I live in a 3rd floor flat with no garden and therefore know zilch about gardening,or tending poultry and livestock, but I was just wondering how many people could be fed by a typical garden, a 1-acre plot and a 5-acre plot in some kind of end-of-world survival scenario? What do you think?
Man, that 5-acre plan is beautiful. If you can keep up with these plans, the first one is going to feed 2-5 people. The 1 acre plan will feed a large family, and even make a little money on the side. The 5 acres will feed them completely, and possibly provide enough income for full-time employment.
Back when I lived in LA there was a family, a father and 3 adult children, who maintained an urban farm on a typical single family residential lot. They grew all their own food, including milk, eggs, lamb/goat and poultry(that they had processed off site), and sold $20-30k a year of produce to their neighbors. At my first apartment I had about 300 square feet of cultivated garden, plus 15 mature fruit trees pumping out lemons, limes, grapefruit, oranges, and Japanese pears. Myself, my wife, and my neighbor were able to limit our grocery trips to the bare essentials-milk, yeast, flour, salt and pepper, and small portions of meat with enough left over to trade for eggs and fill up a community basket for our neighbors. It takes time, years of trial and error, and a heavy upfront labor investment in building a proper garden and soil structure. I recently moved to Texas and since they actually have seasons have went right back to having a rough start trying to figure out when to plant.
You'd be surprised. Agriculture has come an impressively long way, and a rustic gentleman can automate just about all the farm work these days.
A lot depends on your climate and what you grow and your ability to store it. I have been doing this my entire life. The reality is some years are good for some things and bad for others and you just never know which it will be there are so many variables. For instance, last year was a horrible year for sweet potatoes in our area and nobody really knows why. It just was. This year is a bumper year for them.
Maybe in some cases. I plant three different varieties of cucumbers because it seems like one is rolling the dice on not getting any. This year the lemon cukes did amazing but the others not. It is like this year was a good year for zucchini but my crooked neck squash just didn't do well. They are basically the same plant growing under the same conditions but I seldom have a good year for both at the same time. Wasn't an insect problem. The yellows just turned to mush before they got large enough to harvest.
I love lemon squash! I guess it is all according to how healthy the seed is to begin with, don't know really. I know we try to use only heirloom's and seems like somebody has messed with them. They don't do as good as they use to. Same with any plants some plants from same seeds just do better than others I guess.
I save my own seeds when I can, but in the case of squash, if I didn't get any, I have to buy the seeds next go round. Same with the cucumbers that didn't produce much. I prefer heirloom seeds but they just add to the crop uncertainty. Once I shell them, I will probably have between a quart and a half gallon of just red okra seeds for the next few years since it did well enough for me to leave a bunch of the pods on for seed. I have only ever had to buy seed for that once. I am considering bringing some tomato starts that popped up in a flower pot in to see if I can propagate them over winter for spring. Will have to wait and see.
We have over wintered them and they will do great. Won't produce of course but will survive and transplanted out in spring.
Have you ever tried growing new plants off cuttings during the winter? That is what I am really going for. If I can't propagate them, I am not sure I want them.
All the time. Especially tomatoes. We just cut them off and sick them in the dirt. Do you watch youtube?
Yes. It is one of those things I have done during the growing season. Just wasn't sure how successful it would be over winter in lower light conditions than outside.
This needs its own reply. About propagating them yourself I am wondering if when we buy some of these transplant from stores if they don't have some kind of virus in the soil? And are they really Heirlooms or non hybrids like the say they are?
Not sure the original soil would matter as far as growing from cuttings, but I know some food crops like sweet potatoes get sprayed with chemicals designed to keep them from sprouting which makes it harder to use them to create your own slips.
Deckel this guy is really good at hydros and soil planting. Also his personality is cool and easy to understand. Lettuce is also really good with hydros.
I was talking about ' store bought ' transplants not cuttings.haha I'm not always clear in my typing. Yea maybe get potato slips from organic? And save your own potato slips for next season.
We don't put anything in our buckets at all. We use pebbles in our net pots and use only dark buckers for hyros. We bought white food grade but didn't like how green the light turned the water [ green water won't hurt anything but looks cloudy}. We will paint the white buckets later so no light can penetrate. Our reservoir's water is clear too.
I will take a few before the frost from my bucket sweet potatoes just because it took me a month of sundays to get slips going from a store bought one last year. They are very hit or miss in terms of availability at our local southern states which is about the only place to find them any more. Some years they never get any.
I didn't have any luck last year with them from local feed store either. And I don't have any to save. Maybe try to get some from Whole Foods next trip to Jax..
