Learning food gardening skills for when TSHTF

[Glass]

I've been doing a lot of food gardening this last couple years. Veggies and fruit. I figured I should make any mistakes I was going to make and learn as much as I could before it became a survival issue. I actually enjoy gardening and I'm fairly good at it if I pay enough attention to the plants. I have grown things before and done well. As a kid I did a lot of veggies but moved on to other things for a while.

I do not have much space at all. I would estimate my total dirt area at about 24 or 25 square metres so maybe 200 sq ft. I've got paved areas that probably double this. I am probably growing in 200sq ft total. It's a hodge podge of indirect sunlight during most of the year so I use garden beds and pots to try and get the most sun I can.

While growing to make mistakes and learn from them I am not really able to sustain my veggie needs. My main goal is to get a feel for the needs of different veggies and also to harvest any seeds that come from the plants. So much of the time I'll let a fair bit go to seed so I can collect them.

I'm surprised by how prolific the production of seed is. Obviously a lot of the food we eat is actual seeds but a lot is not. Still some plants produce copious amount of seed. So it looks like, as long as you can get started you should be able to grow enough food and seed to keep going.

I work a normal job and I suffer a fair bit of pest problems with what I am growing but I am confident if I was growing full time I would be able to manage the pest problem a lot more effectively. Also sometimes you just have some sacrificial plants, however you dont want to be supporting a pest so it keeps coming back to eat your stuff. I've used a few pest traps with a lot success. The main pests I have seem to readily jump into my beer and yeast traps. I only use dregs beer ok?

I also only use organic. So no phosphate based ferts, only composts and manures. We have very dry and water alergic soil here. The water simply does not penetrate the soil. It's a fatty grey sand. The key really is organic matter and since I have been digging in manures and compost these last 2 years the change is dramatic. I am at the point where some parts of it only need water half as much as before. I took to digging holes in the beds where I am not growing anything and dumping veggie scraps straight in. These are now gone in 2 weeks. It's not practical to keep digging in stuff because I need to grow things there and I obviously can't dig it up all the time - the purpose of having a compost heap. But I am stunned by the change in the soil. It is rich, dark and holds water. It has worms in it which is just amazing if you saw how it started out.

Back to seeds. I have grown some sunflowers the last two years. Not many and in a very narrow strip of dirt. The first year I bought some packet seeds. These were dyed purple and had some thing about the purple colour on the label that I didn't understand. They flowered ok but did not seed at all. This year I grabbed a bag of bird seed sunflowers and grew those. They seeded beautifully. They are what is considered a confectionery seed. They have white stipes on them. Anyway they seeded up nicely. I have harvested a couple flowers now and the output of seeds is phenomenal.

I think I have picked these a bit early as they do not have the stripes on them yet but they are very tender and oily. I was thinking how I can make some sunflower oil, which is a nice cooking oil. It seems it's a bit fiddly unless you are set up right. I found this web site which has some good ideas.

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/oilpress.html

With the amount of seeds these things produce I am sure you can supply yourself with enough oil and seed stock for the next year or two no problems. There are 2 types of seed, one used more for oil and the other for not sure what. I used the not sure what ones but they still seem pretty oily to me.

Anyway, I like the flowers and the way they follow the sun. Once they flower, they seed very quickly and the heads get droopy and heavy. I loved watching the bees go mental over these flowers. Like some kind of apiary orgasm or something. Ants seem to get something from them as well so it's best to harvest them late in the afternoon after the ants have clocked off for the day.

sunflowers are called that for a reason. I like em.

[SLV^GLD]

The most fun I have found is growing chinese okra. The vines grow about 1'-1.5' a day. They flower every morning and the blooms fall off in the afternoon heat. Bees and ants swarm them continuously. The fruit can be eaten like okra or zucchini and it freezes well. You can also just let the fruit grow to max potential till it falls off the vine and dries like a gourd. Peel off the skin and you have the equivalent of a loofa sponge that you can wash dishes with.

[Glass]

There's so much good stuff to grow. I grew cucumbers last year and did well. They kind of bleached in the sun but were good inside. I grew them again this year and I was surprised. I thought the crop was a bit light on but on closer inspection I am doing much better than last year. My carrots were decimated again this year. Tender shoots don't last long enought to grow it seems. There is so much stuff to grow. I have little pockets of herbs which grow in nooks and crannies that can't support other things. It's about creative gardening IMO. Mix it up and plant veggies in any spare space no matter how small.

In between traditional ornamental plants, use them as borders - lettuce, spring onions, radish. It is very dry down here in Oz but I am a great believer that we are our own worst enemy, by cutting down trees and replacing with concrete roofs and bitumen roads, not growing shade trees around our houses we are adding to the desertification of our cities. I believe we need to grow more and water more.

Trees are a water pump. They perspire and push moisture into the air along with particulates which cause the water to condense and come down as rain. We have broken this cycle and have low rainfall as a result. We have water restrictions which based on my experience is backwards. My garden is a mini ecosystem now.

[SLV^GLD]

I have more trouble with getting to eat the fruits before the squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, deer, birds, raccoons, insects, etc. etc. etc. get to them. :D :boohoo