Start a little at-home farm, it may well save you from harm
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This is part 2. Part 1 addressed the mindset.
Farm a little, Here’s How
Enough fanfare, let’s get to the dirt-y part. In this newsletter, we’ll go over the produce options. In the next one—this one is getting pretty long—we’ll lay out some animal options.
Big picture, planting is the easiest up front and requires the least commitment. Poultry are more and a milk goat is even more. Planting is also the most flexible as far as space and living in urban or suburban areas. On the other hand, animals give you more food, a lot more food, for your effort. It’s a trade off.
Produce
Let’s hit a few crops that are pretty easy and rewarding to grow. Pick one that works for you that you aren’t already doing.
(Whatever you pick, manage your expectations. It takes a surprisingly big area to feed a family. Absent some highly specialized intensive techniques, with the investment of time and capital to go along with it, your starter garden isn’t going to replace your food budget. )
Here is what we are going to cover. Pole beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, summer squash and cantelope, sweet corn, potatoes, and pumpkins and winter squash.
As is typical for the Steader, we are going to demystify a lot of the lore that surrounds growing stuff. As is typical for the Steader, we are going to give you the basic, good enough solutions. But some research or talking to neighbors can give you more complicated, expensive, and arduous methods that also give you better results. We’ve lived in different parts of the United States with different climates, so this advice is meant to generalize. Even so, talk to your neighbors and master gardeners. Some things that are easy to grow most everywhere can be particularly challenging in your area. Some things that are challenging most places will grow almost like weeds in yours. Farming isn’t an ideology or a universal abstraction. Its inherently local. And besides, talking to those people is a great idea anyway. Asking people for advice is one of the great ways to reknit those frayed community ties, one conversation at a time.
But first, some basics that you will want to see laid out. (We will be skipping stuff like how close to plant or when, partly because you can get than anywhere, even on the seed packet, but also partly to encourage you to talk to gardeners in your area).
All counsel here is based on experience, our own or chatting with folks. None of this is wikipedia research.
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Plant growth is dirt, water, and sunlight. Even bad growing conditions will usually get you something if you have those three.
SOIL—gardening requires dirt. The worse the dirt, the worse your yields. It is possible to do without. We have successfully grown produce in some terrible soil without doing any extraordinary effort. Improving your soil requires either your own compost or biochar (effort plus knowhow) or buying stuff. But for a first timer, if your soil is bad, its probably worth adding some broken down organic material. You want a rewarding experience. You don’t need to buy tons of the stuff and replace your dirt completely, a little bit goes a long way.
If you want to garden intensively or if you think that you will be gardening in the same spot for years, then soil amendments like perlite, vermiculite, or peat moss start to make more sense. They probably aren’t worth the money for just one year. (Note: Amazon sells these at big mark-ups. Ditto Wal-mart. You are better off at a local or national hardware store or at a specialized online supplier of greenhouse and gardening supplies). Don’t feel like you have to get all of these things to start your home farm though. Permanent soil amendments like these, you can think of them as a form of savings or a compact form of storage. You take resources at a time when resources are cheap and plentiful and you convert it to better soil for when they aren’t. Or you can think of it as ‘storing’ future produce in the ground. But they aren’t necessary.
Learning how to compost or biochar is fun and rewarding. But don’t wait until you’ve figured those out.
Soil that has extreme PH, that is almost pure sand, or that is almost pure clay, will be the most challenging. Anything else will be fairly forgiving.
FERTILIZER—increases yields, but isn’t necessary for many types of plants. If your soil is decent, it may not be necessary at all. Too much fertilizer at once can kill a plant. Some fertilizers are better than others but standard retail fertilizers will work, and will have instructions on them that if you follow will give you ok results.
For a beginner, probably use some fertilizer. It makes it more likely you’ll have a rewarding experience.
Having some extra fertilizer on hand can also be thought of as a way of ‘storing’ produce without worrying about it rotting.
For advanced gardeners, the right soil supplements can boost yields a lot.
WATER—too little, your plants stop growing or even die. You can normally tell just by looking at the plant. If it starts to dry up to the touch or even to the eye, wilt, and/or yellow a bit at the edges, you let it go too long without water. Another test is to push down a few inches into the soil. Is the dirt still bone dry? If you see mold and the soil is mushy or spongy, you have watered too much. In dry areas, you should have a regular watering schedule, which you can adjust. In wet areas, just keep an eye on your plants. If you do need to water, its best if don’t water by spraying the plant from above; you can get mold or mildew that way.
Mulch helps with watering frequency. But you don’t have to mulch, it just means you may need to water more (and you may have more weeds).
WEEDS—you have to weed especially at first. Your plants are often little snowflakes when they are just starting out, weed competition will really set them back. Weeding is the deal that produce plants make with us. They’ll spend their effort making something delicious, but in term we lay waste to their enemy plants for them. (Planting right next to a tree or a bush can be challenging for the same reason. The competition.)
Weed by hand or use a hoe, a shovel, a hulu hoe, a trowel, whatever you find comfortable. You need to weed at least once a week. If you miss a week, no big deal. But if you miss a lot of weeks, your garden will get overgrown. But you can still put in the effort to pull the weeds and salvage the situation. Gardens are pretty forgiving if you just try.
MULCH—Mulch cuts down on weeding. There’s a lot out there about mulch and some kinds are better than others, but essentially all you are doing is putting something down that separates the soil from the sun. Organic stuff is better, things like grass clippings, straw, old leaves, wood chips. But you can also use plastic sheeting or flattened cardboard boxes or a product called weed tarp that allows water through better. In wet areas, too much mulch can lead to molding. In dry areas, mulch helps a lot with watering.
DISEASES, INSECTS, NIBBLERS—these depend on the type of produce and the area. Local knowledge is key here. We will give you some general pointers below.
SUNLIGHT and HEAT—most plants want sun. The more sun, the better they produce. But you can still probably get decent yields if the plant gets sun about half the day.
For produce, the USDA growth zones are a very rough approximation of whether a plant can take the kind of summer heat you experience in your area. Unless you live in the very far north or the very far south, or at extreme elevations, most plants will work for you.
GROWING SEASON—your growing season is basically your time between your last spring frost and your first fall frost. Some types of plants can go into the ground before the last frost.
MONITORING—you probably want to check your garden at least once a week. More often gives you better results. If you need to go on a trip, you can probably be gone up to two weeks without a disaster if you either have rain or an automatic waterer. Otherwise, perhaps a week at most.
GETTING HELP—most gardeners love to tell you about their garden. We have got great advice just by knocking on the door of a great garden we saw. Local social media can also help, or just ask your friends and family. Most areas also have a Master Gardeners club and an agricultural extension office that you can call or email to get put in touch with a live person from your area.
SPACE—if you live in an apartment or condo type situation, even growing something on your patio is good practice. It works the muscle. But you may also look for community gardening options; for nearby empty lots, owners especially don’t mind options like pumpkins or cucumbers that cover a lot of dirt without requiring much digging; or elderly people with more space who might welcome a visitor growing things and sharing some of the produce. When you realize you only need to farm your little plot once a week, it expands your options to a little further away.
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All right, let’s go over your options.
Pole beans:
Pole beans are extremely easy to grow and do well in bad soil. I know—I’ve grown them in both boggy clay and desert dust successfully.
You have to something for them to grow on, which could be a fence, some actual poles or sticks leaning on each other tripod style, or a temporary fence with netting or string or wire between them. The more gaps there are in whatever your use for fencing, the more you may have to occasionally corral loose vines and hook them back onto the fence.
They can grow extremely thick and produce extremely well. This means, number 1, if you have just some kind of temporary fence, it may sag in the middle towards the end of the summer unless you do something to keep the ends steady and secure. Some people use tie downs. My dad likes to put the end poles at an outward slant and hang cinder blocks from them, so the weight of the block counters the weight of the beans.
Number two, it means you will have your work cut out for you when it comes picking time.
Of course pole beans will do better with a little soil preparation, some organic stuff mixed into the soil, some composting, or compost tea. But you will get good results just by digging up a bit where you intend to plant, and then planting.
Once the pole beans are going strong you won’t have much problems with weeds.
In most areas that we have heard of, there isn’t much trouble with insect pests or diseases. Deer will munch on them, though.
Pole bean varieties are usually meant either to be picked green and eaten fresh as a vegetable, or allowed to dry on the vine and then stored for use as a bean. You’ll get better results if you have the right variety of bean for what you want, but the truth is that most varieties can be ok used either way.
If you want to keep the fresh ones, you’ll have to can them.
The dry ones are dead simple to keep. Just store them at room temperature like they would a bean.
Pole beans are probably your best option for growing protein in large quantities.
We recommend pole beans because they are easy to grow and prolific. The downside is that storing them means you either have to can fresh or shuck the dry beans. Either way, picking pole beans is an effort.
Cucumbers
Cucumbers are another one of those dead easy to grow plants. Cucumbers that you grow will also taste noticeably better than you can get in the store.
Cucumbers are not quite as tolerant of bad soil as pole beans, but still pretty tolerant. I’ve grown them lifeless dirt before, with just a little digging and just a little fertilizer at the start, that’s all.
They spread out quite a bit. Cucumbers like space. The advantage for you is that they can cover a lot of ground and choke out the weeds pretty quickly. But if you are tight on space, don’t grow them. There are also pole cucumbers which we’d have good success with. They demand less horizontal space.
In some areas, cucumbers will get “squash bugs”. Ask your local gardeners. These are extremely hard to deal with. Probably the most successful method is to plant later in the season, June or even early July, than you normally would. Or don’t grow cucumbers. Cucumbers otherwise are not every susceptible to disease or insect pests in our experience, in most areas. Animals will eat them, though.
Storing cucumbers is a challenge. Pickling cucumbers is easy to mess up on if you are doing it the natural way. The other way, buying lots of vinegar, can get expensive. (For your first experiments in home pickling, we recommend sauerkraut. It is very hard to mess up. Cabbages, however, while not difficult to grow in the right climate, are also not the easiest).
Cucumbers are low in calories. You are growing them for the flavor or to replace all the pickles and fresh cukes you buy at the store. They aren’t a real strong food source.
We recommend cucumbers because they are easy to grow, don’t require a lot of work to weed or pick, and are delicious compared to the ones you buy. The downside is the storage. Cucumbers are challenging to store. They are also low calorie.
Tomatoes
Tomatoes are popular in gardens because they are moderately easy to grow and are stunning in their flavor compared to the ones you buy.
Either buy young tomato plants from a local nursery or grow them from seeds indoors. The first option is more expensive, the second one requires a bit more skill. However, most guides make indoor growing seem more complicated than it is. Get some wet soil in a cup or a tray, put more seeds in than you want plants, keep it moist. When your plants are ready (adult leaves), remove them from your tray without removing them from the soil (i.e., dig up the dirt they are in with the plant). Find some instructions on hardening also. Peat pellet seed starters are widely available and very easy to use.
Once you’ve planted them, there are different techniques for pruning and training your tomatoes. These give you better results but you can do ok without them.
Tomatoes need a little bit more care for the soil. You will want some decent organic matter worked into the soil, or else you will need to fertilize in some way, probably more than once.
Popular hybrid varieties or cherry tomatoes are the most forgiving for first timers.
You definitely want to talk to successful home tomato farmers in your area to find out what diseases and what resistant varieties they recommend. Tomatoes are easier to grow than you think, but there is some skill involved.
Tomatoes are popular enough that they have varieties meant for growing in patios or on containers. For condo and apartment dwellers, grow tomatoes. The other choice for you would be herbs, I’d probably recommend basil.
Tomatoes have to be canned to be stored more than a week or so. They will last longer on the vine than they will picked.
However, the last few years we have picked our remaining green tomatoes just before the frost. The smaller cherry types in particular will generally slowly ripen and be fresh for a month or more.
Tomatoes are recommended because of the incredibly rewarding experience of eating your own fresh tomato with that unmistakeable home flavor. The downsides are a little more difficulty in growing, plus canning required for storage.
Summer squash and cantelope
Essentially the same advice as with cucumbers, right down to the squash bugs.
Summer squash in particular can be VERY prolific (zucchini is a summer squash). This can be highly rewarding, especially if you have kids helping you. Pick them smaller. If you let them get pithy, they are a waste of your time. The smaller, the more flavor. Just three to four inches are absolutely scrumptious. Try grilling or stir frying. We also like them baked in a casserole dish with some kind of meat on top.
Home farm-fresh cantelope are also incredibly delicious. Try eating them warm from the sun sometime. Oh my.
Neither cantelope or summer squash store very well or are probably worth storing.
Recommended for the ease of growing and the flavor. The downside is that they don’t store and are also fairly low in calories.
Sweet corn
Home grown sweet corn is delicious. Just an incredible experience. Eating corn on the cob you grew yourself is an American heritage experience that everyone should have at least once. It really means something.
Corn grows pretty well but requires decent soil or fertilizer. You either have to spray or you are likely to get a worm infestation in your ears of corn, especially if you or someone else has grown corn in the vicinity sometime in the last year or two. For this reason, we only grow corn every few years when the hankering gets to us. Deer, squirrel, and other pests also love corn.
Corn requires a fair amount of effort at weeding throughout the season.
Corn stalks require more effort to compost than most plant waste.
You can store them by drying them, including letting them dry on the stalk. Potatoes or beans are probably a bit better for long term dry storage of bulk food, however. The dried corn either needs to be ground, or boiled like beans, but the boiled version is fairly tasteless.
Recommended for the pure American flavor of home grow corn, unmatchable anywhere except at a farm stand. Downsides are the worms, the extra effort, and the fact that most varieties you can get are pretty much empty calories.
Potatoes
We’ve never had much luck growing potatoes. The ones we did had a flavor not much better than the store variety.
Still, the ability to store in the ground is attractive. And in long term catastrophes, potatoes probably have the best ratio of calories to effort (apart from animals) for most climates and terrains in the United States. Potatoes are mostly “empty” calories, but hungry people don’t mind. Which means some experience with them would be good.
So potatoes are the Steader challenge for this fella this year. This is the one I will be adding to my home farm tool set.
Here’s some basic advice from a man we trust.
Pumpkins
Pumpkins and winter squash (butternut, etc.) grow well. In our experience, they can still grow in pretty bad soil if they have sun and water. They are one of the easiest plants for beginners to grow successfully.
They are easy to pick and easy to store. If you keep them somewhere cool and not super moist, they will last most of the winter. But we've just left them laying around outside or in the house and still had them go for a couple of months. Wherever you put them, just check on them every once in a while and move them around a bit. No canning or drying necessary.
They are pretty versatile. Pies, breads . . . but you can also just bake or boil and use the flesh as a porridge or as the base for a soup or casserole. Plenty of recipes out there. (For those who don't have a lot of experience cooking with them, you can basically substitute winter squash for pumpkins in most recipes and vice versa. Most canned pumpkin you buy in the store is actually winter squash.). Be sure to save the seeds. They are edible and tasty.
Pumpkins and winter squashes have a hard shell so normally small vermin like mice and squirrels aren’t a problem. The vines themselves can be vulnerable to deer (ducks love, love, love to eat young squash plants).
If you are in an area with squash bugs, you will either want to plant later in the year or try a different type of produce; consult local gardeners.
Pumpkins and winter squash are really, really good where you have lots of space in your garden. They can spread and spread without any more labor on your part. Once they get going, they will choke out almost all weeds.
Pumpkins and winter squash are an American heritage food. Carving your own pumpkin at Halloween, eating your own pie at Thanksgiving, are experiences that really mean something.
They are also a good choice for front yards or highly landscaped areas. In those places, you want
a grow area with a fairly defined border
plants that cover up the dirt entirely
plants that are decorative.
These three steps are the ones that will make your neighbors more likely to see what you are doing as aesthetic—edible landscaping—instead of an icky garden. The last two are the most important.
Pumpkins and winter squash will do a good job of covering up the dirt and producing colorful, decorative fruit.
NOTE: Pumpkins and winter squash (or cucumbers or summer squash) are your two-hour option. Spend 45 minutes doing a little research, spend an hour or so getting some seeds, digging a bit and planting, and water. You can spend more time but you don’t have to.
So pumpkins and winter squash are the number one steader recommendation for new home farmers. They are easy to grow, productive, a good source of calories and nutrients, easy to store, versatile to use, and tasty.
If you have space, pumpkins and winter squash optimize for easy growing, productive produce, and rewarding beautiful use at the end.
Next time: animal options