Backyard gardening/farming?

[TheCoachZed]

Hey guys,

Have been doing some thinking lately about growing my own food to eat in my back yard.

I have a pretty small lot - maybe a quarter of an acre. My backyard borders on the Saint John River, so I can always fish if I run out of food, or maybe even mess around with aquaculture, but that's a hit-and-miss proposition. Does anybody here know if I could feasibly grow enough vegetables on a small lot to feed, say, myself, my wife, and maybe a kid or two?

I did a lot of gardening at home when I was a kid, but we had about two acres of land, so we didn't have to worry too much about squeezing stuff into a small space. I absolutely hate gardening, but it seems like it'd be a pretty useful skill to have if the food supply runs out. My job skills are completely non-essential (journalis/graphic designer) in an economic meltdown, and since my wife's wages are paid by the government (nurse), she'd probably be screwed over by currency deflation . . .

Anyway, I was thinking of maybe growing squash and pumpkins (cuz the seeds are easily harvestable, they last forever in cold storage, and they are easy to grow) potatoes (more or less same reasons),green peppers, green beans, turnips, and maybe alfalfa sprouts indoors. I might plant some bulrushes behind my house, too.

Are there any more "space-effective" crops I should consider?

[hillbill]

yu really have it pretty much covered with what yu listed.i would have to add onions tho. nuttin is better than a big pot of taters, turnips, green beans and onions boiled up.and i use onions to season a lot of meat dishes.they can be stored well along with yur taters.if yu like hott stuff id grow sum red peppers and dry them for addition to many dishes.i used to hate gardening but not as much as i hate goin to the grocery store and handing over my cash.now i really enjoy it as i get older.

[OldReliable]

You can't go wrong by trying to plant some of the things you mentioned.  Tons of info on the net about backyard gardening.  In zone 4 where you are you would not be able to grow enough food to feed your family on 1/4 acre.  Research what type of soil you have and what will grow in it before you begin.  Is it acidic or alkaline?  Different plants like different soils.  I have gravel.  Period.  So I built 400 square feet of raised bed, brought in good silt loam dirt from a local farm, added aged manure and planted the next spring.  Had a huge tomato crop, put up over 80 quarts of juice, sauce & salsa.  Peas, beans, sunflowers, onions, herbs, beets, pumpkins, zuchinni, leaf lettuce, etc all grew well.  All in Zone 4 Montana.  You will be suprised how much you can grow.

[TheCoachZed]

I swore to myself many times as a kid while weeding that I would never garden when I was older. Well, I wasn't moved out of home for more than a month after college before I started thinking about it.

I still hate the idea of gardening, because in the Maritimes you can buy vegetables so much cheaper than growing them yoruself (when you factor in your time cost), but it would be a very useful skill . . .

[FourBee]

I heard this, so I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds interesting.   For those who don't  have any space for a small garden.   Line up a few bales of hay along side the house.  Put them out a few feet.   In the center cut out enough hay to add 2 gals of potted soil, about 7" deep.   Set your vegetable plants in the potted soil of each bale.  It is said that because the bales hold tremendous amounts of moisture that the plants produce bigger and better fruit.  

[charles p]

I have a small garden and I can promise you I have never saved a dime growing my own veggies.  It is just a fun hobbie for me.  Good exercise at age 64, and I enjoy everything except the heat and bugs.  Factoring every cost, and the crop failures that are to be expected, it hasn't been productive on my small scale.  With the 1/4 you have, that should be a different story, until you buy a small tractor, then all bets are off again.  You'll need a pressure canner and a freezer as well.  

Go for it.  It is fun and a good relief for stress.

If you want to feed yourself with fish, you'll need a boat.  Don't think gill nets are legal in Fla anymore.  Maybe a trotline will work.  Turtle and gators are good.

[FourBee]

 

Posted by: charles p      I have a small garden and I can promise you I have never saved a dime growing my own veggies.

Ain't it the truth!  A friend of mine spends a small fortune on his garden.  He makes plenty of great looking veggies though, and he's proud of it too.

[bilmac]

We are used to cheap food. I'm not so sure that we will always be so blessed. If not, you will be far ahead if you already have the skills.

[blind ear]

Mulch Gardening

(HOW TO HAVE A GREEN THUMB WITHOUT AN ACHING BACK, A NEW METHOD OF MULCH GARDENING by Ruth Stout)

Hay is GOLD in a garden. My folks farmed a garden the old  "break it and row it up" way for my whole life. When I was in my late 20s I read a book on mulching where this 80 sumthin year old lady used hay mulch. It practically ended weeding and gave a good walking surface after a rain. If you get your feet wet you need more hay.

The lady never broke her land, she just kept adding, hay keeping at least a 10 inch mulch under the plants. To plant she would pull the hay back to the soil and put seeds in. As the plants grew she would put the hay back against the plants.

I hauled in some composted farm trash and spread it on thier "gumbo clay garden" and covered it with hay. My folks had an easier time gardening than they thought possible. Just keep adding hay. It will break down into black rich soil. It will conserve water real well and earth worms will aeriate the soil.

It worked until they were too old to tend to the garden.

[gypsyman]

Coach, there is a book called Square foot gardening. Shows you layouts of how to squeeze as much into a small lot. You'ld be surprised at how much you can grow in a small area. Plus, not as much free space for the weeds to grow. gypsyman

[bearmgc]

I think now is the time to start experimenting with vegetable gardening no matter what you have for land. Better to water a garden that gives you something back, than a chunk of lawn. I used to have massive flower gardens, but have since changed to vegetables and fruit trees, in a common sense approach to possible hyperinflation. I think the writings on the wall. Can use 5 gal buckets/planters, window boxes, tires,
construct planters from discarded wood. I don't think we should be procrastinating on this.

[hillbill]

i think bearmgc is correct, get out there and do it now.in my local grocery store i have seen a lot of the stuff i buy, and i dont buy much, double in the last couple years.at first i did it to save money and i do. i dont think i spend 100$ a year on seeds and plants. and i eat out of it all summer almost exclusively, supplemented by my own beef and deer i kill, and fish i catch.and freeze and store enuf stuff to git me almost to spring.now i do it cuz i cant tolerate the crap the grocery stores sell.the last few years has been much learning for me. i now wouldnt be afraid to support my whole family on a garden and game.its a really good feeling to know that yu can do this.

[nodlenor]

I've raised a garden all my life and can't tell you if I've saved a dime or not but I wouldn't trade my veggies for any of the store bought stuff. They just don't taste the same. Same goes for home raised beef. I'll keep raising a garden as long as this old body will let me.

[Buck-Ridge]

 I have a small garden and if nothing else it's good for the soul. It doesn't save money but it sure tastes better than anything I can buy. And in the summer I eat a lot healthier because I eat the things I grow .

[WD45]

One thing I have noticed is how much the price of seeds has gone up over the last couple years. Unless you learn to save seed for replanting the next year you will not have a sustainable food source and if crap does hit the fan seeds either will not be for sale or be so expensive that you cant afford them. The hay mulch system does work but is limited to hay availability. living on the river has a plus in dry spells where you can use the river for crop irrigation. I have farmed and gardened all my life and a fourth of an acre in zone four will not feed your family for a year unless you cover that whole thing in greenhouse Other than just not enough part of the problem is in your zone there may not be enough time to replant another crop as the previous one plays out. I live in zone 6 and it always strikes me a little funny when a lot of places up north are getting snow I am still getting things out of my garden or we are planting early crops when in a lot of places there is still snow on the ground. You really need to take notice when you usually get your first frost and your last frost. We always planted bush beans for canning because the crop comes all at once and pole beans for fresh eating because they bear as long as you keep them picked. With very limited space you really have to look at some of the things that take a long growing period but may not produce much like corn. Corn takes a lot of space and water for what you get in return. I am not saying don't plant corn but just that you need to think about such things when trying to make the most of small garden plots. The other alternative is to move to a bigger  WARMER place

[bearmgc]

I disagree. I live in zone 4, and abundance of my garden is sure enough evidence that one should be trying to plant and produce as much of their food as they can. Vegetable choices will not be as diverse as in other zones, but gardens can still be abundant. Greens, all kinds, corn, peppers and green beans can be blanched and frozen or canned. Squash, beets, and pumpkins, can be cooked and frozen or canned. Cucumbers, cabbage and peppers can be pickled and canned. Tomatoes can be juiced and canned. All berries and tree fruit can be frozen or canned or made into jam. I love the idea of tire potatoes, and will be trying out this idea next spring. Onions and all herbs can be dried.  Composting, even in black plastic bags with holes punched, and putting grass or hay between rows is easy to do. Last fall, I collected my nieghbors leaves and made into great compost. I got manure from the ranchers down the road. Don't stop experimenting with gardening. Problem is, we got lazy and knowing we can get what we have a taste for at the super market, we just run to the store. I'm finding this summer, vegetables, even in season are going now almost triple in price from 2 years ago. No more 2 cantalopes for a dollar or a dozen ears of corn for a dollar or a bunch of spinach for $ .79. Nope, weather, the floods, etc have reduced commercial growers yields, and they're passing on the expense to us.

[FourBee]

Hey TheCoachZed ;  How's your garden project coming ?

   My corn crop did fabulous this year.  Can't say that for my tomatos though, cool weather , rain and wind was to much for some.   Squash is doing great too, but the Okra, which I planted late, has been stunted, but it may produce something yet.
  As a side, I've let a few acres of hayfield grow over the last couple of years, mainly to help the Bob White Quail.  Well that land has flourished with wild blackberry vines, which made us a pretty good crop in early June for some blackberry coblers later on.

[jlwilliams]

We garden, and it's a great thing to do.  We have a good sized garden in the back yard and have turned the front yard into a small corn patch the last two years.  Better than mowing grass .

  If you hate weeding as much as I do, think about hydroponics.  There was a thread here on the subject and it got me reasearching.  I haven't made the jump yet, but I'm going to start messing with it over the winter.  In short, you can set up a hydroponic set up in your yard and get more produce out of the space without weeding it.  That sounds good.

  I'm getting guidance from a friend who built a table top letuce factory as an experiment.  He was getting four heads of romaine a week uninterupted by rotating the harvest from one end of the tray to the other.  I think he said it cost $0.14 a week to run the pump and a small flouresent in the winter.  It was outside in the summer so it was just a pump running.

  My wife came across another related process called 'aquaponics'.  That is just a cross between hydroponics and aquaculture.  You feed the produce in the hydro tray from a tank of fish.  The fish water fertilizes the produce and the produce filters the fish water.  Efficient and productive. You can grow ornamental fish to sell or cat fish, trout or talapia to eat.  All depends what you want to do.

  That is where I'd like to work toward.  A small area producing meat and produce in my basement.

[bearmgc]

I wonder if you could do that with crawfish....

[jlwilliams]

  Crawfish is pretty widely aquacultured, so I don't see why not.

  Another thing you may want to try with your potato gardening is the raised 'basket' system.  You take a piece of chicken wire 3' or 4' wide (even the big 2x4 stuff is fine) and cut a length that will wrap into a tube about 2' across.  Put some plastic around the inside, just to keep the dirt in.  Put about a foot of dirt in and plant your spuds.  As the plant grow, add dirt.  Stop adding dirt when the plants start to flower or when you run out of room to put in more dirt.  Then when it's time to harvest you cut the wire and the potatoes are easy to get.  Big advantage is that you don't damage your potatoes with the shovel like you do when you plant them in the ground and dig them out.  We have eight baskets this year.

[Drilling Man]

I heard this, so I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds interesting.   For those who don't  have any space for a small garden.   Line up a few bales of hay along side the house.  Put them out a few feet.   In the center cut out enough hay to add 2 gals of potted soil, about 7" deep.   Set your vegetable plants in the potted soil of each bale.  It is said that because the bales hold tremendous amounts of moisture that the plants produce bigger and better fruit.  

  It does a great job of holding snakes too...  They just love to crawl in those bales!

  Anyway, i've been gardening all of my life, as i grew up on a farm.  I still plant a couple gardens every year, and this year i have three.  Here's one of them,



  You don't need a lot of space to have a decent garden, you just need to learn how to use the space you have.

  DM

[ihookem]

When I was a kid we had 4 gardens. One for each kid. I have a huge garden but can't keep up with the weeds. My wife and I shrank the  garden this year . We decided to buy apple , pear, plum and cherry trees. We bought five trees. We are going to buy more pear and maybe some other trees. It takes a whole lot less work and can produce a lot of food. I also have two mulberry trees growing wild and one is making some berries. I might try growing 10 more mulberry trees. No planting or weeding. If one dies it heats my house. I will always have a garden though.

[FourBee]

We decided to buy apple , pear, plum and cherry trees

Brings back memories........
Years ago there was this old abandoned garden plot with several fruit trees on it.   Never made any fruit.  Then one year the apple trees were loaded with beautful apples. Some kind of baking apple I suppose.  They made the best apple pie you ever ate.

[bilmac]

Hookem,  I never could figure out what to do with mulberrys other than climb up in the tree and eat them fresh. I guess mulberry pie would be great eating. You never see recipies for anything mulberry.

[Drilling Man]

  I have several mulberry tree's here on my place, and you can use the berries the same as blk. berries...  Jam, pies, sauces ect...

  DM

[blind ear]

Interchange with black berries and the seeds arn't quite as bad. eddiegjr

[jlwilliams]

Mullberry wine.

[Blue Duck]

I have a fair sized garden and have had for many years.  Im sure it dosen't save me much if anything but I know it wasn't picked by a 3rd world guy who just crapped in the same field.  I think Ill be better for it in the long run.  If push comes to shove I know how to grow food.  I could save the seed and cut corners in a lot of ways if we didn't live in the land of plenty.  I like the idea of being somewhat self sufficient.  With what we grow, shoot and catch we probably supply at least half of what we eat.  Its a start.  It helps to live in a place like north Idaho.

[The Hermit]

I have 2 huge gardens that serve me well and I give away a lot of veggies. I have a friend on the river (St. Lawrence) who has a small cottage, virtually no land. He bought several of those 1/2 wooden barrels, filled them with dirt, and grows huge tomatoes next to his walkway between his house and garage.
I save my seeds each year and use non-hybrid seeds. Its nice to know that you are in a way feeding yourself even if its a small amount. Best of luck on what ever you decide.

    The Hermit

[Pat/Rick]

If I was limited for space I would grow corn,squash and beans, the three sisters of the Cherokee. Also i would include carrots,onions,garlic, and tomatoes if I had room