Show us your end of season results!

May, how do you store your Sunchokes? And do you water your lotus every few days?

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:May, how do you store your Sunchokes? And do you water your lotus every few days?

I dug up the sunchoke after the tops died last week since the ground was still soft. However the tubers don't taste good until mid winter to turn crispy and sweet. I sorted them out by size and shape for different uses: eating, replanting for tubers and replanting for biomass. I bagged them separately and marked then burried them back in ground in a small concentrated area. I had 9 bags of over 10 lbs each. They store very well this well and won't use up my fridge space.

As for the lotus, I occasionally topped up the water when the level got low once a week. It wasn't much of a chore.

How deep are they buried? I'm a zone warmer then you, I'd like to store mine at a proven depth.

My soil is very hard and rocky so i only dig down to 1 ft or so. But I make a heap on top too so right now there's a 6" layer on top. I did the same last year and this depth worked for me.

Here is a list of my harvest so far. I haven’t included all of the herbs I have harvested, since I forgot to weight a lot of them.
Some things are still early for me, since we grow food all year round. I still need to harvest passion fruit, collards, ginger, sweet potatoes, cassava roots, spinach and the last of my beans and tomatoes.
In a few weeks I will be able to start harvesting lettuce, and around Christmas crops like carrots and beets will start to be ready to pick. Anyway, here is a copy of my master list, all numbers are of pounds.
Cucumbers 60 pounds.                    
Tomatoes 21 pounds
Peas 5 pound
Beans 30 pounds
Spinach 30 pounds
Lettuce 10
Onions 10                
Garlic  20.                                      
Celery 20.      
Collards 50    
Green cabbages 30
Red cabbages 8.    
Tomatillos 35 pounds
Peppers 4
Cauliflower 10            
Broccoli 10
Okra 2.              
Winter squash & pumpkins 250
Beets
Kohlrabi 4
Radishes 2                            
Sweet potatoes  100
Peaches 40
Oranges 100
Plums 2
Raspberries 0.5
Blackberries 0.5
Guava 1
Passion fruit
Apples 20
Avocado
Elderberries 9 pounds
Natal plums
Pomegranates 5
Grapefruit 40
Tangerines 10
Lemons 10
Bananas
Asparagus
Spinach 20
Rhubarb
Carrots 5.    880

Wow Ulla, what a harvest!

Do I see Black Futsu amongst your pumpkins?  I have some seed I'm excited to try next year.

Cy Cobb wrote:Wow Ulla, what a harvest!

Do I see Black Futsu amongst your pumpkins?  I have some seed I'm excited to try next year.

Thank you, and yes I grew black futsu, which was one of the plants that produced most. I also grew burges butternut, cinnnamon girl pumpkins and a delicata hybrid squash.
We are working towards food independence. I have two gardens, a raised bed garden, and a food forest garden. This year we produced 80% of our fruit and vegetables. Next year it will be 100%, except I need pears and they can’t grow here, so those I buy or trade for. We also produce 100% of our own eggs and 20% of our meat.
I am growing cassava this year for flour, so that will be fun to try out, and I plan on making oil out of sunflower seeds I great, and the seeds from my squash and pumpkins. I am just waiting for pepeta to make an electric model that will work in the US.
We are 5 adults, since my college kids still live at home, so my goal is to get over 1 million calories, preferably 2. We have 1/2 acre, so it should be possible. I have added 6 new raised beds this year, plus the forest garden will be finished in spring. It has taken me 7 years to build the forest up, but it was so worth it.

That's fascinating Ulla!  

I don't want to derail the thread with my many questions, so I'll just ask do you have another thread that you could link here that chronicles your 7 year food forest journey?  I only rarely venture to the other areas of this forum, but am interested to see more if it's out there?

Cy Cobb wrote:That's fascinating Ulla!  

I don't want to derail the thread with my many questions, so I'll just ask do you have another thread that you could link here that chronicles your 7 year food forest journey?  I only rarely venture to the other areas of this forum, but am interested to see more if it's out there?

Right now we are adding a lot of mulch, after that I am planting wild flowers, wild onions, walking onions, wild garlic, wild leeks, more herbs, some vegetables and alpine strawberries where I can find room. After that we just have maintenance and waiting for the trees to grow bigger left.  

This one probably documents it the best. This is where I keep adding photos and making updates.
https://permies.com/t/220052/Building-food-forest-edge-desert

Impressive harvest in this thread! Between drought, deer, and some health concerns, my garden produced only a tiny amount, but I want to brag on cucuzzi squash. Deer ignored it, no other pests bothered it, and it continued to produce with no irrigation. I didn't realize it was such a hefty climber and ended up needing a step stool to harvest by the end of the season.
The flavor isn't quite the same as zucchini or yellow summer squash, but it's close enough, and it's on my "definitely grow again" list.

Harvest 2023. I'm wintergardening now.

This year I just started, unfortunately I don't have anything to show you yet, I bought Best Galvanized Raised Garden Beds and have finished building my garden, I'm preparing the seeds, hope to have them soon but fall Plan to share with everyone

Hugo,  Nice variety for seed saving you have there.  I'm curious about the ear of corn with the blue & striped kernels.  It looks young, but likely viable if dried.  What kind is it?

Also, do you eat runner beans?  I've heard some do, & some just use them as decoration for the flowers.  Seems like a nice large bean to me.

Weird corn it is! I've been all over France on seed exchanges. I forgot what varieties they said they were.
I wish i had enough seed of runnerbeans to eat. I suck at it, i guess because i'm dryfarming mostly.
I am part of a group of people trying to adapt varieties slowly to the environment by mixing all landraces we can find. We exchange seeds amongst ourselves now.
I only grow varieties out i can save seeds from. Evert year it gets more varied and interesting.
I've made a lot of progeess last year and would advice every grower to look for landraces and save your own seed.

Hugo, that's good advice about getting others into landracing their own food & exchanging seeds with their neighbors.  Keep it up!

I don't have a garden yet, but this thread is very inspiring!  

Rob,

Welcome!  Stick around, there are so many knowledgeable experts on here.  Just soak up their experience & it'll help you out.  The search function is great for researching previously discussed topics.

Welcome to the forum, Rob!

I have to agree that this thread is inspiring.

And the forums here have great information.

When I first joined I spent eight hours a day researching all the great ideas.

I found the forum IDing plants and have learned about so much more.

We have an online présence. It's a couple of hundred plantbreeders strong in USA. Everybody is bio, but not all permie minded. I try to get people to come here as well to learn about permaculture techniques.
But it really boosted my garden to have seeds that work, that grow healthy plants. And to give others seeds of m'y plants that do well. Just for the price of postage. Best investment ever.

This is my real end of the season harvest from a grocery store Mexican chayote. It finally came down to the freeze last night. First fruit was picked on Halloween and it's already sprouting ( center one in the picture).