I'm just trying to work out how much i need to plant to become self sufficient as far as veg is concerned...
Family of 4 - eat veg everyday, eat little meat so mostly vegetarian meals.
The plot i am getting is 10m x 50m - this seems large to me...but i still havent seen it yet.
Will i beable to become self sufficient with allotment this size?
Anyone got any ideas on how much area to allow for say carrots and potatoes.
Oh silly questions i know - but I just cant get my head round it.
Our garden is 8m by 20ish with a greenhouse and my OH and I are hoping to become self-sufficient in most veg in a year or two.
I think that planning and flexibility are the most important things.
The first couple of years we are intending to try growing what we like, and working out what we need to plant when in order to supply us through the year.
For example, we use 5 onions a week, so we need to plant at least 260 sets each year, which is not practical for us, but if we choose a strong tasting variety of onion, alter what we cook from time to time, and grow some leeks, red onions and shallots for variety then we should be ok for most of the year.
We probably won't be able to grow some types of veg (either at all or in sufficient quantities), and what we do get will vary depending on the time of year. We will have to get used to the fact that we can't have fresh tomatoes in january, or strawberries at christmas. In fact, for some of the 'self-sufficient' veggie families I know their main complaint is of boring food in the winter - so inventiveness in cooking, and learning lots of preserving techniques (and having a big freezer) is important.
I am very much looking forward to the challenge ...
[edit] ps - there is a book called 'the self-sufficient gardener' by john seymour - out of print now, but if you can get hold of a copy from the library it is well worth a read (I am a librarian so a big fan of reading before doing)[edit]
I think you might have enough ground there, with a little careful planning, to grow most, if not all, of your requirements. You may need a good-sized freezer to store some of your produce though.
If you can get hold of a copy of Joy Larkcom's 'Grow Your Own Vegetables', this book may help enormously since it is packed with pertinent information on all aspects of vegetable growing - and it does not assume that the reader already has background knowledge of the subject. The library should be able to get you a reading copy without any difficulty.
Chapter 9 covers the planning aspect: family preferences (grow what you like!), climatic factors (grow what your area will allow), storage (freezer, clamps, frost-free sheds). She then talks you through rotation, grouping vegetables, and has sample plans... one is a...
'Feed the Family' Plan which takes a 5m x 9m rectangle and shows you one possibility of how to pack in as much vegetable growth as possible, within a logical, easy to follow framework. It's drawn out on the page... so you can follow what goes where, and why (as a beginner it was a lifesaver). The space was broken down into 4 beds - for rotation - each 1m wide, with 33cm paths running between them. Within this she managed to pack: broad beans, kale, spring cabbage, peas, lettuce, spring onions, dwarf french beans, mangetout, swiss chard, spinach or mooli radish, runner beans, cucumbers, climbing squash, onions, chicory, red cabbage, summer cabbage, calabrese, swedes, salad leaves, chinese cabbage, oriental greens, texel greens, brussels sprouts, savoy cabbage, kohl rabi, purple sprouting broccoli, mini caulis, maincrop carrots, early spuds, 2nd early spuds, fennel, celery, turnip, hamburg parsley, early carrots, storage beetroot, parsnips, celeriac, early beetroot, tomatoes, garlic, shallots, leeks, winter salad stuff, sweetcorn, endive and courgettes/marrows.
This is a good starting point, and from here you can adapt according to what vegetables you like/don't like. Given the amount of space you have, you have all sorts of other options which cover the 'gourmet' vegetables (also another drawn out plan in her book) which allows you greater space for the more expensive vegetables, and moves away from the staple necessities e.g. more space for salads, peas and beans. Then you can throw in more pumpkins (excellent storers), globe artichokes, rhubarb and asparagus. Or devote lots of space to maincrop spuds...
You'll also have plenty of room for fruit... e.g. you could throw up posts and wires down your east and west borders and have one boundary of blackberries, with the other of raspberries - they are both excellent 'freezers'. Eat all you want and freeze the excess. A strawberry bed is another way of filling the freezer with fruit at a very small cost; even better, ask around the allotment site, and see if anyone would give you their excess strawberry runners in return for some spare seeds/whatever you've got extras of... they'd only end up on the compost heap otherwise. Free strawberries! From there it's a short step to redcurrants, white currants and blackcurrants - again great for the freezer. You may already have a few fruit bushes on your plot, it's not uncommon.
The 'how much space do I need for x, y, z' is more difficult, and since I'm also a beginner, you probably need someone with more nous to answer this one. However, one simple way to start, is to draw up a list and figure out (roughly) what you currently work your way through in the veg line e.g. if you eat 3lbs spuds/week, that means roughly 150lbs/year; 6 carrots/week = 300 carrots; a bunch of spring onions/fortnight = 26 bunches.... keep going until you've covered the main vegetables and then contemplate your basic growing list. Keep in mind that some of the more expensive shop vegetables e.g. french green beans, that might normally be restricted due to cost, are very easy to grow, and that consequently you can eat these until they come out of your ears... and your neighbours' ears... Courgettes fall into this category! Lettuce too. Salad leaves by the bucketfull (instead of £1.19 for a chlorine washed bag)...
We still buy quite a bit of veg, not so much during the summer and autumn but quite a bit in winter and early spring. But we're still learning through trial and error about how much we need and it takes a lot of work growing enough to feed a family of 4 all year round. I felt like last summer I spent nearly all my spare time harvesting and preserving, it was good fun but lots of work. :)
Thanks so much for your wonderful responses!!!
It never even occurred to me to work out how much of what we eat per week - durrr. of course once i do that, it will certainly help.
Gadfium - you have kept me busy all morning! Thank you so much for your envelope.
Now i'd best go and clean up the kitchen - what a mess i made LOL.
A pleasure!
:)
A plot 10 X 50 m should be big enough to be self sufficient.
I never buy vegetables , potatoes and for fruit only citron, oranges etc.
I just started this week my last potatoes from last year (Desiree)
When growing potatoes learn which varietie you can keep and which ones you have to eat within a couple of months. I have a family of 5 and I use a part of my plot like 5 x 10 mtr for potatoes and I have about 10 different varieties.
The vegetables depends which ones your family like . A big freezer is a must and I weck a lot as well. With the new electric weck pan it is very easy to do.
Onions , I still have about 25 left. Red ones dont keep so good.
You find on this board a lot of good recipies, so if you have too many tomatoes, beans, courgettes, make soup or cakes or stew from it.. ;D
Quote from: Lady Cosmos on May 11, 2006, 19:12:55
I weck a lot as well. With the new electric weck pan it is very easy to do.
Weck? ???
Ditto :-\
intrigued now too, what is weck?
Yes, google is not much help ...
hehe, did some searching, it looks like it's canning, am I right Lady Cosmos? :)
Hee hee, I missed that, clever Jesse ! :)
There was a time when a labourer was supposed to be able to feed his family off 1/8 acre, or 505 square yards, which is rather less than I have. So it should be possible.
1/8th of an acre is 600 sq yards approx? since 1 acre = 4840 sq yds. That is the size of my plot, and I struggle to feed my family continuously, therefore I conclude I am not as clever at growing stuff as the labourers were ...
We manage to be about 95% self sufficent (not a scientific estimate you understand). I have to buy citrus, and between Christmas and early summer, apples as mine aren't great storers, plus on average we get through 3 a day. I have to buy some onions from about April until about July when my overwintering onions are ready, then of course I have leeks and spring onions to fill the gaps, but there is an onion gap for me as I cannot grow maincrop onions due to the dreaded white rot. My baking spuds all ran out just after Christmas, altho I did have a bag full of pink fur apples which were only used up recently. I didn't plan ahead and plant some in tubs to force an early crop, so a visit to the farm shop was necessary. However, not long and I will start digging some first earlies.
I think one of the things about being self sufficient is you have to become flexible in what you eat. You eat seasonal produce, so strawbs during the summer, then you freeze or bottle the spare to top you up over the winter. We have just finished the brussel sprouts and kale on our plot, and the purple sprouting broc has probably another 6 or so picks, but the 9 star perennial broc is now starting to produce, so we will move onto that. The first crop of peas aren't far away, and this year for the first time, I have managed to have 4 batches, all different, and all at very different stages of growth to prolong the season. I cram as much in my plot as possible. Everytime something is harvested, something goes back in - either a plantlet that I had in a tray or pot, or a pinch of seed. I'm afraid my rotation leaves a lot to be desired - however, I do move my spuds, onions and brassicas along a section every year.
Another thing with being self sufficient is the ability to store. You cannot afford to waste any of your crops, so you need a good preserving book, you need to be able to freeze produce, and you need somewhere frost free but airy to store things like squashes, spuds, onions and garlic.
It can be done, but you need to be flexible. An average shopper may only buy a pack of runner beans a couple of times in the summer, but you will be picking a carrier bag full a day! 1001 things to do with a runner bean/courgette/lettuce. You must sow little and often so try and avoid huge gluts.
I love it and learn different tricks every year. How to cram even more stuff in - thinking of a hanging basket or 6 on the shed for tumbling toms next year - and how to make the humble courgette exciting! ;D
Well I`m nearly self sufficient last year I bought 2 cabbages, and the odd bag of spuds. other than that I'm there. The thing about growing your own is that you have to get use to eating things in season and surplus get put into the freezer them, I alway grow a stack of onions and when they run out then I have my leeks to fall back on. I grow summer brassicas and winter brasssicas. To be self sufficient is about planning ahead, for instance I have already planned for next year. Get Joy Larkcom book "Grow your own Vegetables" It should be in your local library, it is all explained there.
Joy Larkcom's book 'Grow your own vegetables' is only £6.59 on amazon
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/071121963X/qid=1147422179/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_3_1/202-9525716-3562255
think that might be a fairly immediate purchase ;D
There was a thread like this a while back - but search thing no workey..
As i think i said last time, you can never be 100% self suficient if you want the same choice you can get from the shops all year round. I just try and make sure i've got somthing on the go all year - and live with the fact that I wont be able to have tomatoes in Jan, or swede in June...fresh from my allotment.
it is also advisable to train up the family before hand that they aren't going to be eating meals like they used to. ie: whatever they wanted when they wanted it.
It took me a year to train my OH into freezing left overs from the massive meals he made (chilli/curry coming out of our ears) and actually eating them a few months later instead of chucking them the next day, but I feel the issue of "we've run out of onions, use leeks instead of spending money on onions" will be a harder lesson. All we need is a season of penury and he may get used to the idea!
Like may people on this site I hope that we become increasingly self-sufficient over the next 1-2 years also, but am finding my brain doesn't settle into what needs to be done too easily: rotations, wedding, space, deep digging, weeding, short term cropping, weeding, nor my time allowances. Did I mention weeding? ;D
Rope the family in a little at a time to help out with the workload. I've heard of people paying their child by the snail/bag of weeds which seems a good idea to get them involved. As for getting adults involved... I'm thinking of blackmail ;D ;D ;D
My lot are untrainable; they keep turniing their noses up at perfectly good fruit and veg. It's either 'I don't like it.' or 'how can I eat that?' looking at a perfectly good apple which just doesn't look as nice as Tesco's selected ones.
Self sufficiency is the long term plan really.
At the moment we get a veg box delivered every other week, have been all winter. that usually lasts us the whole fortnight. (It's just the two of us)
Last summer/autumn I managed to have something homegrown in almost every meal - although admittedly sometimes it was only garlic and/or herbs. We had one or two meals a week with all homegrown veg.
Throughout the winter, the only things I've harvested are chard and some herbs. We used up the last of the spuds a few weeks back (I will not buy anymore, though, we will just have to have pasta, rice, etc). And we also had sweetcorn, spinach and some other things in the freezer.
We've been self sufficient on lettuce for a month or so now. Must remember to do some for over wintering this year.
I'm hoping to reduce the veg box to once a month through the summer and get much more out of the garden and into the freezer for the winter months. (I don't have an allotment!)
As for getting used to seasonal things - I tend to find that I go off the more exotic veg (eg - toms, aubs, courg, peppers, etc) in the winter and since eating homegrown strawbs, I refuse to eat anything else (they all laugh at me for being so fussy - but out-of-season strawbs are utterly tasteless!)
Quote from: Robert_Brenchley on May 12, 2006, 15:52:11
My lot are untrainable; they keep turniing their noses up at perfectly good fruit and veg. It's either 'I don't like it.' or 'how can I eat that?' looking at a perfectly good apple which just doesn't look as nice as Tesco's selected ones.
My daughter wont even eat the eggs her chicken lays - so i wonder what she will think of our homegrown veg/fruit LOL