tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138459729531944998.post4935769298679375279..comments2024-03-11T02:25:25.123-05:00Comments on Living Low in the Lou: Backyard garden reality revisited, part 1: can my current garden feed me for a year?SLClairehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17307602613058790026noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138459729531944998.post-30384127420853837272021-10-14T20:31:58.125-05:002021-10-14T20:31:58.125-05:00Thank you! I've just put up the next post in t...Thank you! I've just put up the next post in the series.SLClairehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17307602613058790026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138459729531944998.post-24782154843263426912021-10-14T20:31:07.073-05:002021-10-14T20:31:07.073-05:00Hi Chris,
I just put up the next post, where I wo...Hi Chris,<br /><br />I just put up the next post, where I worked out a 2100 square foot garden design that provides marginally enough nutrition for one adult. Multiplying that by 4 gives 8400 square feet, or about the same amount of land that the farming family you mentioned cultivated for their own needs. That's quite interesting. Thank you for mentioning it!<br /><br />Although my garden is still producing well after close to a decade of re-mineralization, I think it would be better to have a larger garden space and rest part of the garden under cover crops on occasion, for the reason you mentioned. And I think you're right that part of the reason that I can still grow on that land is because I started out with a very young and fertile soil. Still, before I began re-mineralization yields were slowly dropping.SLClairehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17307602613058790026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138459729531944998.post-38140482593960849382021-10-14T20:16:18.835-05:002021-10-14T20:16:18.835-05:00You are very welcome! That's exactly why I inc...You are very welcome! That's exactly why I include my thinking and reasoning in my posts, so that other people can adapt it to their own conditions.<br /><br />This year the squirrels ate all the nuts except for one chestnut that I got to before they did. I'll have more to say about squirrels next year, when I sum up the 2021 garden results.SLClairehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17307602613058790026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138459729531944998.post-42597349979466837722021-10-14T20:12:53.760-05:002021-10-14T20:12:53.760-05:00You're right, it's one thing to design a g...You're right, it's one thing to design a garden that can produce all of one's nutritional needs and quite another to have to live on what it produces. The third post in the series will look at that issue, among others, using the winning garden design from the second post.<br /><br />And thank you for pointing out that the design is potentially more widely applicable than I thought; that's really interesting and not something I would have expected. I'm at about 39 deg N, but I'm also in the interior of the country where there are no oceans to moderate the climate. Your 55 deg N climate is much less severe, because of the Gulf Stream influence, than 55 deg N in the Canadian prairie provinces, which is all I know to compare it to.SLClairehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17307602613058790026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138459729531944998.post-35157001154299599302021-08-30T14:19:50.295-05:002021-08-30T14:19:50.295-05:00Fascinating experiment, Claire! Thanks for sharing...Fascinating experiment, Claire! Thanks for sharing this with your readers.Cat in the Flockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16584236544329106915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138459729531944998.post-86752009534198234562021-08-30T07:41:55.406-05:002021-08-30T07:41:55.406-05:00Hi Claire,
I've heard those claims too and li...Hi Claire,<br /><br />I've heard those claims too and likewise have a great deal of trouble believing them. Excluding the orchards which take up a huge amount of land, I easily have more than 1400 square foot under cultivation, but the winter months are cold and very little goes on in the garden at that time. For your interest, years ago I came across a story of a farming family down under. And excluding grains, they had from memory 800 square metres or 8600 square feet set aside for vegetables and berries, and that met all of their needs. <br /><br />Soils are more fertile in your part of the world, but I'm tending to lean towards accepting the fact that some of my vegetable beds are just going to need to rest every now and then. At the moment it is easy to grow intensively, but any one loss in mineral supplies for any of us, and then you just have to do as the old timers used to do. And that is a bit of a worry. Dunno.<br /><br />Cheers. ChrisFernglade Farmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06950962122594709186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138459729531944998.post-29317910038428697362021-08-28T14:13:38.361-05:002021-08-28T14:13:38.361-05:00Hi Claire,
I rediscovered your post from 2019 abo...Hi Claire, <br />I rediscovered your post from 2019 about your nut trees. Now I remember you wrote about both hazelnuts and chestnuts. <br />Thanks again,<br /> GoranGöranhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02375637941166085188noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138459729531944998.post-175722510616434812021-08-28T14:09:36.870-05:002021-08-28T14:09:36.870-05:00Dear Claire,
Thank you for sharing your backyard ...Dear Claire, <br />Thank you for sharing your backyard gardening experiences. IMHO Real world experiments are far better than thought experiments.<br /> <br />I live in a different climate, so the details of e.g. the variety choice is not so important to me. On the other hand, you describe the thinking and the reasoning, which I think is generalizable to every garden. Thank you very, very much for this!<br /><br />I have a friend in my village who grows organic grains on a medium scale (5-10 acres per year, with an old combine from the 1960s), which covers a big chunk of our family caloric needs. A small input of diesel gives a lot of grains. It would take quite some skill building to replace this with hand-sown, hand-harvested, hand-threshed grains... <br /><br />We also get more and more food from nut trees, both walnut and hazel for oils and protein, and chestnuts for carbohydrates. Trees take up a lot of space, so in a back-yard setting it is usually not suitable. Do you have any nut trees nearby that yield well for you? <br /><br />Please keep writing. <br /><br />Yours,<br /> Goran<br /><br />Göranhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02375637941166085188noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5138459729531944998.post-14605315010781675542021-08-27T16:54:35.663-05:002021-08-27T16:54:35.663-05:00This is a rather brilliant exercise - needed doing...This is a rather brilliant exercise - needed doing and many thanks for doing so. Your conclusions seem perhaps surprisingly widely applicable, even as far as our gardening here in the UK.<br /><br />There is a program that can calculate all nutrional content using original USDA data. I am not up to date on the status of the 'Walford' program, but it was available many years ago through the CR society. The range of vegetables you grow should provide a high level of vitamins and minerals, except of course for Vitamin B12, although calcium can seem a bit tricky, (veg provide high values per 100 Cal) . <br /><br />Potato of course needs rotation, and is very techical if you think in terms of self-saved seed, but seems an obvious way to boost sheer calories per sq ft as it can use high N in the soil. There are issues for storage.<br /><br />Beets are pretty good calories producers and they also have nutritious foliage, but the volume to eat is a bit too much.<br /><br />Extra beans and potatoes might complement one another and reasonably raise both calories and protein. We are trying that in our garden. Otherwise it is the traditional corn and beans, or whatever high-yielding grain that suits the temperature and growing season. <br /><br />At >55 degN in Scotland / N England (cool days; long summer photoperiod)the highest yielding grain crop per area is modern winter wheat (sown September/October) which can benefit from higher N input than traditional wheats, and is less dependent on strict rotation, but can alternate with lower yield but nutritionally valuable barley or oats for a while. It is grown round us at very large scale, but we have not tried it in the garden as an organic crop. The farmed grains need crop protection products in some years, and are always grown with chemical weed control. All the grains need careful attention to maintaining soil carbon in rotation.<br /><br />Am looking forward to your next installment!<br />best wishes <br />philsharrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16992266289232459952noreply@blogger.com