Growing your own food

[Smithy]

Do you grow your own food?
If so what do you grow and how long does it take?

I have never grown my own food always got them from supermarkets.
I might give growing a go but I have been told it can be hard.

 

[Don Alaska]

Of course it can be hard @Smithy and it is not always possible, but I think everyone should grow or raise something for themselves. I think the UK still has an allotment system to allow you to do just that does it not? We raise much or most of our own food and have for years, although we no longer have large livestock, so we are now growing large gardens and greenhouse, with chickens and eggs. Almost everyone can grown container lettuce, radishes, and scallions, and many can grow containers of carrots, potatoes, turnips, parsnips, etc. A lot fewer can grow large crops like cabbage, cauliflower and grains, but it is still possible for some.

It is work, but it is healthy work, and can give you some measure of food security. It usually gets you outside and gardening can be a good exercise even on a small scale.

 

[Mary Stetler]

I agree with Don Alaska.
Just try a window box and a few seeds. You may be hooked. Try some radishes and lettuce to start and see what you think. On a small scale it is not hard. It just takes a bit of learning to know which are plants and which are weeds.

 

[Don Alaska]

I agree with Don Alaska.
Just try a window box and a few seeds. You may be hooked. Try some radishes and lettuce to start and see what you think. On a small scale it is not hard. It just takes a bit of learning to know which are plants and which are weeds.

...and as you know @Mary Stetler many weeds are food>

 

[Mary Stetler]

...and as you know @Mary Stetler many weeds are food>

I am trying to ease him into it, not scare him!

 

[Yvonne Smith]

Berries are a pretty easy thing to grow, and they produce a lot faster than trying to grow a fruit tree, and do not take up as much room. They do not need to be planted each year, like a vegetable garden does, and if you look on YouTube, there are a lot of suggestions for other perennial plants that you can eat as food.
Strawberries would be a simple berry to start with, and they will send out runners for new plants, so you would not need to invest a lot into growing your own strawberries, @Smithy . The main thing you would have to be concerned with are all the birds that come to your bird feeder, and the squirrels. Both would eat seeds that you plant, and also berries , so you might have to protect the berries. We put netting over ours when the berries start getting ripe enough for the birds to want to eat them.

 

[Joe Riley]

I remember when I was about 10 years od, my Dad cleared a patch at the top of the yard. I got to plant radishes. When you look at radish seeds they look like tiny little pebbles.....think "tiny". It was always a test of patience to wait and not pick them too soon. But there was such a thing as "thinning". I remember how magical is was to pull one out of the ground and see a good sized red and white radish. They always livened up a salad! Carrots were similar, but we added sand to the soil first, so they would grow larger. Picking green beans, and leaf lettuce were hard on the back for the older members of the family, but it all was a labor of love!

 

[Mary Stetler]

I remember when I was about 10 years od, my Dad cleared a patch at the top of the yard. I got to plant radishes. When you look at radish seeds they look like tiny little pebbles.....think "tiny". It was always a test of patience to wait and not pick them too soon. But there was such a thing as "thinning". I remember how magical is was to pull one out of the ground and see a good sized red and white radish. They always livened up a salad! Carrots were similar, but we added sand to the soil first, so they would grow larger. Picking green beans, and leaf lettuce were hard on the back for the older members of the family, but it all was a labor of love!

I still love going through the rows of green beans. I may look like a giraffe with spayed legs but I love the process and the product.

 

[Don Alaska]

Sprouts and microgreens are another way to grow food. Sprouts especially are a great addition to salads and sandwiches in bleak midwinter.

 

[Don Alaska]

We had a meal tonight totally from our production. I smoked a turkey we had raised and frozen, we had green beans grown here and canned by my wife, and we had potatoes grown here. It was yummy, but the small turkey will last a while with only two people here.

 

[Mary Stetler]

Are turkeys much different than chickens to produce. This year I had an opportunity to get poults at a reasonable price but wasn't up to changing how I do things.

 

[Axel Slingerland]

I used to grow my own herb for brownies and cookies... But that was over 25 years ago.

 

[Don Alaska]

Are turkeys much different than chickens to produce. This year I had an opportunity to get poults at a reasonable price but wasn't up to changing how I do things.

I think turkeys are easier than chickens. The heritage breeds are generally smarter than chickens, and I find turkeys to be easier to clean since they are larger and it is easier to get my hands inside to clean out the inside well. You can cut the turkeys into pieces to freeze and it saves freezer space and makes meal prep easier. We kept this one intact as we had the freezer space when we killed it and just in case we needed a family dinner. I hadn't smoked a turkey before, but I saw it done when we lived in the South, so I wanted to give it a try. We never did our own bacon either as I thought the local butcher did a superb job with bacon. His hams, however, were not so hot, so we made our own hams when we had pigs and brined and smoked those. I could do a much better job on the hams than the local butcher did for some reason. I think he just didn't want to tie up space in his smoke chamber.