Vegetables Gardening - Growing Organic Vegetables

Friends:  A lady from another group asked the following question, that I thought was relevant to this group: "Does anyone here grow most of what they eat? If so what are your absolute must haves? How much do you plant? Trying to start planning for next year's garden "

And here is my (admittedly long) answer:

We eat mostly from our gardens, and we are blessed to be able to do it pretty much year-round, although we live in SE Idaho :)

You have to train your tastes to eat this way, but the health benefits are surely worth it. Back to Basics for sure! In the winter you should 1) grow sprouts and micro-greens. These take little space, can be grown in your home, are simple, provide great nourishment, and are inexpensive to do - so that's first on the list - GREENS.

In the garden I recommend the same idea, 2) starting with radishes when it's too cold for anything else. They are cold tolerant, grow fast, take little space (which means you can cover them to keep them warmer), and the entire plant is edible and nutritious. Eat by themselves, in salads, with eggs, stir fry, etc., etc.

3) Other greens should follow closely, including kale, turnips beets (the greens especially) and Swiss Chard, and if you have the taste for them the southern greens like collards are great also. Everything I talk about now except carrots can be started on a heat pad and the seedlings grown with Grow-Lights indoors. This will get you growing 4-8 weeks earlier than anyone else!

Be sure that you pick one or two of the outer leaves from all of these at least weekly, and they will produce for you for many MONTHS! These do not take up much space, especially if you keep them pruned, so you can plant them quite close together. And think of carrots in that same category, because the tops are edible! Again, pick one or two leaves weekly and eat for several months!

And while you're at it consider celery. It can be started quite early also, and we pick individual stalks weekly and have been eating from the same plants since June!

Knowing that the large farmers kill the tops of their potatoes with herbicide, so they can harvest everything at once, and considering that the herbicide likely gets into the tubers, 4) I choose to grow my own potatoes. And garlic & onions are easy to grow and produce well in fairly small spaces.

And when it warms up some I grow large plants, and most are best grown vertically to save a great deal of space and give them more light, etc. This saves water and fertilizer, and reduces losses from bugs and diseases as well. 5) For us this includes tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, squash, and pole beans.

6) I do not recommend corn for the family garden, unless you have an overabundance of space. It produces so little and takes up so much space, AND it often shades other crops as well.

By the way, planting early with seedlings and protecting your crops with "low tunnels" or mini-greenhouses, as described in the Mittleider Gardening Course book, make it possible to grow two and sometimes even three separate crops in a season! In less than 1/20th of an acre a family can inexpensively produce several thousand pounds(!) of nutritious and tasty vegetables and fruit, so this is definitely the way to live.

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