Potatoes

If you could choose just one crop to grow to feed your family in tough times, the potato would be ideal. Potatoes may have a humble reputation, but when it comes to surviving in tough times, they're superstars. Here are eight reasons why.

Reason #1: They're easy to grow and require no machinery or processing
Potatoes are easy for one person to grow and harvest. Growing a family plot of potatoes requires minimal labor and attention. No heavy machinery needed! Unlike grain crops, potatoes don't need to be milled, threshed, combined, or undergo any other processing. You just pull them out of the earth, brush off the dirt, and cook them.

Reason #2: Potatoes are packed with nutrition
Potatoes get a bad rap, but they're actually an excellent source of important nutrients. A typical potato contains over half the day's requirement of vitamins C and B6, and almost half of the potassium. They're also a good source of fiber, folate, niacin, thiamin, magnesium, manganese, and more.

Reason #3: Potatoes are a healthful alternative to grains and beans
Many pre-packaged survival foods rely on grains and beans... but for some folks, that can be a problem. Potatoes are more easily digestible than beans, which often require soaking. For people with gluten sensitivities or who don't do well with grains, potatoes are the perfect alternative.

Reason #4: In a TEOTWAWKI scenario, they provide sorely needed calories
In a total meltdown, you will be doing far more manual labor than you do now. You'll be walking or biking everywhere when gasoline prices skyrocket. You'll be growing your own food. If power is down for extended periods, you won't have machines to do laundry, dishes, or cleaning. You'll be chopping wood for heat. And all that extra effort requires more calories. Home grown potatoes, which require minimal labor, can provide all the extra calories your family needs in a complete off-the-grid lifestyle.

Reason #5: They can be grown even when growing space is limited
It doesn't require much land at all to grow potatoes, but if you live somewhere where there's virtually no ground to till, you can still grow them. People grow potatoes in window boxes, food-grade buckets, cardboard boxes, tall homemade containers, and more.

Reason #6: Potatoes keep for months
Kept at the proper temperature in an old-fashioned root cellar, potatoes will last for months. (Keep them away from onions and garlic, however, or they'll spoil faster.) And if you're worried about using them up before they start to go bad, you have another option... see Reason #7.

Reason #7: They're easy to dehydrate
Scrub 'em, slice 'em, and dehydrate them ... either in a dehydrator or in your oven. Dehydrated, potatoes take up less space and can be stored in airtight containers for very long periods of time. In fact, they'll last for ten years in a sealed #10 can.

Reason #8: Potatoes can be prepared in endless ways
Boil 'em, mash 'em, cook 'em in a stew ... fry them, scallop them, even make potato flour from them for baked goods. Make potato pancakes, potato dumplings, home fries ... even potato vodka!

If, like me, you can't help but think that the you-know-what is going to hit the fan any day now, then it's time to get prepared. This spring, why not try your hand at growing potatoes? And if you already do, why not try out a few new varieties?

The Mittleider Gardening Method

What is the Mittleider Method of Gardening?
I urge you to go to directly to the Food For Everyone website to read about Dr. Mittleider himself. Dr. Mittleider was passionate about teaching people how to grow their own food and had many accomplishments while he was still alive. The Mittleider Method of gardening is different in several ways from conventional garden but I want to share the top 5 differences that sparked my interest.
5 Mittleider Method Techniques That Changed The Way I Garden

1. Feeding Plants- Dr. Mittleider found for plants to thrive they need 16 essential plant nutrients. By providing plants with the 16 nutrients plants are healthier and full of nutrients we can consume. The 16 nutrients include 3 airborne elements -Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen. The other 13 include nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium (NPK). The other ten include calcium, magnesium, sulfur and 7 trace elements. This plant formula is fed in small amounts to the plants on a weekly basis over a period of the growth of the plants.
2. The Soil -The condition of the soil is not as vital when using the Mittleider Method. It is important to have well draining amended soil but you can still plant successfully in many different soil types. According to Dr. Mittleider and his method, plants can grow in virtually any soil as long as the plants are given the essential nutrients. It is however important to create soil beds or grow boxes that have the soil evenly distributed for proper water distribution.
3. Plant Spacing – With the Mittleider Method seeds and seedlings can be spaced a lot closer together than traditional methods recommend. The reason for this is because many plants can be grown vertically. Tomatoes (indeterminate), cucumbers, melons and squash some of the plants that can be grown inches apart because of vertically growing.
4. Watering – One of the mistakes I have been making with my garden over the past few years is the methods I use for watering. I usually use drip systems and/or a osculating sprinkler. Dr. Mittleider did not recommend these type of watering because it is wasteful and not as affective.  Watering with a PVC pipe with small holes drilled into them and place down the center of wide isles is the best way to water, according to Dr. Mittlleider.
5. Pruning - Apparently there are many vegetable plants that can be pruned. I was familiar with pruning tomatoes but didn’t realize cucumber, squash and melon plants as well. Pruning these plants can be done because of the vertical growing method. Pruning is important because is allows the growth of large fruit instead of many small fruits. And because plant spacing is closer you can still get the same size harvest but with larger fruit.

Is the Mittleider Method of Gardening Organic?
Growing an organic garden is very important to me. If I am going to take the time to garden to feed my family, I want the produce to be most nutritious it can be. After researching the Mittleider Method and finding out that in order for plants to grow they need certain nutrients. I came to the realization that in order for my family to get the best possible food from my garden, my plants need to be as healthy as possible.
Many people, including myself see the plant formula and think, “those ingredients are in commercial non-organic fertilizers, they can’t be organic, can they?” Well, yes they can. If we understand the fact that everything is chemical at a molecular level. The “chemicals” or elements that are in the plant formula are in our soil and manure fertilizers already.
The reason elements such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (aka NPK, found in bags of fertilizers, usually with numbers like 10-10-10) are in commercial fertilizers is because they do feed plants. There is however a problem with commercial fertilizers and that is the misuse of them. For instance, one of the things nitrogen does is causes rapid growth. An unbalanced amount of nitrogen will cause rapid growth but not healthy nutritious plants. Over use of certain elements can cause toxicity in the soil as well.
So why won’t organic fertilizers such as manure be good enough? The problem with manure is that the nutrients plants need are not always in manure. They may have some of the nutrients but not in the right amounts. Manure often has a unhealthy amount of salt in it which can affect the proper growth of plants. If manure is not sterile it can also cause all kinds of weed problems for you. You can still use sterile manure in your garden but instead of thinking of manure as a fertilizer think of it as a soil amender. The Mittleider Method of gardening offers plant nutrients in the right amounts over the right amount of time. The soil does not get to any toxic level because they plants are using what they need when they need it.
There is a lot more to be said about the Mittleider Method of gardening but I will have to share that at a later time. This post launches the Healthy Homesteading’s very first giveaway. Jim Kennard, the president of the Food For Everyone Foundation, has agreed to give away The Mittleider Gardening Course book. This is the book I purchased when I went to the garden seminar taught by Jim Kennard. The book is easy to follow and full of a lot of great information on starting the Mittleider Method.

One Persons Opinion on Gardening and Survival:

The best thing ANYONE with even a tiny patch of sunny land can do is to start planting perennial food crops now. One semi-dwarf apple tree can produce 10 bushels or more once it gets well established (although you need two for pollination, as long as there is another variety- even wild- in the neighborhood, you'll get apples.)

Apples have the advantage of not needing any type of processing to preserve them for at least a few months. Pick a "keeping" variety, and if you have - or can contrive- a root cellar of any description, you should have fresh apples from October to April. If you have some left when they start getting soft, dry the rest, or make a bunch of pies and freeze them, or can the rest up into applesauce or apple pie filling.

Culls... you'll ALWAYS have culls, even if you spray the heck out of the trees (NOT recommended) or do your best with the various organic alternatives to keep pests down. Culls can be fed to almost any livestock.

For those who suddenly are faced with TSHTF (even if it's just your own personal oscillating device which has suddenly started spattering stuff), concentrate on high yielding crops, and crops which keep well and easily, crops which have a lot of uses, and a high vitamin content.

That means grow winter squash, not zuchinni. Tomatoes instead of eggplant. Potatoes, absolutely. Onions and garlic will spice up the rest of your food, can be replanted the following year (especially if you keep at least a small patch of multiplier onions growing), and can be used as herbal medicine as well.

A person CAN survive- and stay healthy- on potatoes and milk. It sounds odd, but that combination provides all the amino acids and vitamins needed for health. The poor of Ireland did just that until the potato blight hit so hard. If you have a few pots of chives and other herbs in the windowsill, they'll provide some extra vitamins and seasoning as well.

Dry beans are nutritious, and can be grown in quite small of an area, if you pick pole varieties and give them room to climb. Ditto the various pole "snap" beans.. and if you've canned up all the green beans you need, you can leave the rest on the vine to ripen, and either save the seeds to plant, or use them for soups and bean dishes.

Given a small patch of land, FATS will be your biggest problem. That probably sounds downright odd, given our society's current obsession with everything low-fat, but it's true. Fats are absolute necessities for health, and it's very difficult in a "hunting and gathering" situation, or a small gardening- vegetarian diet situation, to get enough.

One drawback to raising rabbits for meat is that they are essentially very lean. Not quite as lean as the wild rabbits maybe- the old saying is a man will starve eating all the rabbit he can stuff into him- and it's true.

Chickens are a better choice, if you can manage it. Their eggs are extremely high quality protein, and their meat is higher in fat.. when I butcher chickens and make soup stock out of the backs and necks and other trimmings, I often end up with many pounds of clear, yellow chicken fat skimmed off. It makes the best biscuits on earth!

For vitamin C in cold climates, either spruce tea (made from the tips of branches from any of the spruce trees) or rose hip tea (made from any of the fruits of roses that weren't sprayed) will add enough of the vitamin to your diet.

Other potential high yield and high nutrient content crops are carrots and cabbage. Both will store for many months in a cellar, and will give you "fresh" veggies when nothing else is available.

If I were in a suburban situation, I'd plant hedges between my backyard and the neighbors- one would be blueberry bushes, one would be blackberries or raspberries. Both can be easily contained with a bit of judicious pruning (and even the brambles won't spread if someone is mowing on both sides of them), and a 50 foot row of each will provide a LOT of fruit in season. Blueberries dry well, raspberries don't- but you can freeze them, or make jam from them. The Amish even can them.

You will need a source of sugar. I'd strongly suggest that you stock up at least a couple hundred pounds NOW, while it's readily available and relatively inexpensive. That at least could get you through the first year while you figure out alternatives.

It's going to take a lot of maple taps to provide enough sugar for both baking and general kitchen use, and canning and preserving. Sugar isn't just flavoring when you're making jams or canning fruit. It adds significant preservative power, preserving color, flavor and texture.

My next project (probably NEXT summer- this summer is establishing a flock of heirloom turkeys for breeders, and getting my daughter married off ) is going to be a couple of hives of honeybees. I've noticed the wild bees are coming back around here, for whatever reason, but that's only a help with pollination. For honey, you need (if at all possible) your own tame hives which can be harvested without killing the bees or losing the colony. Harvesting wild honey is possible, but not something I'd do voluntarily unless there wasn't any choice!

The other absolute basic, which most of us are not going to be able to produce at home, is salt. Again, it's cheap, it will keep literally forever if kept dry, and a couple hundred pounds- or a ton- isn't going to take up much room. Heat and cold don't bother it, so you could store it literally anywhere, once it's packaged up well. I can envision a time when salt is accepted as currency again, all too easily.

The details are endless, and if anyone reading this is getting discouraged, that's not the point. The point is... START NOW!

The old time rule of thumb, which I've followed for years, despite having access to myriad seed catalogs and other sources, is never plant more than HALF your available seed. If a crop failure occurs, you've still got seed to start again. Many crops only take half the growing season, even here in the frozen north. If you replant that year, again, only use half the seed you have left.

It may mean a lean winter, or one subsisting on a small variety of food, but at least you'll have seed for the next year again.

I wonder if many people here can even conceive of the way people in the not-very-distant past worked for years to get to the point where they had the means to grow most of their own food?

There is a great passage in one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books (Little Town on the Prairie, maybe?) where they've been given a hatching of chicks by a friend who already has poultry. They're looking at these tiny balls of fluff and thinking "if they survive- if we can keep hawks and other problems away from them, next year some of them will start laying eggs".. So, did them plan on EATING any of those eggs? Nope.... it goes on "the hens will set on those eggs, and produce chicks, and later that summer, we'll be able to have a few of the cockerels for fried chicken. Then, the next year, we'll have all the eggs we want!"

THREE years from a "gift" of chicks to the point where they have a steady supply of eggs and some fried chicken for Sundays and feast days.

No, subsistence farming is NOT easy. Possible? yes. And definitely rewarding (unless you've swallowed all the 21'st century bulls**t about what constitutes "success"). But very, very hard.

BUT... that is EXACTLY why I think that hoping or relying on "trade" of some mythical surplus is dangerous. There won't BE a surplus, not until all the kinks get worked out on how to change back the big farms- completely dependent on fuel and electricity- to simpler, less energy intensive- but FAR more labor intensive- methods.

We currently produce almost 750,000 pounds of milk in a year. (that's not quite 100,000 gallons). With two people doing all the labor. Given a scenario where we'd have to go back to Amish methods, we wouldn't be able to produce 1/10th of that. But cutting hay with the horses, and then raking it with them, and stacking it either in the field (for easy access for the beef cows) or putting it in the shed or barns is certainly not the biggest problem we'd have.

If you're going to be trading for food, you're going to have to have something at least as valuable to exchange.

Skills like shoemaking, or metal working, or even carpentry, may come in awfully handy.

But someone's idea of "having precious metals" and "hoping" that someone will be willing to trade food is awfully tenuous, in a real disaster situation. Because without gasoline engines, or other labor saving devices (including a draft animal and the harness AND tools to hitch it to) growing enough for any one family is pretty much a full time job. Growing extra is going to be more luck than anything else. And trading food your family needs for something like silver or gold- unless you KNOW of someplace you can then trade those for needed food and other items- is downright silly.

You're correct, of course, that not everyone can homestead.. at least under current conditions. It's entirely possible that we see those conditions crash back far enough that everyone who wants to eat is either going to grow their own, or hunt and harvest their own from the woods and fields. Again, it's unlikely that people will have much extra under those conditions.

I had to laugh about "not having cattle, because they're too much work". I have cows because they are LESS work per calorie that you get back than any gardening I've ever done. Sure, my dairy herd of 40+ cows, plus another 50 young stock, is a full time job. But my herd of little beef cows is simplicity itself... as long as there is pasture inside the fences (and we do a lot of intensive management to maintain the quality of those pastures, but it takes very little time- a few minutes a day to move fences) they're happy, and their calves are packing on beef like crazy.

And ONE milking cow isn't a lot of work- less than 15 minutes per day can take care of feeding, cleaning and milking, once you've got some experience. Making butter and cheese and all the rest from the milk IS very time consuming, but you can't blame the cow for that!

But for one person, a cow is definitely overkill. A cooperatively owned cow, though.....

I guess what it comes down to for me (besides the fact that I truly love this life, and enjoy the sense of independence growing everything I can gives me - and the IRS hasn't figured out a way to tax our gardens yet!) is that under tough circumstances, I want to depend on people I KNOW I can trust, and that is my family, pretty much. I want to know that I don't have to worry about whether or not someone will have extra food available for me to trade for, or whether we'll have something extra that someone will be willing to exchange for food. Once we have enough to eat- and fuel for heat- then we can start looking at helping rebuild society, including setting up trade. But if we don't survive the first year or two, that won't be in issue.

So, You're Going to Grow Your Own Food in a Collapse

There have been many discussions about growing your own food when the collapse occurs. This has begun to concern me because, based upon people's posts, a lot of them have never even gardened. I don't want to call it naive but I think many of them need to take a closer look at what's involved.

Here are recommendations for the amount of food a family of five needs for a year. Both of the following recommendations are from the early 1930's. However, I don't see why they can't be applied today.

The first is from Flight from the City by Ralph Borsodi for the Dayton Homestead program.

Bread, cerals, baked goods - 750 pounds
Vegetables and fruits - 3,000 pounds
Butter, lard and other fats - 250 pounds
Meat and poultry - 500 pounds
Eggs - 200 dozen
Milk - 300 gallons

Borsodi had specific ideas in mind for producing this food although he was quite flexible such as having a cow rather than goats if land were available. He planned on 25 cockerels or capons, 2 buck goat kids and 2 pigs for meat. There would be 25 laying hens for eggs. There would be 3-4 hives for honey.

He felt that 500 quarts of fruits and vegetables would have to be canned or dehydrated.

In Dayton (Ohio), he believed this amount of food and feed for the animals would require 3-5 acres.

The next recommendation was from the Department of Home Economics of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. I'm guessing at the weights of bushels and pecks below.

Flour, cerals - 400 pounds
Potatoes and sweet potatoes - 400 pounds
Dried beans - 1 peck (about 15 pounds)
Tomatoes and citrus fruit - 10 bushels (about 700 pounds
Leafy, green and yellow vegetables - 585 pounds
Dried fruit - 75 pounds
Other vegetables and fruit - 1,400 pounds
Butter, other fats - 165 pounds
Sugar - 200 pounds
Lean meat and poultry - 620 pounds
Eggs - 145 dozen
Milk - 400 gallons

They had no suggestions as to how to produce this much food.

So, what kinds of yields might you expect in order to produce this food? I've taken late 1970's average vegetable production figures for the U.S. and converted them to pounds per 100 square feet. I used this time period since it certainly doesn't take into account some of the technical advances that are available today and it is highly unlikely that any person is going to have technology greater then this in a collapse.

It also takes into account the fact that many people will be doing "serious" vegetable growing for the first time. They not only won't know what they are doing from a cultural point of view but they are likely to have the wrong vegetable varieties for their area.

Now, someone is going to look at the following figures and argue that they currently get higher yields or that biointensive, permaculture, mulch culture or one of the many other growing methods produce ten times as much. My response is, yes, they look low to me too. But that's they way it is and I don't think people will get higher yields in the long term.

There are a number of reasons this will be the case. First, nutrients such as phosphorous are going to be in short supply (There is only a 25 year supply that can be commercially mined before it is exhausted.). Nitrogen also presents a problem. Yes, you can use legume cover crops. The trouble is that you then have to grow and harvest the seed for them. Second, climatological and geographic location have a tremendous influence on crop yields. Lastly, the ability to irrigate will have an immense impact on yields. In facat, water for irrigation will probably be the limiting factaor rather then nutrients.

Droughts come and go in the Midwest and east coast and need to be considered. However, in the west, one simply has to irrigate since there is little, if any, precipittion during the growing season.

Although actual irrigation needs vary throughout the growing season, let's say you are irrigating 1 acre of crops and that you apply 1 inch of water per week (During peak heat periods the amount of water is often far higher.). So, how much will you need to apply per month? An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons and an inch of water per week roughly equals a third of an acre-foot. Therefore, you will be applying almost 100,000 gallons per month or over 3,000 gallons per day.

Now let's carry it a step further. Assume you have a well that can pump 10 gallons per minute (a good residential well). How many hours does your pump have to run each day for irrigation? Five hours - for 1 acre. Realistically, five hours per day of pumping isn't going to happen, muchless 15 hours. And, unless you are willing to invest lots and lots of money, PV panels aren't going to work either.

If you live in California, you can get the evapotranspiration for your area. Click on the data tab at the top. Free registration is required. You don't have to be a grower to register.

Given these constraints, this is why I suggested that some from of hydroponics was probably the only sustainable way to grow food.

Here are the yields in pounds per 100 square feet. They were taken from the 1980 edition of Knott's Handbook for vegetable Growers.

Bean, processing - 9
Bean, lima, processing - 7
Beets, processing - 60
Broccoli - 20
Brussels sprouts - 29
Cabbage, processing - 92
Carrot, topped - 64
Cauliflower - 23
Celery - 115
Corn, processing - 23
Corn, feed - 15
Cucumbers - 24
Eggplant - 46
Lettuce - 53
Melon, Persian - 28
Melon, Honeydew - 41
Muskmelon - 32
Okra - 23
Onion - 71
Pea, processing, shelled - 6
Pepper, Bell - 25
Potato - 58
Pumpkin - 92
Spinach, fresh - 16
Squash, summer - 69
Squash, winter - 92
Sweet potato - 27
Tomato, fresh - 39
Tomato, processing - 101
Turrnip - 69
Watermelon - 27
Wheat - 10

For comparison, here are the yields of crops grown hydroponically in a greenhouse. One of the charts in the book, Hydroponic Food Production by Resh didn't say how many crops were grown during the year. I've put an * by crops where the yield is per crop for susre.

Bush beans - 21*
Beets - 55
Broccoli - 60*
Cabbage - 41*
Cucumbers - 64*
Lettuce - 48
Oats - 6
Peas - 414
Radish - 41*
Rice - 12
Potatoes - 322
Soya - 36
Tomatoes - 207*
Wheat - 9

I want to close by returning to Borsodi's 500 quarts (100 per person) to be canned each season. Here are some canning yields to help you determine how much you need to grow. The data is from the Farm Journal's Freezing and Canning Cookbook .

Apples - bushel - 16-20
Berries - 32 quarts - 24
Peaches - bushel - 18-24
Pears - 46 pound box - 16-22
Plums - 28 pound lug - 12-15
Tomatoes (chunk) - bushel - 20
Tomatoes (juice) - bushel - 12-16
Beans, lima, in pod - bushel - 6-8
Beans, snap, green, wax - bushel - 15-20
Beets, without tops - bushel - 17-20
Carrots - bushel - 17-20
Corn, whole kernel - bushel - 8-9
Okra - 1 1/2 pounds - 1
Peas, in pod - bushel - 6-10
Pumpkin/winter squash - 1 1/2-3 pounds - 1
Summer squash - 2-4 pounds - 1

And, don't forget the grain or hay you have to raise for the animals. For example, a laying hen that is confined eats about a bushel of grain a year.