Trying to Grow Everything | The Survival Gardener

Laura comments:

“Your grocery row garden looks fantastic – so lush and green, not to mention full of food! I know in a video like this you can’t point out every plant in the garden, so I’m curious: do you have any long beans or jicama in there?”

Both of those crops are not in the garden this year, but they are good additions.

When we moved here back in August, we had a few projects we really wanted to continue.

The priorities were:

1. To maintain cassava production
2. To continue growing an abundance of true yams
3. To press on with the okra, corn, pumpkin, watermelon and cucumber landrace projects
4. To grow an isolated plot of an exceptionally large-kerneled variety of corn a Good Gardener snuck in from Peru
5. To get most of my trees and perennials re-established after transplanting over from the rental

We got those all going now. However, there are quite a few good crops we don’t have rolling this year, due to lack of time, or space, or organization, or just plain forgetfulness.

We wanted to grow more cucuzza squash and didn’t get to it. We also have jicama and yard-long bean seeds that never got planted. We only planted a few velvet beans. We also lost our bush bean crop to a frost early in the year – and then to some bad seed – and then didn’t bother replanting again. There are less sweet potatoes in the garden than there should be, and we haven’t gotten around to digging up some of the Russet potatoes hiding in the Grocery Row Gardens somewhere.  The tomatoes never got staked, and we really should have gotten the weeds out of the most easterly row before they completely ate it.

Yet we’re doing okay. Next year will be good.

There are plenty of crops we know would do well that we just don’t manage to pull off every year.

Each garden has its own flavor, especially when we’re constantly experimenting with new things and pursuing new projects.

It’s a good question, Laura – and I still recommend both crops.

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