Productivity for the backyard gardener

[Atash]

I have grown Quinoa. It's easy to grow in the Pacific Northwest. I am guessing Amaranth would surprisingly easy to grow here, despite its high heat requirements, because the stuff goes weedy all over my yard from spilled birdseed!!

Amaranth is a very interesting crop, but a challenge too. Here is the interesting part: C4 metabolism. It grows extremely fast (like corn--same chemical process) in hot weather.

Grain Amaranth is an excellent crop for hot and slightly dryish climates. I might take some with me to the dry jungle where I will be looking for farmland.

Here is the problem: it cooks up unpleasantly gooey/gummy. It makes an unpleasantly gummy porridge that does not appeal to humans.

It seems to me, one might be able to put those properties to good effect cooking small amounts of it in soup. Like gumbo (use your imagination). I have heard of people putting small amounts of it into cookies, cakes, etc, but it could not be the primary ingredient.

The Aztecs made honey-sweetened cookie-like cakes out of them. Often complete with human blood of sacrificial victims. The Spaniards took one look at that, decided it was Black Communion and that the Aztecs were devil-worshippers, and banned the cultivation thereof.

Leaf Amaranth is a good crop for climates too hot to grow spinach. It grows super-fast in hot weather. Asians, especially in tropical countries, eat it. I think in theory you can grow either type for either purpose, but usually Old World Amaranths are used for leaf, and New World for grain.

By the way: both are somewhat problematic for large-scale commercial production, because harvesting their seedheads is a delicate operation. They do not lend themselves to mechanical harvest, although it can be done with careful timing.

[quote]Where do they stack up as to productivity and nutrition? /QUOTE]

I think productivity depends a lot on climate. I would guess Quinoa reasonably productive as grains go here; one can get up to about a pound per plant, and each plant occupies maybe a foot and a half square.

Nutritionally, I know that they are both complete proteins. Quinoa is something like 11% protein which is mediocre, but it's the quality of the protein that is outstanding--something like 98% protein utilization or thereabouts. Like drinking milk.

I bought some Moringa seed and have 2 happy baby trees. I am excited that they make oil seeds, but it sounds like this "ben oil" isn't as healthy as most plant oils...' will do some more research on this.

Morninga bean oil is more useful as an industrial lubricant than as a human foodstuff.

Moringa beans have the following interesting property: if you live in the dryish tropics and can't get clear water--which is a fairly common problem (muddy water), you can collect muddy water in pales, crush one moringa bean per gallon, and add it to the water.

The seeds contain coagulants that will cause the mud particles to sink to the bottom of the pale, so that clear water can be poured off. Horribly muddy water can be made clear. It still has to be boiled or chemically treated, but the Moringa seeds make it quick and easy to clarify it.

If you're going to eat the beans, then normally you'd eat them immature. Traditionally, it's the unripe pods that are eaten. If you've ever wondered what the ingredient "vegetable drumsticks" are in old Indian (as in from India) cookbooks, that's what they are. India has 2 or 3 native species, Moringa oleifera being the one generally used for food. Africa is the center of the genus, and M. stenopetala has become popular as a food plant. Amazing find: it is known from only 5 populations although Mark Olsen thinks it probably occurs elsewhere and nobody bothered to look.

Moringa leaves are roughly 5.7% protein which is high for a leaf, but the more important thing is that they contain complete protein, and they are absolutely amazing as nearly "failsafe" crops for arid tropical climates. They simply drop their leaves during the dry season, but survive. The leaves also contain pro-vitamin A, vitamin C, and the B vitamins. They are storable as dry powder for use during the dry season. Just an absolutely wonderful tree. My avatar, which went missing while I was keeping a low profile after a certain poster who is no longer here started attacking me (and one of the moderators apparently agreed with him...), is me holding a Moringa twig. You can see it on my website in the forms.

I have a tiny African Moringa seedling going in a pot. Alas it will need to be protected as my winters are far too rainy not to mention cold for it to survive without artificial protection. I might try encouraging it to go dormant, then putting it in a shed.

Isn't it at harvesting seaberries where they run into issues with productivity?

No idea. This is my first time trying them, and there's not a huge amount of literature out on the subject. My impression is that Seaberry juice is considerably diluted, something like 2 or 3 parts water to one of Seaberry juice. It is so rich in vitamin C and essential amino acids that it is still supplying plenty.

From my point of view, the attractive points about growing seaberries is that they are a potent source of vitamin C and essential fatty acids for northerly countries, and I don't have to feed them nitrogen fertilizer. So far mine have been easy to grow.

Aside from production.. are you also looking for storage qualities?

Yes. Some crops are used fresh but when times are tough, self-storing ability (fresh or dry) is good. Most root crops don't self-store but store easily in root cellars.

One alternative to storage is crops that are available over a long season anyway. For example, my "tree collards" are available for many months of the year. To store them for off-season (midwinter, midsummer) I'd have to do something like lactic-acid fermentation.

Any storage technique that starts getting complicated or requires expensive outside consumable parts (mason canning jar lids...) is problematic especially for the backyard or homestead grower.

Atash... what means do you use in preserving & storing your crops?

I'm not. I let squashes, soup peas, and beans self-store. Potatoes root cellared. Everything else gets used in season.

My goal here is to collect information for typical backyard gardeners, who will be unlikely to do anything too complicated. And I don't want to train people to do anything too expensive, like canning and freezing, if the whole point is to cut their own food bills.

My preservation means of choice aside from self-storage, drying, and root cellaring, is lactic acid fermentation of leafy vegetables, cucumbers (haven't tried squashes but they should work the same way), and similar delicate crops. My basement is a little warm for it and not ideal (you want slow fermentation for longer-lasting pickles and better flavor), although I can extend the season a bit. My shed would probably work, but it is too full of junk to be useable.

Aside from my garden (which surprisingly quite a few plants rebounded from the nasty hail destruction that I wrote off as "toast")... this late summer/fall I am going mushroom hunting with my husband's coworker. (He has 40+ years experience identifying and foraging for wild mushrooms.) At my Mom's farm in IL we would hunt morels in spring and then puffballs in late summer/ fall... those I can ID... here in CO Porchini & chantrelles are also on the menu (also matsutake... but I want the puffballs! My Mom would make them with this wine & onion sauce... heaven!)

Most mushrooms dry well. I haven't tried puffballs.

I think mushrooms are easy to identify. But I have Asperger's Syndrome and notice details that neurotypicals don't. It's hard to imagine how anyone could mistake, say, a false Morrel for a Morrel, but people somehow manage it.

The ones I REALLY keep an eye out for are the Amanitas. Those scare me! And they are rather common in my part of the world. I see Destroying Angels in people's lawns. And the Fly Agarics get a lot of attention (red caps with dots), but they look sinister enough people leave them alone!

[ilex]

Originally Posted by garnetmoth

...

Mulberry leaves are pretty nutritious for our rabbits, as are sweet potato leaves (which dry well)...

Sweet potato leaves are edible, and if you count leaves, that's a very productive plant for hot weather. Mulberry leaves are also supposed to be edible, and I can tell you they are quite good.

What to grow depends a lot on local conditions. I find potatoes and carrots very difficult to grow, specially potatoes, which I consider almost impossible to grow in conditions.

[Atash]

What to grow depends a lot on local conditions. I find potatoes and carrots very difficult to grow, specially potatoes, which I consider almost impossible to grow in conditions.

Clay or rocky soil? Heat? Pests?

If it's too hot for potatoes grow sweet potatoes, which aren't quite as productive but loaded with calories and provitamin A (except the white-fleshed varieties...). I've heard that in some climates almost weedy.

[Dreyadin]

Hey Atash... I looked a bit about harvesting seaberries. Seems there are 2 primary commercial methods of harvesting... one is cutting the branches and freezing them to shake off the berries (the shrub then needs 2 years to rebound) and the machine shaking in which they seem to get only 50% or so of the crop. Those big ol' thorns seem to make them quite the challenge.

Puffballs are super easy to ID. Some at my Mom's get close to soccer ball sized.

[Atash]

My Seaberries seem to be quite thornless. They are cultivated forms, highly bred. Oddly they are not shaped the same as wild ones I see in pictures--they are more upright and shaped like "standards" ("Lollipop trees").

No fruit this year. Darn.

I think mechanization is the issue with seaberries, because of the small fruit close to the branch (not to mention thorns and other issues). By hand on a small scale, I would just use the clawed scoops Scandinavians use to harvest things like Lingonberries.

[beehappy]

I was thinking, Atash, that even though it's not gardening, beekeeping is a type of agriculture. Requires only space for the hives, and an initial investment in equipment. Medications and bee feed are all that is needed (or might be, depending on your style) after that.

As for products, 3 hives gave me 142 lbs. of honey two weeks ago, we'll see what they produce later this year. That's a lot of calories. Wax is the other product. If you wanted to (I don't) you can raise wax moths for protein from larvae (like I said, I don't) and can also eat bee larvae (another thing I don't do, but is a delicacy to some).

[earthworm77]

thinking about this again....looking in my own garden and I see 6 giant, and I mean giant Collard plants. Hardy, easy to grow and likely one of the best leafy greens as far as nutrition is concerned.

[Atash]

First of all, I had not looked closely enough at my Seaberries. Seaberries don't so much have thorns (leaves modified into pokey things) as they do branch tips that end in a point. It took me a while to notice. Mine does have them, but they haven't been a problem yet. I am guessing that the problem is that each individual berry is rather small, and I would guess reaching into the heart of the plant gets tricky.

Beehappy, there is a chapter on backyard beekeeping in a book I have about growing foods in tiny places. I'll have to look it up. My concern with beekeeping is that there is a bit of a hazard especially if someone nearby is allergic to bee stings.

Hmmm, never heard of raising wax moth larvae for food, but it sounds intriguing. Bugs are actually pretty good protein; humans just seem to have an instinctual repulsion for them, probably because our ancestors got stung, bit, and some insects carry disease. But knowing which ones are which means that you can avoid trouble.

Earthworm, many of the Brassicas are generous food suppliers. Collards is a good one because you eat the whole big leaf. The only reason they are not better known, is because most of us had ancestors in cold climates where they prefer their close cousin cabbage (basically just a heading version of the same species) because it is easy to store.

I'm currently growing Kohlrabbi, and planning to grow a bunch more for fall and winter harvest. You eat both the "tops" and the bulbs. Good crop.

[garnetmoth]

How did everyone's productivity go this year? We were super busy (got married, dad's been sick) but had some fun results with potatoes, sweet potatoes planted really late, great tomatoes, decent arugula and turnip greens.

[Atash]

How did everyone's productivity go this year?

Lost a lot of tomatoes due to failure to ripen. Next year I am growing only a few different kinds I can be sure will ripen.

We are now having fairly regular frosts (unusual). I covered over the last tomatoes. I still get a few sort of ripening from time to time.

My daughter just made her second green-tomato-pie.

Kale is very productive. Too bad my wife hates it. I think it's fine. I sneak it into all sorts of things.

Sorrel is quite productive--enough so that between the productivity, and the fact you only use it in small quantities (it's sour), I am going to give 3/4 of my plants away to put other stuff in their bed.

Potatoes are productive. Not all harvested yet.

Strawberries were poor producers. The root rot is compromising their vigor. Same disease was a major problem for any and all Leguminous crops.

[beehappy]

Despite the weather in NJ my garden treated us well. Tomatoes would have lasted longer, I had no green tomatoes left, but all performed well. Haven't had a frost yet, came close though. I picked the last peppers and green beans yesterday, still getting arugula, turnips, beets, lettuce, collards, carrots, peas, spinach, potatoes, parsley, bok choi, radishes.

Broccoli and cauliflower did poorly, and cucumber beetles decimated my winter squash and cukes, then moved on to squash and zuchini. They seemed to spread bacterial wilt to everything. With the weather I might have had 3 generations.

[smwlindy]

Our productivity was pretty good, I think (??). We had 11 Amish Paste plants that gave us about 200# of tomatoes, a 15' row of pole beans (over 50# of beans) and 25 bell pepper plants which I haven't totalled up yet...I know there were over 200 peppers. Lots of other stuff too, our garden made us so happy!

My favorite bell was the imaginatively named "Orange Bell" from SSE. The peppers were productive, thick-walled and sweet with excellent flavor. To our taste, this was the best bell pepper ever for fresh eating as snacks. They replaced pears, apples & other fruit for us while they were in season. And really big...some of them weighed in at 14 oz each!

We had LOADS of green tomatoes on the vine when we left on a short vacation...lows were predicted in the upper 40s...but the day before we got back it dropped to 23 degrees and snowed. Sigh. I can't complain,we took the risk & lost (tomatoes, we'd harvested everything else) but I think our garden was good to us this year!

We're also still getting kale, arugula, spinach and carrots. Our fall planting of snap peas failed due to the sustained heat we got in September; it just fried them, then we got a rainy October and they got powdery mildew--probably because they were so weakened from the heat.
Next year I'll be more watchful for squash vine borer signs--our Anna Schwartz hubbard were good but would have produced more if I had seen the signs earlier, I think.