is likely substantial differences between the gardens.
@@Finnnicus I was thinking of that, the idea of relative nutrition as you call it, but that would assume that the relative values scale equally, that the factor is similar, and I am not sure about that. I wonder if some crops, say a really well grown lettuce could have 4 times the nutrients/calories as the poor quality 'generic' whereas another crop, like beans might only have an upper limit to the range that is twice as good as the 'generic'. Or in my climate it is impossible to grow aubergines that are better than the generic, but every easy to grow vastly superior greens. And with other crops the nutrient content may hold for quite a long time in storage, and others lose their nutrition quickly after harvest. Anyway, these are some of the things that I think about, in trying to come up with better ways to measure things, which in the end is trying to assign a number to thing so that they are easier to compare. I am hesitant about assigning numbers to things, as people seem to remember numbers, and often use them out of context. It is that thing about only evaluating things based on what we can measure.
Thank you for sharing this data! I find it so helpful as a new gardener to see data like this and understand how pros look at their work. I'm inspired to start keeping my own data now!
Another thing to consider is not just the time taken to grow, but WHEN that time is. Garlic and broccoli may not produce a high yield given the amount of time taken to grow, but they are both crops that will grow over winter while other species will not. Better to plant some garlic and purple sprouting broccoli in a bed than leave it otherwise empty over winter.
‘If we learn to love chard, as well as turnip’ those are two big IFs in my house. Great analysis as usual. I see several comments mention calories rather than weight as a metric but I apply an overlay of taste and variety as well.
It is a bit 'if' in a lot of houses! I figure the real purpose of a garden like this is nutrition (aka taste) rather than calories. Calories and protein are important, and available within a veg garden, but generally we get them from elsewhere. And it is impossible to measure, so just need to use the 'typical analysis' from conventional food, which I think would seriously under represent what is actually available from well grown food.
Our household loves turnips so I tried growing them first time last year. Had some failures (wrong area/lighting etc...) but had good luck in others and found that we only like them at a certain size. The ones I left to go big were not pleasant at all lol. Maggoty/woody and oof the flavor was horrible. I can see why they got such a bad rap food wise. We will be succession planting them this year and I did buy a Japanese salad type all white turnip. But over the winter the last bed of big turnips (I was going to see if cold made them taste better) the deer actually broke down my fence and dug through about 2 feet of drifted snow to eat. My easiest growing crop has to be kale. Unfortunately like Gardener Red. We are having a hard time "enjoying" it. We were also waiting on a frost to sweeten the taste. Well the deer also found them tempting and pulled the frost covers off and ate them as well. Too bad there is no hunting close to homes or if have organic garden fed venison to go with my veg lol. I wish I had the stamina and inclination to record my gardens more than just a few photos with notations (hubby bought me a nifty phone with a pencil so I can write right on my photo and save it.) I did try to track one dollars worth of seeds from the dollar shop. I got 4 packets of seed and my grandkiddos and I tried to keep track of how much produce those 4 packets made. All I can really remember is that with the first harvest of the plants we had made way more than our moneys worth back. We picked cherry tomatoes (large red) zucchini (black beauty) yellow summer squash(straightneck) mixed bell peppers (I've forgotten the name but it had orange/red/purple and yellow smaller bells) The tomatoes did phenomenal and we stopped keeping track after 12 pints. The zucchini did okay we harvest baby zucchini and had at least 12each from each plant(4 plants) out(plus I had enough seed for the following year of all packets) before the vibe borers and powdered mildew wiped them out. Much more on the yellow squash(4) we had about triple the amount of baby fruits from those plants before they too succumbed to the mildew. But the peppers. I know its a me issue but sweet peppers do not grow super well for me. I think we ended up with only about 2 to 4 peppers per plant and I had 8 plants. Plus they fruited so late in the season only one changed color from green to yellow. The rest were green at harvest. But all in all for .25cents(usd) one pepper per plant more than paid for itself. Almost all the seeds bought from there are older trusted heirloom types so with a bit if care I saved seed from them. Hope this wasn't too long winded lol
I'm not a big fan of turnip, swede is much tastier to me but I have loved cooking with 'rainbow chard' which has a smaller more delicate stem. I love it for breakfast cooked in a pan with butter and then folding a couple of eggs through it. Rainbow chard is very happy in our garden and popup volunteer seedlings everywhere, it can survive a few years the oldest has been 5 years that just refused to die but the leaf quality goes down fast. i think the bigger varieties are better sliced in soup or steamed into submission.
This data rich kind of video is always what I look forward to from the red gardens project. I have experience growing neeps (which is the Scots word for swede) and they grew almost uncontrollably without much input from us so I was surprised that Chard (a leafy green) competed with it in terms of production. My friend recommended I grow chard and I didn't take it that seriously but this video has changed my mind on that. I also didn't know Marrows and Courgettes were the same plant - ironically too because I hate courgettes and love marrows.
I expect that a well grown crop of swede will out compete almost anything, but the little-and-often harvesting approach with chard adds up over time, and we get food over a much longer part of the year.
Thanks for posting this video. Using data to maximize yield is something that I'm incorporating in my garden this year. Your videos are an inspiration.
Data driven decision making. Smart. As much as I like it, I do almost none of that myself. I'm not ashamed to steal your learnings and benefit from them though :-) Too many computers during the work day for me to stomach them with my hobbies of living history, fife and drum music performance, driving/repairing old British sports cars (Austin Healey Sprites/Midgets) and gardening. All hobbies distinctly lacking computers. I keep saying my next job will be fish farmer but I suspect you need computers to do that too.
My most productive crops are the ones the slugs don't like lol but leafy greens and chicken eggs are the best yeilds so far. Plus berries. But I forage for those. I'm trialing mashua this year, they are nasturtium root crops and I'm trying mint roots called Chinese artichokes. They produced more than my potatoes in our rainy cool summer last year and now I have enough tubers to plant out for harvest from just one tiny tuber.
How do you eat chard? Do you only eat the leafy part or can you eat that colourful stem too? I only tried it once in a sandwich but the leafy part was too thick, almost leathery and the white stem was very stringy... I've heard it is a very healthy thing to eat but have no idea how to. 😕
We generally cook it, either in soups and stews, or as a separate side dish. I often chop up the stems and cook them a bit first (either stir fry or steam or boil) then about half way through cooking add the chopped up greens which need less time cooking. The simplest way I find is to steam/boil them in a very little bit of water, drain, then add butter, salt and some lemon juice goes well I think. makes a nice side dish of vegetables.
"If we learn to love chard..." I'm not sure why so many people don't have a taste for chard. We grow a variety also known as "perpetual spinach," it's delicious and robust, and works equally well cooked or as part of a salad.
Very nice :) I love to see your data! I would love to see how the picture would change if looking at time instead of space. I also wonder how the picture would change for different macro- and micro-nutrients. For example, I presume chard has some micro nutrient but is mostly water. On the other hand, garlic is quite caloric. In all case, very good food for thoughts thanks :)
@@ximono Yes. I dropped that issue from the video (was in a rush!) but it is important to note that both chard and turnip (especially the leaves) are really nutritious, and contain the range of nutrients that many of us are missing from our diets.
@@ximono Thanks! You're comment prompted me to check its calories too, it is quite impressive. Almost equal with potato and higher then garlic 🤯 Who knew chard was so nice!
*Wooow my friend RED GARDENS!!! But must admit that the quality of your video is TOP, it's a pure delight to watch your new video releases, as they are very informative, and your channel is one of the best in this field, thank you for your kindness to share this knowledge you have in gardening, happy gardeniiiiiing!!!*
Very interesting insights! You could also take into consideration the nutrient density of the crops. Weight is an important metric, but it's the nutrient profile that matters in the end. For example, cucumber is low in nutrients compared to chard. The yield per m² might be the same, but chard could be 10x as dense in nutrients as cucumbers. To get some numbers on this, I've looked at sources that score vegetables by their nutrient profile. Based on those numbers, you could calculate a "harvested nutrients per m²" score, or what I like to call the "nutriciency" (nutrient efficiency) of the crop :) The idea is simple enough, but it gets complicated quick. The sources use different algorithms for calculating the nutrient score, and they seem to disagree on some vegetables. For example, protein and carbohydrates may be undervalued, probably because they assume a modern diet already high in carbs and animal protein. And I haven't found a source that covers all the vegetables I'd like to grow, making it difficult to produce a complete list. It's also not clear if they include all edible parts of the plant, like the leaves of turnips. To work around some of these issues, I've started on a spreadsheet that calculates a weighted average of the different scores, and combines that aggregate score with my expected yield to calculate the nutriciency per m². But the quality of the output is only as good as the input (GIGO), and I'm not confident about either the sources or my rough yield estimates. Ideally, I'd make my own algorithm for calculating a nutriciency score, based on nutrient profiles from a realiable database (like Frida from the National Food Institute of Denmark). Or better yet, calculate different scores for different nutrient groups (vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, fats), like the player profile in football games. Because it's not about finding the "best" plant to grow, but about understanding the nutriciency of the harvest. It would be a tool to help me decide on which crops to focus on in order to produce a harvest that's highly nutritious, providing a balanced diet overall. To maybe grow more chard than cucumbers, for example. Unless you really like cucumbers :) The best sources on nutrient density that I've found are Di Noia's paper "Defining Powerhouse Fruits and Vegetables: A Nutrient Density Approach" and the more compehensive Aggregate Nutrient Density Index (ANDI). To take the example of cucumbers and chard, ANDI rates cucumber as 87/1000 and chard as 895/1000. Di Noia doesn't include cucumber, but rates chard as 892/1000, very close to ANDI. On the other hand, while ANDI rates kale as 1000/1000, Di Noia only rates it as 491/1000. And neither of them rate important crops like beetroot, potatoes, beans or peas. If anyone know of any other good sources, feel free to drop a comment. Other aspects you touched on is time (in the ground) and space (3D). Those are also important to consider, as it really affects intercropping and succession planting, and therefore the potential yield per m². I did find an index from the National Garden Bureau (NGB) that rates vegetables by total yield per square foot, average value per pound and length of time in the ground. But I'd much rather make my own solution, ideally one that visualises the "spacetime" of the crops rather than reducing it to a score. I am a (recovered) programmer, so I'd really like to work on something like this. If only I had the time (or money, in today's society).
Extremely thoughtful. It even gets more complicated when you factor in marketing & sales. Assuming you are not farming for subsistence/survival, you have to consider the likes/dislikes of your customers and their culinary skills (or lack thereof.) My gowers group does sales & giveaways. Hard to do either if the customer or the recipient doesn't know what to do with your nutrition packed veg because it is unfamiliar/weird/outside of their traditional foodways. We started inserting recipe suggestions using likely ingredients they have at home.
@@flatsville1 Absolutely. When market gardening, you should always start with what your customers want and work from there. I'm growing mainly for my own family, so my focus is on our dietary needs and what we like to eat. I like the idea of inserting recipe suggestions! I feel we need that for chard and some other crops we're not used to :)
'Nutriciency' - I like it! Nutrients are definitely something to explore, but I think your point about it being a simple idea that gets complicated quick is the key issue for me. I have explored some the ideas you talked about, and one thing that I kept coming back to the fact that it got way to complicated when all most people want to do is just grow some vegetables. It felt like a rabbit hole that only a few people would follow me down, but it would be interesting to explore some more. The other key issue I kept running into was this idea of there being a general or universal nutrient density or profile for each vegetable. I think this is fundamentally wrong, as the variety, growing conditions, fertility profile of the soil, climate, plant stress, growing method, etc can all significantly change the nutrient profile, and not in a uniform way. I suspect that with really good soil and practices, some of the vegetables that I grow could be dramatically more nutrient dense, but other vegetables would not show as much of a response. All of the other work that I do in developing the soil, and caring for the plants is geared, in part at least, towards producing vegetables that contain way better nutrition. So it felt to me that we could only use the 'typical' values for any analysis like this, but by doing so would have to ignore some of the fundamental differences, and I haven't been able to figure out how to get around that. I think before I went down this path again I would first want to get a load of detailed nutritional analysis done on different types of vegetables, including samples from different gardening methods. Thanks for poking that part of my brain again, and for providing additional insights. I will have to look into the ANDI.
That is some excellent data, in the American Rocky Mountains chard and turnip both dominate here too. But I rarely get the yields you get as a general rule, then again you have access to much better bulk compost than the farm I work with. Purslane is another plant, generally treated as a weed, that is nutritious easy growing and extremely productive.
Winter purslane is an amazing plant to grow during winter, even in freezing temperatures (if you have a polytunnel or greenhouse and use hoops with fleece over).
@@ximono The sort I know is just the summer frost tender sort of purslane. Honestly it is so dominating a plant that the idea of one that can grow in cold weather too sounds daunting. Though I recall hearing tell before that there are kin species that grow in the cold well, but I never tried growing any of them just yet.
Great video, really glad I found this channel a couple of weeks ago. One comment I would add is that you need to factor in the water weight to these yield calculations. Can we really make a weight-for-weight comparison between watermelons and hazelnuts? One is 99% water, the other is 1%. At the end of the day we are aiming to grow food not water. Something to consider :)
Hello Bruce. I just came from the recent seed video, great one (I need to buy more seeds and put them in my freezer). I appreciate you and your work! Wonderful and important work you do here. You mentioned about garlic being a much needed crop, indeed it is. About not being productive in respect to weight, but how much garlic one needs in comparison to other crops. Of course I’m looking at it in the way is used. I may be able to eat a whole cucumber in one seating but most definitely not a whole garlic (I may use a whole garlic per week?) Just saying. ☺️ I command your work always, thank you! 😉💗👍🏼
I love chard. Some of my favorite chard recipes are Mexican. I really like turnips too. Kudos to you on collecting and analyzing all of your data! Very interesting.
How you have time for all of this? I don't know. So cool. I would say that actual value of crops is more relatable than kilos per square metre? I'd rather eat a kilo of peas then a kilo of cucumber that's for sure.
Blend Chard leaves into your daily juice. We cut the stank from the leafy part and run it thru the juicer. It's actually nutty how man ingredients are in our daily 32 Oz juice. We make enough in one eve to last 5-7 days.
Chard is so underrated. They are currently cropping in our urban veg co-op, the leaves are superb in stir fries, in curries, and as a spinach substitute. Hardy with few pests. Hungry gap filler too.
Another great thought provoking video Bruce! It got my wife and I asking the question 'If we could only grow one crop what would it be'? Tomatoes, beans and beets were the front runners just because, in Canada, we can't buy good ones in the store most of the year. We settled on beets though. You can get a slightly longer harvest period from them as long as you eat beet greens. There are so many ways one can measure the value of a crop. Thumbs up... again!
Yes, there are so many ways to measure the value of a crop, and yield is just one of them. If I could only grow one crop, in the outside gardens, I think it might be beets as well, as they are so productive, nutritious, and we can eat all (or at least most) of the plant at any stage in its development.
Turnip does extremely well here in Newfoundland too! I feel like you'd love Land and Sea, it's a program on culture here in NL that's run for decades. I think all of it has been uploaded to TH-cam, watching stuff on farming and gardening techniques as early as the sixties is super fascinating. I learned that farmers here used to (still do? Don't know!) cloche entire crops of individual turnips to get a jump on the season.
I haven't. I usually consider vegetables more for flavour and broad nutrition, not really for calories, but it would be interesting to see how the different crops do compare.
Turnips are something I've never really considered. Storage is one of my concerns, and I understand they store well. I may have to try swapping out a potato bed with turnips next year. I also grow spinach all winter under low poly tunnels for fresh greens, but now you have made me think about swiss chard, which I have never grown. Thanks, Bruce, as always, for expanding my gardening horizons!
There are a number of different vegetables that are called turnips. The swede/rutabaga/turnip/irish turnip do store very well and grow over a long season. The Japanese/French/Salad turnips that I was mentioning are more for eating fresh. I am not sure how well they would store. They are more of a little-and-often kind of crop which grow and mature quickly, and get too big soon after that. Chard is definitely worth trying.
Another great video, I love the analysis and thought processes that you share, always an inspiration for my own gardening journey!! Obviously different metrics have varying importance to different growers, which is fascinating. I dedicated a year to weighing and measuring everything that we harvested from our family garden, as well as noting the current “in season” purchase price at the supermarket. I found the ultimate dollar value of harvest to be very informative, as it quickly showed me where the greatest savings could be had, and which things were not really “worth” growing from a financial perspective. We grew $320 worth of strawberries and $13 worth of carrots in the same sized area. Although I never would have spent that much at the supermarket buying strawberries if we didn’t grow them, it showed me the possibilities, and I dedicated a second bed to strawberries… we can buy carrots!
That is very interesting. I suspect that there is a lot of things I would change in our planting plans if I used that kind of evaluation. Really useful in a situation where space is scarce.
Other commentators have argued for overall measurements of calories, and you have used weight. It is not surprising that 'watery' veg like cucumbers, potatoes and tomatoes produce good weights. However we eat portions of veg, all that chard wilts down a lot in cooking, while carrots and swede don't. Also a heavy crop is not necessarily an edible crop. Using a sale value, may explain why brassicas are grown commercially as against chard. Chard doesn't last well once harvested so you won't find it in the shops, while for the gardener, the reliability of portions of food at the end of the garden is fabulous. A sale value, would give out of season crops value, even if they don't weigh, heavily. Winter brassicas are hardy and fresh, while tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers etc are not available in winter. Squash and parsnip comes into their own as they store well, and provide stomach filling meals in winter and spring. I prefer to eat fresh from my veg garden rather than my out of season, frozen veg. Also all that processing for freezing a glut, is such a chore. I pickled some cucumbers last summer but they don't spring onto my plate now, like PSB, kale, chard, sprouting brassicas etc. All this presupposes you know the price of veg in your local shops, if available. I can buy 1kg chopped cavelo nero kale, but the midrib isn't seperated, I harvest the few leaves for a portion, strip the midrib out and wash, and repeat the next day. Much more tricky to equate, measure and calculate.
All good points. The kg/m2 is only one metric, and not necessarily the most important, but it is the easiest to use and doesn't involve the use of 'generic' levels of calories and nutrients. Essentially all forms of measurement and evaluation like this are flawed, but can still be useful if used appropriately.
"My husband hates turnips so when I got given a three pound bag of them, I experimented. Boiled IS yucky! Grated and fried in a little avocado oil and butter with a dash of salt is wonderful They make chicken broth taste so rich it is unbelievable. Along with parsnips. I always add them to my bone broth. Since no one likes them I compost them but after cooking in stock it takes all the nutrients anyhow and just the fiber is left"
This is the way forward. Sadly both are foods I never really loved... but maybe that should change! I'd love to see nutritional break downs, but I guess if you publish your data we can make up our own calculations. Looking amazing as always!
Thanks. I have avoided the nutritional calculations, partially because it would make the video way too long, but also that I didn't want to rely on 'generic' values for nutrition. I am very confident that the range of actual nutrients available varies hugely within each crop, depending on how it was grown, etc. But, as you say, people can use the data to make their own calculations if they want.
Thanks for the video. There are so many ways of eating chard. We slice chard thin and add few slices of potatoes, and a sliced onion, a bit of turmeric, curry powder, a bit of chilli powder to your liking and salt to your taste, Add a bit of coconut cream and cook them all until potatoes are cooked. If you feel chard will overcook cook potato slices and other ingredients first, then add sliced chard. Another way of cooking chard is slice them thinly and add onion, bit of curry powder, ground pepper, salt and desiccated coconut (about 1/3 of the amount of chard) heat in frying fan and mix continuously until onion and chard is cooked. Take the pan out from heat and add lemon juice to your liking. This is an oil free recipe. You will love both dishes.
Very interesting Bruce. Couple extra add ons to add to the mix to complicate it even further might be the work hours per kg (tho think you do have this one someplace) the calorie content per kg or per m2 the nutritional value per kg or m2 and the medicinal value/ immune boosting quality etc. per m2/ hours spent. garlic and parsley esp jump to mind smaller yield but high value nutritionally and medicinally
Hi Majella. The hours per kg is tough to measure for each veg, as we dont keep track of how much time we spend on each crop, only on each garden. So I have that kind of info at a garden scale. With individual vegetables, it is more of an estimation. The calorie content, or som rather nutritional ranking would be ver interesting. One of the reasons I haven't gone down the route is I would have to use the 'typical' values, which are based on averages of industrial food, and don't reflect the actual additional calories and nutritional value that the well grown fresh vegetables would have. I'd rather not use inaccurate numbers, as they can distort things too much.
I watch a lot of youtube... too much even... but I've never subscribed to a channel before now. I just sub'd because you produce the most useful content around: no fluff; no pushing useless gadgets or fads; just authentic perspective and hard data to help produce what we all actually need--food.
To reduce the impact of outlier growing seasons, you can use the median instead of average. In terms of getting 1 number for grow more / grow less, you can chart crops as yield per week (yield / weeks) and grow more crops with the greatest yield over time. This doesn't take into account the seasonality of crops though... so needs some adjustments for succession planting.
It does start to get messy when trying to work with numbers like that. Median is likely better than average, though it still doesn't take into account when I have more recently improved the productivity of a crop through better varieties or growing practices.
I tracked yield data at this level year before last. I counted calories, though, and did less accounting for space. My best yield by far on that basis was winter wheat. Less than six hundred square feet of wheat provided about a third of the calories I got from the garden for the entire year, and that's including a decent amount of field corn I also grew during the summer. I would have to go back to my spreadsheet to be sure, but I think on a row-foot basis I actually got more calories from cucumbers than I did from potatoes. I live in a hot summer climate where potatoes do poorly and cucumbers do well. Of course, eating the potato harvest was easy and actually got done. Eating the entire cucumber harvest (as one person) was a challenge I wasn't up to.
Each time you post I find that your information is really focused and better than the last time. That says a lot as your videos are always focused and really valuable. We do not live in the same climate, yet your information is still valuable for any gardener's consideration. Your charting for time, crops and output needs a good read (for me at least) to be able to understand the information and how I can set up to do the comparisons for my crops and area. Is this information in printed form? If so, where might I purchase it? My 1/4 acre orchard/garden is small comparatively, but the information you provide would certainly help me to be more productive. Thank you!
Wow, thanks for that comment! Glad I am getting better! I can’t really share that document, too many person things in it that I don’t want to send around.
Very interesting analysis! Another person I follow is looking at caloric density of his garden produce (th-cam.com/video/ljjYbqIqdoA/w-d-xo.html). I would think caloric density and nutritive value both need to be considered together, especially when working towards being completely self reliant like the person in the link I included. Keep up the great work!
Thanks. Calories and nutrients are very important factors to consider, especially as you say you are seeking self sufficiency. One of the issues I have with this approach, is relies on generic values for the nutrient content and calories, but there are based on poor quality industrial food. It seems strange to me to put in the effort to grow the best possible quality, and then to evaluate them with generic data which I think would seriously distort things. I haven't figured a way around this.
Have you ever grown perennial kale or tree collards? We've started growing perennial kale, and the plants are amazing. We have harvested kale leaves for over a year, and in spring the flower shoots are like a sprouting broccoli. It can grow quite large, but its very productive, and can be propagated by cuttings. Its a great famine food because it produces consistently year round. I would love to see how it stacks up against chard, because it seems to out produce the chard in my garden.
That would make it a bit more complicated, but possibly useful for people who want to grow more of their calories, rather than relying on their vegetable gardens more for flavour and variety.
That would be interesting. One of the reasons I didn't do that (beyond making this video too long) is I would need to rely on the generic data for how many calories are in each vegetable, but that can be hugely different with different growing conditions.
There is some chat about trying to figure out the calorie density, nutrient, protein, etc. It seems to me that getting that exact would be some fancy science, and using generic data isn't very appealing. But a crude proxy measure to get a very basic idea of 'how much food is in a kilo or pound' would be simple dry weight. How much of the produce isn't water. A dehydrator and a decent scale could give a great estimate of that in nothing flat.
Hmm, that is an interesting idea for a proxy. I agree that using generic data isn't appealing, as it assumes everything I produce is poor quality (which is what the generic data is based on).
Did you record the hours spent on caring for each crop? I think it would be really interesting to see which crop gives you the most value for your time. If the goal is to feed the world sustainably there will be way more man hours needed for food production. For example I started growing beetroot two years ago. I just sow them in a quickpot tray two to three seeds per pot and plant them out when the have a few leaves. With some mulch there is little weeding needed as they soon take up all the light. No additional care is needed and in the fall you have a nice harvest. You can also just leave them in the ground all winter, no need for complicated storage. Or pumpkins which can be treated almost the same as beetroot and also store quite easily. Compared to onions where you have to be quite diligent with weeding and have to start them very early (possibly the year before if you don't have an indoor growing space) if you grow them from seeds. Then you need to harvest them at the right time, dry them, store them etc. Or tomatoes which need care at least once a week to take out the suckers and string them up. Storing them is also quite time intensive (making tomato sauce).
I have recorded hours per crop in the past, but it got way to messy in the context of these gardens. I agree it is a definite factor that needs to be considered. As you mention a lot of the time is outside the garden, in storing and preserving/processing.
I grow swiss chard, bright lights a multi coloured variety., but limit it to 2, 3-4 foot rows. That is more than we can eat, and a lot of people don't know how to cook it, so it's hard to give away.
What about relative cost to grow, in time, in money? Whether the food is more expensive to grow than to buy? Whether the nutritional value of say a cucumber is better than a cabbage or a strawberry? Which makes me ask who prefers cucumbers to strawberries?
All good questions, though outside the scope of this one video. harvest per area is only one metric, but perhaps the easiest one to measure. It is hard to measure value, as I would have to research what everything costs, and would I compare it to the cost of the cheapest crap available in the main supermarkets, or the 'good' organic stuff I can buy in the bougie food shop in one of the nearby towns. That would give a very different value. Both cucumbers and strawberries have their place! It isn't an either/or situation.
I have tried it, which is essentially a type of chard that was bred to look more like spinach. I prefer true spinach, now the I have figured out how to grow it well, and grow the other types of chard with the larger leaves. But I know a lot of people who really rely on perpetual spinach.
I think doing weight (or calories) per meter-week would be an easier way to look at this vs the scatter plot. Meter week would be multiplying the area by weeks in the ground
Possibly, as it would give a singular value, though I like that the scatter plot shows the range of different crops, and able to identify when something is an outlier or where the typical cluster is.
Calories is an important issue, especially if you are trying to be self sufficient, but I felt would have made the video too long and complex. I also think that many people have no issues with getting calories they need from other food, but look to the garden for nutrients, taste and variety, so calories are less of a factor for them. It is something I want to explore, although it means relying on generic data that assumes that all carrots are the same (I.e. poor quality) but I know there can be huge differences in the nutrients and calories depending on a lot of different factors. I haven’t figured out a way to get around that.
Most of the vegetables I grow are not staples, or grown for their higher calorie content. I generally grow them for their nutrients, flavour and diversity of diet.
True, but taste changes over time and with different experiences. For those of us that can learn to love really productive vegetables it becomes a lot easier to feed ourselves.
My 2 cents.......try steaming or boiling the leaves separately from the stalks (I tend to use the stalks in minestrone and ratatouille). The leaves are really delicious dressed with butter and soy sauce - trust me!! Also, the leaves are really tasty in a spanakopita. I think many people get put off by eating the stalks and leaves together. Bon appetite and I hope you join your brother (as long as there's enough to share LOL).
This would be way more interesting when calculating calories harvested instead of weight harvested. Afterall, it's not about the weight of food you consume, but about the calories.
I think in the vegetable garden is it more about nutrients than calories, we tend to get those from other sources. It would be useful to explore, but would need to depend on the 'typical analysis' found in mainstream conventional food, and there would be no way of knowing how much more, or less, the vegetables I grow would supply, without sending loads of samples off to a lab.
@@REDGardens Oh I see. I didn't realize most calories wouldn't come from agriculture. But if it's about nutrients, what's the point of comparing weights when comparing apples to oranges? I guess I do understand that this way of comparison is simply the only one available without going overboard on the analysis. Still, if you wanted, you could check studies where nutritional values of commercially farmed produce is compared to produce where best soil conditions are given. It's actually not that much more. From there you could go ahead and assume the % change for most crops and estimate. Also, when comparing your own produce, it doesn't even really matter if your vegetables hold more or less nutrients than the ones found in mainstream conventional food. Since it's about percentage differences between your own crops, the comparative numbers should be the same. By the way, I love your channel and the videos you produce. I've binge watched them all for years. Keep it up!
@@ExProsiveGaming Most calories do come from agriculture, just typically not from what we grow in most vegetable gardens. Calories tend to be more suited to a field scale kind of production, whereas I think nutrients are better suited to local grow-your-own scale of production. But of course there are calories, protein and nutrients everywhere. Yep, this kind of analysis is simply the easiest to use, and yield is important, but not the only metric.
6:18 Should this chart read "Chard" at the top left instead of "Swede"? Or am I misunderstanding / not hearing you right when you say Chard here but perhaps meant Chart?? :think: Same at 10:28
Garlic is my favorite crop by far. A garden without garlic isn't a garden, if you ask me :) Fun fact: The English name garlic stems from the Norse worse geirlauk, literally "spear onion". In the early 1000s, many Norwegians had a dedicated garlic garden ("laukgard"). Laws from that time said that if a man enters another man's garlic garden, he's no longer protected by the law. In other words, the owner could do whatever he wanted to the trespasser. That's how important garlic was back then.
@@REDGardens I suspect it’s easy for most people to balance things out if they go for a diverse range of fruit/veg and don’t just eat beets, chard, spinach and rhubarb at every meal.
I love your videos - even if I'm a bit envious at your lush, bountiful crops! Here in Australia we're in a La Nina phase which means SOOOO much rain, little sun, and nothing is growing well - in fact, my swiss chard in raised beds died because of the excess rain. It couldn't happen at a worse time with prices of everything going up PLUS flooding has wiped out many market gardens leading to some veggie prices more than doubling! Thank-you for your thoughtful data - it's especially valued given the road ahead. Cheers!
For my first garden I was planning on inter-cropping beetroot, broccoli, spinach, and lettuce, but now I'm considering mixing in some chard. It's a cool, mild climate here, so I plan to try to keep it simple and learn how to grow a handful of crops well, before branching out. Love the charts, as usual!
I never realized how productive swiss chard could be! After watching this I'm going to try and grow more. I've grown Japanese turnip here in Maine with great success and I think it's very tasty. The variety I've done the best with is Tokinashi and it germinated uncovered in my beds even when ice was still on the ground. Thank you for the great info and presentation as always.
Great video, you have had some incredible success in your journey and it's deserved for the effort you put in. I'm surprised you keep the tomatoes and cucumbers in the greenhouse, I've had huge yields outdoors although I have a garden pretty well protected from wind and an area that gets summer sun from sunrise to 7pm-ish. I'm trying corn with the cucumbers this year as a natural trellis with some peas/beans too as I want to make the best use of the square footage. The greenhouse remains for chillis only though.....and my mothers seedlings she sneaks in there when I'm at work😄
With the Irish climate, I think it is probably a waste of time to try to grow tomatoes and cucumbers outside, unless it is very well protected from the wind.
amazing video as always. only just got to watch it, love how you broke down the yields and added the adjuster for the overshadowing. very useful given this context of the family grown plots projects you are running and the differing growing conditions. this data sets you head andshoulders above the rest. keep the excellent content coming
As always very interesting! However, I was a bit surprised that you did not make an attempt to guess nutritional value. Calories at foremost but also the balance of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. I kilogram of cucumbers will not make a satisfying meal. 500g green beans will need very little additional incidents to make a nice meal.
Thanks! I should have mentioned the issue of nutritional value more directly, but it was way outside the scope of this video. It really depends on what you are looking for, and it is something that is very difficult to measure and compare, as it seems that nutritional content can vary considerably from the typical values that are published. I suspect even my cucumbers would be way more nutritious than the 'typical' but IO have no way of knowing that.
Calorie density seems more important to me than weight. Turnips, chard and cucumbers etc might produce more over a set period and space, but potatoes will make more calories (30-40k calories per 100 sq feet). Obvs you still have to balance calories with nutrient requirements. I try to grow 750,000 calories per 2000 square feet over the year. That means each 2000 square foot section of my garden can feed 1 adult. I have a family of 5 so I don't grow enough for us to live off (about 6000 sq feet in total for me and much of it non-intensive perennials like fruit canes and bushes). I'm growing around 1.2M calories per year atm but could easily get that to 2-3M with a bit more effort and making sure I had no bare ground. Still, having a set calorie target is useful for me if we ever need to feed ourselves completely. I wouldn't feel so comfortable doing my planting plans by weight until I already had the calories accounted for. Great results for you though at a glance. You're doing a wide range of crops in many different ways so my hat is off to you for what you've accomplished.
That is so cool that you are able to grow calories at that rate. And having the target of being able to feed yourself completely, if necessary, si a good one to explore. For me, and I think many other people, I rely on other stables that I buy in for most of the calories we eat, and the vegetables serve more as nutrients, flavour and variety. I assume that you use 'generic' info about the calorie density of different vegetables, and was wondering if you figured out how this relates to the actual calorie content in the vegetables you grow, as they are likely quite different. I am strongly suspect that the calorie and nutrient density of the vegetable that we grow varies considerably between the different gardens we manage, and don't know how to account for that.
@@REDGardens Yes, you're exactly right. I have to use generic results from tests on monoculture crops. Likely the nutrient profiles and calorie density are actually quite different IRL. I've not even been able to do it for 'varieties', so it's very much just 'potatoes, squash etc' for me. I'd imagine that most are far over and some are possibly even lower because of the heritage varieties I'm doing. Overall I think aiming high is a good idea because I can always trade or gift my excess. I still buy in 95% of my meat (I keep some chickens), so I'm not self sufficient really (not to mention choc, coffee, sugar, salt etc). I suspect we'd be pretty unhealthy with little meat in the diet and preserving stuff would be a challenge if supplies stopped, even with so much good veg. Still, it all gives me a feeling of some food security and helps me sleep at night with three young kids to worry about in a world gone mad Thanks for all of your wonderful experiments and updates etc, I've learned some great stuff from your videos!
@@REDGardens Yes, and as more and more wake up to just how crazy it all turns out to be, I predict that your subscriber list and view counts are going to have a meteoric rise! You are well ahead of the curve and veg gardening is about to become VERY fashionable. I think your local community are also going to grow more and more appreciative of what you've done there for them, in terms of added food security and quality. I just wish the context of your channel's impending growth wasn't so scary! Good luck my friend. And keep dropping pearls to help others on their journey. You do a great job!!!
fyi sounds like a digital sample timing distortion. from this i surmise you are using a usb audio interface. if so, increase your buffer size to improve click.❤
@@davidmiedema2950 Hmm. I am using a new lavalier microphones, connected to an iPhone (with Lightning to a 3.5mm audio jack adapter). Not sure if I can adjust things, but thanks for the pointer about what to look for. I am planning to upgrade to a different camera soon-ish.
The discipline needed to gather this data is quite admirable.
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This comment sounds like his voice
@@paulhanson6836 His calm demeanor might be contagious. 🙂
I'd love to see this broken down into protein/acre and calories/acre. I find that to be more useful than raw weight. Great info regardless.
That would be useful, but I felt outside of the scope of this video. I also have an issue that the protein/calorie/nutrient content can vary significantly within the same crop, depending on the variety, growing conditions, soil, fertility. I think using the 'typical analysis' would seriously understate the actual content of the vegetables that I grow. In addition, I think the main purpose of a vegetable garden like this is to provide nutrients, with a bit of protein and calories on the side, but all of this is too difficult to actually measure in my context.
@@REDGardens Another metric could be grouping crop by specific nutrient (vitamin C, potassium, etc.), but I guess it would be work for next winter ;)
Extending metric to items as protein is also not bad idea - with that pea probably would not look so "bad".
yes i also think a calorie measure would be a lot more relevant than just weight/volume - and would help decide what plants to grow in a limited area with the goal self-sufficiency. cukes and greens are great but are calorically negligible.
this can be calculated rather easily if measuring edible portion only and crossing it with a publicly available nutrition database.
this has been done - proving again and again that fruit and sugar-cane - win big time. i wonder though what it would be in ireland and with your growing methods.
How about a "value multiplier" where you assign a multiplier to each crop based on the average objective value e.g. nutrients, protein, calories and another one for subjective factors like taste, providing fresh food in early spring, effort needed for growing?
It doesn't matter how much protein your peas have exactly but they have way more than salad so that should be accounted for.
Onions might not have many calories but they are a staple food for a reason.
This would obviously be highly subjective but still should provide interesting results.
It might be ok to use large parts of your growing space for a crop that has bad yields if everybody wants to eat it.
@@Ultrazaubererger i think calorie info will be the most objective number - and takes into account the "protein concern", as eating sufficient calories of diverse garden whole food sources is extremely unlikely to result in protein deficiency.
Interesting. This video might have been the nail in the coffin for me growing, broccoli, cauliflower, and other brassicas. I've always thought the space to yield wasn't awesome, and seeing your numbers confirms it.
While watching this I was thinking self sustainability and was wondering about total calories per meter/per kg yield. A kg of cucumber is going to have significantly fewer calories than a kg of potato. If there was some way to plug that data in and turn it into calories per kg/meter you'd have an idea of which plants may have a larger caloric yield.
I love this project.
Broccoli is higher in protein than some other greens. Plus having some brassica family plants and carrot family plants help round out the nutrition from the garden. Our ancestors found them important enough to breed tons of varieties of this family it's probably worth growing some
Brassicas are really packed in nutrients. One could also intercrop tall brassicas like broccoli and kale with lower crops, which could also balance out the effects of the brassica on the soil, resulting in a higher total yield per m².
@@ximono I became a fan of broccolini for this reason. I am more of a tender stem person anyway. When I do drow regular broccoli, I keep the leaves timmed back & under sow on the edges of the bed. No idea of nutrition value of broccolini v broccoli. I don't care.
Including calories is an interesting one. I felt it was outside of the scope of this video, as it would be way too long, but I might look at doing a video about it in the future. My initial thoughts are that calories are not the primary reason for a vegetable garden, as we tend to get most of our calories from other sources, and we rely on vegetables mainly for nutrients (but of course we can get a lot of calories and protein from vegetables). I would also need to rely on the conventional 'typical analysis' for determining the calories, but I know that there is a huge variation in the calorific, protein and nutrient content of vegetables depending on loads of different factors. I would expect (or hope) that the vegetables that I produce would be higher in all of these good things than anything you could buy from a shop, so it seems a bit strange to use data from crappy food to evaluate/justify what I grow.
Note that the most excellent salad turnip is the very same species as, say bok choi, brassicas have the potential to be very productive. Even though the turnip seems to thrive in many garden contexts, other brassicas can be really productive if you have a sort breed for your own conditions. Cabbage and kohlrabi in the right time of year compete with turnips in my garden in the American Rocky Mountains. Broc and Cauli I think are at a disadvantage because even if the plant creates as much biomass as a turnip, its only the flower stock that is top value... that being said they taste excellent and some loss of yield can be accepted.
For my garden cabbage and kohl are some of the best crops, because I can transplant em from small trays such that I get a huge yield from modest field time, and they are able to produce a yield in much more marginal areas with much much lest work per square foot. Also both keep for a long time, and are easy to use bulkly. Kohlrabi is better in my book because it is much less vulnerable to cabbage moth worm damage, as they can't get into the headd to frass it up like cabbage. Though cabbage I do prefer to cook with.
Turnip whoops both in pounds per bedweeks, but it is direct seeded and vulnerable to pests in some parts of the season.
I love the way your mind works, and how it saves time and space in OUR Gardens! Thank you for being so analytical!!!
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Cheers for another great video.
I'm impressed and envious of your data gathering and analysis. These are skills I definitely need to work on and incorporate into my future veggie gardening.
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Great video, everything is made better with spreadsheets, and I enjoyed your consideration of time to harvest. However, it seems silly to me to use weight/area as the main metric for productivity. The nutritional content of legumes cannot be compared with greens or roots in my opinion. I believe the weight quantity should be transformed on a per crop basis into macronutrient data, or even the market price. This would create a metric more like energy/day*area, which would be a unit of energy flux, which is essentially what gardens do - transferring energy from the sun to us. Would you be willing to share a copy of your crop spreadsheet?
Not all energy is equal, though. Our nutrient needs are complex to say the least, as are the nutrients provided by the plants. But I agree that it's worthwhile to at least get some insight into this aspect.
Including nutrients would be interesting, but make it way too much for this video. And, there is the issue of what data to use for those nutrients, as there is HUGE difference between the nutrient content of the crappy vegetables used in the 'typical analysis' figures I would need to rely on, and what can be found in very well grown vegetables - or at least I believe there is. So I think any comparisons I make in that regard will be highly suspect, especially as there is likely substantial differences between the gardens.
@@REDGardens Very true. Perhaps the plants would also be some similar factor more nutritious? Only relative nutrition between plants is relevant.
@@Finnnicus I was thinking of that, the idea of relative nutrition as you call it, but that would assume that the relative values scale equally, that the factor is similar, and I am not sure about that. I wonder if some crops, say a really well grown lettuce could have 4 times the nutrients/calories as the poor quality 'generic' whereas another crop, like beans might only have an upper limit to the range that is twice as good as the 'generic'. Or in my climate it is impossible to grow aubergines that are better than the generic, but every easy to grow vastly superior greens. And with other crops the nutrient content may hold for quite a long time in storage, and others lose their nutrition quickly after harvest. Anyway, these are some of the things that I think about, in trying to come up with better ways to measure things, which in the end is trying to assign a number to thing so that they are easier to compare. I am hesitant about assigning numbers to things, as people seem to remember numbers, and often use them out of context. It is that thing about only evaluating things based on what we can measure.
Thank you for sharing this data! I find it so helpful as a new gardener to see data like this and understand how pros look at their work. I'm inspired to start keeping my own data now!
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Another thing to consider is not just the time taken to grow, but WHEN that time is. Garlic and broccoli may not produce a high yield given the amount of time taken to grow, but they are both crops that will grow over winter while other species will not. Better to plant some garlic and purple sprouting broccoli in a bed than leave it otherwise empty over winter.
That is definitely something to consider, and I have tried in the past to integrate conditions like that into a metric, but haven’t really used it.
‘If we learn to love chard, as well as turnip’ those are two big IFs in my house. Great analysis as usual. I see several comments mention calories rather than weight as a metric but I apply an overlay of taste and variety as well.
It is a bit 'if' in a lot of houses! I figure the real purpose of a garden like this is nutrition (aka taste) rather than calories. Calories and protein are important, and available within a veg garden, but generally we get them from elsewhere. And it is impossible to measure, so just need to use the 'typical analysis' from conventional food, which I think would seriously under represent what is actually available from well grown food.
@@REDGardens looks like you are on the cusp of 100k subscribers, congrats on that!
Our household loves turnips so I tried growing them first time last year. Had some failures (wrong area/lighting etc...) but had good luck in others and found that we only like them at a certain size. The ones I left to go big were not pleasant at all lol. Maggoty/woody and oof the flavor was horrible. I can see why they got such a bad rap food wise.
We will be succession planting them this year and I did buy a Japanese salad type all white turnip.
But over the winter the last bed of big turnips (I was going to see if cold made them taste better) the deer actually broke down my fence and dug through about 2 feet of drifted snow to eat.
My easiest growing crop has to be kale. Unfortunately like Gardener Red. We are having a hard time "enjoying" it. We were also waiting on a frost to sweeten the taste. Well the deer also found them tempting and pulled the frost covers off and ate them as well.
Too bad there is no hunting close to homes or if have organic garden fed venison to go with my veg lol.
I wish I had the stamina and inclination to record my gardens more than just a few photos with notations (hubby bought me a nifty phone with a pencil so I can write right on my photo and save it.)
I did try to track one dollars worth of seeds from the dollar shop. I got 4 packets of seed and my grandkiddos and I tried to keep track of how much produce those 4 packets made.
All I can really remember is that with the first harvest of the plants we had made way more than our moneys worth back.
We picked cherry tomatoes (large red) zucchini (black beauty) yellow summer squash(straightneck) mixed bell peppers (I've forgotten the name but it had orange/red/purple and yellow smaller bells)
The tomatoes did phenomenal and we stopped keeping track after 12 pints.
The zucchini did okay we harvest baby zucchini and had at least 12each from each plant(4 plants) out(plus I had enough seed for the following year of all packets) before the vibe borers and powdered mildew wiped them out. Much more on the yellow squash(4) we had about triple the amount of baby fruits from those plants before they too succumbed to the mildew.
But the peppers. I know its a me issue but sweet peppers do not grow super well for me. I think we ended up with only about 2 to 4 peppers per plant and I had 8 plants. Plus they fruited so late in the season only one changed color from green to yellow. The rest were green at harvest. But all in all for .25cents(usd) one pepper per plant more than paid for itself.
Almost all the seeds bought from there are older trusted heirloom types so with a bit if care I saved seed from them.
Hope this wasn't too long winded lol
@@DK6060 Thanks! Just passed it, and was great to reach that milestone.
I'm not a big fan of turnip, swede is much tastier to me but I have loved cooking with 'rainbow chard' which has a smaller more delicate stem. I love it for breakfast cooked in a pan with butter and then folding a couple of eggs through it. Rainbow chard is very happy in our garden and popup volunteer seedlings everywhere, it can survive a few years the oldest has been 5 years that just refused to die but the leaf quality goes down fast. i think the bigger varieties are better sliced in soup or steamed into submission.
This data rich kind of video is always what I look forward to from the red gardens project.
I have experience growing neeps (which is the Scots word for swede) and they grew almost uncontrollably without much input from us so I was surprised that Chard (a leafy green) competed with it in terms of production. My friend recommended I grow chard and I didn't take it that seriously but this video has changed my mind on that.
I also didn't know Marrows and Courgettes were the same plant - ironically too because I hate courgettes and love marrows.
I expect that a well grown crop of swede will out compete almost anything, but the little-and-often harvesting approach with chard adds up over time, and we get food over a much longer part of the year.
As a Biosystems Eng. student I love this video and the effort you put in taking the data
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Thanks for posting this video. Using data to maximize yield is something that I'm incorporating in my garden this year. Your videos are an inspiration.
Glad it was helpful!
Data driven decision making. Smart. As much as I like it, I do almost none of that myself. I'm not ashamed to steal your learnings and benefit from them though :-) Too many computers during the work day for me to stomach them with my hobbies of living history, fife and drum music performance, driving/repairing old British sports cars (Austin Healey Sprites/Midgets) and gardening. All hobbies distinctly lacking computers. I keep saying my next job will be fish farmer but I suspect you need computers to do that too.
Steal whatever you can! 😀
I am glad that I have a reasonable balance of computer and physical and thinking activities in the work that I do.
My most productive crops are the ones the slugs don't like lol but leafy greens and chicken eggs are the best yeilds so far. Plus berries. But I forage for those. I'm trialing mashua this year, they are nasturtium root crops and I'm trying mint roots called Chinese artichokes. They produced more than my potatoes in our rainy cool summer last year and now I have enough tubers to plant out for harvest from just one tiny tuber.
Yep, the most productive crops are the ones the pests avoid!!
How do you eat chard? Do you only eat the leafy part or can you eat that colourful stem too? I only tried it once in a sandwich but the leafy part was too thick, almost leathery and the white stem was very stringy... I've heard it is a very healthy thing to eat but have no idea how to. 😕
We generally cook it, either in soups and stews, or as a separate side dish. I often chop up the stems and cook them a bit first (either stir fry or steam or boil) then about half way through cooking add the chopped up greens which need less time cooking. The simplest way I find is to steam/boil them in a very little bit of water, drain, then add butter, salt and some lemon juice goes well I think. makes a nice side dish of vegetables.
"If we learn to love chard..." I'm not sure why so many people don't have a taste for chard. We grow a variety also known as "perpetual spinach," it's delicious and robust, and works equally well cooked or as part of a salad.
It seems to have a taste that people find 'earthy'
I have not seen that technique for planting tomatoes sideways. Interesting.
I use it when the plants get too tall, as I find it easier than digging a deeper hole.
Very nice :) I love to see your data! I would love to see how the picture would change if looking at time instead of space. I also wonder how the picture would change for different macro- and micro-nutrients. For example, I presume chard has some micro nutrient but is mostly water. On the other hand, garlic is quite caloric. In all case, very good food for thoughts thanks :)
Chard is actually rated very highly in terms of nutrient density (check out Di Noia and ANDI if interested).
Thanks! As you mention, there are so many different ways to look at growing vegetables, yield is just one of them.
@@ximono Yes. I dropped that issue from the video (was in a rush!) but it is important to note that both chard and turnip (especially the leaves) are really nutritious, and contain the range of nutrients that many of us are missing from our diets.
@@ximono Thanks! You're comment prompted me to check its calories too, it is quite impressive. Almost equal with potato and higher then garlic 🤯 Who knew chard was so nice!
*Wooow my friend RED GARDENS!!! But must admit that the quality of your video is TOP, it's a pure delight to watch your new video releases, as they are very informative, and your channel is one of the best in this field, thank you for your kindness to share this knowledge you have in gardening, happy gardeniiiiiing!!!*
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Very interesting insights! You could also take into consideration the nutrient density of the crops. Weight is an important metric, but it's the nutrient profile that matters in the end. For example, cucumber is low in nutrients compared to chard. The yield per m² might be the same, but chard could be 10x as dense in nutrients as cucumbers.
To get some numbers on this, I've looked at sources that score vegetables by their nutrient profile. Based on those numbers, you could calculate a "harvested nutrients per m²" score, or what I like to call the "nutriciency" (nutrient efficiency) of the crop :)
The idea is simple enough, but it gets complicated quick. The sources use different algorithms for calculating the nutrient score, and they seem to disagree on some vegetables. For example, protein and carbohydrates may be undervalued, probably because they assume a modern diet already high in carbs and animal protein. And I haven't found a source that covers all the vegetables I'd like to grow, making it difficult to produce a complete list. It's also not clear if they include all edible parts of the plant, like the leaves of turnips.
To work around some of these issues, I've started on a spreadsheet that calculates a weighted average of the different scores, and combines that aggregate score with my expected yield to calculate the nutriciency per m². But the quality of the output is only as good as the input (GIGO), and I'm not confident about either the sources or my rough yield estimates. Ideally, I'd make my own algorithm for calculating a nutriciency score, based on nutrient profiles from a realiable database (like Frida from the National Food Institute of Denmark). Or better yet, calculate different scores for different nutrient groups (vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, fats), like the player profile in football games. Because it's not about finding the "best" plant to grow, but about understanding the nutriciency of the harvest. It would be a tool to help me decide on which crops to focus on in order to produce a harvest that's highly nutritious, providing a balanced diet overall. To maybe grow more chard than cucumbers, for example. Unless you really like cucumbers :)
The best sources on nutrient density that I've found are Di Noia's paper "Defining Powerhouse Fruits and Vegetables: A Nutrient Density Approach" and the more compehensive Aggregate Nutrient Density Index (ANDI). To take the example of cucumbers and chard, ANDI rates cucumber as 87/1000 and chard as 895/1000. Di Noia doesn't include cucumber, but rates chard as 892/1000, very close to ANDI. On the other hand, while ANDI rates kale as 1000/1000, Di Noia only rates it as 491/1000. And neither of them rate important crops like beetroot, potatoes, beans or peas. If anyone know of any other good sources, feel free to drop a comment.
Other aspects you touched on is time (in the ground) and space (3D). Those are also important to consider, as it really affects intercropping and succession planting, and therefore the potential yield per m². I did find an index from the National Garden Bureau (NGB) that rates vegetables by total yield per square foot, average value per pound and length of time in the ground. But I'd much rather make my own solution, ideally one that visualises the "spacetime" of the crops rather than reducing it to a score. I am a (recovered) programmer, so I'd really like to work on something like this. If only I had the time (or money, in today's society).
Extremely thoughtful.
It even gets more complicated when you factor in marketing & sales. Assuming you are not farming for subsistence/survival, you have to consider the likes/dislikes of your customers and their culinary skills (or lack thereof.) My gowers group does sales & giveaways. Hard to do either if the customer or the recipient doesn't know what to do with your nutrition packed veg because it is unfamiliar/weird/outside of their traditional foodways. We started inserting recipe suggestions using likely ingredients they have at home.
@@flatsville1 Absolutely. When market gardening, you should always start with what your customers want and work from there. I'm growing mainly for my own family, so my focus is on our dietary needs and what we like to eat.
I like the idea of inserting recipe suggestions! I feel we need that for chard and some other crops we're not used to :)
@@ximono I have "issues" with chard. Can't fool me with "rainbow" colors. When you find that great recipe, drop it below. 😉
'Nutriciency' - I like it! Nutrients are definitely something to explore, but I think your point about it being a simple idea that gets complicated quick is the key issue for me. I have explored some the ideas you talked about, and one thing that I kept coming back to the fact that it got way to complicated when all most people want to do is just grow some vegetables. It felt like a rabbit hole that only a few people would follow me down, but it would be interesting to explore some more.
The other key issue I kept running into was this idea of there being a general or universal nutrient density or profile for each vegetable. I think this is fundamentally wrong, as the variety, growing conditions, fertility profile of the soil, climate, plant stress, growing method, etc can all significantly change the nutrient profile, and not in a uniform way. I suspect that with really good soil and practices, some of the vegetables that I grow could be dramatically more nutrient dense, but other vegetables would not show as much of a response. All of the other work that I do in developing the soil, and caring for the plants is geared, in part at least, towards producing vegetables that contain way better nutrition. So it felt to me that we could only use the 'typical' values for any analysis like this, but by doing so would have to ignore some of the fundamental differences, and I haven't been able to figure out how to get around that.
I think before I went down this path again I would first want to get a load of detailed nutritional analysis done on different types of vegetables, including samples from different gardening methods.
Thanks for poking that part of my brain again, and for providing additional insights. I will have to look into the ANDI.
That is some excellent data, in the American Rocky Mountains chard and turnip both dominate here too. But I rarely get the yields you get as a general rule, then again you have access to much better bulk compost than the farm I work with. Purslane is another plant, generally treated as a weed, that is nutritious easy growing and extremely productive.
Winter purslane is an amazing plant to grow during winter, even in freezing temperatures (if you have a polytunnel or greenhouse and use hoops with fleece over).
It does grow quite big with all the fertility of a smaller garden. I haven't a lot of experience with purslane, but want to try growing it more.
@@ximono The sort I know is just the summer frost tender sort of purslane. Honestly it is so dominating a plant that the idea of one that can grow in cold weather too sounds daunting. Though I recall hearing tell before that there are kin species that grow in the cold well, but I never tried growing any of them just yet.
Great video, really glad I found this channel a couple of weeks ago. One comment I would add is that you need to factor in the water weight to these yield calculations. Can we really make a weight-for-weight comparison between watermelons and hazelnuts? One is 99% water, the other is 1%. At the end of the day we are aiming to grow food not water. Something to consider :)
Yes good point.
Hello Bruce. I just came from the recent seed video, great one (I need to buy more seeds and put them in my freezer). I appreciate you and your work!
Wonderful and important work you do here. You mentioned about garlic being a much needed crop, indeed it is. About not being productive in respect to weight, but how much garlic one needs in comparison to other crops.
Of course I’m looking at it in the way is used. I may be able to eat a whole cucumber in one seating but most definitely not a whole garlic (I may use a whole garlic per week?)
Just saying. ☺️
I command your work always, thank you! 😉💗👍🏼
I love chard. Some of my favorite chard recipes are Mexican. I really like turnips too.
Kudos to you on collecting and analyzing all of your data! Very interesting.
How you have time for all of this? I don't know. So cool. I would say that actual value of crops is more relatable than kilos per square metre? I'd rather eat a kilo of peas then a kilo of cucumber that's for sure.
Thanks. Value is another metric, and an important one, but would need another video.
@@REDGardens hey I think you capture a lot of important metrics and it's great content to watch you go over every aspect of growing vegetables.
Too bad chard is disgusting. How so you eat it? Maybe I am doing it wrong
Chard and turnips. Who’d have thought. Well done on the data harvesting.
Thank you for the Swiss Chard idea - I was always afraid to grow it due to possible slug damage, but I will give it a chance to prove itself worthy :)
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I do like chard i prefer swiss tho it is more multi useable and goes well im smoothies as well as idk a chilli
Thanks for sharing your videos
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You are like a spade Samurai!
Haha!
Great stuff! Amazing work. My suggestion: you should have a table for "stomach happiness" so the lighter crops can compete :)
That is a good metric!
Blend Chard leaves into your daily juice. We cut the stank from the leafy part and run it thru the juicer.
It's actually nutty how man ingredients are in our daily 32 Oz juice.
We make enough in one eve to last 5-7 days.
Juicing would definitely help increase consumption!
Chard is so underrated. They are currently cropping in our urban veg co-op, the leaves are superb in stir fries, in curries, and as a spinach substitute. Hardy with few pests. Hungry gap filler too.
It is so underrated!
link to sheet?
Sorry, can't really share that.
Another great thought provoking video Bruce! It got my wife and I asking the question 'If we could only grow one crop what would it be'? Tomatoes, beans and beets were the front runners just because, in Canada, we can't buy good ones in the store most of the year. We settled on beets though. You can get a slightly longer harvest period from them as long as you eat beet greens. There are so many ways one can measure the value of a crop. Thumbs up... again!
Yes, there are so many ways to measure the value of a crop, and yield is just one of them. If I could only grow one crop, in the outside gardens, I think it might be beets as well, as they are so productive, nutritious, and we can eat all (or at least most) of the plant at any stage in its development.
Turnip does extremely well here in Newfoundland too! I feel like you'd love Land and Sea, it's a program on culture here in NL that's run for decades. I think all of it has been uploaded to TH-cam, watching stuff on farming and gardening techniques as early as the sixties is super fascinating. I learned that farmers here used to (still do? Don't know!) cloche entire crops of individual turnips to get a jump on the season.
I am not surprised that they grow well in Newfoundland. And I also find the cloche definitely helps.
Did you consider dry weight or calories per weight in terms of yield ? Example cucumbers are mostly water and not very nutritional
I haven't. I usually consider vegetables more for flavour and broad nutrition, not really for calories, but it would be interesting to see how the different crops do compare.
Turnips are something I've never really considered. Storage is one of my concerns, and I understand they store well. I may have to try swapping out a potato bed with turnips next year. I also grow spinach all winter under low poly tunnels for fresh greens, but now you have made me think about swiss chard, which I have never grown. Thanks, Bruce, as always, for expanding my gardening horizons!
There are a number of different vegetables that are called turnips. The swede/rutabaga/turnip/irish turnip do store very well and grow over a long season. The Japanese/French/Salad turnips that I was mentioning are more for eating fresh. I am not sure how well they would store. They are more of a little-and-often kind of crop which grow and mature quickly, and get too big soon after that. Chard is definitely worth trying.
Another great video, I love the analysis and thought processes that you share, always an inspiration for my own gardening journey!!
Obviously different metrics have varying importance to different growers, which is fascinating. I dedicated a year to weighing and measuring everything that we harvested from our family garden, as well as noting the current “in season” purchase price at the supermarket. I found the ultimate dollar value of harvest to be very informative, as it quickly showed me where the greatest savings could be had, and which things were not really “worth” growing from a financial perspective. We grew $320 worth of strawberries and $13 worth of carrots in the same sized area. Although I never would have spent that much at the supermarket buying strawberries if we didn’t grow them, it showed me the possibilities, and I dedicated a second bed to strawberries… we can buy carrots!
That is very interesting. I suspect that there is a lot of things I would change in our planting plans if I used that kind of evaluation. Really useful in a situation where space is scarce.
Fantastic video. What's the hybrid variety of turnip you grow?
They are called Tokyo Cross F1
Other commentators have argued for overall measurements of calories, and you have used weight. It is not surprising that 'watery' veg like cucumbers, potatoes and tomatoes produce good weights. However we eat portions of veg, all that chard wilts down a lot in cooking, while carrots and swede don't. Also a heavy crop is not necessarily an edible crop. Using a sale value, may explain why brassicas are grown commercially as against chard. Chard doesn't last well once harvested so you won't find it in the shops, while for the gardener, the reliability of portions of food at the end of the garden is fabulous. A sale value, would give out of season crops value, even if they don't weigh, heavily. Winter brassicas are hardy and fresh, while tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers etc are not available in winter. Squash and parsnip comes into their own as they store well, and provide stomach filling meals in winter and spring. I prefer to eat fresh from my veg garden rather than my out of season, frozen veg. Also all that processing for freezing a glut, is such a chore. I pickled some cucumbers last summer but they don't spring onto my plate now, like PSB, kale, chard, sprouting brassicas etc.
All this presupposes you know the price of veg in your local shops, if available. I can buy 1kg chopped cavelo nero kale, but the midrib isn't seperated, I harvest the few leaves for a portion, strip the midrib out and wash, and repeat the next day. Much more tricky to equate, measure and calculate.
All good points. The kg/m2 is only one metric, and not necessarily the most important, but it is the easiest to use and doesn't involve the use of 'generic' levels of calories and nutrients. Essentially all forms of measurement and evaluation like this are flawed, but can still be useful if used appropriately.
"My husband hates turnips so when I got given a three pound bag of them, I experimented. Boiled IS yucky! Grated and fried in a little avocado oil and butter with a dash of salt is wonderful
They make chicken broth taste so rich it is unbelievable. Along with parsnips. I always add them to my bone broth. Since no one likes them I compost them but after cooking in stock it takes all the nutrients anyhow and just the fiber is left"
Sounds great!
This is the way forward. Sadly both are foods I never really loved... but maybe that should change! I'd love to see nutritional break downs, but I guess if you publish your data we can make up our own calculations.
Looking amazing as always!
Thanks. I have avoided the nutritional calculations, partially because it would make the video way too long, but also that I didn't want to rely on 'generic' values for nutrition. I am very confident that the range of actual nutrients available varies hugely within each crop, depending on how it was grown, etc. But, as you say, people can use the data to make their own calculations if they want.
Thanks for the video. There are so many ways of eating chard. We slice chard thin and add few slices of potatoes, and a sliced onion, a bit of turmeric, curry powder, a bit of chilli powder to your liking and salt to your taste, Add a bit of coconut cream and cook them all until potatoes are cooked. If you feel chard will overcook cook potato slices and other ingredients first, then add sliced chard.
Another way of cooking chard is slice them thinly and add onion, bit of curry powder, ground pepper, salt and desiccated coconut (about 1/3 of the amount of chard) heat in frying fan and mix continuously until onion and chard is cooked. Take the pan out from heat and add lemon juice to your liking. This is an oil free recipe. You will love both dishes.
Wow, they sound good. Thanks.
Very interesting Bruce. Couple extra add ons to add to the mix to complicate it even further might be the work hours per kg (tho think you do have this one someplace) the calorie content per kg or per m2 the nutritional value per kg or m2 and the medicinal value/ immune boosting quality etc. per m2/ hours spent. garlic and parsley esp jump to mind smaller yield but high value nutritionally and medicinally
Hi Majella. The hours per kg is tough to measure for each veg, as we dont keep track of how much time we spend on each crop, only on each garden. So I have that kind of info at a garden scale. With individual vegetables, it is more of an estimation. The calorie content, or som rather nutritional ranking would be ver interesting. One of the reasons I haven't gone down the route is I would have to use the 'typical' values, which are based on averages of industrial food, and don't reflect the actual additional calories and nutritional value that the well grown fresh vegetables would have. I'd rather not use inaccurate numbers, as they can distort things too much.
I watch a lot of youtube... too much even... but I've never subscribed to a channel before now.
I just sub'd because you produce the most useful content around: no fluff; no pushing useless gadgets or fads; just authentic perspective and hard data to help produce what we all actually need--food.
Ah, thanks for the comment and for subscribing!
To reduce the impact of outlier growing seasons, you can use the median instead of average. In terms of getting 1 number for grow more / grow less, you can chart crops as yield per week (yield / weeks) and grow more crops with the greatest yield over time. This doesn't take into account the seasonality of crops though... so needs some adjustments for succession planting.
It does start to get messy when trying to work with numbers like that. Median is likely better than average, though it still doesn't take into account when I have more recently improved the productivity of a crop through better varieties or growing practices.
I tracked yield data at this level year before last. I counted calories, though, and did less accounting for space. My best yield by far on that basis was winter wheat. Less than six hundred square feet of wheat provided about a third of the calories I got from the garden for the entire year, and that's including a decent amount of field corn I also grew during the summer. I would have to go back to my spreadsheet to be sure, but I think on a row-foot basis I actually got more calories from cucumbers than I did from potatoes. I live in a hot summer climate where potatoes do poorly and cucumbers do well. Of course, eating the potato harvest was easy and actually got done. Eating the entire cucumber harvest (as one person) was a challenge I wasn't up to.
That is really interesting. Eating enough cucumbers to get the calories you need would be a challenge for anyone!
Recently watched your seed retention video. This makes me curious how the seed output and *potential* future produce weighs in on productivity.
Interesting question.
That's cool! Have you ever fermented Chard like sauerkraut?
I fermented the stems once, but haven't tried the whole leaf.
Each time you post I find that your information is really focused and better than the last time. That says a lot as your videos are always focused and really valuable. We do not live in the same climate, yet your information is still valuable for any gardener's consideration. Your charting for time, crops and output needs a good read (for me at least) to be able to understand the information and how I can set up to do the comparisons for my crops and area. Is this information in printed form? If so, where might I purchase it?
My 1/4 acre orchard/garden is small comparatively, but the information you provide would certainly help me to be more productive. Thank you!
Wow, thanks for that comment! Glad I am getting better!
I can’t really share that document, too many person things in it that I don’t want to send around.
Onions,winter squash and potatoes are storage crops.
Are the hybrid turnips and beetroots storage crops as well?
The turnips aren't, but beetroot can be a good storage crop.
Very interesting analysis! Another person I follow is looking at caloric density of his garden produce (th-cam.com/video/ljjYbqIqdoA/w-d-xo.html). I would think caloric density and nutritive value both need to be considered together, especially when working towards being completely self reliant like the person in the link I included. Keep up the great work!
Thanks. Calories and nutrients are very important factors to consider, especially as you say you are seeking self sufficiency. One of the issues I have with this approach, is relies on generic values for the nutrient content and calories, but there are based on poor quality industrial food. It seems strange to me to put in the effort to grow the best possible quality, and then to evaluate them with generic data which I think would seriously distort things. I haven't figured a way around this.
Have you ever grown perennial kale or tree collards? We've started growing perennial kale, and the plants are amazing. We have harvested kale leaves for over a year, and in spring the flower shoots are like a sprouting broccoli. It can grow quite large, but its very productive, and can be propagated by cuttings.
Its a great famine food because it produces consistently year round. I would love to see how it stacks up against chard, because it seems to out produce the chard in my garden.
I haven’t tried perennial kale, but it would be interesting to grow it and to see how it compares.
Not to make things even more complicated, but I think you may also want to consider calories produced, and not just the kilograms.
That would make it a bit more complicated, but possibly useful for people who want to grow more of their calories, rather than relying on their vegetable gardens more for flavour and variety.
Can you do one for calorie per m2. This would be very interesting to know what provides the must filling food.
That would be interesting. One of the reasons I didn't do that (beyond making this video too long) is I would need to rely on the generic data for how many calories are in each vegetable, but that can be hugely different with different growing conditions.
There is some chat about trying to figure out the calorie density, nutrient, protein, etc. It seems to me that getting that exact would be some fancy science, and using generic data isn't very appealing. But a crude proxy measure to get a very basic idea of 'how much food is in a kilo or pound' would be simple dry weight. How much of the produce isn't water. A dehydrator and a decent scale could give a great estimate of that in nothing flat.
Hmm, that is an interesting idea for a proxy. I agree that using generic data isn't appealing, as it assumes everything I produce is poor quality (which is what the generic data is based on).
Did you record the hours spent on caring for each crop?
I think it would be really interesting to see which crop gives you the most value for your time.
If the goal is to feed the world sustainably there will be way more man hours needed for food production.
For example I started growing beetroot two years ago.
I just sow them in a quickpot tray two to three seeds per pot and plant them out when the have a few leaves.
With some mulch there is little weeding needed as they soon take up all the light.
No additional care is needed and in the fall you have a nice harvest.
You can also just leave them in the ground all winter, no need for complicated storage.
Or pumpkins which can be treated almost the same as beetroot and also store quite easily.
Compared to onions where you have to be quite diligent with weeding and have to start them very early (possibly the year before if you don't have an indoor growing space) if you grow them from seeds. Then you need to harvest them at the right time, dry them, store them etc.
Or tomatoes which need care at least once a week to take out the suckers and string them up. Storing them is also quite time intensive (making tomato sauce).
I have recorded hours per crop in the past, but it got way to messy in the context of these gardens. I agree it is a definite factor that needs to be considered. As you mention a lot of the time is outside the garden, in storing and preserving/processing.
I grow swiss chard, bright lights a multi coloured variety., but limit it to 2, 3-4 foot rows. That is more than we can eat, and a lot of people don't know how to cook it, so it's hard to give away.
It is hard to give away!
Do you eat the tomato leaves? They are edible and would increase your productivity. ❤️
I don't eat the tomato leaves, they are slightly poisonous.
What about relative cost to grow, in time, in money? Whether the food is more expensive to grow than to buy? Whether the nutritional value of say a cucumber is better than a cabbage or a strawberry? Which makes me ask who prefers cucumbers to strawberries?
All good questions, though outside the scope of this one video. harvest per area is only one metric, but perhaps the easiest one to measure. It is hard to measure value, as I would have to research what everything costs, and would I compare it to the cost of the cheapest crap available in the main supermarkets, or the 'good' organic stuff I can buy in the bougie food shop in one of the nearby towns. That would give a very different value.
Both cucumbers and strawberries have their place! It isn't an either/or situation.
I recently heard about a type of shard that is called perpetual spinach. Will try it this year. Supposed to grow continually without re-seeding.
I have tried it, which is essentially a type of chard that was bred to look more like spinach. I prefer true spinach, now the I have figured out how to grow it well, and grow the other types of chard with the larger leaves. But I know a lot of people who really rely on perpetual spinach.
I think doing weight (or calories) per meter-week would be an easier way to look at this vs the scatter plot. Meter week would be multiplying the area by weeks in the ground
Possibly, as it would give a singular value, though I like that the scatter plot shows the range of different crops, and able to identify when something is an outlier or where the typical cluster is.
Hi could you tell me the length, width and height of the polytunnel please, Thanks
One of them is 20m x 5m and about 2.2m tall. The larger ones are 20m x 5.5m and about 3.2m tall
how about the issue of how many calories you can get from these crops? As we know, cucumber is mostly just water.
Calories is an important issue, especially if you are trying to be self sufficient, but I felt would have made the video too long and complex. I also think that many people have no issues with getting calories they need from other food, but look to the garden for nutrients, taste and variety, so calories are less of a factor for them. It is something I want to explore, although it means relying on generic data that assumes that all carrots are the same (I.e. poor quality) but I know there can be huge differences in the nutrients and calories depending on a lot of different factors. I haven’t figured out a way to get around that.
The issue with cucumber and chard is that they have a low caloric density which is why they are not staples and things like grains and potatoes are.
Most of the vegetables I grow are not staples, or grown for their higher calorie content. I generally grow them for their nutrients, flavour and diversity of diet.
Loved the thoughts and precision in this video! how do you plant the Japanese turnips to get such good yields :direct seed or starts? @ which spacing?
Thanks! I direct sow the turnips, often at 5-10 cm or 2-4" in a row and 25cm or 10" between rows
If only chard didn't taste like boiled soil, this would be an absolute winner with me
“Boiled soil” haha
Grow crops you want to eat, not crops you grow and have to eat. The latter is a recipe for misery.
True, but taste changes over time and with different experiences. For those of us that can learn to love really productive vegetables it becomes a lot easier to feed ourselves.
No wonder cucumbers did well. They're basically water ;)
True.
I eat chard most days. It took me about three weeks to get used to it… now I absolutely love it
That is the way to do it!
Woow Bruce what a cool video you did, you are the man.
😀
If only I could learn to like chard. It’s my brothers fave, so I feel like I should…
It has taken me a while, still can't say that I love it, but I do like it enough.
My 2 cents.......try steaming or boiling the leaves separately from the stalks (I tend to use the stalks in minestrone and ratatouille). The leaves are really delicious dressed with butter and soy sauce - trust me!! Also, the leaves are really tasty in a spanakopita. I think many people get put off by eating the stalks and leaves together. Bon appetite and I hope you join your brother (as long as there's enough to share LOL).
This would be way more interesting when calculating calories harvested instead of weight harvested. Afterall, it's not about the weight of food you consume, but about the calories.
I think in the vegetable garden is it more about nutrients than calories, we tend to get those from other sources. It would be useful to explore, but would need to depend on the 'typical analysis' found in mainstream conventional food, and there would be no way of knowing how much more, or less, the vegetables I grow would supply, without sending loads of samples off to a lab.
@@REDGardens Oh I see. I didn't realize most calories wouldn't come from agriculture.
But if it's about nutrients, what's the point of comparing weights when comparing apples to oranges? I guess I do understand that this way of comparison is simply the only one available without going overboard on the analysis.
Still, if you wanted, you could check studies where nutritional values of commercially farmed produce is compared to produce where best soil conditions are given. It's actually not that much more. From there you could go ahead and assume the % change for most crops and estimate. Also, when comparing your own produce, it doesn't even really matter if your vegetables hold more or less nutrients than the ones found in mainstream conventional food. Since it's about percentage differences between your own crops, the comparative numbers should be the same.
By the way, I love your channel and the videos you produce. I've binge watched them all for years. Keep it up!
@@ExProsiveGaming Most calories do come from agriculture, just typically not from what we grow in most vegetable gardens. Calories tend to be more suited to a field scale kind of production, whereas I think nutrients are better suited to local grow-your-own scale of production. But of course there are calories, protein and nutrients everywhere.
Yep, this kind of analysis is simply the easiest to use, and yield is important, but not the only metric.
6:18 Should this chart read "Chard" at the top left instead of "Swede"? Or am I misunderstanding / not hearing you right when you say Chard here but perhaps meant Chart?? :think:
Same at 10:28
Yes, a mistake I missed. It should have said chard, but I didn't catch the error in my rush to get the editing done late at night.
@@REDGardens thanks!
Japanese turnips are delicious!
I do like them!
Absolutely! But it’s all nothing without garlic.
Funny. Isn’t it.
Garlic is my favorite crop by far. A garden without garlic isn't a garden, if you ask me :)
Fun fact: The English name garlic stems from the Norse worse geirlauk, literally "spear onion". In the early 1000s, many Norwegians had a dedicated garlic garden ("laukgard"). Laws from that time said that if a man enters another man's garlic garden, he's no longer protected by the law. In other words, the owner could do whatever he wanted to the trespasser. That's how important garlic was back then.
Garlic is the easiest crop to be self sufficient in, as you can grow a years supply in a relatively small space.
@@ximono Interesting. Lauch is the German word for leeks and Germans are Geirman of course. :)
I really enjoyed. Thanks
🙂
I’ve been put off eating too much chard because of the oxalic acid content; I don’t want to overdo that if I can help it.
Hmm, I wonder how much is too much for many people?
@@REDGardens I suspect it’s easy for most people to balance things out if they go for a diverse range of fruit/veg and don’t just eat beets, chard, spinach and rhubarb at every meal.
Great information thanks.
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I love your videos - even if I'm a bit envious at your lush, bountiful crops! Here in Australia we're in a La Nina phase which means SOOOO much rain, little sun, and nothing is growing well - in fact, my swiss chard in raised beds died because of the excess rain. It couldn't happen at a worse time with prices of everything going up PLUS flooding has wiped out many market gardens leading to some veggie prices more than doubling! Thank-you for your thoughtful data - it's especially valued given the road ahead. Cheers!
Thanks! that sounds like a really tough spell of weather. Hope it settles soon enough for you.
For my first garden I was planning on inter-cropping beetroot, broccoli, spinach, and lettuce, but now I'm considering mixing in some chard. It's a cool, mild climate here, so I plan to try to keep it simple and learn how to grow a handful of crops well, before branching out. Love the charts, as usual!
Thanks! Learning how to grow a handful of crops well is a really good place to start, if you can resist the temptation to grow lots more!
A great video ,thanks.
I think that I’ll grow Swiss chard again this year after seeing you continually harvest it.
Hope it works well for you.
I never realized how productive swiss chard could be! After watching this I'm going to try and grow more. I've grown Japanese turnip here in Maine with great success and I think it's very tasty. The variety I've done the best with is Tokinashi and it germinated uncovered in my beds even when ice was still on the ground. Thank you for the great info and presentation as always.
The Japanese turnip are amazing! And chard just keeps going!
crazy, thats a lot of work
yes, and productive
Great video, you have had some incredible success in your journey and it's deserved for the effort you put in. I'm surprised you keep the tomatoes and cucumbers in the greenhouse, I've had huge yields outdoors although I have a garden pretty well protected from wind and an area that gets summer sun from sunrise to 7pm-ish. I'm trying corn with the cucumbers this year as a natural trellis with some peas/beans too as I want to make the best use of the square footage. The greenhouse remains for chillis only though.....and my mothers seedlings she sneaks in there when I'm at work😄
With the Irish climate, I think it is probably a waste of time to try to grow tomatoes and cucumbers outside, unless it is very well protected from the wind.
Chard can be pickled easily, either as a “refrigerator pickle” (no fermentation) or brining it, and letting lactobacillus go to work.
I haven’t made refrigerator pickles, but I did ferment a big batch of thinly sliced stems once. They were quite good.
amazing video as always. only just got to watch it, love how you broke down the yields and added the adjuster for the overshadowing. very useful given this context of the family grown plots projects you are running and the differing growing conditions. this data sets you head andshoulders above the rest. keep the excellent content coming
Thank you. Glad you appreciate the data!
amazing, that´s a lot of data
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Quite informative.
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Yep, came to the same conclusion. Found lots of recipes for chard, and love chard now. 🥳🦋
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I wish I could have done analysis like this, I tried doing it for inside pots but had difficulty
It takes a lot of work, and consistency.
As always very interesting! However, I was a bit surprised that you did not make an attempt to guess nutritional value. Calories at foremost but also the balance of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. I kilogram of cucumbers will not make a satisfying meal. 500g green beans will need very little additional incidents to make a nice meal.
Thanks! I should have mentioned the issue of nutritional value more directly, but it was way outside the scope of this video. It really depends on what you are looking for, and it is something that is very difficult to measure and compare, as it seems that nutritional content can vary considerably from the typical values that are published. I suspect even my cucumbers would be way more nutritious than the 'typical' but IO have no way of knowing that.
Calorie density seems more important to me than weight. Turnips, chard and cucumbers etc might produce more over a set period and space, but potatoes will make more calories (30-40k calories per 100 sq feet). Obvs you still have to balance calories with nutrient requirements. I try to grow 750,000 calories per 2000 square feet over the year. That means each 2000 square foot section of my garden can feed 1 adult. I have a family of 5 so I don't grow enough for us to live off (about 6000 sq feet in total for me and much of it non-intensive perennials like fruit canes and bushes). I'm growing around 1.2M calories per year atm but could easily get that to 2-3M with a bit more effort and making sure I had no bare ground. Still, having a set calorie target is useful for me if we ever need to feed ourselves completely. I wouldn't feel so comfortable doing my planting plans by weight until I already had the calories accounted for. Great results for you though at a glance. You're doing a wide range of crops in many different ways so my hat is off to you for what you've accomplished.
That is so cool that you are able to grow calories at that rate. And having the target of being able to feed yourself completely, if necessary, si a good one to explore. For me, and I think many other people, I rely on other stables that I buy in for most of the calories we eat, and the vegetables serve more as nutrients, flavour and variety. I assume that you use 'generic' info about the calorie density of different vegetables, and was wondering if you figured out how this relates to the actual calorie content in the vegetables you grow, as they are likely quite different. I am strongly suspect that the calorie and nutrient density of the vegetable that we grow varies considerably between the different gardens we manage, and don't know how to account for that.
@@REDGardens Yes, you're exactly right. I have to use generic results from tests on monoculture crops. Likely the nutrient profiles and calorie density are actually quite different IRL. I've not even been able to do it for 'varieties', so it's very much just 'potatoes, squash etc' for me. I'd imagine that most are far over and some are possibly even lower because of the heritage varieties I'm doing.
Overall I think aiming high is a good idea because I can always trade or gift my excess. I still buy in 95% of my meat (I keep some chickens), so I'm not self sufficient really (not to mention choc, coffee, sugar, salt etc). I suspect we'd be pretty unhealthy with little meat in the diet and preserving stuff would be a challenge if supplies stopped, even with so much good veg.
Still, it all gives me a feeling of some food security and helps me sleep at night with three young kids to worry about in a world gone mad
Thanks for all of your wonderful experiments and updates etc, I've learned some great stuff from your videos!
@@ashmash1934 The world is definitely going mad, and knowing that you can grow food to sustain your family and others if necessary is a real benefit.
@@REDGardens Yes, and as more and more wake up to just how crazy it all turns out to be, I predict that your subscriber list and view counts are going to have a meteoric rise! You are well ahead of the curve and veg gardening is about to become VERY fashionable. I think your local community are also going to grow more and more appreciative of what you've done there for them, in terms of added food security and quality. I just wish the context of your channel's impending growth wasn't so scary! Good luck my friend. And keep dropping pearls to help others on their journey. You do a great job!!!
@@ashmash1934 Hopefully! Thanks for the support!
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Great! Did you only plant for your family or you sell the most of your harvest?
Thanks! We sell the surplus to neighbours.
might just be my headphones but i kept hearing a short blip during your sentences, are there mic issues?
Yes, mic issues.
fyi sounds like a digital sample timing distortion. from this i surmise you are using a usb audio interface. if so, increase your buffer size to improve click.❤
@@davidmiedema2950 Hmm. I am using a new lavalier microphones, connected to an iPhone (with Lightning to a 3.5mm audio jack adapter). Not sure if I can adjust things, but thanks for the pointer about what to look for. I am planning to upgrade to a different camera soon-ish.
Dr we appreciate your effort with doing this research it's amazing and helps beginners.
Glad you found it helpful!
Thanks
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