I think fruit trees are absolutely the number one way to save money. The return on investment is out of this world. Speaking from experience of growing fruit trees for the past 8 years in my Suburban Backyard Orchard. I grow a ton of figs, apples, plums, cherries, and peaches.
@@terrisserose What's your climate? (USDA hardiness zone, precipitation level/pattern, length of winter ["chilling hours" is how that is measured in South and Southwest, where it is vital; but I supposein the extreme north, the converse problem of a very short growing season also restricts what you can grow to that which ripens early in the season, before frost screams "STOP"--for that the measure is probably # of frost free days), maybe humidity, the sun available to your containers?) Obviously smaller plants are easier to keep in containers. Usually that means berries (though mulberries grow on big trees so you'd need Geraldi Dwarf) though there are dwarfing rootstocks for apple (Budagovsdky-9 is excellent) and loquat (namely, quince). "Flying Dragon" trifoliate orange will dwarf Citrus a little, but I'd still stick with small types like kumquats, limequats, and calamondins (which may stay small on their own roots). You can't really dwarf a grapefruit. Peaches have some genetic dwarf types (not the best quality nor adapted to the limits of peach culture). Pie cherries have the University of Saskatchewan crosses that grow as shrubs. Obviously you won't be able to grow kumquats in cherry country without a greenhouse etc. Deciduous trees tend to need this thing called "winter" (hence the counting of "chill hours") and therefore do poorly in Citrus country. Heck, these days even Citrus is risky in Citrus country, because of the spread of diseases like canker and hualongbing (facilitated by our addiction to industrial monoculture agriculture).
Yes much better ROI then vegi gardens, most fruits only produce excess for short time then nothing for rest of yr, biggest handicap IMO. Citrus, Avocados and a few others may produce near yr round assuming multiple types of each. For me in zone 9a, farther NorCali, citrus is super easy and make fine hedge walls for privacy too, don't require excess water and zero pests except for ppl picking in passing my oranges along the road. I find that I can't buy berries, cherries, peaches, pears and more after home grown experience, they are not only expensive they are crap from the store. Blueberries I get for a couple months per yr of my small bushes, good ROI if you don't mind the picking time required and I need to add some acidifiers a few X per yr.
Yeah my son always gets strawberry plants, he don't like to eat them but likes the white flowers, 2 yrs ago He got one and I have saved it for 2 yrs from snow and heat, and they've survived and this year started to give us fruit 🍓 very tiny but very sweet 😋
As long as they don't develop root or crown rot, mine have thrived through 2 years with an abnormal amount of snow for Arkansas, like week long, foot of snow on the ground with no protection 😁
Economies are always going to fluctuate so it is wise to be prepared with food, water, cash, and such. If you buy only what you like then you will be fine but I also try to buy some things that my neighbors enjoy as well. For example, I started a raspberry patch about 15 years ago in my back yard. I started with 4 plants, a few years later I gave 6 to a neighbor who now has about 90x4ft curbside raspberry patch that he allows anyone to pick from without having to ask first. Goodwill is one of the most important commodities we can cultivate. If you live in a place where you don't have any outside area think about growing cherry tomatoes, herbs, edible flowers around your interior using the sunlight you have available and small grow lights. You can grow things in hanging planters as well as pots on your window ledges, etc. If you have a small balcony you can grow things there or you might be able to set up some grow pots on the roof of the building you live in. It doesn't hurt to ask. There are all kinds of edible "weeds" everywhere that can also serve as medicines. For example, I have wild lettuce, purslane, dandelion, and thistle in my yard. These are also growing in the big cities. Purslane can be found growing out of the cracks of the sidewalk as can the wild lettuce and dandelions. They are everywhere. These are all edible and the wild lettuce can be made into a pain medication. Get familiar with those in your area and learn how to use them in both categories mentioned. Learn how to make foods that can be dried and stored long term like pemmican, jerky, dried fruits and veggies (these can be done in your oven at a very low temp about 160 degrees for 12 or so hours - learn as much as you can on how to do that and the best way to store. I have a large food saver machine that I use. If you live in an urban or rural area (I'm probable preaching to the choir there), look for wild berries AFTER you have learned how to identify the ones that won't make you sick or kill you outright. I like chokecherries as they make great jam, jelly, and syrup. Also mushrooms are good to know about and you CAN grow them inside. Check out North Spore or search for "how to grow mushrooms at home" on YT. I started keeping bees this year mostly to help the apple trees and other fruiting trees and plants that aren't doing very well in my neighborhood. I will end up having to harvest some honey and that will go to my neighbors as well. There are now hives that you can actually keep near a window INSIDE your home so the bees can come and go as they please through a tube that comes in from the outside and you can watch how they are building comb, and so on. If you have people in your neighborhood that have skills you don't, figure out a way to barter so you can share your skills and help each other. Know and grow.
This spring I planted in my backyard raspberry bushes, blueberries, gooseberries, currants, elderberries and honeyberries. Some are just decorative, some will attract birds, most of them are for my family. And I'm sick of mowing grass, I'll keep planting anything I can - herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, even wildflowers.
Sweet potatoes (or yams) are prolific in warm climates. I find them very worthwhile to grow. Corn (though I love it) is probably one of the worst since it requires so much time, space and nutrients.
You can co plant bush beans and corn or pole beans and corn for nitrogen to feed them if you do pole beans or peas you have to unwind the pollen tendrils from the vines though
@@annak804 Works with grain corn and shell beans, since you harvest when the plants have died. Harvesting unripe crops like sweet corn and green beans without trampling your plants can be difficult in the "3 sisters" method. I would suggest crop rotation, biochar (because nutrients leach quickly at least on Sand in the South) and the addition of compost and perhaps burnt bones (phosphate) because nitrogen isn't everything, even for corn. Of course, dry beans and grains often have fungal issues in warm, humid climates. Corn smut is good, but aflatoxin can kill you.
Thank you for your honesty, I think many of us see these gardens and pets and see it so easy, but you're right it's not!! I am just barely getting adjusting to having my 3 girls, but based on that I want to try the berries because I think I can take that on. Oh may I add I do not have a green thumb so it's scary and I don't want to waste money you know. But I will try it and hope I can succeed 🙏 wish me luck!! Again thank you for taking the time in making these videos, very much appreciated.
If you plant fruit bushes (and fruit trees) you don't have to prune them, though some would say you'd get more fruit if you did, but you don't have to. When the girls eventually ask for rabbits/guinea pigs, buy chickens instead, they are much friendlier than most rabbits, and my children would often sit with a hen on their lap watching TV. Cochins, Salmon Favarolles and Orpingtons are all very friendly breeds (there are others I gather, but I've owned these myself).
Rosemary once tiny shrub size and in the ground is hard to kill if watered once a week no pruning needed. Berries once their roots are established are hardy. Bush beans are easy as well we grow the green bean type here and they add nitrogen to the soil for other plants to use so double duty. Remember chicken manure (any omnivore or carnivore) is hot and has to rot before being used on plants or it can hurt them, only vegitarian animals can give you ready to use manure.
Thank you for this video. I've canned and dehydrated food for years. This year I am focusing on dehydrating and powering all my berries, fruit, herbs and other veggies. Saves space and stores longer. Doing blueberries and Arapahoe black berries right now. Good stuff.
I've been growing fruits and vegetables in my small backyard for a few years which was a huge help during the pandemic as I didn't need to go out during the worst period. Been wanting to keep chickens too but I live in an apartment block and they'll probably be too noisy for the neighbors, especially a rooster. My next choice is quail but I've never eaten the bird nor egg and would like to at least taste the egg before I get my birds. Microgreens are a great idea, I have grown wheatgerm grass in the past and the juice tastes yucky but the superfood is very healthy as shots. Will grow some of the other stuff too this time, including baby spinach.
Quails have very little meat on their bodies. Their eggs are tiny and taste similar to chicken eggs but creamier due to the much higher yolk to egg white ratio. How about rabbits? If you acquire a compatible mating pair, they reproduce like crazy. The offspring are ready for butchering at only 8 weeks.
I was offered some free quail, but was advised to go and listen to them before accepting. They make an awful noise, so I said no thank you graciously. You don't need a rooster/cock bird, hens will lay without, and make great pets too if bought young. I wouldn't recommend it, as mine have the run of the garden, but I've seen people keep 2 hens in a large rabbit hutch. As long as you can let them out for a bit of exercise certain breeds are happier with captivity than others, so check out the breed requirements if thinking of a small run.
Quail need horizontal space chickens need vertical in their roosts so know what you are getting into with their housing and quail eat a vegitarian diet so their poop is garden ready vs chicken poop which needs to rot for at least 2 years to be plant ready as they are omnivorous. There are quiet chickens (all female chickens are quiet) and they feed themselves much easier than a quail can in limited area. Chickens will eat almost anything from seeds and veggies to a snake or mouse or rat. Study the birds you want find a place that sells them get the gear before the birds. Chicks ship best for chickens but you have to have food and electrolytes ready for when they arrive along with the propper housing for chicks, they cannot thermoregulate so they need a heat source. Be smart and prep so the birds do not suffer.
Asparagus! Not everyone likes it, but if you do and have the room, awesome. I started 25 seeds and they grew remarkable fast. The third year we picked about 2 pounds. The fourth about 5 pounds, fifth year, 10+ pounds (stopped measuring). Last year spread wood chips and Wine Cap Mushroom Spawn in Asparagus bed, same year picked 3 pounds mushrooms. Appreciate all your info
Side shoots can be harvested after the main head is taken from the broccoli plant. There's quite a bit that grows. We have a good variety of veggies. If I had to pick 5, eggplant, potatoes, peppers, onions, tomatoes. They all can be stored or put up and retain their quality. We grow everything that you mentioned except blackberries and micro greens. The greens look awfully good. We make maple syrup too. There are some commenters mentioning fruit trees, those are great too. Thanks for the video.
We easily saved $400 on strawberries last year during the season (not including what we were able to freeze for the rest of the year, or give away to friends/neighbors) - all from two plants that have created a patch. Our second most prolific honestly was our asparagus patch - sure, it takes three years to really take root, but from 12 crowns we had WAY more than we could possibly eat, and we frequently gave away to friends while also enjoying just a ton of fresh asparagus. That's of course a lifestyle thing - I want to eat asparagus every day so having 10-12 stalks to harvest on a daily basis was really great for our family.
I love zucchini! I cook up spaghetti sauce with cubed zucchini and onion, garlic, spicy chicken sausage, and mushrooms.. I bake it in the oven after cooking for about a half an hour on the stove to reduce down the sauce and thicken it. I learned this from a boss who was Italian and she also told me to put a little bit of sugar into the sauce. every person that has tasted this sauce, which I use for spaghetti or lasagna, absolutely loves my spaghetti sauce! I have my boss to thank for that. I've even made zucchini lasagna with the three cheeses required and I add greens when layering the zucchini.. like arugula, spinach, baby kale, Etc. It is amazing. I too make zoodles but also use it for butternut squash and various other things like potatoes and onions and even beats that have been steamed. I am an artist and the creativity is also part of my cooking not just my regular art lol! Thank you for this information and ideas.. it has really sparked my imagination now and boy am I going to have fun! BTW I've been growing microgreens for a long time now.. since they first became popular and I swear by them for nutrition and energy!
This is a great video! I would love to add longevity spinach in. I had issues trying to grow traditional spinach and I dont really like lettuce so I tried it and I love it! Way better for growing in hot areas and a perinneal! It will die back at around 25 degrees but comes back in the spring if you mulch around the roots, and it is super easy to propagate. Thanks for sharing 💜
I'm growing lettuce & spinach right now. I actually had my 1st harvest today and it made me so happy. Over the years I have (slowly) been growing the things I keep in my pantry:tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, etc. I live Seattle where space is not abundant so I grow a lot inside. I have my hydroponic system that I am in lo e with and container garden for now. My favorite and most successful grow has been lettuce and basil. The basil is my "hero" plant that has taught me a lot. I even grow it in my bedroom on the windowsill bc it is so pretty & have a polite temperament. Also it smells beautiful
Not sure if you mentioned Swiss Chard. Plant once in early spring and harvest through December in Zone 6. Leaves can be harvested when two or three inches and incorporated into salad . . . or allow to grow two feet and use the leaf part as you would spinach.
I've planted 14 zucchini plants , two 4x8 beds of green beans and yellow beans and 40 scarlet runners bc we LOVE beans and zucchini ( we make a ton of zucchini relish) my other more than most people would plant is celeriac, collards ,kohlrabi and butternut squash.
I’ve been growing blueberries for well over a decade in Nova Scotia and I have to say, I’ve found them the easiest of all the berries to grow. I grow blackberries, strawberries, gooseberries and many other types of fruit. We have bumper crops it seems every year of blueberries. We freeze tons of them and gouge ourselves on fresh ones. Rhubarb is also super economical because it’s perennial.
For me it's more of a convenience. To be able to walk out to my back yard and grab some vegetables, herbs is convenient. And, some lettuce for an Italian salad. Plus, turn on some Plácido Domingo and other Italian music, while cooking and eating.
We bought a $2.00 6 inch tomato plant. It is as tall as I am now! 20 tiny sweet little gems a day is a wonderful harvest. I plant spring, summer, and fall veggie gardens, making the best of our soil enrichment practice. Also helps us to rotate nitrogen fixing crops in my tiny urban plot. The garden habits I learned from my dad, who is 100 years old and still going. Eating fresh keeps you healthiest, I believe. In Connecticut we need to work hard to make the most of our growing time. I suspect you do, too. Love your videos. 🍁 p.s. wish I could have some Easter Eggers!
Great video! Just i hit subscribed. I will say one thing about lettuces; a head of Boston type goes for $3.00 (CAD) but I get 1000 seeds for the same cost. Assuming 50% make it to harvest, that's a half-penny per. Now we don't eat 500 lettuce a year. With succession planting, my family eats 1 per week and we donate about 4 per week. I think that's key to your video; those of us lucky to enough space to produce can have a MASSIVE positive impact on others
Tomatoes are definitely a must two tomato plants and we probably had about 50 lb of red tomatoes and still about 30 or 40 lb of green tomatoes before that early Frost hit. Love my beans and my sugar snap peas also corn sweet or dry and corn although if you plant Dent corn you're going to need to grind it for cornmeal but there is nothing like fresh sweet corn on the cob and those stocks double as a bean pole climber. One you didn't put in your berries list that I'm going to be trying this year is huckleberries specifically Garden huckleberries which are an annual you plant every year so those are going in the center of my strawberry area where the strawberry plants aren't planted so I have still some kind of Fruit Harvest for the couple of years it's going to take those strawberries to get established the goal for next winter it's not have to buy any Frozen or canned vegetables to use everything from our Harvest that I Frozen or processed myself
Crops such as herbs and chilies, which provide flavour more so than calories or nutrients, are sometimes underappreciated for how they can save you money and elevate your cooking. They can dress up really affordable staples, and save you on more expensive sources of flavouring like cheese or bacon.
Bramble berries (blackberries/raspberries) make good vinegar. Just put the UNWASHED berries in a jar, top them with unchlorinated water, cover the jar with a coffee filter and a rubber band and store in a cool dark place. In a week it will be foamy, in a month it will be sour like wine, in two monthsit will bw a weak vinegar that can be strained and bottled. The longer you keep it the stouter it gets.
Her favorite plants. 🙂🍀🌻💖 * Berries, all kinds. Diverse and many uses. * Fresh herbs. Culinary and medicinal uses. * Microgreens, homegrown. Fast & easy to grow. * Lettuces and kale. Kale being the better choice. * Prolific producers: tomatos, zucchini, summer squashes, beans, eggplants, peas, AND THEN PRESERVING FOR WINTER.. * FRUIT TREES 🌳 take time to get established, but are absolutely worth the time and effort.
Yes they pay off. Hubby’s grandparents had apple trees. Way more apples than a family eats in a year from just a single tree. They had full size trees. We’ve planted semi dwarf trees so we can harvest sooner and have more varieties.
@@bailey2777 In my experience, pears are slower than apples or stone fruits. Compatible varieties can be grafted on Quince (unless you are too cold for quince; z5 is probably the safe limit) for dwarfing and younger bearing. But Quince is highly susceptible to fireblight; if your scions are also, take no vacations in the danger season and watch for symptoms like a hawk. Prune off and burn anything suspect.
@@bailey2777 Pyrifolia types ("apple pears") are more precocious even though they aren't Quince compatible. I don't like them because they lack aroma, but they do make a good substitute for water chestnuts (sweet and crunchy).
It's not just savings, or taste, but much of the fruit/veg. sold in the stores are nutrient deficient!!! They do not have the same or anywhere near the density of nutrition that they had say a 150 years ago. The soils have become stripped of the nutrients, elements and nitrogen that normally should be there making mass production farms very dependent on chemical fertilizers which now cost a fortune due to war issues etc. If you can compost organically naturally at home and feed that healthy soil to your home grown veg. etc. you may look like you are producing less... but the nutrient density will be much higher. Therefore, you will be getting far more 'healthy nutrition' for your buck and effort. That in itself is far more important in the long run! So yes, grow your own garden but remember to augment your soil with good organic compost.
If u dehydrate your tomatoes and turn them to powder and THEN vacuum seal them the powder in jars, u can MAKE paste and sauces by adding water to the powder 2:1..... saves greatly on jar space and ur not using ur freezer.
Excellent advice particularly for people off-grid with photovoltaics who have electricity to burn in a sunny summer but might struggle to keep a freezer running through winter. The extra electricity to process the tomatoes is well worth it for not needing electricity to store them.
For the leg sized zucchini (when you skipped a day checking on them), make a soup base by boiling them with onion and garlic and pureeing it. You can can it or freeze it and then use it instead of water when making soups. It does not taste like zucchini but just a rich broth.
By far, the best investment is to teach your children to do all of this. I’m also planting things that I may never see a harvest from, but my daughter and her children will; it’s not always about supplying my needs, but theirs.
Exactly. Like Little House on the Prairie type stuff. But unfortunately, just like in the show, people gave up their farms and land to move to the city for “better” jobs. Some people were forced to. But we got played. Now look at us trying to save money by growing food. Lol. The irony.
@@JustOutHereTrustingGodNot sure if you have read up on the Industrial Revolution in England, but the destruction of the commons and forcing people off the land while tempting them into the city to be fodder for the factories was entirely intentional and an outlined and much discussed long term plan to destroy the self sufficiency of rural people who were seen as the main bulwark against the collection of power by the elites as they didn’t need anything from the government beyond protection of their rights. If really dark reading the words of the industrialists and the destruction of the commons and the evil plans they had for ordinary people who were quite happy with their bucolic rural lives. This whole dynamic was actual the basis for the Lord of the Rings which was written at the time, with the hobbits representing the happy, healthy self sufficient people of England in the shires, and the endless burning and ravaging of the lands at the hands of Sauron to feed the fires of industry were quite clearly the industrialists. The intellectuals and elites are the elves and wizards etc who either held themselves above, with their plans to simply depart to greener pastures, or came down on one side or the other. At the time there was both types of intellectual, some consumed by greed aligning and making the case for the destruction of the commons, and the other defending that which makes England what it was; the common people and their ways of life (represented by Gandalf and the elves who showed up to fight). Sorry for waxing poetic here, but it is extremely important to preserve what shreds we have left of the life and land that was our birthright, and to claw back what we can from the ever hungry maw of industry that wants to devour us all for profit. And to hand off what we have protected and regained to our children and theirs.
After spending some time in Taiwan- we learned to eat vegetables at every meal, even breakfast. We grow green and ruby Swiss chard along with several types of kale. We plant close and cut individual leaves while they are small. I would never buy the huge clumps in the organic section of our market. It is so very expensive and big and tougher. We grow 85-90% of our vegetables from a 35 by 50 foot backyard garden. Tomatoes, onions, peppers - we made 100 jars of salsa last year. It is our grandsons ‘favorite vegetable.’😂
that's a meal at our house, greens w/ garlic or onion and protein (which is often eggs). or basically the same but in a kimchi or kraut. save the bread or crackers for a snack if you need it later. I went shopping with a friend and forgot what it's like to be a "nightly" shopper (which I totally was once upon a time!) buying based on whatever looks good. So much energy. We have the same grocery list basically every week. When things run out of stock in our cupboards we replace them. I watch for the sale cycle of our essentials and get everything at a lower price. I don't buy for recipes, I cook from what I have in the cupboard. Nobody is wondering how to get dinner started. heat up the pan. Chop some onions and greens and we'll go from there.
Another benefit with berries is the longevity of the plants. I inherited my grandparents place. We are still picking blackberries from the same berry patch my grandmother did 100 years ago. A berry I don't see in stores but I love is black raspberries. These basically grow as weeds but are delicious. Pole Beans will take longer to begin bearing but they will continue to give fruit until frost (here in Vermont - very similar growing conditions to Wisconsin.
Black raspberries (blackcaps to some) are a favorite berry of my wife and myself. We've foraged bunches of them from local woods. More complex in flavor than red raspberries or blackberries. BTW, the reason they're practically nonexistent in stores is that their delicate, easily spoiled flesh doesn't tolerate shipping, so enjoying them when absolutely fresh is a must.
Bolting greens is a seed savers dream. Those seeds can be used to grow baby greens and micro greens thereby saving more money. Plus you know where the seeds come from.
And when you're growing sprouts and microgreens, you're not worried about selecting for plants that take longer to bolt. You're not selecting for a long harvest of repeat-pick leaves. You just want a big mass of seeds as quick as possible!
I treat my garden as both a soul filling hobby and a job. Jobs make money to feed our family. I just skip the paycheck and go straight to the food. Treating it as a job motivates me to make the time for gardening.
I’ve also found that butternut squash is insanely easy to grow and yields a ton of fruit. You can make an entire meal out of two big ones, and the shelf life is really long.
Winter squash is definitely a great idea, acorn squash is also very prolific. Requires quite a bit of space though as they run all over the place. Pumpkins would be great too, the smaller sized varieties, but with squash you're best off picking a single variety so that you can save the seeds for planting again since they will all hybridize with each other.
Its also very resilient to vine borer infestations...and has a long shelf life. I had one i ate that was almost a g3ar in the pantry...it wasnt as sweet prevuous butternuts but still perfectly fine to eat.
What I'm finding is that the growing a garden and chickens and trees, it's the overall time commitment that people need to be aware of; especially when you work full time and are single :) then, it turns into a few hours a night more sometimes....However, it's also nice that my salad is 100 feet away and my eggs are next to it.
This is true. I now get up at 6, spend several hours working in garden and taking care of chicks and dogs then same thing at 6 pm. I figure 4 hours a day. But I feel healthier for it, as a single lady it’s good exercise and good for the soul. Legs feel much stronger than before raising baby chicks, there’s a lot of squats required, lol. Also I guess weeding my 1/3 acre and putting down 80 bags of mulch by myself helped too. 😆
You need to work smarter, not harder. No time to weed? Use ag fabric. No time to water? Use a roll of drip tubing (not tape) and a timer. That way you’re only spending time planting and harvesting. Then you have all winter to pull plants and prep for spring.
I am pushing towards that myself. ( making a small tree cabin/chicken coop) once my son and grandchildren out grow it. I add more garden space every year and next is pear and apple trees. 😃....
I've explained to my neighbors when they ask about my garden that the experts always advocate eating local. It doesn't get more local than my back yard, now does it? There's just something so satisfying about going into the garden and picking dinner, and the flavor of the food is incredible compared to what the store has on offer.
for your leafy green, don'T forget swiss chard which are a good replacement for spinach and are cold hardy and don't bolt in the hot summer. They comes in many colors, very prolific and you can eat the stem and the leaf as 2 different produce. Also, try Bok choy, prolific, yummy, and you can plant it at different time in the season for a continus harvest.
Green onions! I use them so much and I started to replant the small part that I cut off the bottom of store bought onions. I planted them in my aquaponic growbed and they did so well. Also kale grows great in the winter in my growbed.
I cannot recommend enough to research easy to grow plants for your area…cucumbers are not easy in Florida! Neither are tomatoes unless they are Everglades Tomatoes. Research your zone!!
I think anyone who has a decent size garden should have chickens. They really go hand in hand. Chickens are omnivores so they will eat most of what kitchen waste you can give them and that reduces their own feed needs like you said. But the larger benefit is the amazing compost they make for the garden. It really is a winning combination.
And if you don't have enough space, try quail. My quails are arriving this week. They prefer smaller spaces anyway. I'm starting with 20. Besides eggs, they give compost, eat very little and are cute af
Problem is zoning/local government regulations. You have to check whether you're even allowed to keep chickens, and if you are, how many are allowed. Roosters will definitely be a no unless you're in the countryside, in a rural zone.
No, cuz you'll be giving cats, racoons, hawks, etc easy meals. There is more to it and a lot of ppl never find the "time" to do anything in the day of "neflix and chill", lol.
@@SY-ok2dq Ya need to put wire over their run to keep them safe. Also buried the wire around the coop and yard 2 ft to keep the diggers out. Haven't lost any and we have fox, coyotes, skunks, possum, porcupines, bear, eagles, and hawks. Use metal trash cans to store their food in so no worries with mice or rats.
I have found that growing many types of plants has improved my diet immensely. When I started growing eggplants for instance I had no idea what to do with them so I had to look up eggplant recipes. I made a moussaka last week that would knock your mousakka's off. I grew habaneros and had no idea what to do with them all and now I make fantastic hot sauce.
Moussaka is a favorite. Bien gon kabarta(sp) is heavenly too. This is an Indian dish the can be used as a dip or over rice depending how thick you make it
Yes agree. I think it's a good idea to set aside 10-20% of your garden for experiments and 80-90% for reliable producers. That way you can still scratch that itch to try crazy new stuff from the seed catalogue and expand your palette but you still have your staples as well. I found the quantity of vegetables that I eat increases a lot when I grow them as well. So while I almost never buy snap peas, if they're growing in the garden I munch on them all day and almost never have any left over for cooking. I think you need to experiment to find the sweet spot of things that grow easily in your area, that you like to eat, and that are worth the time and effort to grow, harvest and process into something. That won't exactly reflect your pre-garden shopping list, but agree that that's a good place to start to identify your staples. The other way to come at it is "What's hard to get at the store where I live or is poor quality at the supermarket because it doesn't travel or store well?" For me it's chili peppers other than one or two types, ingredients for Thai food like kaffir lime leaves, turmeric, and lemongrass, and fruit like feijoa, elderberries, and gooseberries which are delicious but just don't travel well. So a better use of my precious garden real estate can sometimes be more unusual varieties than onions which are so cheap at the store but take so long to grow and apples where you have to stay on top of pests so much.
@@shanghaiallie There are quite a few disease resistant apples around, especially heritage varieties. You need to know which ones work in your area though. Rootstock is important for your soil type.
You are also saving on plastic waste, I am shocked at how many plastic clamshell cases and plastic bags are used for fruits and vegetables. It’s gotten worse since Covid.
Other than berries, these definitely wouldn’t be on my list but it is a great thought experiment everyone should work through. I’ve narrowed my garden space down to only to grow items that produce a lot of calories and are hugely successful in my area such as potatoes, beans, corn and tomatoes. My list: 1) Apple trees 2) Potatoes 3) Beans 4) Tomatoes (paste for pasta sauces) 5) Berries Bonus item: giant sunflowers for snacking/winter chicken treats
Good advice here. A year, two years will come and go whether you plant berries and trees or not, so you might as well get some in the ground. That's how I see it, anyway. Plus, you can propagate them to sell or trade. I do want to push back on the lettuce thing a little bit though. Yes, lettuce does bolt quickly when the temp goes up, but it's like $10/lb or more to buy in the store. Lettuce seed is super cheap, and it can be ready for harvest in 30 days. Every week, sow a week's worth, and keep on a 30-60 day rotation, and it ends up being a huge money saver. Kale certainly has it's place, but if that's all I have to make salad with, I'm probably not going to eat much salad; Especially in the summer when it turns bitter. Just my two cents. Great content! Thank you!
This year, I'm incorporating wild edible food (AKA weeds) into parts of our garden. For example, I'm not taking out Lamb's Quarters (wild spinach) and dandelions that are growing in several parts of our garden; instead, I'm letting them grow and multiply. I use them for smoothies and salads.
me too. I left the dandilions in my raspberry and gooseberry beds so i could try them and see how they taste- the ones in the lawn are unedible as we have a dog. I tried my first dandilion flower this year, as i didn't know they were edible.
Every part of the dandelion is edible, and the plant is beneficial to the garden since it draws up nutrients from deep underground. You can cut the bitterness of mature dandelion leaves by cooking them with vinegar or lemon juice.
Sweet potato greens - tasty, very productive, and grow easily from cuttings. Pumpkins - so easy to grow, and easy to store. Cherry tomatoes seem to get less-affected by the bugs than the big ones (or at least there are a greater number of undamaged tomatoes)
What I find worth the time, energy, investment is Louisiana Purple Pole beans. I planted two 40’ rows last years and canned 80 quarts beside what we ate fresh. I grow lots of tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers for pickles, peppers of multiple varieties I either can them freeze them eat them fresh. I grow lots of herbs, a lot of them will overwinter here in N Mississippi. There is so so much more. Plant something, start somewhere… it’s addictive! Blessings y’all
Purple “pole” peas… I believe you mean purple HULL peas and as a Louisianan I second that they are easy to grow(if you can keep the deer out of them) and delicious. I blanch and freeze mine instead of canning.
I doubt anything cucumber-ish is nutrient dense, but sometimes the cooling snap is just pleasant and experimenting with pickle recipes is fun. Anyway, I have found Mexican sour gherkin (Melothria scabra) to be much more resistant to fungal diseases than are cukes. (Don't plant the native Melothria pendula though--it is "the mother of all laxatives.")
I'd add potatoes to the list cause you can grow so much in a small area. It stores a long time if you store them properly. Not very nutrient dense, but they are calorie dense as far as plant foods go. Also I like your perspective of "things may or may not get better" for the simple fact that you see a future beyond this fall. I've heard many many people talk about how this fall will be the big one and everything is going to crash and burn and we're all gonna die etc etc. I'm being hyperbolic, but I like to hope that we will have a few more years to get some things established for food security. Cause this is my first year growing food and let me tell ya it isn't enough. 😅 Thanks for reaffirming my desire to grow a ton of fruits.
Great point on potatoes! And they actually ARE quite nutritious. Not many people know this but they are exceptionally high in a very valuable kind of protein. It will never substitute animal protein but my point is, don’t overlook the humble but powerful potato as a source of good carbs, calories and a suplemental protein! 🥰🥰
Potatoes have lots of nutrients! This is our first year gardening also. We're growing corn, green beans, and peas in an old 10 x 18 dog kennel(to keep the deer out of the corn), and have 2- 4 x 8 raised beds with tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, eggplant, and other veggies in them. We're also growing some things in containers. We want to do so much more, but also don't want to get overwhelmed in our first year. We'll do a few more raised beds next year.
Just be sure NOT to vote for Marxists aka Progressive Democrats and We WILL get through this... "Remember We are ALL in this together" so long as you vote and think accordingly like us (The Progressive Mantra)
@Cindilas I think we're on year four. We're just now starting to produce what you might call "some" food from our own garden. This is mostly due to laziness in weeding and watering when it's 157 degrees outside. Keep it up long term and you'll see results!
It's hard to live on only vegetables - unless the vegetable is potatoes. Outside of potatoes you're pretty much stuck with grains, which require a LOT of processing to get to be ready for the table. I recently saw a video about Jerusalem Artichokes as well, supposedly they yield even more than potatoes in terms of calories per acre, and they supposedly store incredibly well just left in the ground until you're ready to dig them up and eat them as needed.
I planted 4 blackcurrant bushes 11 years ago and haven’t touched them since, except to harvest. They grow in thick weeds and produce enough for apple-blackcurrant compote every breakfast for the year. Best garden investment ever!
Loved this perspective and your thoughts. Made me think about your berry plants comment and that an another bonus is you would eat more berries than you might buy. I might not buy raspberries each week due to the ccost (more of a treat), but I would have no problem eating a ton (literally) of berries if they were "free" from my own bushes. Gotta run... and check out more of your videos!
The newest item I am growing this year to save money is asparagus. I found out that it will come back in its own every year for between 20-40 years! I bought 2 year old crowns and it was a bit more work getting their bed ready, as you have to add sand etc. And you cannot harvest the first year. But asparagus is very expensive and we love it, so it’s worth the extra work up front.
We have had asparagus that was planted by my now passed away in laws. I have lived on this farm 50 years & my husband was born here & he's 78. So it has longer life than what you stated by far. It's not in a garden spot but along our property here & there whereever it was planted.
It is a seasonal crop (spring only, but occupying space year round). If you are short on land, greens like kale, chard, amaranth (spinach substitute for warm weather) or in z8b+ chaya or moringa will give you more food/nutrition.
I ploughed up my 10 year old asparagus bed and planted perennial rye grass...now a 1000 lb. jersey cow grazes there and gives me 5 gallons/day and a beef calf once per year. The asparagus bed was miserable to maintain. The cow is pure joy...
Have chickens (need more though), 3 of my 5 have started laying. I'm in Australia so this is our low season for gardening, but I've got broccoli & cauliflower, lettuce, parsley, strawberries. I'm looking forward to September when I can start all the summer crops.
Saving money? I don't know, but there is something to be said about cooking and just stepping out the door tu pick whatever the recipe calls for. I am 100% with you regarding the herbs. I think it is part of a way of life. We almost never go to restaurant, but we work from home. This whole pandemic has been a great beneficial change for a lot of people (unfortunately not for all...)
Depending on your climate Peaches/Nectarines are heavy producers and fruit often next year. Plums and Apples can produce the following year. Figs and Mulberries can also fruit the year you get them.
In Australia a bunch of spinach runs circa $9.00 at the supermarket. For the last 12 months I have had a small 2 metre X 1 metre patch where I have grown English spinach, OMG what a saver, I go out every could of days and just trim off a whole bunch from the plants and they are prolific, they just keep growing back and so now I have greatly improved my diet and saved a lot of money. Great video, thank you, everyone kids themselves about not having time, get off social media, turn off the tv and go get some garden therapy while enriching your well-being and wallet.
It's also really easy to forage for greens. Often the weeds that grow in your garden are more healthy than the greens that you plant. Also you can harvest extra, dry it and supplement your chicken food in the winter.
Peterson's has some very good books for each state or area. Edible Wild Plants, Medicinal Plants and Herbs. Build yourself up a library on similar books.
@@PatrickKQ4HBD Pretty much, yeah - but it's healthier than hay. My chickens adore dandelion leaves (dried or fresh). Sometimes I freeze our leftover berries to give to them in the winter, if I have room in the freezer. Apples keep pretty well overwintered in dry, cool conditions too. I leave them separated from one another in cardboard trays in our garden shed. I just keep a close eye on them in case rodents come (thankfully ours is quite well sealed up).
Foraging is a big part of my survival system but growing things is another part. You should have multiple means in acquiring food. Survival cares nothing for ego, infact ego is often counterproductive to survival. Don't rely on only one means to aquire food.
I live in a very similar climate to you. I grow my lettuce and leafy greens in a window box that's shaded most of the day and then use the cut and come again method. I get to harvest all season because they get bright light but no direct sunlight so they don't get too hot ☺️
Think animal feed also. Pigs can eat almost anything out of the garden. I can't wait to see what the pork is like after eating pumpkin squash cukes tomatoes Mellon and anything else we can feed them.
ATTENTION Kathalene------ For the first time this year we planted Ground Cherries. Ground cherries are a winner for us in our zone 6b.. They produced an overabundance of fruit up to our first frost. If you have never tried them. Please do so. You can plant them under your fruit trees. The 3 x 3-foot plant hugs the soil. It doesn't get over a foot high. Thanks for everything you do. You helped me in my first purchase of chickens 2 years ago. -- Ray Delbury Sussex County NJ USA
Great video! So helpful! Another idea for easy fruit for jam or jelly is serviceberry tree.. if you have time mid June to process them. It’s a one time harvest. Delicious right off the tree too. Plant in high traffic area to discourage birds. Another easy green to plant spring summer fall is tatsoi. It will make its own seeds easily and can take both heat and cold, dry or wet.
I agree...we are looking at a "long haul" regarding the economics situation. It's great to walk out in the garden in the mornings and eat fresh strawberries and blueberries. Even my dogs will carefully pull off the ripe berries. Beans are very important and I grow lots of them. Great in soups! Mulch well which cuts down on weeding.
Really good reasoning and explanations; thank you! I'm too lazy to scroll through the comments to see if anybody already mentioned that one way to control zucchini/summer squash is to use the blossoms, not just the fruits. They can be fried, stuffed, roasted, used as pot herbs, or just dropped into salads.
Also bear in mind that all crops are at least somewhat climate specific. Grow what grows and produces well on your land. Raspberries don't do well in the Deep South, though the tropical black raspberry Rubus niveus can be kept alive from zone 8b south using sprinklers or other frost protection (they need 20F+). Northern ones, red or black, just die.
@@annak804 Normally "Deep South" refers to the Coastal Plain. Mountainous areas obviously have their own microclimate based on altitude and even wind patterns. If you can grow raspberries other than Dormanred, rejoice. If you can only grow Dormanred and actually like it, more power to you. (I found Asian raspberries watery when I worked in China, and find their half-descendent not much better, but tastes differ.) There are in contrast many blackberry and dewberry options throughout the South though some of the most reliable types for the extreme south (like "Brazos") are old, thorny, and not often sold in national catalogs. I would say blackberries and mulberries are fairly dependable if you pay attention when choosing the cultivar, and raspberries are a gamble at best, unless you have a weird microclimate that also allows rhubarb.
@@erikjohnson9223 Ha, I was about to reply that I'm so excited about the raspberries surviving, and thriving here. lol Nursery called them Dorma Red, but suspect it's the same thing. I'm over the moon to finally eat raspberries after being without any for decades. Looks to be on death's door after spring gets done with it's rollercoaster, so no point bothering trying to get two crops, but still sends up canes every year! Dewberries were my top favorite berry growing up. Had considered seeing if my family could dig some and we'd get them on a visit. Decided against it, as I didn't think they'd handle our whiplash springs up here in 8a. Amaryllis seemed very week to spring, and I was scared to try anymore transplants. (Later found out most people grow those indoors up north, but we don't really do indoor growing.) Our very thorny but tough blackberries are too far out to get water to them. So some years they are tiny rocks and every so often a good year comes through and we have great berries. Mulberries always seemed like a northern thing, but I've been reading there are some that can take the heat, humidity, drought, and spring flash freezes.
One thing you should mention to people who are planning to grow their own microgreens is to be sure to plan out the watering schedule since they need watered fairly heavily every 12 hours without much margin for error. This makes growing them tough if people have a variable schedule 1-2 days of any given week where they are gone from their house for more than 14 hours at a time. 🤘💚 We started our tiny vertical farm 2 years ago and sell microgreens to our local community through farmers markets and roadside market resellers. We just went open source a few weeks back and all are welcome. We are posting all our methodologies for everyone to use, get inspired by, etc. ✌️🌱
POTATOES! I've experimented a lot with potatoes. It seems best to leave them in the ground over winter and just harvest a little from an area as you need. Leave some there that will grow back next spring. They do great in a shady location like under a tree because it helps them retain lots of moisture. They will flourish in full sun too but they require excessive watering or excessive mulch for water retention (+nutrient bonus). A location with lots of indirect sun or just a couple hours of direct sun exposure will be adequate for moisture retention. I'd suggest: Layer 1.Bury the potatoes. Optionally mark their locations with sawdust or other material. Layer 2.sticks and twigs (easily gathered from an open tree forest with a rake) +compost and any other debris you want. Optional to skip or go thin on debris you don't want to dig through later but it's ez moisture retention Layer 3. cardboard. don't cover directly over the potatoes unless shredded. Layer 4. Seed Mulch or Mulch which is either just sawdust mix or sawdust mix with seeds mixed in. I bought woodstove pellets from tractor supply which are compressed sawdust @ just under $6 per 40lb bag (I bought a pallet in bulk for discount I mix pellets with some cheap compost manure mix I bought for $1.50 a bag to bulk it up and add worm castings and sometimes some fish manure or other "swamp water" a term for water + plants brewing in a bucket (with a lid cuz smell). Everything past the sawdust is just extras that help bulk up the substrate and add nutrition. Not necessary but atleast add some fertilizer water because it's gonna soak it up good. Mix your pellets in a wheelbarrow or a {kitty pool ~ $8-20} with your fertilizer water. It will quickly expand then add your seeds to the mix and let it soak overnight. Alternatively for larger seeds that are more prone to birds and mice devouring them like sunflowers you can ideally soak seeds in water 12-24hr but not necessary then layer the seeds first then the mulch over top. I'm still experimenting with my seeds to mulch ratios but I put a lot of seeds and ideally a good 1/2in to 1in layer of mulch but even if you spread it thin it will work just try to avoid having bare spots in an area where you see the underlying earth/material. -I've used the seed mulch method over bare dirt and cardboard both with great success but if done over cardboard a thick mulch is necessary or the roots may struggle to get through the cardboard if it's dry. Seed mulch method: -increases moisture retention drastically -Slowly releases nutrients over time -Makes spreading seeds SUPER easy (just toss by the handful or scatter around plants) Most importantly don't forget to pray for your garden(: And thanks for the great video and awesome ideas.
I am experimenting with growing azolla (duckweed) in order to use it as a substrate for oyster and shiitake mushrooms. I'm not sure if it's going to work, but given that 10m2 of pond can grow enough azolla to fill a grow bag (and thus be able to regularly harvest mushrooms) every couple of days under the right conditions it seems like it's worth a try. It can also be fed to ducks (unsurprisingly) as their primary fodder either dried or fresh, in order to reduce their feed costs to close to zero. One duck can be sustained on just a couple of square meters of pond space, which would make duck eggs a cheap option for protein. Other poultry doesn't like duckweed so much, but even so research suggests you can replace about 5% of the daily fodder for most animals with duckweed without any loss in productivity or growth rate (compared to high performance feeds). The other place duckweed can be useful is if you're growing mealworms or black soldier fly larvae for your ducks/quail/chickens/aviary birds/reptiles. Both mealworms and BSF larvae seem perfectly happy eating duckweed, although you might have to partially dry it off for mealworms (not entirely sure on that point). Obviously if you're hardcore mealworms are edible by humans, but I prefer to feed them to my birds as 10% of their daily fodder and enjoy the meat from the birds instead. Much less gross all around. :) The other thing is that duckweeds can be eaten in small amounts by people. I hear they make an ok part of a salad for fresh greens. It's not gonna replace lettuce anytime soon though I suspect, as humans don't deal well with too much of the flavanols, tannins, etc either. Finally, azolla in particular makes amazing fast compost. Harvest it wet, and put it in a pile under a tarp for a fortnight or so and it will have self digested into super nutritious high nitrogen fertilizer.
Duckweeds are species in the genus Lemna, flowering plants that seem to be absurdly minimalist floating micro-arums except unlike arums they are edible w/o extreme cooking (I would still cook that intended for human food because of the risk of free swimming aquatic parasites). Azolla is a floating microfern. Both multiply absurdly quickly and have historically been used for fodder. I am a bit leary of Azolla because it uses cyanobacteria to fix nitrogen, and I don't trust cyanobacteria (b/c of non-protein amino acids like BMAA which is associated with Parkinsonism, dementia, and more recently, Alzheimer's; also other cyanotoxins are found in algal blooms at least) Lemna doesn't fix nitrogen, so it is theoretically less productive, but in my opinion safer than anything that associates with cyanobacteria.
![[TH] FS vs BME - VCT Ascension Pacific - Lower Bracket Final](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wnygqsR2Fig/mqdefault.jpg)
I think fruit trees are absolutely the number one way to save money. The return on investment is out of this world. Speaking from experience of growing fruit trees for the past 8 years in my Suburban Backyard Orchard. I grow a ton of figs, apples, plums, cherries, and peaches.
I have been wanting to do this for years but only able to grow trees in containers. Any suggestions?
And they play a major role in the environment. They store a lot of carbon and they enrich the ecology. Thank you for the advice
@@terrisserose What's your climate? (USDA hardiness zone, precipitation level/pattern, length of winter ["chilling hours" is how that is measured in South and Southwest, where it is vital; but I supposein the extreme north, the converse problem of a very short growing season also restricts what you can grow to that which ripens early in the season, before frost screams "STOP"--for that the measure is probably # of frost free days), maybe humidity, the sun available to your containers?) Obviously smaller plants are easier to keep in containers. Usually that means berries (though mulberries grow on big trees so you'd need Geraldi Dwarf) though there are dwarfing rootstocks for apple (Budagovsdky-9 is excellent) and loquat (namely, quince). "Flying Dragon" trifoliate orange will dwarf Citrus a little, but I'd still stick with small types like kumquats, limequats, and calamondins (which may stay small on their own roots). You can't really dwarf a grapefruit. Peaches have some genetic dwarf types (not the best quality nor adapted to the limits of peach culture). Pie cherries have the University of Saskatchewan crosses that grow as shrubs. Obviously you won't be able to grow kumquats in cherry country without a greenhouse etc. Deciduous trees tend to need this thing called "winter" (hence the counting of "chill hours") and therefore do poorly in Citrus country. Heck, these days even Citrus is risky in Citrus country, because of the spread of diseases like canker and hualongbing (facilitated by our addiction to industrial monoculture agriculture).
What do you spray the apple trees with. I have loads of apples full of bugs
Yes much better ROI then vegi gardens, most fruits only produce excess for short time then nothing for rest of yr, biggest handicap IMO. Citrus, Avocados and a few others may produce near yr round assuming multiple types of each. For me in zone 9a, farther NorCali, citrus is super easy and make fine hedge walls for privacy too, don't require excess water and zero pests except for ppl picking in passing my oranges along the road.
I find that I can't buy berries, cherries, peaches, pears and more after home grown experience, they are not only expensive they are crap from the store. Blueberries I get for a couple months per yr of my small bushes, good ROI if you don't mind the picking time required and I need to add some acidifiers a few X per yr.
Yeah my son always gets strawberry plants, he don't like to eat them but likes the white flowers, 2 yrs ago He got one and I have saved it for 2 yrs from snow and heat, and they've survived and this year started to give us fruit 🍓 very tiny but very sweet 😋
As long as they don't develop root or crown rot, mine have thrived through 2 years with an abnormal amount of snow for Arkansas, like week long, foot of snow on the ground with no protection 😁
Economies are always going to fluctuate so it is wise to be prepared with food, water, cash, and such. If you buy only what you like then you will be fine but I also try to buy some things that my neighbors enjoy as well. For example, I started a raspberry patch about 15 years ago in my back yard. I started with 4 plants, a few years later I gave 6 to a neighbor who now has about 90x4ft curbside raspberry patch that he allows anyone to pick from without having to ask first. Goodwill is one of the most important commodities we can cultivate. If you live in a place where you don't have any outside area think about growing cherry tomatoes, herbs, edible flowers around your interior using the sunlight you have available and small grow lights. You can grow things in hanging planters as well as pots on your window ledges, etc. If you have a small balcony you can grow things there or you might be able to set up some grow pots on the roof of the building you live in. It doesn't hurt to ask. There are all kinds of edible "weeds" everywhere that can also serve as medicines. For example, I have wild lettuce, purslane, dandelion, and thistle in my yard. These are also growing in the big cities. Purslane can be found growing out of the cracks of the sidewalk as can the wild lettuce and dandelions. They are everywhere. These are all edible and the wild lettuce can be made into a pain medication. Get familiar with those in your area and learn how to use them in both categories mentioned. Learn how to make foods that can be dried and stored long term like pemmican, jerky, dried fruits and veggies (these can be done in your oven at a very low temp about 160 degrees for 12 or so hours - learn as much as you can on how to do that and the best way to store. I have a large food saver machine that I use. If you live in an urban or rural area (I'm probable preaching to the choir there), look for wild berries AFTER you have learned how to identify the ones that won't make you sick or kill you outright. I like chokecherries as they make great jam, jelly, and syrup. Also mushrooms are good to know about and you CAN grow them inside. Check out North Spore or search for "how to grow mushrooms at home" on YT.
I started keeping bees this year mostly to help the apple trees and other fruiting trees and plants that aren't doing very well in my neighborhood. I will end up having to harvest some honey and that will go to my neighbors as well. There are now hives that you can actually keep near a window INSIDE your home so the bees can come and go as they please through a tube that comes in from the outside and you can watch how they are building comb, and so on. If you have people in your neighborhood that have skills you don't, figure out a way to barter so you can share your skills and help each other. Know and grow.
This spring I planted in my backyard raspberry bushes, blueberries, gooseberries, currants, elderberries and honeyberries. Some are just decorative, some will attract birds, most of them are for my family. And I'm sick of mowing grass, I'll keep planting anything I can - herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, even wildflowers.
Sweet potatoes (or yams) are prolific in warm climates. I find them very worthwhile to grow. Corn (though I love it) is probably one of the worst since it requires so much time, space and nutrients.
You can co plant bush beans and corn or pole beans and corn for nitrogen to feed them if you do pole beans or peas you have to unwind the pollen tendrils from the vines though
@@annak804 Works with grain corn and shell beans, since you harvest when the plants have died. Harvesting unripe crops like sweet corn and green beans without trampling your plants can be difficult in the "3 sisters" method. I would suggest crop rotation, biochar (because nutrients leach quickly at least on Sand in the South) and the addition of compost and perhaps burnt bones (phosphate) because nitrogen isn't everything, even for corn. Of course, dry beans and grains often have fungal issues in warm, humid climates. Corn smut is good, but aflatoxin can kill you.
Thank you for your honesty, I think many of us see these gardens and pets and see it so easy, but you're right it's not!! I am just barely getting adjusting to having my 3 girls, but based on that I want to try the berries because I think I can take that on. Oh may I add I do not have a green thumb so it's scary and I don't want to waste money you know. But I will try it and hope I can succeed 🙏 wish me luck!!
Again thank you for taking the time in making these videos, very much appreciated.
If you plant fruit bushes (and fruit trees) you don't have to prune them, though some would say you'd get more fruit if you did, but you don't have to. When the girls eventually ask for rabbits/guinea pigs, buy chickens instead, they are much friendlier than most rabbits, and my children would often sit with a hen on their lap watching TV. Cochins, Salmon Favarolles and Orpingtons are all very friendly breeds (there are others I gather, but I've owned these myself).
Rosemary once tiny shrub size and in the ground is hard to kill if watered once a week no pruning needed. Berries once their roots are established are hardy. Bush beans are easy as well we grow the green bean type here and they add nitrogen to the soil for other plants to use so double duty. Remember chicken manure (any omnivore or carnivore) is hot and has to rot before being used on plants or it can hurt them, only vegitarian animals can give you ready to use manure.
Thank you for this video. I've canned and dehydrated food for years. This year I am focusing on dehydrating and powering all my berries, fruit, herbs and other veggies. Saves space and stores longer. Doing blueberries and Arapahoe black berries right now. Good stuff.
Thai spicy basil and eggplant is my new favorite way to use garden veggies. Garlic, basil, onion, eggplant, hot peppers, ginger are all things I grow!
I've been growing fruits and vegetables in my small backyard for a few years which was a huge help during the pandemic as I didn't need to go out during the worst period. Been wanting to keep chickens too but I live in an apartment block and they'll probably be too noisy for the neighbors, especially a rooster. My next choice is quail but I've never eaten the bird nor egg and would like to at least taste the egg before I get my birds. Microgreens are a great idea, I have grown wheatgerm grass in the past and the juice tastes yucky but the superfood is very healthy as shots. Will grow some of the other stuff too this time, including baby spinach.
Quails have very little meat on their bodies. Their eggs are tiny and taste similar to chicken eggs but creamier due to the much higher yolk to egg white ratio. How about rabbits? If you acquire a compatible mating pair, they reproduce like crazy. The offspring are ready for butchering at only 8 weeks.
Find an Asian market near you, the larger ones often have fresh quail eggs.
@@faintlyartistic7803 I was just about to post this! Great minds thinking alike!
I was offered some free quail, but was advised to go and listen to them before accepting. They make an awful noise, so I said no thank you graciously. You don't need a rooster/cock bird, hens will lay without, and make great pets too if bought young. I wouldn't recommend it, as mine have the run of the garden, but I've seen people keep 2 hens in a large rabbit hutch. As long as you can let them out for a bit of exercise certain breeds are happier with captivity than others, so check out the breed requirements if thinking of a small run.
Quail need horizontal space chickens need vertical in their roosts so know what you are getting into with their housing and quail eat a vegitarian diet so their poop is garden ready vs chicken poop which needs to rot for at least 2 years to be plant ready as they are omnivorous. There are quiet chickens (all female chickens are quiet) and they feed themselves much easier than a quail can in limited area. Chickens will eat almost anything from seeds and veggies to a snake or mouse or rat. Study the birds you want find a place that sells them get the gear before the birds. Chicks ship best for chickens but you have to have food and electrolytes ready for when they arrive along with the propper housing for chicks, they cannot thermoregulate so they need a heat source. Be smart and prep so the birds do not suffer.
Asparagus! Not everyone likes it, but if you do and have the room, awesome. I started 25 seeds and they grew remarkable fast. The third year we picked about 2 pounds. The fourth about 5 pounds, fifth year, 10+ pounds (stopped measuring). Last year spread wood chips and Wine Cap Mushroom Spawn in Asparagus bed, same year picked 3 pounds mushrooms. Appreciate all your info
Side shoots can be harvested after the main head is taken from the broccoli plant. There's quite a bit that grows.
We have a good variety of veggies. If I had to pick 5, eggplant, potatoes, peppers, onions, tomatoes. They all can be stored or put up and retain their quality. We grow everything that you mentioned except blackberries and micro greens. The greens look awfully good.
We make maple syrup too.
There are some commenters mentioning fruit trees, those are great too.
Thanks for the video.
We easily saved $400 on strawberries last year during the season (not including what we were able to freeze for the rest of the year, or give away to friends/neighbors) - all from two plants that have created a patch. Our second most prolific honestly was our asparagus patch - sure, it takes three years to really take root, but from 12 crowns we had WAY more than we could possibly eat, and we frequently gave away to friends while also enjoying just a ton of fresh asparagus. That's of course a lifestyle thing - I want to eat asparagus every day so having 10-12 stalks to harvest on a daily basis was really great for our family.
Berries are definitely one of the best money savers and can offset some of the costs of you growing veg in terms of fertiliser and seeds.
I love zucchini! I cook up spaghetti sauce with cubed zucchini and onion, garlic, spicy chicken sausage, and mushrooms.. I bake it in the oven after cooking for about a half an hour on the stove to reduce down the sauce and thicken it. I learned this from a boss who was Italian and she also told me to put a little bit of sugar into the sauce. every person that has tasted this sauce, which I use for spaghetti or lasagna, absolutely loves my spaghetti sauce! I have my boss to thank for that. I've even made zucchini lasagna with the three cheeses required and I add greens when layering the zucchini.. like arugula, spinach, baby kale, Etc. It is amazing. I too make zoodles but also use it for butternut squash and various other things like potatoes and onions and even beats that have been steamed. I am an artist and the creativity is also part of my cooking not just my regular art lol! Thank you for this information and ideas.. it has really sparked my imagination now and boy am I going to have fun! BTW I've been growing microgreens for a long time now.. since they first became popular and I swear by them for nutrition and energy!
This is a great video! I would love to add longevity spinach in. I had issues trying to grow traditional spinach and I dont really like lettuce so I tried it and I love it! Way better for growing in hot areas and a perinneal! It will die back at around 25 degrees but comes back in the spring if you mulch around the roots, and it is super easy to propagate. Thanks for sharing 💜
I'm growing lettuce & spinach right now. I actually had my 1st harvest today and it made me so happy. Over the years I have (slowly) been growing the things I keep in my pantry:tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, etc. I live Seattle where space is not abundant so I grow a lot inside. I have my hydroponic system that I am in lo e with and container garden for now. My favorite and most successful grow has been lettuce and basil. The basil is my "hero" plant that has taught me a lot. I even grow it in my bedroom on the windowsill bc it is so pretty & have a polite temperament. Also it smells beautiful
Not sure if you mentioned Swiss Chard. Plant once in early spring and harvest through December in Zone 6. Leaves can be harvested when two or three inches and incorporated into salad . . . or allow to grow two feet and use the leaf part as you would spinach.
I've planted 14 zucchini plants , two 4x8 beds of green beans and yellow beans and 40 scarlet runners bc we LOVE beans and zucchini ( we make a ton of zucchini relish) my other more than most people would plant is celeriac, collards ,kohlrabi and butternut squash.
I’ve been growing blueberries for well over a decade in Nova Scotia and I have to say, I’ve found them the easiest of all the berries to grow. I grow blackberries, strawberries, gooseberries and many other types of fruit. We have bumper crops it seems every year of blueberries. We freeze tons of them and gouge ourselves on fresh ones. Rhubarb is also super economical because it’s perennial.
Dear have always loved cutting through my yard, so I grow things that attract deer... It's a real cost saver from buying meat in the store.
Surprised growing mint wasn't mentioned. Mints are easy to grow and can take the place of spinach and lettuce and you can make tea and chutney.
You forgot mint sauce? :)
Grow mint in containers or you won't be able to grow much else (except trees). Mentha species believe in world conquest.
Just subscribed!! Love your content and your direct quick way 😀 I'm growing tomatoes, lettuce but going to order microgreens and I love arugula too!
I am growing more berries this year. Not to mention that homegrown are minus all the pesticides, ESPECIALLY with strawberries.
For me it's more of a convenience. To be able to walk out to my back yard and grab some vegetables, herbs is convenient. And, some lettuce for an Italian salad. Plus, turn on some Plácido Domingo and other Italian music, while cooking and eating.
We bought a $2.00 6 inch tomato plant. It is as tall as I am now! 20 tiny sweet little gems a day is a wonderful harvest. I plant spring, summer, and fall veggie gardens, making the best of our soil enrichment practice. Also helps us to rotate nitrogen fixing crops in my tiny urban plot. The garden habits I learned from my dad, who is 100 years old and still going. Eating fresh keeps you healthiest, I believe. In Connecticut we need to work hard to make the most of our growing time. I suspect you do, too. Love your videos. 🍁 p.s. wish I could have some Easter Eggers!
Loved this video! Thank you for your knowledge and insights! 💞
Great video! Just i hit subscribed. I will say one thing about lettuces; a head of Boston type goes for $3.00 (CAD) but I get 1000 seeds for the same cost. Assuming 50% make it to harvest, that's a half-penny per. Now we don't eat 500 lettuce a year. With succession planting, my family eats 1 per week and we donate about 4 per week. I think that's key to your video; those of us lucky to enough space to produce can have a MASSIVE positive impact on others
Tomatoes are definitely a must two tomato plants and we probably had about 50 lb of red tomatoes and still about 30 or 40 lb of green tomatoes before that early Frost hit. Love my beans and my sugar snap peas also corn sweet or dry and corn although if you plant Dent corn you're going to need to grind it for cornmeal but there is nothing like fresh sweet corn on the cob and those stocks double as a bean pole climber. One you didn't put in your berries list that I'm going to be trying this year is huckleberries specifically Garden huckleberries which are an annual you plant every year so those are going in the center of my strawberry area where the strawberry plants aren't planted so I have still some kind of Fruit Harvest for the couple of years it's going to take those strawberries to get established the goal for next winter it's not have to buy any Frozen or canned vegetables to use everything from our Harvest that I Frozen or processed myself
The savings isn't just in $$'s. Just being able to have time in nature is a major benefit to emotional health.
Crops such as herbs and chilies, which provide flavour more so than calories or nutrients, are sometimes underappreciated for how they can save you money and elevate your cooking. They can dress up really affordable staples, and save you on more expensive sources of flavouring like cheese or bacon.
Bramble berries (blackberries/raspberries) make good vinegar. Just put the UNWASHED berries in a jar, top them with unchlorinated water, cover the jar with a coffee filter and a rubber band and store in a cool dark place. In a week it will be foamy, in a month it will be sour like wine, in two monthsit will bw a weak vinegar that can be strained and bottled. The longer you keep it the stouter it gets.
Our extras go to the food bank or trade then the chickens.
Her favorite plants. 🙂🍀🌻💖
* Berries, all kinds. Diverse and many uses.
* Fresh herbs. Culinary and medicinal uses.
* Microgreens, homegrown. Fast & easy to grow.
* Lettuces and kale. Kale being the better choice.
* Prolific producers: tomatos, zucchini, summer squashes, beans, eggplants, peas, AND THEN PRESERVING FOR WINTER..
* FRUIT TREES 🌳 take time to get established, but are absolutely worth the time and effort.
Good tips, thanks for sharing!
sweet potatoes are so-o-o-o easy to grow and high yield.
Which fruit trees did you guys plant? Once established they really do pay off.
Yes they pay off. Hubby’s grandparents had apple trees. Way more apples than a family eats in a year from just a single tree. They had full size trees. We’ve planted semi dwarf trees so we can harvest sooner and have more varieties.
I'm interested in pear trees, I heard you get fruit sooner, maybe 2 years. Is this true?
@@bailey2777 In my experience, pears are slower than apples or stone fruits. Compatible varieties can be grafted on Quince (unless you are too cold for quince; z5 is probably the safe limit) for dwarfing and younger bearing. But Quince is highly susceptible to fireblight; if your scions are also, take no vacations in the danger season and watch for symptoms like a hawk. Prune off and burn anything suspect.
@@bailey2777 Pyrifolia types ("apple pears") are more precocious even though they aren't Quince compatible. I don't like them because they lack aroma, but they do make a good substitute for water chestnuts (sweet and crunchy).
don't forget garlic. super easy to grow, and they can be very expensive (and coming from china) at the grocerie store
The ones from China have their roots ground off. Don't buy those, because of the way they are grown.
Is there a mustard shortage in the US?? Have you done a video about growing mustard???
14:00 yes I'm looking for good security and self-reliance. Love there bartering though!!! Folks never needed "the man" back in the day...
Egg plant cut in half inch slices top with spaghetti sauce and cheese bake or barbecue it is veg pizza
Very nice list. 👍🏾
Here's my top five;
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Peppers
Corn
Cucumbers
If ur stuff "bolts" consider it a gift......a replenishment of your "microgreens" seeds.
Do you have to keep replenishing the micro green seeds or do you just take part of it and it grows back?
I agree with your vision :)
Hi l always look out for seeds
On offer get them cheap ready
For next year's veg
Try to grow my veg on windows sills
No harm trying lol 😅
It's not just savings, or taste, but much of the fruit/veg. sold in the stores are nutrient deficient!!! They do not have the same or anywhere near the density of nutrition that they had say a 150 years ago. The soils have become stripped of the nutrients, elements and nitrogen that normally should be there making mass production farms very dependent on chemical fertilizers which now cost a fortune due to war issues etc. If you can compost organically naturally at home and feed that healthy soil to your home grown veg. etc. you may look like you are producing less... but the nutrient density will be much higher. Therefore, you will be getting far more 'healthy nutrition' for your buck and effort. That in itself is far more important in the long run! So yes, grow your own garden but remember to augment your soil with good organic compost.
So true. I also compost everything to create my own soil /compost to add to garden beds every year.
If u dehydrate your tomatoes and turn them to powder and THEN vacuum seal them the powder in jars, u can MAKE paste and sauces by adding water to the powder 2:1..... saves greatly on jar space and ur not using ur freezer.
Excellent advice particularly for people off-grid with photovoltaics who have electricity to burn in a sunny summer but might struggle to keep a freezer running through winter. The extra electricity to process the tomatoes is well worth it for not needing electricity to store them.
This is great advice. How do you dehydrate them? Just a food dehydrator?
For the leg sized zucchini (when you skipped a day checking on them), make a soup base by boiling them with onion and garlic and pureeing it. You can can it or freeze it and then use it instead of water when making soups. It does not taste like zucchini but just a rich broth.
Sounds good
That is a fantastic idea!!! Thanks for the tip!
Interesting. I usually use the large ones as chicken feed
My Mom requests a large one from my garden. She cuts it in half, scoops out the seeds and stuffs it with a meat/rice stuffing then bakes. So good! :D
That’s what I use for the base of my spaghetti sauce. Just add Italian seasoning and a big can of crushed tomatoes. Just add some cooked pasta.
By far, the best investment is to teach your children to do all of this. I’m also planting things that I may never see a harvest from, but my daughter and her children will; it’s not always about supplying my needs, but theirs.
Very solid points 👍
Exactly. Like Little House on the Prairie type stuff. But unfortunately, just like in the show, people gave up their farms and land to move to the city for “better” jobs. Some people were forced to. But we got played. Now look at us trying to save money by growing food. Lol. The irony.
Grow perennials like Jerusalem artichokes n such
Grow n sell them
@@JustOutHereTrustingGodNot sure if you have read up on the Industrial Revolution in England, but the destruction of the commons and forcing people off the land while tempting them into the city to be fodder for the factories was entirely intentional and an outlined and much discussed long term plan to destroy the self sufficiency of rural people who were seen as the main bulwark against the collection of power by the elites as they didn’t need anything from the government beyond protection of their rights. If really dark reading the words of the industrialists and the destruction of the commons and the evil plans they had for ordinary people who were quite happy with their bucolic rural lives. This whole dynamic was actual the basis for the Lord of the Rings which was written at the time, with the hobbits representing the happy, healthy self sufficient people of England in the shires, and the endless burning and ravaging of the lands at the hands of Sauron to feed the fires of industry were quite clearly the industrialists. The intellectuals and elites are the elves and wizards etc who either held themselves above, with their plans to simply depart to greener pastures, or came down on one side or the other. At the time there was both types of intellectual, some consumed by greed aligning and making the case for the destruction of the commons, and the other defending that which makes England what it was; the common people and their ways of life (represented by Gandalf and the elves who showed up to fight).
Sorry for waxing poetic here, but it is extremely important to preserve what shreds we have left of the life and land that was our birthright, and to claw back what we can from the ever hungry maw of industry that wants to devour us all for profit. And to hand off what we have protected and regained to our children and theirs.
Strawberries are one of the "dirty dozen", so that alone is reason to grow them
I live in the city and everblooming strawberries are a lovely "plant" that can grow in the front yard for their flowers.
After spending some time in Taiwan- we learned to eat vegetables at every meal, even breakfast. We grow green and ruby Swiss chard along with several types of kale. We plant close and cut individual leaves while they are small. I would never buy the huge clumps in the organic section of our market. It is so very expensive and big and tougher. We grow 85-90% of our vegetables from a 35 by 50 foot backyard garden. Tomatoes, onions, peppers - we made 100 jars of salsa last year. It is our grandsons ‘favorite vegetable.’😂
Haha I'm gonna start saying that
Nice work! Salsa is also my favorite veggie! 😂 Especially from the garden salsa!!! Happy Gardening 💚
I would love your salsa recipe!
that's a meal at our house, greens w/ garlic or onion and protein (which is often eggs). or basically the same but in a kimchi or kraut. save the bread or crackers for a snack if you need it later.
I went shopping with a friend and forgot what it's like to be a "nightly" shopper (which I totally was once upon a time!) buying based on whatever looks good. So much energy. We have the same grocery list basically every week. When things run out of stock in our cupboards we replace them. I watch for the sale cycle of our essentials and get everything at a lower price. I don't buy for recipes, I cook from what I have in the cupboard.
Nobody is wondering how to get dinner started. heat up the pan. Chop some onions and greens and we'll go from there.
@@anneh7725 tomatoes are not vegetables they are fruit
Another benefit with berries is the longevity of the plants. I inherited my grandparents place. We are still picking blackberries from the same berry patch my grandmother did 100 years ago. A berry I don't see in stores but I love is black raspberries. These basically grow as weeds but are delicious.
Pole Beans will take longer to begin bearing but they will continue to give fruit until frost (here in Vermont - very similar growing conditions to Wisconsin.
What a treasure to be able to pick berries from the same plants your grandmother did
Black raspberries (blackcaps to some) are a favorite berry of my wife and myself. We've foraged bunches of them from local woods. More complex in flavor than red raspberries or blackberries. BTW, the reason they're practically nonexistent in stores is that their delicate, easily spoiled flesh doesn't tolerate shipping, so enjoying them when absolutely fresh is a must.
That is so awesome!! 100 years ago! I love that!
Wow, I had no idea blueberries could live so long, it's a real legacy plant!!
If you can’t find a black raspberry to propagate, they can be ordered online easily. Mine came from either Stark or park Seed.
Bolting greens is a seed savers dream. Those seeds can be used to grow baby greens and micro greens thereby saving more money. Plus you know where the seeds come from.
So, so true!
And when you're growing sprouts and microgreens, you're not worried about selecting for plants that take longer to bolt. You're not selecting for a long harvest of repeat-pick leaves. You just want a big mass of seeds as quick as possible!
I treat my garden as both a soul filling hobby and a job. Jobs make money to feed our family. I just skip the paycheck and go straight to the food. Treating it as a job motivates me to make the time for gardening.
It is no more about saving money, it is moving into the realm of survival.
Absolutely true! bidenomics is a scourge...
I’ve also found that butternut squash is insanely easy to grow and yields a ton of fruit. You can make an entire meal out of two big ones, and the shelf life is really long.
Butternut squash are often my potato replacement. They store longer than potatoes plus I freeze them...roasted, pureed, chopped, etc.
Winter squash is definitely a great idea, acorn squash is also very prolific. Requires quite a bit of space though as they run all over the place. Pumpkins would be great too, the smaller sized varieties, but with squash you're best off picking a single variety so that you can save the seeds for planting again since they will all hybridize with each other.
The bugs though
Its also very resilient to vine borer infestations...and has a long shelf life. I had one i ate that was almost a g3ar in the pantry...it wasnt as sweet prevuous butternuts but still perfectly fine to eat.
I have had several last almost a year in the basement.
What I'm finding is that the growing a garden and chickens and trees, it's the overall time commitment that people need to be aware of; especially when you work full time and are single :) then, it turns into a few hours a night more sometimes....However, it's also nice that my salad is 100 feet away and my eggs are next to it.
This is true. I now get up at 6, spend several hours working in garden and taking care of chicks and dogs then same thing at 6 pm. I figure 4 hours a day. But I feel healthier for it, as a single lady it’s good exercise and good for the soul. Legs feel much stronger than before raising baby chicks, there’s a lot of squats required, lol. Also I guess weeding my 1/3 acre and putting down 80 bags of mulch by myself helped too. 😆
it's better to spend a few hours in the garden after a day in the office, rather than plunk ourselves down on the couch and watch crap tv 😊
You need to work smarter, not harder. No time to weed? Use ag fabric. No time to water? Use a roll of drip tubing (not tape) and a timer. That way you’re only spending time planting and harvesting. Then you have all winter to pull plants and prep for spring.
I am pushing towards that myself. ( making a small tree cabin/chicken coop) once my son and grandchildren out grow it. I add more garden space every year and next is pear and apple trees. 😃....
I've explained to my neighbors when they ask about my garden that the experts always advocate eating local. It doesn't get more local than my back yard, now does it? There's just something so satisfying about going into the garden and picking dinner, and the flavor of the food is incredible compared to what the store has on offer.
for your leafy green, don'T forget swiss chard which are a good replacement for spinach and are cold hardy and don't bolt in the hot summer. They comes in many colors, very prolific and you can eat the stem and the leaf as 2 different produce.
Also, try Bok choy, prolific, yummy, and you can plant it at different time in the season for a continus harvest.
Green onions! I use them so much and I started to replant the small part that I cut off the bottom of store bought onions. I planted them in my aquaponic growbed and they did so well. Also kale grows great in the winter in my growbed.
You can also save money by having your chickens make compost for your plants and not buy expensive fertilizers. Permaculture saves money.
I always heard that chicken poop doesn’t make for good fertilizer given they eat bugs and not a plant diet?
@@miguelregalado1319 Any livestock manure can be aged for fertilizer.
@@miguelregalado1319 it has to be rotted for at least 2 years before it can be used on plants
I cannot recommend enough to research easy to grow plants for your area…cucumbers are not easy in Florida! Neither are tomatoes unless they are Everglades Tomatoes. Research your zone!!
Sweet potatoes are another great one to grow. 😉 the best part is you can grow your own over and over with slips.
I rather not slip, but do it right the first time.
and the greens are edible.
I learned from the Okinawans to choose to eat the nutritious green leaves of sweet potatoes as well.
I am canning sweet potatoes...and have planted them also for later this summer.
I've been thinking about sweet potatoes but the extended curing process and the temperature needs has me a bit worried.
It's warms my heart to see a young lady like you learning to be more independent and sharing what you've learned with others.
I think anyone who has a decent size garden should have chickens. They really go hand in hand. Chickens are omnivores so they will eat most of what kitchen waste you can give them and that reduces their own feed needs like you said. But the larger benefit is the amazing compost they make for the garden. It really is a winning combination.
And if you don't have enough space, try quail. My quails are arriving this week. They prefer smaller spaces anyway. I'm starting with 20. Besides eggs, they give compost, eat very little and are cute af
@@fiffihoneyblossom5891 yes, and I think more housing zones are open to quail (callem' pets)
Problem is zoning/local government regulations. You have to check whether you're even allowed to keep chickens, and if you are, how many are allowed. Roosters will definitely be a no unless you're in the countryside, in a rural zone.
No, cuz you'll be giving cats, racoons, hawks, etc easy meals. There is more to it and a lot of ppl never find the "time" to do anything in the day of "neflix and chill", lol.
@@SY-ok2dq Ya need to put wire over their run to keep them safe. Also buried the wire around the coop and yard 2 ft to keep the diggers out. Haven't lost any and we have fox, coyotes, skunks, possum, porcupines, bear, eagles, and hawks. Use metal trash cans to store their food in so no worries with mice or rats.
I have found that growing many types of plants has improved my diet immensely. When I started growing eggplants for instance I had no idea what to do with them so I had to look up eggplant recipes. I made a moussaka last week that would knock your mousakka's off. I grew habaneros and had no idea what to do with them all and now I make fantastic hot sauce.
Share the recipe!
Moussaka is a favorite. Bien gon kabarta(sp) is heavenly too. This is an Indian dish the can be used as a dip or over rice depending how thick you make it
Yes agree. I think it's a good idea to set aside 10-20% of your garden for experiments and 80-90% for reliable producers. That way you can still scratch that itch to try crazy new stuff from the seed catalogue and expand your palette but you still have your staples as well. I found the quantity of vegetables that I eat increases a lot when I grow them as well. So while I almost never buy snap peas, if they're growing in the garden I munch on them all day and almost never have any left over for cooking.
I think you need to experiment to find the sweet spot of things that grow easily in your area, that you like to eat, and that are worth the time and effort to grow, harvest and process into something. That won't exactly reflect your pre-garden shopping list, but agree that that's a good place to start to identify your staples.
The other way to come at it is "What's hard to get at the store where I live or is poor quality at the supermarket because it doesn't travel or store well?" For me it's chili peppers other than one or two types, ingredients for Thai food like kaffir lime leaves, turmeric, and lemongrass, and fruit like feijoa, elderberries, and gooseberries which are delicious but just don't travel well. So a better use of my precious garden real estate can sometimes be more unusual varieties than onions which are so cheap at the store but take so long to grow and apples where you have to stay on top of pests so much.
A big golden courgette works well in Mousakka as well, if you haven’t got an eggplant.
@@shanghaiallie There are quite a few disease resistant apples around, especially heritage varieties. You need to know which ones work in your area though. Rootstock is important for your soil type.
You are also saving on plastic waste, I am shocked at how many plastic clamshell cases and plastic bags are used for fruits and vegetables. It’s gotten worse since Covid.
Other than berries, these definitely wouldn’t be on my list but it is a great thought experiment everyone should work through. I’ve narrowed my garden space down to only to grow items that produce a lot of calories and are hugely successful in my area such as potatoes, beans, corn and tomatoes. My list:
1) Apple trees
2) Potatoes
3) Beans
4) Tomatoes (paste for pasta sauces)
5) Berries
Bonus item: giant sunflowers for snacking/winter chicken treats
Right!, I just started growing potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, corn and sunflowers. things I know I will eat. I'll have to research beans, thanks.
just watched a video on pinto beans, I'll be growing some soon, thanks again for the idea.
Swiss chard and ameranth can be good spinach alternative for hot weather
Good advice here. A year, two years will come and go whether you plant berries and trees or not, so you might as well get some in the ground. That's how I see it, anyway. Plus, you can propagate them to sell or trade.
I do want to push back on the lettuce thing a little bit though. Yes, lettuce does bolt quickly when the temp goes up, but it's like $10/lb or more to buy in the store. Lettuce seed is super cheap, and it can be ready for harvest in 30 days. Every week, sow a week's worth, and keep on a 30-60 day rotation, and it ends up being a huge money saver. Kale certainly has it's place, but if that's all I have to make salad with, I'm probably not going to eat much salad; Especially in the summer when it turns bitter.
Just my two cents. Great content! Thank you!
This year, I'm incorporating wild edible food (AKA weeds) into parts of our garden. For example, I'm not taking out Lamb's Quarters (wild spinach) and dandelions that are growing in several parts of our garden; instead, I'm letting them grow and multiply. I use them for smoothies and salads.
me too. I left the dandilions in my raspberry and gooseberry beds so i could try them and see how they taste- the ones in the lawn are unedible as we have a dog. I tried my first dandilion flower this year, as i didn't know they were edible.
Dandelion leaves make tea. Kinda bitter, but supposedly good for you
Also purslane!!!
Every part of the dandelion is edible, and the plant is beneficial to the garden since it draws up nutrients from deep underground. You can cut the bitterness of mature dandelion leaves by cooking them with vinegar or lemon juice.
Also dandelion root is great natural medicine for blood poisoning
Sweet potato greens - tasty, very productive, and grow easily from cuttings.
Pumpkins - so easy to grow, and easy to store.
Cherry tomatoes seem to get less-affected by the bugs than the big ones (or at least there are a greater number of undamaged tomatoes)
I am finding the same thing with cherry tomatoes, they are less buggy, more to harvest.
What I find worth the time, energy, investment is Louisiana Purple Pole beans. I planted two 40’ rows last years and canned 80 quarts beside what we ate fresh. I grow lots of tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers for pickles, peppers of multiple varieties I either can them freeze them eat them fresh. I grow lots of herbs, a lot of them will overwinter here in N Mississippi. There is so so much more.
Plant something, start somewhere… it’s addictive!
Blessings y’all
Sneaky goats ate my purple pole beans and everything else except mustard greens.
Purple “pole” peas… I believe you mean purple HULL peas and as a Louisianan I second that they are easy to grow(if you can keep the deer out of them) and delicious. I blanch and freeze mine instead of canning.
Purple Hull is a cowpea and should do well in the South. In a pinch you can add the foliage to stews also.
I doubt anything cucumber-ish is nutrient dense, but sometimes the cooling snap is just pleasant and experimenting with pickle recipes is fun. Anyway, I have found Mexican sour gherkin (Melothria scabra) to be much more resistant to fungal diseases than are cukes. (Don't plant the native Melothria pendula though--it is "the mother of all laxatives.")
I'd add potatoes to the list cause you can grow so much in a small area. It stores a long time if you store them properly. Not very nutrient dense, but they are calorie dense as far as plant foods go.
Also I like your perspective of "things may or may not get better" for the simple fact that you see a future beyond this fall. I've heard many many people talk about how this fall will be the big one and everything is going to crash and burn and we're all gonna die etc etc. I'm being hyperbolic, but I like to hope that we will have a few more years to get some things established for food security. Cause this is my first year growing food and let me tell ya it isn't enough. 😅 Thanks for reaffirming my desire to grow a ton of fruits.
Great point on potatoes! And they actually ARE quite nutritious. Not many people know this but they are exceptionally high in a very valuable kind of protein. It will never substitute animal protein but my point is, don’t overlook the humble but powerful potato as a source of good carbs, calories and a suplemental protein! 🥰🥰
Potatoes have lots of nutrients! This is our first year gardening also. We're growing corn, green beans, and peas in an old 10 x 18 dog kennel(to keep the deer out of the corn), and have 2- 4 x 8 raised beds with tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, eggplant, and other veggies in them. We're also growing some things in containers. We want to do so much more, but also don't want to get overwhelmed in our first year. We'll do a few more raised beds next year.
Just be sure NOT to vote for Marxists aka Progressive Democrats and We WILL get through this... "Remember We are ALL in this together" so long as you vote and think accordingly like us (The Progressive Mantra)
@Cindilas I think we're on year four. We're just now starting to produce what you might call "some" food from our own garden. This is mostly due to laziness in weeding and watering when it's 157 degrees outside. Keep it up long term and you'll see results!
It's hard to live on only vegetables - unless the vegetable is potatoes. Outside of potatoes you're pretty much stuck with grains, which require a LOT of processing to get to be ready for the table. I recently saw a video about Jerusalem Artichokes as well, supposedly they yield even more than potatoes in terms of calories per acre, and they supposedly store incredibly well just left in the ground until you're ready to dig them up and eat them as needed.
I planted 4 blackcurrant bushes 11 years ago and haven’t touched them since, except to harvest. They grow in thick weeds and produce enough for apple-blackcurrant compote every breakfast for the year. Best garden investment ever!
What zone are you in?
We are in alaska and black currant does really well too
What zone
Loved this perspective and your thoughts. Made me think about your berry plants comment and that an another bonus is you would eat more berries than you might buy. I might not buy raspberries each week due to the ccost (more of a treat), but I would have no problem eating a ton (literally) of berries if they were "free" from my own bushes.
Gotta run... and check out more of your videos!
The newest item I am growing this year to save money is asparagus. I found out that it will come back in its own every year for between 20-40 years! I bought 2 year old crowns and it was a bit more work getting their bed ready, as you have to add sand etc. And you cannot harvest the first year. But asparagus is very expensive and we love it, so it’s worth the extra work up front.
I bought 20 crowns not realizing the space and soil you need for them. It's crazy. I have to build a new bed just for them
We have had asparagus that was planted by my now passed away in laws. I have lived on this farm 50 years & my husband was born here & he's 78. So it has longer life than what you stated by far. It's not in a garden spot but along our property here & there whereever it was planted.
I've heard that leeks come back and grow prolifically as well. I know it's late in the year but I'm trying to start some so I can eat a ton next year!
It is a seasonal crop (spring only, but occupying space year round). If you are short on land, greens like kale, chard, amaranth (spinach substitute for warm weather) or in z8b+ chaya or moringa will give you more food/nutrition.
I ploughed up my 10 year old asparagus bed and planted perennial rye grass...now a 1000 lb. jersey cow grazes there and gives me 5 gallons/day and a beef calf once per year. The asparagus bed was miserable to maintain. The cow is pure joy...
Berries ==> homemade shelf stable dehydrated fruit rollups and berry chips
Herbs in the garden are fantasic! Fresher than grocery store, and often repel pests.
Keep them right on the back deck and snip before dinner 👍 the best 😀
Have chickens (need more though), 3 of my 5 have started laying. I'm in Australia so this is our low season for gardening, but I've got broccoli & cauliflower, lettuce, parsley, strawberries. I'm looking forward to September when I can start all the summer crops.
Hi Melissa what part of Australia as I am in Brisbane Qld - this is our perfect season to grow here. Cheers Denise
Saving money? I don't know, but there is something to be said about cooking and just stepping out the door tu pick whatever the recipe calls for. I am 100% with you regarding the herbs. I think it is part of a way of life. We almost never go to restaurant, but we work from home. This whole pandemic has been a great beneficial change for a lot of people (unfortunately not for all...)
Depending on your climate Peaches/Nectarines are heavy producers and fruit often next year. Plums and Apples can produce the following year. Figs and Mulberries can also fruit the year you get them.
Reading this makes me want to start canning more sooner than later. My grandmother made the best fig preserves ever!
I would also add potatoes and onions to the list.
Oak abode coming in with another great video. Thanks for the great info.
In Australia a bunch of spinach runs circa $9.00 at the supermarket. For the last 12 months I have had a small 2 metre X 1 metre patch where I have grown English spinach, OMG what a saver, I go out every could of days and just trim off a whole bunch from the plants and they are prolific, they just keep growing back and so now I have greatly improved my diet and saved a lot of money. Great video, thank you, everyone kids themselves about not having time, get off social media, turn off the tv and go get some garden therapy while enriching your well-being and wallet.
It's also really easy to forage for greens. Often the weeds that grow in your garden are more healthy than the greens that you plant. Also you can harvest extra, dry it and supplement your chicken food in the winter.
Wow, thanks as I have 3 chickens. Do you crush these dried plants and put in with other grains?
Peterson's has some very good books for each state or area. Edible Wild Plants, Medicinal Plants and Herbs. Build yourself up a library on similar books.
Like making hay, but for chickens??? 😳
@@PatrickKQ4HBD Pretty much, yeah - but it's healthier than hay. My chickens adore dandelion leaves (dried or fresh). Sometimes I freeze our leftover berries to give to them in the winter, if I have room in the freezer. Apples keep pretty well overwintered in dry, cool conditions too. I leave them separated from one another in cardboard trays in our garden shed. I just keep a close eye on them in case rodents come (thankfully ours is quite well sealed up).
Foraging is a big part of my survival system but growing things is another part. You should have multiple means in acquiring food. Survival cares nothing for ego, infact ego is often counterproductive to survival. Don't rely on only one means to aquire food.
Calabrese broccoli, harvest the center head and continue harvesting side florets until next spring. Absolutely awesome
Potatoes, you left these off, super easy and twice a year harvest. Love the channel!!!
Yes - please make a video on how to plant and harvest microgreens! This is such good information!
I live in a very similar climate to you. I grow my lettuce and leafy greens in a window box that's shaded most of the day and then use the cut and come again method. I get to harvest all season because they get bright light but no direct sunlight so they don't get too hot ☺️
Think animal feed also.
Pigs can eat almost anything out of the garden. I can't wait to see what the pork is like after eating pumpkin squash cukes tomatoes Mellon and anything else we can feed them.
Be very careful feeding tomato to pigs. The stalks are toxic and unripened tomato is hard on their digestive system.
ATTENTION Kathalene------ For the first time this year we planted Ground Cherries. Ground cherries are a winner for us in our zone 6b.. They produced an overabundance of fruit up to our first frost. If you have never tried them. Please do so. You can plant them under your fruit trees. The 3 x 3-foot plant hugs the soil. It doesn't get over a foot high. Thanks for everything you do. You helped me in my first purchase of chickens 2 years ago. -- Ray Delbury Sussex County NJ USA
Preach ! Ground cherries are freaking amazing !
I was planning on planting some ground Cherries too, do you know what type you have? I would like to know what grows good in our area
Great video! So helpful! Another idea for easy fruit for jam or jelly is serviceberry tree.. if you have time mid June to process them. It’s a one time harvest. Delicious right off the tree too. Plant in high traffic area to discourage birds.
Another easy green to plant spring summer fall is tatsoi. It will make its own seeds easily and can take both heat and cold, dry or wet.
I agree...we are looking at a "long haul" regarding the economics situation. It's great to walk out in the garden in the mornings and eat fresh strawberries and blueberries. Even my dogs will carefully pull off the ripe berries. Beans are very important and I grow lots of them. Great in soups! Mulch well which cuts down on weeding.
Really good reasoning and explanations; thank you!
I'm too lazy to scroll through the comments to see if anybody already mentioned that one way to control zucchini/summer squash is to use the blossoms, not just the fruits. They can be fried, stuffed, roasted, used as pot herbs, or just dropped into salads.
Also bear in mind that all crops are at least somewhat climate specific. Grow what grows and produces well on your land. Raspberries don't do well in the Deep South, though the tropical black raspberry Rubus niveus can be kept alive from zone 8b south using sprinklers or other frost protection (they need 20F+). Northern ones, red or black, just die.
Not if you are in the mountains
Interesting....Atl Ga and we have raspberries. Some much we freeze a gallon or more.
@@annak804 Normally "Deep South" refers to the Coastal Plain. Mountainous areas obviously have their own microclimate based on altitude and even wind patterns. If you can grow raspberries other than Dormanred, rejoice. If you can only grow Dormanred and actually like it, more power to you. (I found Asian raspberries watery when I worked in China, and find their half-descendent not much better, but tastes differ.) There are in contrast many blackberry and dewberry options throughout the South though some of the most reliable types for the extreme south (like "Brazos") are old, thorny, and not often sold in national catalogs. I would say blackberries and mulberries are fairly dependable if you pay attention when choosing the cultivar, and raspberries are a gamble at best, unless you have a weird microclimate that also allows rhubarb.
@@erikjohnson9223 Ha, I was about to reply that I'm so excited about the raspberries surviving, and thriving here. lol Nursery called them Dorma Red, but suspect it's the same thing. I'm over the moon to finally eat raspberries after being without any for decades. Looks to be on death's door after spring gets done with it's rollercoaster, so no point bothering trying to get two crops, but still sends up canes every year!
Dewberries were my top favorite berry growing up. Had considered seeing if my family could dig some and we'd get them on a visit. Decided against it, as I didn't think they'd handle our whiplash springs up here in 8a. Amaryllis seemed very week to spring, and I was scared to try anymore transplants. (Later found out most people grow those indoors up north, but we don't really do indoor growing.) Our very thorny but tough blackberries are too far out to get water to them. So some years they are tiny rocks and every so often a good year comes through and we have great berries. Mulberries always seemed like a northern thing, but I've been reading there are some that can take the heat, humidity, drought, and spring flash freezes.
My biggest bang for the buck is Swiss chard. It be cut and come again, a few plants feeds your family. Re broccoli, eat the leaves.
One thing you should mention to people who are planning to grow their own microgreens is to be sure to plan out the watering schedule since they need watered fairly heavily every 12 hours without much margin for error. This makes growing them tough if people have a variable schedule 1-2 days of any given week where they are gone from their house for more than 14 hours at a time. 🤘💚
We started our tiny vertical farm 2 years ago and sell microgreens to our local community through farmers markets and roadside market resellers. We just went open source a few weeks back and all are welcome. We are posting all our methodologies for everyone to use, get inspired by, etc. ✌️🌱
POTATOES! I've experimented a lot with potatoes. It seems best to leave them in the ground over winter and just harvest a little from an area as you need. Leave some there that will grow back next spring. They do great in a shady location like under a tree because it helps them retain lots of moisture. They will flourish in full sun too but they require excessive watering or excessive mulch for water retention (+nutrient bonus). A location with lots of indirect sun or just a couple hours of direct sun exposure will be adequate for moisture retention. I'd suggest:
Layer 1.Bury the potatoes. Optionally mark their locations with sawdust or other material.
Layer 2.sticks and twigs (easily gathered from an open tree forest with a rake) +compost and any other debris you want. Optional to skip or go thin on debris you don't want to dig through later but it's ez moisture retention
Layer 3. cardboard. don't cover directly over the potatoes unless shredded.
Layer 4. Seed Mulch or Mulch which is either just sawdust mix or sawdust mix with seeds mixed in.
I bought woodstove pellets from tractor supply which are compressed sawdust @ just under $6 per 40lb bag (I bought a pallet in bulk for discount
I mix pellets with some cheap compost manure mix I bought for $1.50 a bag to bulk it up and add worm castings and sometimes some fish manure or other "swamp water" a term for water + plants brewing in a bucket (with a lid cuz smell). Everything past the sawdust is just extras that help bulk up the substrate and add nutrition. Not necessary but atleast add some fertilizer water because it's gonna soak it up good.
Mix your pellets in a wheelbarrow or a {kitty pool ~ $8-20} with your fertilizer water. It will quickly expand then add your seeds to the mix and let it soak overnight. Alternatively for larger seeds that are more prone to birds and mice devouring them like sunflowers you can ideally soak seeds in water 12-24hr but not necessary then layer the seeds first then the mulch over top. I'm still experimenting with my seeds to mulch ratios but I put a lot of seeds and ideally a good 1/2in to 1in layer of mulch but even if you spread it thin it will work just try to avoid having bare spots in an area where you see the underlying earth/material.
-I've used the seed mulch method over bare dirt and cardboard both with great success but if done over cardboard a thick mulch is necessary or the roots may struggle to get through the cardboard if it's dry.
Seed mulch method:
-increases moisture retention drastically
-Slowly releases nutrients over time
-Makes spreading seeds SUPER easy (just toss by the handful or scatter around plants)
Most importantly don't forget to pray for your garden(:
And thanks for the great video and awesome ideas.
I am experimenting with growing azolla (duckweed) in order to use it as a substrate for oyster and shiitake mushrooms. I'm not sure if it's going to work, but given that 10m2 of pond can grow enough azolla to fill a grow bag (and thus be able to regularly harvest mushrooms) every couple of days under the right conditions it seems like it's worth a try.
It can also be fed to ducks (unsurprisingly) as their primary fodder either dried or fresh, in order to reduce their feed costs to close to zero. One duck can be sustained on just a couple of square meters of pond space, which would make duck eggs a cheap option for protein. Other poultry doesn't like duckweed so much, but even so research suggests you can replace about 5% of the daily fodder for most animals with duckweed without any loss in productivity or growth rate (compared to high performance feeds).
The other place duckweed can be useful is if you're growing mealworms or black soldier fly larvae for your ducks/quail/chickens/aviary birds/reptiles. Both mealworms and BSF larvae seem perfectly happy eating duckweed, although you might have to partially dry it off for mealworms (not entirely sure on that point). Obviously if you're hardcore mealworms are edible by humans, but I prefer to feed them to my birds as 10% of their daily fodder and enjoy the meat from the birds instead. Much less gross all around. :)
The other thing is that duckweeds can be eaten in small amounts by people. I hear they make an ok part of a salad for fresh greens. It's not gonna replace lettuce anytime soon though I suspect, as humans don't deal well with too much of the flavanols, tannins, etc either.
Finally, azolla in particular makes amazing fast compost. Harvest it wet, and put it in a pile under a tarp for a fortnight or so and it will have self digested into super nutritious high nitrogen fertilizer.
Duckweeds are species in the genus Lemna, flowering plants that seem to be absurdly minimalist floating micro-arums except unlike arums they are edible w/o extreme cooking (I would still cook that intended for human food because of the risk of free swimming aquatic parasites). Azolla is a floating microfern. Both multiply absurdly quickly and have historically been used for fodder. I am a bit leary of Azolla because it uses cyanobacteria to fix nitrogen, and I don't trust cyanobacteria (b/c of non-protein amino acids like BMAA which is associated with Parkinsonism, dementia, and more recently, Alzheimer's; also other cyanotoxins are found in algal blooms at least) Lemna doesn't fix nitrogen, so it is theoretically less productive, but in my opinion safer than anything that associates with cyanobacteria.