so I might have to resort to a CSA. Unfortunately I hate most of the root vegetables and cabbage-family they include in their packages, but I might have to learn to like turnips, kale and Brussels sprouts.

Took the last couple years and tried new techniques for growing the veggies. Most important thing in my book is soil remediation after harvest. Fertilizer may become more expensive it’s already one of the leading expenses.
Comfrey is a great solution, its NPK is good…N 1.80. P 0.05 K 7.09. That’s for russian comfrey which doesn’t spread like regular comfrey.

We start our seeds in grow tents in our garage which we ‘converted’ into our first floor basement. We’ve moved some of the garden inside the house. We’re going to try to grow lettuce and tomatoes inside under a grow light with exposure to southern exposure. Then we start our peppers, cabbage, tomatoes in the grow tents for establishing ‘starts’ for the bale garden, greenhouse and the raised beds.

Then it’s the medicinal foraging that’s going to be important. Around me we have Prunella Vulgaris growing profusely, it’s a kinda wonder herb.

https://www.medicinenet.com/what_is_prunella_vulgaris_used_for/article.htm

Red Clover, Meadowsweet, Red Raspberry leaves, Bee Balm, Dandelion, Plantain, are all medicinal herbs we use to ward off sickness and boost our immunities. We got all the vaccines and along with our medicinals we haven’t been sick for years.

And I hear there's a new product that will soon be at the markets, something called Soylent Green...



The prophesized world of 2022 comes just a little late.

I suspect Trump will be hands-off with regards to California produce, which is where I live and the primary business of my community. Most of my neighbors are immigrants or their parents were.

Much of the nation is going to take a big hit in food prices and availability. Those off-season and frozen blueberries that now come from Peru, for example, are going to end up in China instead.

My great grandmothers canned, pickled, or dried every kind of food. So does my wife's dad. Their gardens were mostly planted with that in mind.

My favorite food preservation machine is my dehydrator. That's not really "green" however and electricity here is expensive, especially in the hours between 4 and 9 PM when solar cuts out and demand is still high. I haven't yet experimented with adding some kind of thermal mass to my dehydrator stack and running it on a timer.

Hunting and fishing are not skills I passed onto my children. In any extended crisis our wild places are going to be flooded with armed idiots who think they can live off the land like their ancestors did.

include winter squash, tomatoes, beans, peppers, onions, garlic and zucchini.

For winter squash, I'm growing rampicante squash (Baker Creek Seed Co). I tried this for the first time this year and am hooked. I put it on an arched cattle panel, and foolishly put in five starts. Two starts is more than enough. Because of all of the construction in my garden area, I couldn't get things planted until late. I was only able to harvest a few fully matured squash to store, but ended up with oodles and oodles of immature squash. The nice thing about this squash - aside from its ridiculous production rate - is that the immature squash can be eaten just like zucchini. And letting it fully mature on the vine - well, let's just say you get massively long squash with lots of "meat" in the neck and few seeds at the very end. My biggest one is probably 3+ feet long. And they apparently store for most of the year at normal house temperatures, which means I don't have to fight to find cold storage space. I'm testing the longevity by holding one of the squash until May. Oh, and for 2025, I'm confining myself to two starts and they'll be put along the back fence. The plants overtook the arch - it just needs more room. Very aggressive growth.

I'll also grow some sweet meat squash from saved seeds. I didn't grow it this year (again with the construction activities in the areas I was going to plant it in). I did end up buying one from a local farm. If you haven't grown them, they're massive. And the flesh is super sweet when roasted. When I was working at the office, I'd go buy a quarter of one at the weekly farmers market across the street. Anyway, I cut up the one that I bought this year and pressure canned the chunks. I ended up with 16 pints. I probably should've canned in quarts, but oh well. The chunks will be pureed and used in pumpkin breads, pumpkin pie (including the one I'll make tomorrow for Thanksgiving) and for use in making squash tortillas and soup.

I may throw out a butternut squash seed or two as well, but I feel like the rampicante covers that pretty well.

For my main production (canning ) tomatoes, I'll be planting out Nova tomatoes (Territorial Seeds). It is a variety that I have grown most years, and it is unfussy in my climate. It keeps on producing until very late summer, and is the first tomato plant to die off. I'm usually grateful for that, as I can only pressure can so many jars of marinara sauce and whole tomatoes.

I'll also grow my three favorite dwarf varieties - Speckled Heart, Wild Fred and Big Green. I've grown Speckled Heart for years, since I was graciously given some seeds from DU's very own tomato guru. I tried Wild Fred and Big Green this year and am hooked. The Big Greens were super productive and delicious slicers. I just used my last one last week (I picked a few very green ones at the end of this season as I was pulling out the plants and topping off the beds with compost and chicken yard material and the green tomatoes have been on my enclosed unheated back porch slowly ripening). The Wild Fred was not quite as productive for me, but really a beautiful big tomato with plenty of flavor. The three of these are mostly for slicing, but I'll also dehydrate some and powder the slices as I need them, and I may throw some in some fresh (not canned) sauce.

I also have to have a sungold tomato plant, so I'll start one of those. I do grow Aurora tomatoes, which are a basic red slicing tomato. They're good in salads and such, just a reliable tomato. New varieties I'll be trying this year include Emalia, Principe Borghese (hopefully for sundried tomatoes), Rebel Star Fighter, Lemon Plum and Cane Torre. I'll only grow one of each of those, just to see how I like them. I tried a bunch of purple tomatoes this year and found they just take way too long to mature. All of the different varieties of purples were delicious, just too risky to grow such long season ripening tomatoes here in my yard.

I mostly grow bush beans nowadays, as my vertical space is committed to rampicante squash, a couple of northern melons and cucumbers (beit alpha and lemon for fresh eating and various pickling varieties for my picked cukes.) I grow black beans, coqaine and Rosso di Lucca for dry beans though I'm trying Hungarian Rice beans too this next year. For fresh eating, I grow a yellow wax bean (no idea where I got the seeds from but I save them each year), Desperado green beans and a purple bean that I've also lost the variety name of but have tons of saved seeds.

Sweet peppers are a tough one for me to grow, so I'm always searching for the perfect one. I find that Doux peppers grow fine here, so I'll be growing some of those. I'll be trying Jimmy Nardello, Doe Hill and Little Bells.

For hot peppers, I always grow Fireball (for hot sauce), jalapeños (for pickling, freezing and pressure canning) and Cayenne (for simply hanging/drying and using as red pepper flakes). I grew Bhut x Neyde this year and I'm debating growing one next year. It is a cross of a ghost pepper so it is apparently super hot. I have it hanging and drying and plan on powdering and adding to salt and then trying. It is a lovely purple-leafed/stalk bush and the peppers are deep dark purple until they ripen to an orange with some stripes that make it look like it has been grilled. It thrived in my yard, so I'm likely to grow it again even if I'm not brave enough to eat one. I'll be trying Serrano peppers this year too.

For onions, I'm trying Yellow of Parma as it is a good northern onion that apparently stores really long. I'm kinda meh on growing actual yellow onions in general, because I can buy a 50 lb bag for 15 bucks at the local restaurant supply place. But I'm a sucker for growing my own, so I'll try this one and see how it does. I also grow leeks, and I just reintroduced Egyptian walking onions to one of my beds. I always have clumps of chives grown here and there, and I try to plop in a few green scallion seeds now and then. I am also trying shallot bulbs this year.

I had to re-establish my garlic this year. We'd moved some raised beds to a different location in our yard last fall and I'd planted out the garlic. Of course the bed needed to be moved before the garlic was even close to mature. So I started over again this fall.

For zucchini, I grow a gray Mexican zucchini from Territorial Seeds. I also grow a gold variety called Goldini, which dehydrates well and tastes amazing in soups when rehydrated.

Geez! How much land do you have? When do you start most of your seeds? Thx

The garden itself is about 45' wide and 16' deep. I use metal raised beds, and have 11 of them in my garden space. I have various pots and planters as well (like a small fig in a crock, some large pots with artichokes). I have a retaining wall at the back of the garden and a fence above that wall, so I have lots of vertical space to grow stuff too. I cram stuff in my raised beds. They're all on an irrigation system. I keep chickens and have a steady supply of stuff for the compost bins. I top off my beds each year with finished compost from my bins.

Our place is on a half acre, half of that is wooded, and the other half is roughly split with 1/3 for the footprint of the house and 2/3 for the perennial beds/backyard/garden. I have lots of areas outside of the garden that I plant stuff in, but in general, I garden on a fairly small space.

I keep a calendar of when I need to start various seeds based on my last frost date. Until my greenhouse is in place (hopefully next year!), I start seeds inside using rolling shelving units, heat mats and simple shop lights. By the time mid-May rolls around, the house is pretty much bursting with tomato and pepper plants as well as lots and lots of flower starts. I start my tomatoes and peppers mid-February. I'm growing a few more asparagus starts next year, and will start those in mid-January.

After 3 years my Meyer lemon is producing. Lime and navel have a ton of blossoms, chases away the winter blahs.