planning a partial subsitance garden

RescueRiley

RescueRiley

Joined
Mar 22, 2006
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This is strictly in the beginning of the planning stage...As I am still pricing out real-estate. But was curious as to how much land a garden would have to occupy to supply a large amount of food to a family of 3-4, Also what would you grow??I'm researching these things seperately but thought it would be nice to get some feedback..I'm planning on having an apple tree or 2 and several berry patches as well but these would be seperate from the main garden. Thanks.
 
One good thing to do is to see what the local natives were growing for subsistence, and do likewise. It may take some research, since even in Arizona (where the non-Native history is comparatively brief, and you only have to go back a century or so to find people who'd been farming exactly the same way since before Columbus), most of the original native crops have been largely eclipsed by modern, industrial-farming-dependent ones.

That said, for those in arid places, a great resource is Native Seeds / SEARCH (www.nativeseeds.org), which collects, keeps, and sells at low cost seeds from the same lines the native peoples were using before European contact. I've got a garden in the back yard planted with drought-tolerant beans, heat-resistant squash, etc., etc. It'll do a lot better than the hybrid, less-drought-tolerant seeds (hybrids often being bred so as to be incapable of reproducing, by the way) that you might get in a nursery or other mainstream store.

I imagine Native Seeds / SEARCH has some sister organizations that serve areas where there is more humidity and where the temperatures are cooler; I just don't know what they are.
 
Sounds like a really cool plan, good luck!

I'm planning on making a nice garden this year. Hopefully with food prices the way they are, more people will try it out.
 
Potatoes and tomatoes are both easy enough and really versatile. Corn is a bit more work from what I understand, but the yield is pretty good and it's also very versatile. Don't forget to grow some herbs to season food too, as those get pretty expensive for what you get in the little bottles.
 
soccergod04 said:
Potatoes and tomatoes are both easy enough and really versatile. Corn is a bit more work from what I understand, but the yield is pretty good and it's also very versatile. Don't forget to grow some herbs to season food too, as those get pretty expensive for what you get in the little bottles.
Click to expand...

Plus, fresh tomatoes are delicious. I usually won't eat them, but fresh from a garden, they're excellent.
 
They are! When I was a kid my uncle grew cherry tomatoes and I'd get in trouble for sneaking out and eating them by the handful.
 
growing herbs huh???sounds like a way to end up in jail...LOL just kidding...great ideas guys keep'em coming.
 
I'm born and raised in Jersey and this summer I'm moving to Texas. No garden this year is killing me.

I've grown a small garden of my own since I was a wee lad. About 3 years ago, I started raised bed gardening, similar to the squarefootgardening.com method and haven't looked back.

Last year, I put out enough cucumbers, tomatoes, green peppers, and a few varieties of hot and super hot peppers and all the herbs my wife could manage for my family of four for the whole summer, not to mention the stuff I gave away at work. Did it all in four 4x4 raised beds and a few hanging buckets.

I'm looking forward to the extended growing season in Texas.
 
There are a couple of great books out there called;

"Five Acres and Independence"
by Maurice G. Kains

and

The Complete Book of Composting
by J. I. Rodale

Both are available used over at Amazon at bargain prices.

As the title to book one alludes to five acres is plenty to support most families on a basic level. If you are into it your can;

1. garden
2. truck farm
3. keep animals like chickens, goats and pigs
4. build a fish pond or tank
5. raise worms for bait
6. tend bees
7. tend fruit trees, grape vines, bramble fuits
8. cut firewood
9. keep a greenhouse and sell flowers and winter veggies
10. have a house and live
11. keep an active forge and welding shop

And do it all on five acres. I do all that stuff and more on eight acres.
It is less than 7 miles from were I work and if need be I can ride my bicycle to work. My place is about 1/3 woodlot with hardwoods and pines, 1/3 pasture, grass fruit trees and grape vines, and 1/3 house and yard.

If you focus on quality and plan for what you need you can grow and raise most of your food needs except for staples like sugar, tea, ect.
 
RescueRiley said:
This is strictly in the beginning of the planning stage...As I am still pricing out real-estate. But was curious as to how much land a garden would have to occupy to supply a large amount of food to a family of 3-4, Also what would you grow??I'm researching these things seperately but thought it would be nice to get some feedback..I'm planning on having an apple tree or 2 and several berry patches as well but these would be seperate from the main garden. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Good to have some permanent crops like apples and berries. Do more of this,
because of disease, weather-related crop failure.
Example 1: Fire-blight can wipe out an apple tree for a season or two.
Example 2: A freeze, when a tree is blooming (setting fruit), can destroy the
crop.
Both of these have happened to me, more than once.

Locating your planting area in a flood plain (tempting fertile flat ground),
is a risk but know that risk, and diversify. Don't locate a house in a f-plane.

Try to find a place with good soil. Plant mostly the garden stuff that locals
plant. OTOH, if a neighbor is a potato framer, I would not plant too many
potatoes; I would buy from him. (It is in his interest for you little guys to
not plant potatoes, and spread disease to his fields.)

Do not under estimate pests like deer, rabbits, grasshoppers.
Do you have an easy source of water if a drought occurs?
 
Even a moderate-sized garden can produce a lot of food. Plant a variety of things that you like - tomatoes, spinach, chard, string beans, berries, squash (be careful with squash, you will be giving it away by the wheelbarrow load). Corn takes a fair amount of land to produce, but fresh corn from the garden is hard to beat. The leaf vegetables like spinach and chard will keep producing all summer if you don't uproot it - just trim a few leaves off each plant as you go down the row, and you can have some several times each week at the height of the season.

If you have space for fruit trees, put in a variety, too. In your area, apples would be good, and possibly stone fruit like cherries, apricots or a cold-tolerant peach. In my area, peach and nectarine production is a huge business. Make sure that you meet the pollination requirements for the fruit trees - some are self-pollinators, some are not.

Every climate has its possibilities. I live in Zone 9, and apples don't do too well in the heat. But my plum tree produces prodigious amounts of fruit, and I have a number of citrus trees that put out so much fruit that I have to give it away by the bagful to anyone who will take it (tangelo, lemon, orange). Right now my Valencia oranges are ripe, and they are really good. I planted some swiss chard along the back wall of my house, and it doesn't get cold enough in the winter here to kill it off (just occasional frost) and it keeps coming back up year after year. And I have grapes and a fig tree, too, all on my quarter acre lot with my house. It does not take a huge plot to grow a lot of food.

Have a pest control plan, too. It is really a bummer to anticipate a large crop, only to lose it to insects or animals.

Plan out the diversified planting so that you have things ripening at different times through the summer. That way you have a steady source for an extended time.
 
lambertiana said:
Have a pest control plan, too. It is really a bummer to anticipate a large crop, only to lose it to insects or animals.
Click to expand...

A lot of good advice from lambertiana and others.

As per lambertiana and myself, pests are a real problem,
so be ready for them and keep ahead of them.

Deer love to eat trees and they will kill small trees (as will goats).
After trees get big, deer do less damage, however they will still
eat all low hanging branches. So, once you have a mature tree,
and you got fruit, birds and squirrels will help themselves.
You might need to reduce the squirrel population, in advance of
your fruit getting even near ripe. Netting, sold specifically, for
keeping birds out, looks promising. Birds, that I have seen, will wait
for fruit to ripen, then eat it in 1 or 2 days.

Where you locate, matters a lot.
Read some books about gardening and homesteading in
your selected area. This will give you specifics.
Books of other areas are OK, but there are such different considerations,
for Desert Southwest, High Plains, Midwest, South, and New England.
And there are relevant subdivisions within these.
 
I always grow a garden every year. I grow Tomatoes, corn, Butterbeans, peas, squash, cucumbers, pepper, okra, and this year Im getting some chickens for fresh eggs. I dont know about getting a Hog yet but im thinking about it too. Theres nothing like a good Hog killing in Nov. Its the best meat in the world. Now I grew up with wood heaters all of my life and I can tell you from experience that you will need more than 5 acres for firewood. We usually get trees from people who want them removed and cut in the summer so the wood can dry for the winter.
 
Hard to beat what has been done on this continent already for a very long time. Consider a Three Sisters Garden...

"The Three Sisters all work together. Critters will find it harder to invade your garden by interplanting your corn, beans and squash. The corn stalk serves as a pole for the beans, the beans help to add the nitrogen to the soil that the corn needs, and the squash provides a ground cover of shade that helps the soil retain moisture."

http://www.nativetech.org/cornhusk/threesisters.html

This is just one website, google Three Sisters Garden and you will find a lot more detail.
 
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