Over the winter I did plant, harvest, and consume some potatoes (four plants), simply because I had a bag that didn't get used and started growing eyes. Not a big deal, but hey, they tasted good.
But I've got my 4' by 8' raised bed planted and it's looking good so far -- romaine, another variety of leaf lettuce, green onions, cayenne peppers, bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, radishes, zucchini, and cantaloupe. One week later, I've got sprouts of everything but the cantaloupe. I bought a bag of single-use plant food packets, which as it happens are each supposed to be enough for a 4' by 8' area, to be used weekly, and set up an Alexa reminder so that I don't forget to feed the plants every Friday. I also plan to be more attentive to weeding, spraying for bugs, etc. this time around.
Obviously a 4' by 8' raised bed garden isn't going to feed the family, but it should provide some salad and stir-fry fixins. Since there will be time for at least one more planting season this year, I'm eyeing a much larger space in the back yard. Maybe a row of sweet corn (to throw on the grill!), and possibly more tomatoes and a row of kidney beans (add beef and seasoning, possibly including some of those cayenne peppers, and voila -- chili!).
On the food side, I'm only a "prepper" to the extent that I keep a fairly large selection of canned food around. We could probably eat canned food for a month and not run out. I do that mainly because if the power goes out for an extended period (as it does when a hurricane comes through), it can be heated over an outside fire fairly easily.
Do any of you do any serious gardening, and/or can the foods you raise? One thing I'm trying to figure out is how much effort and expense would be involved in doing it at the scale required to reduce our outside food needs to meats, spices, and grain-based stuff that would probably be a pain to take from "in the ground" to "that's a loaf of bread right there."
No comments:
Post a Comment