Many of us have been growing gardens for its enjoyment for a long time, many of us are just getting into gardening. But a big shift we can see from both sides, is that the motive isn’t only for the sake of fun, to learn a new hobby or skill. But instead, we see that it is to find a new way to provide for ourselves. Whether it’s just for fun, to worry less about ingredients and produce sprays or to worry less about food shortages and supplies, many of us are now growing food for its ability to provide for us all times of the year.
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How to Grow Enough Food with Your Garden to Feed Your Family for One Year
Growing a garden has been a hobby for most of us for years, but many are starting to learn how to take it a step further. Many of us are learning to bring back the Victory Garden’s of the early 20th century and the lifestyle of our ancestors before then. Growing and making our own foods is becoming natural again, and I think our great great grandparents (like little house on the prairie ancestors) would be so proud of us.
But the struggle at this point is learning how to achieve this. We want to be our own grocery stores, which is so natural, it’s how the Lord intended it, but how do we do that. How do we, actually do that.
This post is here to help you with just that, five tips to help you learn more about growing food for a whole year in just the three to four months that your garden is up and running.
1.) Grow Root Vegetables & Tubers
If you want to maximize space and grow foods that will fill you up at any meal grow root vegetables and tubers. These plants consist of carrots, radishes, potatoes and other plants grown under the ground.
How is this aiding you in growing food for a whole year?
Root vegetables use space that would otherwise be unused in the garden (around a foot of depth into the earth’s soil), which means more produce and also hardier foods that are easier to Winter. Also, these vegetables fill our tummies- they are extremely filling and diverse foods to add to any meal.
2.) Don’t Plant a Cookie Cutter Garden
A cookie cutter, or typical garden blueprint is extremely different from nature, right? Nature is cluttered, nature doesn’t require the chemicals, soil additions and nutrients we have to constantly add to our gardens. Nature is never considered overcrowded, and yet everything grows and has space to thrive.
Our gardens can be the same. Some might say- should be the same.
Planting your garden in this format that mimics nature will prevent bugs and pests from eating it all or ruining it all. It will also prevent your garden from needing large amounts of water. Growing in this format also gives and takes from equal nutrients in the soil, which means less depletion.
Lastly, and most importantly to the subject, it allows you to grow more food!
There is a lot more to this subject, and you can join our exclusive blog posts to read more about planting patterns, the right and wrong ways to garden when you are trying to mimic nature and so much more.
This planting style works in all styles of gardens, though it is easiest in raised beds!
3.) Buy and Plant Seeds that You Know Your Family Will Eat
It’s easy to have great and grand plants assuming you and your family will learn to try and love new produce this season.
But, if your goal is to grow food to eat over the off seasons, is this the best idea?
If your children don’t like green beans, the chances are they won’t like canned green beans even more, and they will end up as gifts or sitting on the pantry shelf while you shop elsewhere for food.
Being super intentional about what you buy is super important, and finding seeds from places that have a large variety will help your search be more successful.
4.) Be Equip
Growing food for a whole year is a great goal to have. Though, growing the food is only half of the process.
Once you have grown the produce you have to preserve- or learn to preserve- it.
There is so many different methods to preserving your garden, your harvest. Dehydration, freezing, refrigeration, canning, freeze drying, and preparing squashes, potatoes and carrots in cold dark storage.
All of these require equipment of some kind:
- A water bath or pressure canner
- Freezer safe bags or Tupperware
- Sand
- Freeze Dryer
- Mason Jars
- & more
Depending on what you plan to do, you will more than likely need a good blend of equipment to ensure you can properly harvest and preserve your foods. Generally my dehydrator is dehydrating herbs while I can tomatoes and apples in the water bath canner! It’s a process and lots of different types of preservation are necessary to reach that level and title of “preserving enough food for the Winter months”. I have already created a list on Amazon for you to look through as you decide what equipment you think will aid you the most!
5.) Use all Space and Time to Your Advantage
Having such a large task at hand is absolutely doable, especially if we are really on point with our use of our time and space.
Have you learned more about your garden zone and frost dates? Have you learned more about what you can plant indoors the first few weeks of their growth, to have a head start on the gardening season?
To go along with that, do you have space you can utilize outside of your garden for herbal hanging baskets, edible flowers, a vertical strawberry garden on the deck.
Ask yourself if you are properly using the space you have been given and stretching your garden season to its fullest and then some by planting in greenhouses and indoors.
If you need help getting creative with space, click here to find our renter friendly gardening options WHICH will help you learn how to use your free indoor space and any extras space in your yard or on your deck.
To learn more about your zone and frost dates, you can watch your weather forecast, local news, contact college extension offices, contact local branches of government in AG, and find gardening websites that help you learn your zone by entering your zip code. One website that will do this for you and show you plants for your area is Gurneys.com.
That is our five tips for growing food for a whole year.
Thank you so much for reading, let us know your tips below! Have questions? Email us below! God bless you lovely folks and thank you again for your support!
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