Welcome to the TBR Garden Thread for the week of June 26, 2016! This is the thread for all things gardening....Sorry I didn't make the targeted Sunday date for starting the garden thread, I managed to stab myself this weekend in the calf muscle fairly deep with a grass hook and have been hobbling around, which makes every chore take twice as long and eats up time.
For some reason, as it seems to have happened a few times in the last number of years, our garden is dry. Rain has just missed us in every direction and now we are reduced to watering. Despite the recent heat, it's not too bad at that point, and rain looks to be on the way today with cooler temps, so hopefully the mini-drought will be over.
We are are now over the May hump, got things well weeded, and are now in the June lull. Some of the later maturing spring vegetables such as peas, cole crops, roots (beets and carrots), shallots and some of the grains are ready (and how I stabbed myself - harvesting them). Got a very nice little crop of rye and winter wheat that I kept in a small wire hoop tunnel (although something, rabbits or deer got some of the wheat) and finished out fairly early this year (pics below). Getting a few herbs to dry and collecting seeds from the tunnel of overwintered greens that will be used both for replanting and sprouts.
Now we are just waitng for the summer stuff to come on, especially the melons.
[img width=150 align=left]http://static.artfire.com/uploads/product/1/631/2631/3002631/3002631/large/heirloom_dixie_speckled_butterpea_lima_bean_seed_by_azuredandelion_fc2e28ff.jpg[/img] The variety of the week is Dixie Speckled Butter Pea. I am not the biggest fan of the standard white lima bean, but these are a different story alltogether. They are a Southern variety with small reddish brown seeds that have a very meaty taste, higher in protein, and don't bother me like regular limas. They remind you a bit of black eyed peas that have been cooked in a bit of barbecue sauce. We've been planting them for years and will never plant any other.
These are very prolific and fairly early. Drought and heat tolerant, and don't seem to be bothered by much. Bees love their flowers. They are excellent canners and seem to improve in the jar.
A number of vendors sell them such as Baker Creek, Vermont Bean, and Gourmet
The topic this week is a quick disussion of how we plan our garden for if we fall into tougher times in order to meet our nutritional needs. This is just a quick overview of things and we will get more into detail in the coming weeks.
In terms of providing food from the garden we look at four things that determine what we plant - the usual protein, carbs and fats for calories, but we add a fourth category - nutritional value. That is a big umbrella including vitamins, minerals, fiber, as well as other substances that help keep you healthy and balanced. As you can see from our attached garden plan, we grow a wide variety of things to get to that goal should we have to depend on it for our food source and get a well rounded diet.
A quick look each category and what we plant to get that:
Protein - mostly dried beans and soup peas, but we also select lower starch, waxy potatoes, flour corn, various greens such as kale, and certain grains like quinoa. Nuts as well, including peanuts we grow as well as wild ones like hickory and walnut. We use these to supplement any meat that would land on the table.
Carbohydrates - Carbs are trickier than you think. The obvious direction is grains and flour corn, and there are many choices, but outside of that it gets difficult if you are looking for fresh or even out of the root cellar. Potatoes are next, but from a seed saving perspective, potatoes are a dead end, over time the tubers will get smaller and smaller as they slowly get infected by various viruses that afflict them. There are other roots like sunchokes that contain inulin, which is mostly indigestible, but beyond that very little choices. Though fruit contains sugar, it's not the long chain kind of base carbs you want for your base carbs.
Fats - Though animals provide good quality fats for eating, there are some things in the garden you can grow and process for oils. Safflower, flax, sunflower, oil radish, and others can be grown to use fresh or for cooking.
Nutrition - The easiest category, and one of the reasons we plant so many different things in the garden, to give us a full spectrum of vitamins and minerals. These are the glue that binds protein, carbs, and fats, a good nutritional base means your body is more efficient at digestion and absorbtion of calories, so that you can eat less and get more out of them. That is something that could stretch the food supply in tough times. This also includes medicinal properties to keep diseases at bay and help heal injuries and chronic ailments.
Will get into more specifics in later posts, but for now that is a quick overall idea of our approach to food production. I have this week also attached our garden plan to get an idea of how much space we devote to each to get enough of each category.
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