Automatic Backyard Food Pump

Jay Angler wrote:...I think a big part of the "automatic backyard food pump" is identifying plants that grow so well in your ecosystem, that you can count on them for your basic calories and nutrition pretty much without fail. Paul has plenty of other plants and young fruit trees on his land, both wild and domestic. Those can supplement and diversify his diet as available (like rhubarb which is only a spring crop due to its oxalic acid content). In my area, the natives relied on the ocean for their "food pump" by harvesting the salmon run. They also grew camas bulbs, but also exported/traded many of those. Many areas around the world had at least one "reliable" staple crop that was well adapted to their ecosystem.

If the information I got is right, the staple crop growing here, and harvested since prehistory, was a wild parsnip. When potatoes were 'discovered', and came to Europe, everyone changed to potatoes. I don't understand why parsnips now are a 'forgotten vegetable' (starting to come back since a few years, mostly in the organic food stores). They grow easily, at least at my allotment garden. Better than potatoes, which get blight and colorado bugs.

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:
If the information I got is right, the staple crop growing here, and harvested since prehistory, was a wild parsnip. When potatoes were 'discovered', and came to Europe, everyone changed to potatoes. I don't understand why parsnips now are a 'forgotten vegetable' (starting to come back since a few years, mostly in the organic food stores). They grow easily, at least at my allotment garden. Better than potatoes, which get blight and colorado bugs.

i bet parsnips are an excellent one for certain climates!
The challenge as I see it, is that we are looking for calorie dense foods that stick around without attracting other critters who are also looking for calories. Nuts won’t work because they have a crazy short harvest time before squirrels and such nab them.
    Honestly, I can’t think of many crops in this area that are calorie dense enough to serve as a staple and stable through the winter. Maybe ground nuts? Turnips? Persimmons - I have seen examples of the fruit drying on the tree and being edible long into the winter.
If you include crops with short harvest windows but minimal storage requirements, then hazelnuts, walnuts, and winter squash can be added to the list. And storage fruits like winter apple.

With 150 days to harvest, Chayote (Sicyos edulis; it has several local names) seems like a stretch, but possible contender.

This is a viviparous (seed starts germinating inside the fruit), perennial vine, up to 8 years but best up to 3 years. Grows quickly. Produces increasingly as with each year. DELICIOUS. I eat as much of as possible whenever I’m in the Caribbean and Mexico and Mesoamerica. Fruit is tasty eaten raw and cooked. Apparently leaves, stems and roots are all edible too.

Need to figure out how to preserve it and how to overwinter the vine or a new plant. My best guess is that in warmer climates, fruits drop and new vines start (although some seeds germinate while still on the vine). So it almost meets Paul’s criteria.

I’m itching to try it here in zone 7b. Probably best for folks in the south; ideal in tropics (and Florida?). It can be started indoors, and summers here are stretching into autumns more and more. Maybe with a passive, solar greenhouse this would be a good option.

Germinating and growing experiment in Taos,
NM and general information described here: https://www.motherearthgardener.com/plant-profiles/chayote-on-the-rise-zm0z20szbut/

Looks like folks in BC are experimenting with varieties that are more cold adapted (article comments are helpful): https://bcfarmsandfood.com/chayote-squash-new-staple-crop-northern-gardens

This gardener in the Virginia piedmont grows it for its shoots: https://www.laughingduckgardens.com/2009/01/29/growing-chayote-in-virginia/

I wonder if Hopniss would make a good plant? I’m planting some in my garden. They appreciate sandy soils and wood and I think they’d love hugelkultur mounds. The tubers also grow closer to the surface. They’re a root vegetable a bit like jerusalem artichoke, but it sounds like they’re best well cooked. They also are a nitrogen fixing legume so could make the vining “bean” component in the polyculture.

Also eaten extensively by Native peoples. Did Lewis and Clark also eat them?

So if I were to build one of these Automatic Backyard Food Pumps, I wouldn't need solar pumps or aquaponics gear, right? It looks like you usually set up a hugel to keep the ABFP moist for most of the summer?

I think a person could plant sunchokes, walking onions and kale into a patch of dirt.  Maybe even a lawn.  And then be done.

Of course, there are better food pumps.  This is the minimum.

Harold Skania wrote:So if I were to build one of these Automatic Backyard Food Pumps, I wouldn't need solar pumps or aquaponics gear, right? It looks like you usually set up a hugel to keep the ABFP moist for most of the summer?

I think maybe the word 'pump' can be confusing.
A 'food pump', I think, is pumping out food (edible plants). It's 'automatic', meaning it does this all by itself, in a natural way. It doesn't need help from any gear ... after the first start it doesn't even need any work. All you do is pick your harvest the needed food plants.

Probably it depends on your climate what will grow without any work. If there's a lot of rain you don't need to keep the soil moist in the same way you need to do if you're in a dry climate.

paul wheaton wrote:I think a person could plant sunchokes, walking onions and kale into a patch of dirt.  Maybe even a lawn.  And then be done.

Of course, there are better food pumps.  This is the minimum.

I gotcha. An Automatic Backyard Food Pump can be started in dirt. That sounds easy enough. I just ordered my first batch of sunchoke roots ever!

paul wheaton wrote:We have a giant thread about sunchokes https://permies.com/t/sunchokes

And then samantha shared this excellent video

Any chance there is actual information? I truly hate these AI videos, and seriously doubt the validity of the 'information' contained in them.

Sandy Cromwell wrote:Any chance there is actual information? I truly hate these AI videos, and seriously doubt the validity of the 'information' contained in them.

Did you check the sunroot thread paul shared? Anything else you're wanting to know? You could start a new thread.
I'm finding sunroot a little slow here, but have had good success with woodland sunflower - related but prefers a cooler, damper spot than most jerusalem artichokes seem to.

Sandy Cromwell wrote:Any chance there is actual information? I truly hate these AI videos, and seriously doubt the validity of the 'information' contained in them.

The information in that particular one is pretty good, which is why Samantha and Paul recommended it.

Here's an older video Paul made himself about them which you might prefer.

Sunchokes used to function as pretty reliable self-growing food in central England where I live.  The main way they'd fail was in their first year, if there were too many slugs & snails.

But now our summers are too hot & dry.  Not a staple, but rhubarb was similarly self-sustaining, and is now struggling in the dry heat too.

We now get hot dry summers with temperatures regularly 30-40 C, contrasting with almost always < 30 C  and with significant rain only two decades ago.

Is there a list of climate zones with suggested staple perennial plants somewhere?

Many thanks.

Ac Baker wrote:Is there a list of climate zones with suggested staple perennial plants somewhere?

Good point! We did start making a list of potential Backyard food Pump plants and their characteristics here If you have any more thoughts on additions reply to that thread. These are not just perennials, but a few self seeding annuals and biannuals too which people have found going feral in their growing area.

I'm not sure we have a single list of general perennial vegetables, although there is the whole perennial vegetables forum with some pretty good threads. I suggest pfaf.org perhaps?

Thank you. PFAF.org is definitely a go-to mine of useful information.

ETA: Being in central England, we've been sort-of equivalent to Zone 8 but not quite. Frost is rarer and very rarely colder than -10 C. These days, our average last frost is around mid-May.  Our average first frost is late Oct or Nov.  Our summers are now a lot hotter, frequently reaching 30-40 C.

Still, this list of Perennial Vegetables, particularly in my case the section for for Zone 8, is a useful find from that other thread: https://www.epicgardening.com/perennial-vegetables/

Ac Baker wrote:Thank you. PFAF.org is definitely a go-to mine of useful information.

ETA: Being in central England, we've been sort-of equivalent to Zone 8 but not quite. Frost is rarer and very rarely colder than -10 C. These days, our average last frost is around mid-May.  Our average first frost is late Oct or Nov.  Our summers are now a lot hotter, frequently reaching 30-40 C.

Still, this list of Perennial Vegetables, particularly in my case the section for for Zone 8, is a useful find from that other thread: https://www.epicgardening.com/perennial-vegetables/

I think European climates are not comparable to North-American climate zones. Especially close to the North-western coast of Europe (Ireland, UK, Iceland?, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium) there's the influence of the Gulf Stream (or 'Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation').

The result: higher winter temperatures than at the same latitude in North-America. But I think here (UK, NL, etc.) it rains more often than in the climate zone with comparable temperatures (about zone 8). When I read about the first and last frost date, they are very different too. Dutch gardeners always say: there can be frost until half May. So we plant our tomatoes, courgettes, a.a. in the garden after May 15th. That's a later date than mentioned in the official info on zone 8. And I remember very well I had a frosty night in September when I was camping once ... So frost is possible for more months ... but that frost is only a few degrees 'below zero' (Celsius). Winter here in general is only around that 'zero' point.

High temperatures, yes this year has some extremes. In 2019 there were some days of 40 C too. It might have something to do with 'el nino'. Or it's 'climate change'...

Okay, this is off-topic, but I wanted to add this photo to my post here.
This is what the weather here looks today (August 5th, 2026). After some days of very sunny weather, the normal clouds are returning...

Ac Baker wrote:Still, this list of Perennial Vegetables, particularly in my case the section for for Zone 8, is a useful find from that other thread: https://www.epicgardening.com/perennial-vegetables/

I'd say treat that site with caution - they list spinach there (which is not perennial) and they describe Turkish Rocket as

This is a smaller vegetable, with plants reaching only four to six inches tall.

I don't think they've proof read their AI script very well.

Oh, that's very disappointing.

I'd thought they meant perpetual spinach, which the RHS calls Beta vulgaris subsp. cicla var. cicla
https://www.rhsplants.co.uk/plants/_/perpetual-spinach/classid.2000014666/

Ac Baker wrote:Oh, that's very disappointing.

I'd thought they meant perpetual spinach, which the RHS calls Beta vulgaris subsp. cicla var. cicla
https://www.rhsplants.co.uk/plants/_/perpetual-spinach/classid.2000014666/

They may also have been confused with causasian spinach - Hablitzia tamnoides perhaps.  I'm tending not to trust sites that seem to have been written less than three years ago now.