- Thread starter
- #71
digitS'
Garden Master
Ramble - it may all be folderol, as my mother used to say. Or, applesauce ...
I used to see so many apple trees growing in the wild that I set out a few times to sample their fruit. Terribly sour! Growing from seed, those trees weren't producing the same fruit that someone threw out of the window of a car or off the train, years before.
Bananas. No, that element in my fruit diet would have to be abandoned if I was to grow all my own food. We eat some meat and sustaining livestock is where most of those 5 acres are going. Much of our dietary proteins are from eggs and the quality feed required by 300 egg/year laying hens means that they need a diet not all that different from what humans enjoy. And, a small flock eats a surprising amount of food.
I'm lucky that DW enjoys harvesting and using potatoes. Her participation in digging them is a whole series of "Wow!" One TEG gardener a few years ago said that I must be in an ideal potato growing location. No, I'm between ideal potato growing locations. The comment prompted me to weigh every bucket of spuds that I carried out of the garden. Despite growing them in well-prepared soil, I only accomplished a "farmer's average." Not bad, lots of Wows, from DW
.
Winter storage is a problem for potatoes. I have yet to try a "potato clamp" for storage. Setting a heated house over a root cellar results in adequate storage conditions for only about 5 months.
Mother Earth magazine has great information on "biodynamic" gardening and how to figure how much food you need with yields and serving size. Use their links to charts.
Steve
I used to see so many apple trees growing in the wild that I set out a few times to sample their fruit. Terribly sour! Growing from seed, those trees weren't producing the same fruit that someone threw out of the window of a car or off the train, years before.
Bananas. No, that element in my fruit diet would have to be abandoned if I was to grow all my own food. We eat some meat and sustaining livestock is where most of those 5 acres are going. Much of our dietary proteins are from eggs and the quality feed required by 300 egg/year laying hens means that they need a diet not all that different from what humans enjoy. And, a small flock eats a surprising amount of food.
I'm lucky that DW enjoys harvesting and using potatoes. Her participation in digging them is a whole series of "Wow!" One TEG gardener a few years ago said that I must be in an ideal potato growing location. No, I'm between ideal potato growing locations. The comment prompted me to weigh every bucket of spuds that I carried out of the garden. Despite growing them in well-prepared soil, I only accomplished a "farmer's average." Not bad, lots of Wows, from DW
.Winter storage is a problem for potatoes. I have yet to try a "potato clamp" for storage. Setting a heated house over a root cellar results in adequate storage conditions for only about 5 months.
Mother Earth magazine has great information on "biodynamic" gardening and how to figure how much food you need with yields and serving size. Use their links to charts
.Steve
