The Modern Victory Garden

I am constantly working to obtain the greatest food production possible from our limited growing area.   I don’t have the luxury of expanding my garden much beyond what I currently have - because it would require cutting down significant portions of our wood lot to provide needed sun exposure.   We like our trees and the beautiful setting they create for our home, so that is not a good option.   Instead, I work with the area of our property that gets adequate sun exposure and use various techniques to optimize food production therein.   There are many of us who have limited space availability for food production gardening and yet manage to produce a tremendous amount of our own food supply.   Over the next several weeks, I thought I would devote some of my blogging time to exploring the many techniques available to optimize food production gardening.   There are quite a few topics that relate to this pursuit - including (among others):

• Crop Selection
• Intensive Planting Practices
• Season Extension
• Soil Management & Fertility

To kick this blog series off, I will focus today on Crop Selection.   Our choice in what to plant greatly determines the success we will experience in producing a greater amount of our own food supply.   There are several things to consider in this process.                                                

Minimizing Waste – Using limited and valuable garden bed space to grow items that ultimately end up not being eaten is contrary to the pursuit of optimizing the garden’s food production capabilities.   I suspicion we have all been guilty at some time or another of growing items that we only marginally like and end up either letting it go to seed or rot on the vine because we just are not interested in using it or even preserving it for later use.   To the extent we can avoid such waste by choosing crops more carefully, the greater our food garden’s actual production will be.   For these reasons, I generally do not grow eggplant, cauliflower, bitter greens, and only occasionally (and in modest amounts) grow beets and kohlrabi.   For the 2010 garden season, I intend to pass on growing beets and kohlrabi altogether to make greater room for more valued crops.                 

 Nutrition Per Square Foot - Some crops are much more dense nutritionally and provide greater value accordingly.     Some particular noteworthy garden produced “Super Foods" include; spinach, blueberries, broccoli, cranberries, kale, winter squash & pumpkins, dried beans, tomatoes, garlic, and onions.   Virtually all plants and fruits are of great values nutritionally, but these particular items are significant in their contribution to good health and should be given some extra consideration in the process of choosing crops for the home food production garden.   Of course, if you do not particularly like to eat any of these items,  then it is wise to remember the goal of minimizing waste by not planting items that will not be fully used – no matter how good for you they are supposed to be!   Luckily, I happen to love all of these super foods and so they have a place in my garden.                         

Yield in Pounds Per 100 Square Feet of Growing Area - If your growing space is limited, then producing as much as possible from that available area is important in the pursuit of producing a greater amount of our own food supply.   I have added to this site a table of average crop yields for a selection of vegetables and grains grown in intensively planted beds.   It gives a good approximation of yield for planning purposes based on a number of assumptions.   Specifically, non-hybrid plant varieties in ordinary soil with sufficient water are assumed.   Obviously actual yields will vary greatly based on actual variety selection, soil condition, sun exposure, and climate etc.   It is quite possible with excellent soil and growing conditions that yields can be even greater than these averages.   You can see from this table that certain crops provide a better yield per 100 square feet of intensively planted growing bed area.   One of the astounding revelations is that chard actually out produces potatoes!

If you adhere to the food pyramid guidelines and serving sizes then you would need 456 lbs of vegetables, 365 lbs of fruits, 250 lbs of grains (wheat, corn, oats, and rice etc), and 159 lbs of protein foods (lean meats, dried beans, dairy, & eggs) for one adult person.    My primary focus and goal is to provide all of our family’s vegetable needs.   To do this and meet the suggested quantities of the food pyramid for my family of two adults and one (almost adult) teenager - I would need to produce 1,368 pounds of vegetables.   Currently, I do produce all of our family’s vegetable needs in that we do not buy any vegetables other than those we consume in meals eaten out (such as restaurants, potlucks, or when eating at someone else’s place).   Obviously, we are not eating the recommended amounts of vegetables as I am only producing between 600 to 750 pounds of produce a year and that does not come anywhere close to the recommended 1,358 pounds of vegetables!   Our daughter will be heading off to college in less than a year’s time so our numbers will be more closely aligned to the recommended amount for two individuals but we will need to change our eating habits too - basically including greater volumes of veggies and lowering our meat consumption.   I will never be able to grow all of our fruit needs on this property given our space limitations, but I can get to approximately 50% with wise planting and crop selection.   My recent additions of bush pie cherries, raspberries, and more cranberries and strawberries should help me work towards meeting that goal.   I need to give consideration to other fruit options that might further increase our production.                

Climate & Growing Conditions – Planting crops that naturally do well in your specific climate and growing conditions will give you a big jump in production.   Devoting a great deal of bed space to plants that fail to thrive because they are out of their preferred element is squandering valuable bed space.   Some crops are just plain worth the extra effort to grow, but the trade off of production capability should be factored into the decision to grow such high maintenance crops.   Similarly, where you grow items in your garden can also greatly influence production capability.   I have one section of garden that gets very good sun and this area is where I plant all the sun intensive crops.   The other section of the garden is bordering on marginal sun exposure and if I want to optimize food production, I need to confine myself to planting more shade tolerant crops there – such as greens and carrots.                                                 

Variety Selection – Carefully choosing varieties that are noted for good production, disease resistance, and with days to maturity that match your area’s growing season and conditions is very important to the pursuit of increasing food production capabilities.   If you are interested in seed saving, then open pollinated varieties will be an important factor in the decision.   However, if you are not planning to save a specific item’s seed, you may find that a hybrid variety offers more vigor and production potential than it’s open pollinated cousins.   That is certainly not always the case since many heirloom varieties meet or exceed their hybrid counterparts in production yield, but in certain circumstances a hybrid is the better performer and should be given some consideration when selecting a variety to grow.                                        

From my perspective, these are some of the more critical elements of crop selection that heavily influence the garden’s utility and productivity.   As I begin the process of choosing crops for the 2010 garden, I intend to think about these considerations and hopefully wind up with even better results next year as a consequence.