Link to video about vegetables that the Amish don't grow.
Summary
- How will this vegetable feed me in February? Is it a good-fit with my storage plan?
- How much usable food (calories) will this vegetable produce per square-foot over the season?
- How much usable food will this vegetable produce per minute of my labor?
- Does this vegetable want to grow in my garden or am I pushing a rope?
Editorializing
According to this video (AI voice-over, maybe AI content) the Amish plant potatoes, cabbage, winter squash and beans. If they want ears of corn, they roast some from the field corn.
The video also challenges us to rethink how much area we allocate to each crop. Are we dedicating nearly equal amounts of space to every vegetable?
Are we "in love" with a vegetable with a toxic personality? For example, maybe we adore Middle Eastern cuisine and want to grow every species of vegetable that thrives in Lebanon, Tunisia or Greece. The seductive thing is that some of those vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, zucchini/summer squash, turnips) might thrive is southern Michigan while others will crash-and-burn due to lack of heat, short growing season and high humidity and insect pressure.
Repeatedly trying to grow those difficult (for you conditions) vegetables is the same as being obsessed by the exotically beautiful girl with the toxic personality while ignoring the girl next door with the beautiful personality.
Here is a short mental exercise. Suppose you have a garden that is 100 square-feet...that is, the size of three sheets of plywood or OSB. You have four types of vegetable that you want to grow. One of them produces one pound per square-foot. The second produces 1/5 pound per square-foot. The third produces 1/12 pound per square-foot and the fourth produces 1/25 pound per square-foot. If it helps to visualize, potatoes, beets, peppers and parsley.
If you plant equal areas to each plant then you will get 25 pounds of potatoes, five pounds of beets, two pounds of peppers and one pound of parsley for a total of 33 pounds of food.
Conversely, if you had planted 60% of the garden to potatoes, 25% to beets, 10% to peppers and 5% to parsley then you would harvest 60 pounds of potatoes, 5 pounds of beets, 1.2 pounds of peppers and three ounces of parsley for a total of 66.4 pounds of food...twice as much as the other example AND the proportions are probably closer to what you will actually eat.
Morals of the story
Don't confuse the garnish that decorates the plate with the food that will keep you alive.
Be polite to the exotic beauty with the toxic personality but invest your time and your heart in the girl-next-door.
Good advice! In our modern day and age, I find gardening to be an enjoyable hobby. Thank goodness for Krogers, amiright?
ReplyDeleteI find planting exotic (to me) crops to be enjoyable, and make the task of gardening (in general) more palatable. I'm always curious how _____ is doing after the rain, and while I'm here, let me weed that row of beans. Like stashing board games and toys for children, give yourself a treat now and again, its a good thing! If the world ever does turn upside down, that silly crop you enjoy may prove a lifesaver! I know of a few non-smokers who grow tobacco for just such reasons, myself included.
I guess we have done the same through trial and error. We love broccoli, but the bug/worm infestation was not worth the work. We stopped growing the things we didn’t eat much. Beets and carrots are cheap in the store, for now, so no more of them. We’re down to beans, snow peas, some peppers, some potatoes, squashes.
ReplyDeleteSouthern NH
Imagine the gastrointestinal forces at play for a large family, sitting down to a regular routine of dinners of primarily cabbage and beans. Make Americans FART again.
ReplyDeleteThere is an evolutionary wisdom in Amish gardening choices. Once again, fine sir, I thank you for bringing that wisdom to light.
Milton
It's long been a question of mine what you actually DO with all the potatoes that you plant. Do you actually harvest 300 feet of row potato?
The BEST thing we ever did with the potatoes was to make arrangements with the local youth group (aka Sunday School + social stuff) and have them come over, pick pears and dig potatoes for the St Vincent de Paul food distribution center.
DeleteThe second best thing was to invite family over to dig potatoes.
Usually...I dig them and they sit in our cellar all winter and then they feed the wildlife in the spring.
It is not a total loss. I am honing my ability to grow potatoes. I have them on-the-shelf or in the torpedo-tubes in case things get spicy very quickly. Gardens revert to wild pretty quickly if you stop cultivating them, so it is a way of maintaining them to be ready if things get crazy.
You don't just decide "Lets grow potatoes" and have potatoes the next day, week or month. Depending on the time of year that you have that though, it might be 9 months before you see a potato you grew.
Thanks for asking. I wish I could say a that every potato I grew went to a hungry belly, but that has not been the case.
When my leftover unused potatoes start to sprout, I use them to plant next years crop. Some go into the compost bin. So they do get used. I don’t plant as much as you, because right now, there isn’t a need to plant that many.
DeleteStore bought potatoes have sprouted and grown just fine for me.
SNH
Beans and potatoes are a complete protein source.
ReplyDeletePotatoes have an excellent amount of vitamin C as does cabbage.
If you keep a garden gun handy you get to add some pest control meat to the pot.
I'd rather fart than be malnourished.
Michael the anonymous
Great thought exercise ERJ.
ReplyDeleteI am likely guilty of trying more "exotics" than is wise, but I find the gamble of if I can grow them or not (to be fair, in a time of plenty) an entertaining one. Occasionally I am surprised.
On a separate note, I do find the distribution of the Amish interesting. The gap on the entire West Coast is interesting.
Great post Joe. Exactly what I try to teach people in my neighborhood. I also point out that potatoes might not be available at the farm store for planting when spring comes so you had better have enough to provide your own seed when spring comes.. ---ken
ReplyDeleteMy grandparents grew up during the Depression and Dust Bowl, and raised five children during the '50's on a farm in central Oklahoma. According to my mother they mainly raised potatoes, tomatoes, field corn and sweet corn, green beans, blackeyed peas, beets, turnips, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, cantaloupes and watermelons in a garden that was between 1 and 2 acres. It was cultivated with a Farmall A on about 48 inch rows, so the size would be probably be bigger than a modern garden.
ReplyDeleteA smaller garden closer to the house grew things like leaf lettuce, onions, etc.
They also didn't have to deal with anything like deer pressure in the garden.
Smiling, I love deer pressure. Easy hunting :-)
DeleteI enjoy reading all your posts, but as a third year neophyte (started at retirement), I relish the garden ones, especially with the photos.
ReplyDelete