Walking Squirrel Farm GAMCOD

I got started filming yesterday at my place!  It was sunny so I did some introduction work but didn't think close-ups would work.

Today it was cloudy so I showed the soil and started deep mulching it.

Bonus for anyone reading this, here's a solution for a permie-friendly, non-cardboard seed starting pot:   The peculiar art of the birch bark pot

Tally:
Cost:
Potato and sunchoke tubers were free due to spoilage culling at grocery store
Sunchoke transplants were free for the digging
Seeds were self saved from past seasons
Sepp Holzer grain was earned from earning BB20
Sunflowers were free for the digging
N fixing innoculant - $1 worth of the bag was used

Not counting labor for:
Videography setup
Laying out the plot and marking corners

Fully counted labor:
Initial mulching - 45 min
Touch-up mulching and staking out rows - 15
Depositing main garden weeds on GAMCOD took 30 seconds per deposition x 40 times
Starting squash seeds - 10 min
Digging wild sunchokes - 5 min
Planting potatoes - 15 min
Planting sunchokes - 5 min
Ruth Stouting compost - 2 min x 2 times
Planting Sepp Holzer grain - 5 min
Planting Lofthouse beans - 30 min (innoculating them plus 2 planting methods)
Planting foraged sunflowers - 10 min
Planting squash - 10 min
Transplanting squash - 5 min
Harvesting trellis branches - 10 min
Assembling trellis - 20 min
Training squash onto trellis - 2 min
Setting up rabbit fence - 5 min
Harvesting beans, potatoes, mustard greens and sheep sorrel - 45 min
Harvesting sunchokes - 20 min
Total time - 279 minutes = 4 hours, 39 min

Labor that can be reused later:
Making seedling pots - 45 min

Labor that was getting done anyway but I took advantage of:
Weeding nearby garden: 30 hours

Harvest:
Potatoes 34.355 (main harvest) plus 1.125 (first test harvest) plus 0.88 (volunteers) = 36.36 lbs
Squash 2.015 lbs
Sunchokes 3.45 lbs
Radish/mustard greens >1 calorie
Sheep sorrel >1 calorie
Dry beans 0.48 lbs

Filming is ongoing here at my GAMCOD plot.  Frost free day is about three weeks away!  I'm going to update the top post with my hours and costs so they're in one spot...

Intended plants are:
Sunchokes
Squash
Sunflowers
Lofthouse dry bush beans
Potatoes
Hulless pumpkins (maybe)

Sunchokes, potatoes and Sepp Holzer grain is planted, need to plant Lofthouse beans and sunflowers soon...

Everything is finally planted.  Wettest coolest spring I've had here so the dry sandy soil is nice and damp (yay) but we had frost warnings earlier in the week (boo).  Just need to build a quick squash trellis and wait to harvest in the fall.

Squash trellis is built.  I was going to put dry branches in the ground and weave some green saplings through them to tie it together.  It seems to be decently held together without the green stuff so I'm saving some time on that.  Hopefully the squash will hold it together.  

The transplanted squash are doing just fine.  The seeded ones aren't up yet so I'm getting worried.  It's awfully late in the year to get squash started and get a crop before winter so I'm probably out of luck if they don't/didn't sprout.  Good thing I transplanted some in :)

Only ongoing work will be to help the squash climb the trellis every few days as someone walks past.  I'm off to Wheaton Labs for a month so we'll see what it looks like when I get back :)

According to my calculation, you only need to grow one 40 lbs pumpkin and you will reach the one million per acer goal.

Is that one 40 lb pumpkin per 200 square foot GAMCOD garden?  If so, I'm set cuz I have plenty of taters growing plus the 5 squash plants :)

My harvest is starting to come in so I look up the nutritional fact of some typical crops and take note of the number of kcal/100g

Pumpkin 26
Butternut squash 45
Potato 77
Sweet potato 86
Jerusalem artichoke 73
Garlic 111/130/149
Sorghum 339
Tomato 18-20

An acre is 43560 sq ft, so 1,000,000 calories per acre is equivalent to
4591 calories per 200 sq ft plot (1,000,000÷43560×200=4591).

This number is much lower than I thought. It means you only need to grow about 14 lbs of potatoes on a 200 sq ft plot (14×454÷100×77=4894)

Or 25 lbs of Butternut squash. I am not sure if the above mentioned number considered the calories from the seeds or not, that's a significant source of nutrients too.

Given that typical potato yield is 6 million calories per acre, the number seems
reasonable.  Maybe we permies can aim for something higher like 10 million calories per acre.

Yeah, we got this!  Do remember that we're growing on dirt with fewer inputs than what regular farmers would use.  But I think we should be able to hit a million per acre.  Bonus points if you get a million from 200 square feet :)

I started harvesting today since my potatoes from the root cellar have run out.  I mistakenly thought I had early red spuds in this garden but they turned out to be yellow ones.  I pulled one plant and got some small to medium sized tubers.  

Potato weight from this harvest was 1lb 2oz.

Pics please!

I did my first major harvest yesterday.  Total potato harvest for the year is 35.48 lbs.  At 354 calories per lb that is 12,600 calories!  I think I heard that the goal of GAMCOD was to grow a million calories per acre.  If my plot was multiplied by 218 it would be an acre.  So taking just my potato harvest and multiplying it by that amount gives 2.7 million calories!!!  If I'm doing the math right.....

Edited to correct the math by a decimal place :)

Today I finished harvesting!!!

Two weeks ago I harvested the dry beans, squash and some volunteer greens.  The main bean harvest was 0.44 lbs and I came thru a week later and got an additional 0.04 lbs for a bean total of 0.48 lbs.  The radish/mustard greens were at least a calorie, as were the sheep sorrel greens.

I harvested two squash, a 1.245 lb butternut and a 0.77 lb spaghetinni for a squash total of 2.015 lbs.  Squash in crappy soil and in the shade of sunchokes wasn't a great plan...

Today I harvested sunchokes and found a few volunteer potatoes.  I got 3.45 lbs of sunchokes and 0.88 lbs of potatoes to bring the full potato harvest up to 36.36 lbs.  

Calorie tally

Squash  154 calories per lb
Beans 1568 calories per lb
Potatoes 354 calories per lb
Sunchokes 354 calories per lb

Squash - 154 x 2.015 = 310 calories
Beans - 1568 x .48 = 753 calories
Potatoes - 354 x 36.36 = 12,871 calories
Sunchokes - 354 x 3.45 = 1,221 calories
Greens (just enough to count) = 1 calorie

Grand total = 15,156 calories

Times 218 to equal an acre gives 3,304,008 calories (3.3 million calories)

Mike, will you post any video from your bountiful garden?

I've collected the video.  Need to send it to Andres for the possible movie.  Wasn't planning to post it here but maybe I will...

We’re tallying up the submissions. It will be great if you could upload it using the link Andres posted.

Uploading now!  99 video files :)

Well done Mike!

Mike, is your first post in this thread updated or will you still work on it?

I think the top post is up to date and complete for 2024...