William Bronson

M Ljin wrote: I wish I could get the domestic ones to flower and try crossing the two…

Oh, are they like potatoes in this way?
No flowers means no seeds and greatly reduced invasiveness.
(I know potatoes can produce flowers and even viable seeds, but normally don't).
No seeds makes selecting for new traits tricky, but the reports I've seen on garlic make me think it's entirely doable.

How hungry are these plants?
I'm wondering if they could be raised in sand, for ease of harvest.

The die back that M Ljin witnessed has me convinced at  that domesticated chufa won't be invasive like regular yellow nutsedge.
At the same time, their success growing chufa in a zone 5 reassures that me my zone 6 has enough growing days to produce a yield.

I have some "buss tubs" (from the restaurant industry).
They are about 5 inch deep, is that enough for growing chufa?
If not, I have barrels, half barrels , buckets and totes...

I would like to let them go to seed, collect the greens for hay and the seed for food/fodder/ next year's crop.

M Ljin, that's very exiting!
Did you wait for the tops to die before harvesting?

A while back, I had the idea to grow winter rye in a comfrey bed, and use both for green manure:

https://permies.com/t/179522/Cover-crops-die-summer

The plan hinged on the way comfrey disappears over the winter.
I've yet to try it, but there's a bed at the community garden that could become a green manure bed.

I also have a biomass bed over at the yarden, delegated  thusly because of shade and a hostile neighbor.
Said neighbor sprays herbicide on anything that is higher than the privacy fence, so I've been planning a switch to low growing plants instead of the jchokes and "trash" trees I've been growing.

B, thank you for the hard earned wisdom!
These are old, old wood chips, so that's great news!
I have chicken curated household waste compost that is rife with red wrigglers, so I can add that as well!

The note on wood chips plus urine is very useful.
I might still make such a bed specifically as a perennial garlic bed.

So I compost my dog's poop in n in ground bin.
I started out using an in ground bucket, it filled up, so I added a bottomless bucket on top of that, and started using a compost auger.
The auger really are a difference, and now it looks like this:

I found some of these in an African market.
I'm entranced by their high fat content, and fodder potential.
Like the nutrients of the tubers are similar to olives, and sedge has been successfully fed to rabbits.

I don't think they are actually the same as yellow nutsedge.
The bags of "chufa" sold for wildlife plots do seem to be cold hardy nutsedge, but I believe real chufa is  actually killed by frost.

Container growing seems like the best way to deal with the long growing times, frost sensitivity, and harvest difficulty.

So anyway, who has experience planting, growing and eating chufa?

Nicola Bludau wrote:

William Bronson wrote: I think grain has the advantage when it comes to storage duration.
How many roots can be stored for years and still be edible?
This allows surplus to be built up, year over year.
This kind of surplus can equate to food security, but also translate into wealth, with all that comes with that.

OK you don't need that if you live in zone 10 and up.

I think zone 10 includes places that are threatened by multi year droughts.
Surplus seems ideal in these situations.

Nicely done, as usual!

I've read accounts of root vegetables being used as winter food for cattle in particular.
Cutting it into smaller pieces was either necessary or very advantageous.
Grain avoids this step entirely and it's useful for many different animals.
It's like fuel that can run your chicken, cow or pig, even if it's not the best fuel for any one of them.

Of course animals can lay eggs, birth litters or give milk without it, but we have been breeding them to thrive on gran for a long time.
All is not lost, there are plenty of people breeding grass and forage reliance back into cattle, pigs and chickens

I'm hoping to create a corn/ fava bean rotation at my friends food pantry garden.
Both can be stored, both can be left to grow on their own, both produce a lot of biomass.
The corn is actually easier to process than the beans, and both keeps for years.