Automatic Backyard Food Pump

Great thread!
I'd add Swiss chard to the "sow once and walk away"-list. It's not calorie-dense, but a great green for the diversity in the garden and kitchen.
It readily goes to seed and self-sows...a bit like salad

I'd love to know how to prepare sunchokes properly. I love the taste but get horrible bellyache+ from eating it.
Burra says long, slow cook. Like in a slowcooker with meat or something like that?

Thanks everyone!

I like your approach, Inge!! I have self-seeded chard, parsnip, Schwarzwürzel (salsify??), Lambs Lettuce, lettuce, onions, garlic, herbs in various places. Many herbs just keep going. I get frost from October, maybe through to May, but many things dont care, and it rarely goes below -10C and even then never for long.

I grew "fodder beets" (Fütterrüben) this year and they outperformed my red beetroot. The leaves are good too, just like chard. Sweeter, but one must peel them! I prefer the pink to the yellow. The British call them "Mangelwurzels" I don't know what they are in the US. I tried the Füttermöhren (fodder carrots) too, but like most carrots in my garden, they grow too slowly to be a 2nd crop, I will try them next year in a spring planting.

I have a few self-seeded field beans / fava beans, but generally they just rot if I leave them standing.

I was going to let my leeks self-seed but some of this years seem to have got rust, so I dont know that the next generation will survive that.

Winter (Spanish black) radish also survives through to self seeding, and is just about acceptable peeled and roasted. I wonder if fermenting would tame it?

I think it is good to note which things get chomped by deer, but I also think that getting chomped by deer does not excludesit from "the top 3".  

I have a fenced area.  And a lot of unfenced area.  And a LOT of deer pressure.  

The deer eventually chomp the kale and the sunchokes.  But I can still get a big kale harvest before they chomp it.  And the sunchokes tolerate some chomping late in the season.   So kale is mostly grown in the fenced area.  

The deer do not chomp the onions.  


Everybody is going to have different zones and challenges.  Some people have zero deer problems.  

There are thousands of gardening books where people talk about growing gardens and there is zero mention of deer.  

And thousands of gardening books growing stuff that will not grow in a tropical climate and they have zero mention of citrus, bananas, etc.  

I mention all this because I appreciate the discussion of challenges ("grow in a fenced area" or "the deer don't seem to want it") but some of the wording seems dark to me because it seems to discourage anybody trying due to challenges.

S. Glass wrote:Fairy potatoes: grows wild in many climates, entire plant is edible, no real maintenance necessary

Can you harvest in winter?

Cassie Martin wrote:I don't know if they do this everywhere, but potatoes are tenacious where I live. If you miss just one or two little potatoes, they grow big, healthy plants next year. There are potatoes growing in the lawn areas where we had garden beds years ago. They could hypothetically be harvested any time, you would just need to know where they were in the winter.

I have never tried to harvest potatoes in winter.

I asked google and google said

Any potatoes left in the ground would have already frozen solid during the colder months. The freezing process ruptures the potato's cell walls, turning the flesh gray or reddish-brown. When thawed, the potatoes would become a mushy, inedible mess.

paul wheaton wrote:I asked google and google said

Any potatoes left in the ground would have already frozen solid during the colder months. The freezing process ruptures the potato's cell walls, turning the flesh gray or reddish-brown. When thawed, the potatoes would become a mushy, inedible mess.

Google obviously doesn't live in a mild area! They overwinter quite happily here too.

Nancy Reading wrote:

paul wheaton wrote:I asked google and google said

Any potatoes left in the ground would have already frozen solid during the colder months. The freezing process ruptures the potato's cell walls, turning the flesh gray or reddish-brown. When thawed, the potatoes would become a mushy, inedible mess.

Google obviously doesn't live in a mild area! They overwinter quite happily here too.

Or a very harsh area! We occasionally hit -40 C/F and potatoes overwinter for me too, but it depends on the variety. A theory I'd been playing with is that our sand allows all water to drain away from the tubers, but I've also seen people on clay say taters overwinter for them as well. So I guess genetics is my current best theory.

Or a very harsh area! We occasionally hit -40 C/F and potatoes overwinter for me too, but it depends on the variety. A theory I'd been playing with is that our sand allows all water to drain away from the tubers, but I've also seen people on clay say taters overwinter for them as well. So I guess genetics is my current best theory.

That being said, it may be interesting to find out what type of potatoes have overwintered well, types of soil and region grown. For me, that information could really help - I'd love to be able to have a plot of spuds that can reproduce themselves, overwinter and still be edible, etc. Mom eats a LOT of potatoes, and growing our own is the safest way to ensure quality.

For reference, we are in Eastern TN, and our 'soil' can be mostly clay, mostly shale or a combination. We have plenty of livestock too, to create an amazing compost that really helps.

paul wheaton wrote:I think it is good to note which things get chomped by deer, but I also think that getting chomped by deer does not excludesit from "the top 3".  

I have a fenced area.  And a lot of unfenced area.  And a LOT of deer pressure.  

The deer eventually chomp the kale and the sunchokes.  But I can still get a big kale harvest before they chomp it.  And the sunchokes tolerate some chomping late in the season.   So kale is mostly grown in the fenced area.  

The deer do not chomp the onions.  


Everybody is going to have different zones and challenges.  Some people have zero deer problems.  

There are thousands of gardening books where people talk about growing gardens and there is zero mention of deer.  

And thousands of gardening books growing stuff that will not grow in a tropical climate and they have zero mention of citrus, bananas, etc.  

I mention all this because I appreciate the discussion of challenges ("grow in a fenced area" or "the deer don't seem to want it") but some of the wording seems dark to me because it seems to discourage anybody trying due to challenges.

I think Matt Powers hid his edibles from deer with tall plants/ grasses to make a visual barrier.  Ohh, I've just found the piece he did...

Inge:
Thank you for this list of easy vegetables! It will help me to expand what I grow.
By the way, I wonder if your sweet beet is related to parsnip? I

I like this general idea that this can be morphed into other zones, other conditions, other challenges ...   Before I can contemplate those, I guess I would like to ask


     is there anything that would bump something off of my current top 3?

           (sunchokes, walking onions and kale)


I think the requirements are:

    - a huge harvest window that includes a big part of winter
    - if forgotten for four years, there will be more
    - food that can be eaten raw, or is very easy to prepare

I do think it is gonna take five years of experimentation - beyond what I have done already.  

Also, it is my opinion that the comedy of sunchokes can be mitigated.  I would appreciate it if any comments about this can be moved to some other thread.  It has been about seven years since I have experience ANY comedy from eating sunchokes.


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This whole idea is borne from a massive collection of other things.  What I really want to do is be able to say something like

      - spend 30 minutes gardening the way I tell you.  NO FUCKING VARIATIONS!  Obey my instructions or fuck off.  Yes, there exist enough variations to fill one and a half full sized libraries.  I just want to spell something out that is so brain dead simple that it is nearly impossible to fuck up.  

      - ignore it for a year or two.  Or three or four.

      - now there is a huge amount of food.  Especially in winter.  In montana (or similar cold climates).    

Rather than soy+wheat+corn being the three staples, and tying you to politicians and a workee-job, these three foods will be your staples.  Total cost is, maybe twenty bucks?  Total time put in is 30 minutes.  Harvest will be less time than going to a grocery store or restaurant.  

Give these plants a bit more love, you get even more food.  But I don't even want to talk about that.  



I love the idea that ABFP could, in time, expand to have a dozen authors, each with their own ABFP strategy.  And they do a similar thing - share what they do that works for them.  

I feel like when I try to talk about gardening as a solution for a lot of things, I get flooded with:

    - what about people that live in apartments?
    - what about people that live at the north pole?
    - what about people that live at the sahara desert?
    - what about people that live on a boat?
    - what if people move?
    - what if their mom says no?
    - what about tomatoes?
    - what about crunchy cereal?
    - what about restaurants?
   
And all this stuff makes the conversation impossible.  And while I try to talk about trying something in montana, there is always a response that sounds like it cannot possibly work for me in montana because somebody in the world lives in a submarine stationed at the north pole.


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In time, i might write a book or make a movie about this.  It will show what was done for me.  And maybe there will be some others that will add to it about their story.   And the submarine people can yell at the book or movie all they want and nobody will hear them.  We will be able to tell our story without the distractions.


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Mark's book "restoration agriculture" does an excellent job of shooting down wheat, corn and soy.  

I think that when we grow wheat and corn, they have an okay harvest window.  Then we store it.  Cool.  And now what is the work that we do to eat it?  Mark makes a lot of excellent points about how we should never eat these.  But I just wanna point out that that is a LOT of work to eat that.

Sunchokes, kale and onions can be eaten raw.  Wheat and dried corn cannot.

I do feel like it would be good to come up with a list of dishes with minimal prep where these staples are 70% or more of the dish.

1. You crack me up with your cat herding attempts ( no sarcasm there - it really did tickle me).

2. You already had me years ago with the sunchokes and the onions. But I’m still not eating kale.

3. I finished Restoration Agriculture last week. You’re right - Shepard already did all the work.

4. I wonder how many of your restricted target audience are already growing those things? If the answer is “most,” perhaps that’s why some of us persist in spinning off into other scenarios?

I love your posts. They always get me thinking differently about my own backyard. (Plus you can be very funny.)

paul wheaton wrote:is there anything that would bump something off of my current top 3?

           (sunchokes, walking onions and kale)

There's some discussion toward the (current) end of the great big sunchoke thread about how productivity falls off if they're not harvested (for thinning purposes) each year. That makes it less automatic. But you've seen what you've seen and it seems like you've seen different.

I'm pretty skeptical that kale will self-seed enough to continue production for four years and especially if you're looking for increase -- but maybe...I don't live where you live.

I think I need to find a way to get some of my galega seed to you. It's a perennial tree cabbage, very similar to kale but 'older' genetics, which is usually kept perennial by removing the flower buds- But I've been selecting for the ability to survive seeding and have seed off one that survived for four years and seeded successfully for three of those. Generally they live for seven or so years if you take the buds off.

This plant grew from the compost I dumped out from a pot of galega bush cabbage seedlings when we moved to the new place in April 2020.  It grew up with zero help whatsoever, in poor soil, battling with weeds.  It grew well despite having zero help and went to seed in 2022. To my surprise, it survived seeding so I began to take more notice of it.

By March 2023 it looked like this.



Not as tall as most of my other galega, but bushier. With strong survival instincts!

By June it had successfully seeded for a second time and despite dying right back, it decided it hadn't survived long enough and decided to grow back.



Then in February 2024 it seeded again, this time for the last time. I saved all the seed though!



Maximum height was a bit over 5 feet. I have no idea how long it would have lived if I'd taken flowers off, but I do have some of its babies in the GAMCOD bed and will be watching carefully next year to see how many survive seeding.

I cut the stem into sections to see how solid they were. The higher bits were hollow. The lower ones basically wood! I kept the pretty bit and put it in the display cabinet because I think it's awesome.

Burra Maluca wrote:I think I need to find a way to get some of my galega seed to you. It's a perennial tree cabbage, very similar to kale but 'older' genetics, which is usually kept perennial by removing the flower buds- But I've been selecting for the ability to survive seeding and have seed off one that survived for four years and seeded successfully for three of those. Generally they live for seven or so years if you take the buds off.

I don't think Galega (commonly known as goat's rue or French lilac) is a tree cabbage. It's in the legume family. Tree Kale is in the Brassica oleracea family. I think I would prefer it more than regular kale because supposedly it doesn't taste a whole lot like regular kale.

paul wheaton wrote:I like this general idea that this can be morphed into other zones, other conditions, other challenges ...   Before I can contemplate those, I guess I would like to ask... etc  

and then

paul wheaton wrote: What I really want to do is be able to say something like
      - spend 30 minutes gardening the way I tell you.  NO FUCKING VARIATIONS!  Obey my instructions or fuck off.

Well, THAT made me consider leaving permies, until I calmed down and went to page one of this thread, the first post, where I saw that you wrote " I want to start putting the idea out there and see if a dozen others out there wanna play with this thought experiment."

I did not read that original post before I read the fuck off comment. Now that I have read it, I understand the frustration. I just would like to remind you that I'm probably not the only person who didn't read the first post, and I assumed it was just like any other thread where it's a conversation, not a controlled thought experiment. Really, the frustration would be nonexistent if the title of this thread had been "THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: Automatic Backyard  Food Pump" and that every Paul Wheaton post in this thread reminded us what the point was, along with the request to stick with the stated purpose of the thought experiment.

With that, I will bow out of the whole thread.

Lif Strand wrote:I don't think Galega (commonly known as goat's rue or French lilac) is a tree cabbage. It's in the legume family. Tree Kale is in the Brassica oleracea family. I think I would prefer it more than regular kale because supposedly it doesn't taste a whole lot like regular kale.

This is couve galega, and it's Brassica oleracea. Nothing to do with goat's rue. It's one of the original brassicas to be domesticated and never had its perennial tendencies bred out. Probably older than anything currently labelled 'kale'. Every self respecting Portuguese garden has these growing just outside the back door. The lower leaves double as toilet paper.

Burra Maluca wrote:This is couve galega, and it's Brassica oleracea. Nothing to do with goat's rue. It's one of the original brassicas to be domesticated and never had its perennial tendencies bred out. Probably older than anything currently labelled 'kale'. Every self respecting Portuguese garden has these growing just outside the back door. The lower leaves double as toilet paper.

Aha - translation issue. Thanks for the correction!

Interesting thread. For warmer climate I would add sweet potatoes. They really grow easy and are a good and pretty ground cover.

We have grown sunchokes and walking (egyptian?) onions since 1973.
During that time we always moved some with us along with other seeds and roots.
After 4 moves I suppose we've left a trail although this is the first place we've lived without deer pressure and the deer (and our goats!) loved our sunchokes.

Those plants were probably among the most shared at my plant exchanges.

Kale, though, is difficult here because of the cabbage moth...even growing late season.
I keep trying.

This thread has me wanting to go check out what might have survived at our old place (other than wisteria🫤).

Here, I have to dig sunchokes early as the longer they are in the ground the more eaten up by a larvae I've yet to identify...

Now a days I ferment the sunchokes and we love them...they stay nice and crispy.
We lost our taste for cooking them years ago, back when they were a dependable winter food.

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:
The kale - I'm not sure about. It's a good choice in a lot of respects. Daughter tolerates sauerkraut well (and dill pickles); it seems likely that kale could be made into sauerkraut, though it would be a little different....

In my very limited experience, kale is no good for sauerkraut. It makes a horrible-smelling mess. I've understood that this happens when what you ferment contains too many leafy greens (too much chlorophyll maybe?) compared to the amount of available carbs. I remember reading a book where someone described the smell as "the most horrible dead thing you can imagine", but I personally thought it smelled more like some kind of poo. Hopefully someone with more fermentation experience than me will chime in. A thought occurs to me though: If the problem really is the ratio of chlorophyll to carbs, then a mix of kale and sunroots might work just fine? Hmm...

I am in Mexico near Lake Chapala. I planted 3 moringa seeds in 3 pots in 2022. All grew and I transplanted them to large pots ( more like bins, actually) in 2023. They did very well. In 2024 I harvested leaves every quarter, and 2025 too. I have had to keep pruning the tops to 11 feet as I live in rentals with no “growth space. In June 2025 , I gave one away to a friend for his birthday. He planted it in the soil and it has taken on furiously. They hate it when you prune them and won’t let them live in the ground. All 3 bore blossoms in 2024, one which I named Brenda. I harvested leaves from the two “males” . All blossoms fertilized and bore seeds. “Her brother” is now bearing lots of blossoms. Transgender?? Haha. That mature to 20-30 feet. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Rosemary and marigold foils the leaf cutter ants.

L Anderson wrote:Inge:
Thank you for this list of easy vegetables! It will help me to expand what I grow.
By the way, I wonder if your sweet beet is related to parsnip? I

Thank you. No, that beet isn't a parsnip, it is related to chard and beets. It might be a kind of  'mangelwurzel' or 'fodder beet'.
How I know? I have parsnips too, but their leaves are totally different. The leaves of this plant look exactly like a green Swiss chard.

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

I shared a vid from david the good about how he thinks sunchokes suck because the gas is unbearable.  I pointed out that he lives down south where it might not get cold enough - because i don't have the gas problems.  

And then samantha shared this excellent video

The automatic backyard food pump page for the permaculture bits and bobs ebook:



Click on the image to zoom in!

This thread inspired me to dig some sunchokes from my family’s home and replant here. I expect they will do great.
As a small kid in Maryland, we had walking onions all over the garden. As an adult, some 30 miles away from where I was born, I have tried planting them 3-4 times, and never had them survive past the first year. Planted them in small swales, raised beds, no luck. I have hardneck garlic and elephant garlic and a random green onion (no bulbs at all, flat leaves) that survive multiple years and spread slowly. Walking onions - zero luck. Drives me nuts…

Add:
Nettles - so easy to gather stalks, tie together and hang to dry. then crumble off the leaves into powder. (Still using gloves - most of the stingers are disabled by drying, but not quite all! But the rest are neutralized by using the powder in cooking.) With a kid-leather clean gloves only used for nettle harvesting (that don't have air holes in the backs of the hands!)

diakon or oilseed radish: grows easily, reseeds, I leave the roots to rot in the ground (and break through the clay soil). Harvest the leaves and seed pods. Chopped and cooked, the leaves get softer and lose the radish tang (thank you!). The filled out, but not quite mature, abundant seed pods I cook like green beans (but my friends that like radish flavor eat them raw or chopped into salads)

The voles, gophers, and ground squirrels don't bother the nettles and radish, nor the brassicas, and the sunchokes seem to be fine. They did appreciate the skirret, though. So the main "crop" I am growing now is above-ground raised beds lined with corrugated sheet metal roofing, filled hügelkultur style.  

First sign spring is cabbage moths. We just need to start appreciating eating the larvae - they are probably high protein and fat!

I met a couple of requirements of this thought experiment. I'm in zone 7b in southeastern US, and I have 1/6 acre fenced-in garden that's been largely ignored for about 4 years. I chopped and dropped a lot of it a few years ago, and then health problems got in the way. The lesson I learned was "don't put all of your eggs in one basket." I like the idea and simplicity of 3 main crops, but I think having only 3 and then ignoring them until needed would make me more concerned. Because interestingly, the sunchokes and walking onions, which were thriving and spreading for several years, all died during the last 4 years. There was weed pressure, deer pressure for the sunchokes, record low temperatures in winter, and a record drought one summer. Kale has never reseeded itself for me. A couple of radishes still show up here and there from reseeding, and I find garlic in various places that I missed harvesting.

Over those 4 years, a couple of pine trees and lots of blackberries showed up. Blueberries and muscadines are thriving. Perennial herbs are doing well, and asparagus is still producing, though it's not a fan of all the weeds. Lambsquarter and chickweed show up each year, but often not in the same spots they were in the year before. During the winter, my fresh (not stored) choices were dandelion, henbit, plantain, wild onions, and chickweed, unless I wanted to collect and process acorns.

If I were to plant food that I could leave for extended periods, I'd feel the need to opt for a variety of perennial veggies, lots of berries, trees if there's room, and annual edible "weeds." I might miss some windows of harvest, but there'd be *something* to harvest at almost any time and I wouldn't be in a clutch if one of those harvests failed or died. I imagine 3 core crops would work great for some people, but I'm not built for that after my gardening experiences.

After reading this thread, I want to look into skirret. I haven't had any luck with carrots, yet. And I want to investigate more edible tubers, as I don't know if achira or chufa would be options for me.

Nikki Roche wrote:I met a couple of requirements of this thought experiment. I'm in zone 7b in southeastern US, and I have 1/6 acre fenced-in garden that's been largely ignored for about 4 years. I chopped and dropped a lot of it a few years ago, and then health problems got in the way. The lesson I learned was "don't put all of your eggs in one basket." I like the idea and simplicity of 3 main crops, but I think having only 3 and then ignoring them until needed would make me more concerned. Because interestingly, the sunchokes and walking onions, which were thriving and spreading for several years, all died during the last 4 years. There was weed pressure, deer pressure for the sunchokes, record low temperatures in winter, and a record drought one summer. Kale has never reseeded itself for me. A couple of radishes still show up here and there from reseeding, and I find garlic in various places that I missed harvesting.

Over those 4 years, a couple of pine trees and lots of blackberries showed up. Blueberries and muscadines are thriving. Perennial herbs are doing well, and asparagus is still producing, though it's not a fan of all the weeds. Lambsquarter and chickweed show up each year, but often not in the same spots they were in the year before. During the winter, my fresh (not stored) choices were dandelion, henbit, plantain, wild onions, and chickweed, unless I wanted to collect and process acorns.

If I were to plant food that I could leave for extended periods, I'd feel the need to opt for a variety of perennial veggies, lots of berries, trees if there's room, and annual edible "weeds." I might miss some windows of harvest, but there'd be *something* to harvest at almost any time and I wouldn't be in a clutch if one of those harvests failed or died. I imagine 3 core crops would work great for some people, but I'm not built for that after my gardening experiences.

After reading this thread, I want to look into skirret. I haven't had any luck with carrots, yet. And I want to investigate more edible tubers, as I don't know if achira or chufa would be options for me.

Hi Nikki. So your garden showed you what are the kind of plants that grow well, and what plants don't do so good there. In permaculture it's always 'it depends'. There's no general rule 'what's the best to grow'.

I'm a fan of 'edible weeds' and of a wide variation of vegetables and fruits too.

I'd like to expand on this question for those with greenhouses.

If you have a (small!) greenhouse and can grow tropical (or subtropical crops) year round...which plants are the ideal ones for low effort food?  I assume various tropical fruit trees, but I could be wrong. Beyond that I have no idea and I would love to hear what people think.

The assumption is this is a small greenhouse. Obviously if you have a massive tropical greenhouse this is totally different.  But if you have a small greenhouse big enough for a few plants, how would you supplement a backyard food pump?

The high producing trees I know of are things like White Sapote, Breadfruit, Jackfruit, Mango, Starfruit, Carambola...

As a bonus, what about greenhouse crops that fill gaps in the popular choices already in this thread?

By gaps I mean either time gaps (say 2-5 months of deep winter where even the long-harvesting crops are no longer available) or nutritional gaps, such as providing vitamins that would be missing if you were eating a lot of sunchokes and kale, or a lot of potatoes.

I have absolutely no clue about the nutritional map of the foods we're discussing here, and what may be missing. Except to guess that it's probably low on protein.

Daniel Andy wrote:I'd like to expand on this question for those with greenhouses.

If you have a (small!) greenhouse and can grow tropical (or subtropical crops) year round...which plants are the ideal ones for low effort food?  I assume various tropical fruit trees, but I could be wrong. Beyond that I have no idea and I would love to hear what people think.

The assumption is this is a small greenhouse....

Hi Daniel. Where I live a greenhouse can be used for growing peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, a.a. Real tropical plants need not only more heat, but also more light than there usually is in this cloudy climate. To heat the greenhouse and have grow-lights on ... can't be called 'automatic'.

But of course in other regions, with other climates, tropical plants can be grown in a greenhouse. In that case my first choice would be: bananas! Because I love them.

paul wheaton wrote:
I have never tried to harvest potatoes in winter.

I asked google and google said

Any potatoes left in the ground would have already frozen solid during the colder months. The freezing process ruptures the potato's cell walls, turning the flesh gray or reddish-brown. When thawed, the potatoes would become a mushy, inedible mess.

An old-timer from Yukon told me that if you take a frozen potato and put it *directly* in boiling water, it cooks up just fine. You can't allow it to thaw.

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote: Where I live a greenhouse can be used for growing peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, a.a. Real tropical plants need not only more heat, but also more light than there usually is in this cloudy climate. To heat the greenhouse and have grow-lights on ... can't be called 'automatic'.

There is a fellow near me who is growing "sub-tropical" plants in largely unheated greenhouses. I say "largely" because every couple of winters we get hit by lower than typical lows and he has his tender trees (lemons, oranges and similar) wrapped in strings of incandescent Christmas lights which turned on, give the plant just enough extra heat to make it through.

However, there are people using some form of RMH - properly vented - to keep their greenhouses warm in much colder climates where the combination of little cloud cover and reflection of light off snow, gives enough light for some plants to grow without constant supplementary light. LED grow lights use much less electricity than the older Halogen greenhouse lights. If imported food is not available, there may be a case for this on a small scale in an effort to keep nutritional levels high.

I have very long, slow springs which tomatoes and peppers don't like. Yet I have people who love to eat tomatoes and peppers... sigh... They *aren't* keen on Kale. I supplement sunlight for a few hours in the morning and a few in the evening to help the plants get off to a good start. Not "automatic", but also, not hydroponic mega industrial greenhouse plants either.

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.

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:

Daniel Andy wrote:I'd like to expand on this question for those with greenhouses.

If you have a (small!) greenhouse and can grow tropical (or subtropical crops) year round...which plants are the ideal ones for low effort food?  I assume various tropical fruit trees, but I could be wrong. Beyond that I have no idea and I would love to hear what people think.

The assumption is this is a small greenhouse....

Hi Daniel. Where I live a greenhouse can be used for growing peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, a.a. Real tropical plants need not only more heat, but also more light than there usually is in this cloudy climate. To heat the greenhouse and have grow-lights on ... can't be called 'automatic'.

But of course in other regions, with other climates, tropical plants can be grown in a greenhouse. In that case my first choice would be: bananas! Because I love them.

You're right it's going to depend heavily on the type and construction of the greenhouse whether it can get and keep enough sun to do that. Here's a mostly passive greenhouse growing tropical fruits in alberta, canada.  

That's pretty extreme, but it's an extreme climate. My point is that it can be done in less extreme (but still cold) climates with less work