At some point I calculated our gamily needs about a ton of vegetables (veggies, fruits, berries etc) in a year in order to get out five a day portions. And about a ton of carbohydrates, like potatoes, rice, pasta abd so on. So that's two tons of food from plants. Then add bread, crisps, popcorn and other cereal or potato based snacks... No wonder I feel like I'm just going in to the shops or coming from them...
It would be a cheap solution to grow everything by myself - if only I could do that. I might have mentioned few times our soil is dense clay, and there's not many plants that thrive in clay. And we have groug water very near surface, so fruit trees don't grow in our yard (even if we wouldn't get frost until late June and again in early August).
Being stubborn I still try to grow at least some of produce we use. I have some plants growing directly in the soil, and I have 5 raised beds/grow boxes.
This year I've been lucky with lettuce, it's been way over 6 weeks since I've bought any lettuce and there's more to come. I planted all lettuce in containers, lettuce don't grow in clay at all.
All green beans we eat come from my veggie patch ( it's only up to 5kg, I use green beans in soups/stews, curries, stir fry's and chili con/sin carne type of things. Should eat more, green beans are one of crops that actually give a good harvest in most years.
I had high hopes for potatoes, but this dry and hot summer meant I have only small (cherry sized) potatoes. I guess I planted about 5kg of souds and might get harvest of 20kg? Anyway we have our own potatoes until September, it's not much but it is at least something.
Tomatoes are producing. Pea sized cherry tomatoes and cherry sized beef tomatoes... and I don't think it's all my incabability of growing, because my mother has been complaining the same thing. Plus they had someone eating tomato plants in their green house!
I've got two pickling cucumbers so far. This is the last year in the ground, next year I need to plant them in grow bags, containers or raised beds.
No glut of zucchinies, I've only got one so far. Only male flowers on any of my pumpkins and courgettes. I just don't get it - I've plants in directly in soil, in raised beds, in containers... I've been fertilizing them, and watering. Some of them frow in shadow, some in direct sunlight... I just don't get it. What's wrong with me and my cucurbitas?
Even my beets are sulking, those few which survived that thunder storm right after sowing... next year I'll plant seedlings again.
And my poor peas. Pidgeon hunting season is on...
Carrots are doing fine. Corn is still not producing cobs, but they are growing nicely. Might be too late to hope any harvest, there might bee frost nights soon.
At least my black currants were producing a lot of berries this summer. I froze as much I could fit in the freezer, maybe 10kg? And myother made us cordial/juice to drink.
But now it's autunm and rains are here. I have foraged mushrooms every day this week, and we have been eating them every day. Chanterelles and porchinies. Os has porchini slices in his pizza instead of bought mushrooms. So far I think we have eaten about 10kg of mushrooms! And that is a lot!
When I take 'Suma to het morning walk, I usually pick some porchinies, they are dense mushrooms so if I have five it's over 300g, and after work I take anothet walk in the woods and pick a small bag of chanterelles and few porchinies, so it's about 700g per day!
Soon we have eaten enough, and there's some left I can freeze/dehydrate. If I can get 40 bags to freezer, that's enough for the whole year (one meal per week during the off season). One bag is roughly 500-600g of fresh mushrooms, so one meal=one portion per person. Some years we have more, some years less, mushrooms are wild produce and I have no control what so ever over them. But so far nature seems to be much better in this producing edible food thing that I am.
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