What staple crops are you growing?

Tyler Ludens wrote:This past Summer I grew Zucchetta Rampicante, a variety of Cucurbita moschata

Tyler, I was just looking at these the other day and noticing that they were moschatas. I know them as tromboncino, though. I see they're typically grown as summer squash, but did you let any grow to maturity to see what they're like as winter squash?

I was musing about a butternut/tromboncino cross, aiming for something similar-looking to Joseph's moscchini. The first squash I ever grew was a butternut that ended up very long with a tiny seed cavity at one end. You could just lop off squash steaks all the way down; it was awesome and I've always wanted to develop something like that.

David Livingston wrote:Joeseph
I was looking for a plant to grow for oil to cook with . Any ideas ? I have Walnuts- which are great for salads but not for frying.

I'm not Joseph, but I'll weigh in. I don't have first-hand knowledge yet, but from my research sunflowers seem like a good bet. Easy to grow and process, decent oil yields, can take some heat. Piteba has really good information on individual nuts and seeds for oil production.

Todd Parr wrote:Joseph, do you sell seeds for people that would like to try this?

Yes. http://garden.lofthouse.com/seed-list.phtml

I think of my landraces as a great way to develop staple crops in other areas. Because I have gathered a tremendous amount of genetic diversity into my varieties. I aim to include as much of the geographic and phenotypic diversity as I can acquire. Then I let the plants, the climate, the bugs, and the farmer figure it out... There are lots of genes hidden in my crops that don't work very well here but may work well in other places. For example, I planted cantaloupes that were supposed to get up to 20 pounds. They didn't produce fruit for me, but 5 years later I harvested some 12 pound muskmelons. I suppose that the supposedly XL plants may have contributed some pollen. I culled the huge fruits. Cause they are too long season for my garden. But they contributed pollen that went back into hiding.

In my initial plantings failure rates of 50% to 99.9% are common.
Most things that survived the first year also produce seeds the second year, and the crops are becoming quite respectable.
I think of the third year as the magical year, because things are finally settling down, and the best of the best have risen to the occasion.

Todd Parr wrote:I know your conditions are different than mine and that is the purpose of what you're doing, but if a person wanted to try this with one crop, say sweet corn, do you sell a "grab-bag" of 20 or 50 or 100 different kinds of corn so that I could try it? I think it would be fun to give this a shot, but I would hate to buy 100 packets of beans or corn or whatever just to plant two of each to get started.

I have already put in the effort of acquiring the 10, or 20, or 50, or 300 packets of seed, and growing them out, and encouraging them to promiscuously pollinate. On highly out-crossing crops like corn, carrots, spinach, and squash, every plant in a packet of my seed is genetically unique: So if a packet of squash seed contains 40 seeds, that's like planting 40 unique varieties. (I generate around a million genetically unique corn seeds per year on my farm.) With highly inbreeding crops like common beans and peas, there are some family groups that could be thought of as traditional 'varieties'. This year there are around 300 different families in my dry beans. But a packet of dry bush beans only contains around 100 seeds. I can count about 40 different types of beans in a packet of seeds. No telling how many of them look the same but are genetically different. But with all that diversity, some are likely to survive wherever they are planted. The survivors then become the ancestors of a new landrace locally-adapted to wherever it is being grown and to the farmer's habits. My success rate when planting new varieties of beans is around 25%.

I have been pleased to see how well my varieties sometimes do in other places.... One of my sweet corns failed spectacularly in Malaysia, but it thrived in Belize. My moschata squash doesn't have much resistance to powdery mildew, but it comes on super fast, and sets an early crop, and then dies, while long-season butternuts with more resistance struggle to make a crop. There might be some powdery mildew resistance in my moschata squash, but it's not important in my garden. In gardens where it is important the grower could pay attention to how the plants grow, and only replant seeds from the more resistant plants. Or my landrace could be crossed with a resistant variety, or inter-planted with one.

David Livingston wrote:I was looking for a plant to grow for oil to cook with . Any ideas ? I have Walnuts- which are great for salads but not for frying.

Brassica seed seems like it would be super easy to grow, and to harvest seeds from: rapeseed is a common oil plant. I grew a crop of Bok Choi seed this summer. It was super easy to grow, and produced huge amounts of seed, that I expect is around 40% oil. Bok choi is the same species as turnip.

What is hazelnut oil like to cook with?

Can you grow peanuts in France?

I love slicing steaks out of the long-necked moschata squash and frying them in butter or coconut oil. Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck, Canadian Crookneck, and Trombocino are great for that purpose. Don't have to eat the whole thing on the same day. Can cut off the end closest to the stem, and repeat for a few days or weeks until the seed cavity is reached. Carol Deppe recommends rubbing the juice that leaks over the face of the cut. Cause it dries hard and reseals the squash. Mmm. Mmm. Mmmmmm.

Thought I'd mention a specific variety of dry bean in case anyone wants to try a new one out. I've grown Nez Perce for a few years and it's always my highest yielding, although last year was the first year I bothered to weigh them. I got about 5lbs from 16 or 18 feet.

One more thought on amaranth:

If you throw a half cup of it in a dry skillet and gently shake/swirl it over medium low heat until a bunch of it pops (like very tiny popcorn), then add a bit of sweetener and some milk, the rest of the seeds pop as they absorb some of the liquid. This makes it very easy to cook and eat, without the weedy taste of stewing it to porridge. It takes only minutes to prepare it this way.

Jan White wrote:
Tyler, I was just looking at these the other day and noticing that they were moschatas. I know them as tromboncino, though. I see they're typically grown as summer squash, but did you let any grow to maturity to see what they're like as winter squash?

I was musing about a butternut/tromboncino cross, aiming for something similar-looking to Joseph's moscchini. The first squash I ever grew was a butternut that ended up very long with a tiny seed cavity at one end. You could just lop off squash steaks all the way down; it was awesome and I've always wanted to develop something like that.

I didn't let any of the rampicante mature, but I suspect they would have a somewhat bland flavor when ripe. Maybe you can buy some seeds of Joseph's moschini to get started on your extra-long winter squash experiment.

Please can you suggest any varieties of pumpkin to grow for shelless seeds? Last year I grew Lady Godiva, a basket ball size fruit with lovely big tasty seeds inside but only a handful of seeds. I was hoping for more as the flesh is very bland to eat and there's a lot of it to process.

I strongly recommend amaranth as it is so easy to grow and the winnowing is great fun! They are tall leggy plants leaving plenty of room for a layer of lettuces underneath too.

I'm in the UK about USDA 8

I've been learning about andean root crops lately. Maybe some good lesser known staples there.

cesca beamish wrote:Please can you suggest any varieties of pumpkin to grow for shelless seeds? Last year I grew Lady Godiva

Styrian is another shell-free pumpkin seed.

Benton Lewis wrote:I've been learning about andean root crops lately. Maybe some good lesser known staples there.

I plant Oca and Yacon and they died. But it is not exactly like the Andes here......

cesca beamish wrote:Please can you suggest any varieties of pumpkin to grow for shelless seeds? Last year I grew Lady Godiva, a basket ball size fruit with lovely big tasty seeds inside but only a handful of seeds. I was hoping for more as the flesh is very bland to eat and there's a lot of it to process.

I've grown styrian. The fruits I got were about the same size as yours, some a little bigger, but had more than a handful of seeds - probably getting up to more like two handfuls each. there's still a lot of bland flesh, though. No one in my house will even eat it, so I freeze it in chunks and throughout the year feed it to my dogs, who love it. They grew up eating a lot of fruit and veg, though. A couple years ago I had to replace all my neighbour's kale cause one of my dogs got out and ate everything but the roots.

I got a few acorn squash (I've never grown them) from my neighbour this fall that had really delicious, tender, thin-hulled seeds. They came out all in one scoop, with very little extra stuff - strings, slime, etc. The squash looked like they'd been grown from hybrid seed, though. Probably cross-pollinated with their crookneck the year before because some of them were a bit warty and some had watery flesh and very tough skin, more like a shell, when mature. So I don't know if all acorns have such nice seeds, but that might be an option for a dual purpose, seeds-and-flesh squash.

old old guy northeast ks. do harvest sweet potatoes before they are frosted!! if you wait you will have a garden covered with worthless vines the next year.
if your not getting a decent crop maybe you can put the slips in earlier.

Tyler Ludens wrote:Though some disagree about health benefits, alcoholic beverages have been a traditional method for storing fruit and grain calories, so yes, to me they qualify as staples if you consume them often enough to be getting significant calories from them (not just on special occasions).

Historically beer Was a staple, providing as much as one third of the daily caloric input for medieval europeans. Also provided safe drinking water. I have a friend who researched the subject of brewing through history pretty thoroughly some years back. Subsequently became a professional brewer and has now had two brew pubs in the Philadelphia vicinity.

Dioscorea batatas, a hardy yam

Jan White wrote:

David Livingston wrote:Joeseph
I was looking for a plant to grow for oil to cook with . Any ideas ? I have Walnuts- which are great for salads but not for frying.

I'm not Joseph, but I'll weigh in. I don't have first-hand knowledge yet, but from my research sunflowers seem like a good bet. Easy to grow and process, decent oil yields, can take some heat. Piteba has really good information on individual nuts and seeds for oil production.

If you want to grow oil to cook with, your best bet is to grow it on the hoof instead.

Asian Heritage Hogs [aka Potbelly Pigs] are an easy option. Tallow [from Beef or Sheep or Goats or hunted Deer/Elk] tends to have more omega 3's than lard though.

Benton Lewis wrote:Dioscorea batatas, a hardy yam

Have they grown well for you? I have one, but it hasn't done much growing. Do they taste like potatoes?

Tyler Ludens wrote:

Benton Lewis wrote:Dioscorea batatas, a hardy yam

Have they grown well for you? I have one, but it hasn't done much growing. Do they taste like potatoes?

Since you asked that I remembered this thread was about staples that we are growing. Sorry about that I would delete the post but don't see how. I haven't actually grown them I just thought they had good potential.

Don't worry about if you haven't grown it. It's a great suggestion.
If you hadn't mentioned it, I for one might never have heard about Dioscorea batatas. Thanks for the suggestion.

One carbohydrate staple I'm growing as a famine food; I don't expect to need to eat it, but I like knowing it's there. It's one of my favorite native plants, Sotol (Dasylirion texanum). Here's a little patch of it growing over our septic tank, on a West-facing slope (the yucca in the photo is less edible):

...Also not technically a "plant" crop, and maybe not the most "staple" of staple foods, but we've had ENORMOUS harvests of Stropharia/Garden Giant mushrooms the past couple years and they store beautifully when dried or canned as marinated mushies. We've got several jars of dehydrated mushrooms from just this last summer that go into all sorts of meals - pretty much anything you'd use those store-bought button mushrooms or portabella caps with.

Though we're working toward more perennial staple crops in the long term (chestnut, hazelnut, walnut, acorn, hardy yam [we call them "air potato"], arrowhead/wapato, fartichoke, etc), everything's still pretty young and so far not harvestable. Meanwhile, we too have been relying on a lot of squash for our "homegrown" staple crops this winter. We did grow potatoes, but not nearly enough yet - they only lasted us ~2 months. Hoping to triple production this year but it's slow going in getting things workable with the heavy/wet clay we have.

The squash, though, has proven to be an excellent one for us (seems to be the running theme in this thread, doesn't it?). This past season we harvested only 8 acorn squash, from 6 plants, but around 30 "New England Pie Pumpkin" (another C. pepo) off only 6 plants. These pumpkin turned out to be better tasting, baked or boiled, than standard butternuts we're used to

Since we lost our crop of butternut to the extreme slug pressures of May and June, we filled in with a lot of locally grown buttercup we picked up at the harvest sales (along with a few 50lb bags of white potatoes), but since then we've *finally* discovered the spaghetti squash (about time, right?) and will be trying that this year as well as a hubbard/maxima bush type, "golden nugget", supposedly developed as a replacement for sweet potato in the north...will see how they do.

I noticed a glaring lack of onion mentioned in this thread - only about half the calories per pound as you'd get out of potatoes (~180kcal/lb compared to ~350kcal/lb "fresh") but certainly a staple by my estimation and something most modern, western diets are accustomed to already. We've tried onion sets the last two years but had varying levels of "not so successful, but certainly tasty". Giving up on that idea and switching gears a bit to try leeks instead. We already include them in our diet (highly nutritious with most of the same benefits you'd get from onion) but haven't yet tried growing here. These, too, should make a good staple crop if they do well, perhaps better than onions would have in some respects. They pack in nicely, growing well with pretty tight spacing, and store fairly well (can handle sub-freezing temperatures so can be left in the garden until temps are dipping below 10*F). Coming in around 270 calories per pound (fresh), they're not too bad on calorie supply overall considering

Oh, and we've been ramping up tomato production as we do eat a lot of them and consider them a "staple" (as in "used in practically everything"). We're working with a standard Roma VF (OP variety) and mixed in a bit of striped cavern tomato genetics this past year as they were more vigorous and produced nearly identical fruits. Overall, we made around 4 gallons of straight tomato sauce this past season (which lasted us about 3 months) and that's after culling around half of the tomatoes due to a nasty bought of (pretty sure it was) late blight.

Favas are a favorite, too, but we find them much tastier fresh and young than mature and dried, so will be trying to get nice spring and fall crops to can. Funny thing about the fava bean is that we never liked them before - I only bought the seed as an N-fixer / green manure to help with establishing our garden beds. Never expected such a wonderful, buttery flavor and texture from what I always have associated with "the weird foods of Hannibal Lecter"

Figure we had maybe 5% homegrown staple crop this year (which is truly pitiful when I think about it). If all goes well, winter 2016-17 will be more like 30%.

Dehydrated squash/pumpkins
When I open a large one what I will not use immediately goes through the french frie cutter and in to the dehydrator. It comes out as shoe strings. So a 20 pound pumpkin is reduced to a 2 quart jar. I make my daily bread with a variety of seeds milled fresh in a coffee mill. I use one dry ingredient with one oily one so that each batch is not dusty or gummy. The dried pumpkin goes in with golden flax and pumpkin pie spice so I get a pumpkin bread. I combine sunflower seeds with a legume and turmeric which helps with aches and pains. I have planted lentils this year I will see how hard they are to thresh; they are the easiest to mill. Millet mills well with sesame seeds and I usually add the natural salt with that batch. I cook the whole batch in a double boiler having moistened it with cold water before adding hot water. I also stir in dried fruit, crystallized ginger and chocolate chips for variety. If I let it simmer for a few hours it becomes a moist bread. My digestion requires a high fiber diet so I avoid most industrialized food.
I do buy the big round circles of flat rye bread fro Finland to make my pizzas. a layer of vegetables and herbs from my garden with cheese melted on top in the microwave. I am limited to micro greens, green onions ,celery, and rosemary right now because my kale got grazed.

Upside down pumpkin pie: Blend cooked pumpkin or squash with eggs and a small amount of yogurt or cream and a little honey if you require the sweetness. pour it in a glass pie plate and cover with a crumble pie crust. Microwave until center is firm and the sides begin to pull away from the edge. Turn upside down on a plate to cool. It usually separates from the pie plate but oiling and flouring it may help. I serve it cold with yogurt on top.
If I am making it just for myself I make it in a bowl and just eat it right out of the bowl without turning it out.

It froze in my greenhouse last month so it set back my spring potatoes and terminated my purple potatoes early that I planed for January harvest. so I am low on potatoes right now. I planted the sprouts on a russet that my wife forgot in the pantry where the purple cam out so I will see how they do. I never seem to get all the rose skinned potatoes growing wiled in the raspberry house so I may find some of those while I am pruning and re-mulching.

I discovered that the seedling pears which taste like unripe persimmons become delicious when dried so that is becoming a caloric source. I process apples and Himalaya blackberries together in a steam juicer. I can bottle the juice directly from the juicer in sterile bottles so that is available when I have to have some quick energy. The pulp I then run through a mill to remove the seeds and I have red apple butter as a base for my morning smoothie. Wish I could raise avocados they are costing me 80 cents a day.

Hans Quistorff wrote:Wish I could raise avocados they are costing me 80 cents a day.

There are cultivars hardy down into the low teens, theoretically they should be guaranteed to survive in our climate in a high tunnel with thermal mass on the north side.

Now whether or not they would ripen fruit... I have no idea.

Kyrt Ryder wrote:

Hans Quistorff wrote:Wish I could raise avocados they are costing me 80 cents a day.

There are cultivars hardy down into the low teens, theoretically they should be guaranteed to survive in our climate in a high tunnel with thermal mass on the north side.

Now whether or not they would ripen fruit... I have no idea.

My high tunnels are not set up to be that thermally stable because the plums in them need the chill factor. They do give season extension and rain protection.
If I ever complete the renovation of the chicken house to have a glazed south end and restore the mass heater I think I would have a chance. They do grow prolifically out of the compost. They have never established enough root to resprout when the leaves are killed by a frost. If I could complete my plans I would have a 20" height from the ground front south center.

Plums... in a high tunnel... in Pierce County?

Are you in a frost pocket or something?

Or are these just cultivars especially vulnerable to frost blossom loss [and if so I would greatly appreciate the information of which cultivars these are.]

Kyrt Ryder wrote:Plums... in a high tunnel... in Pierce County?

Are you in a frost pocket or something?

Or are these just cultivars especially vulnerable to frost blossom loss [and if so I would greatly appreciate the information of which cultivars these are.]

It is mostly a mater of happenstance.
The variety is green gage. They happened to be in the raspberry patch. They come mostly true to type from seed. I try to control them for space as trelles support and shade to get optimum production of the raspberries which are an edge plant. I put up the high tunnels for rain control and season extension. With a combination of spring and fall bearing raspberries I get three overlapping productions from May through November.
The plums do flower earlier on the inside than the outside. The blossoms are protected from rain which reduces disease which is not a problem for the plums but is for the peaches which are in another part of the tunnel complex. The tunnels are set up to support 4 types of bees. Mason bees, bumble bees, leaf cutter bees for pollination and paper wasps for pest control. So though not necessary the arrangement gives me slightly earlier plums with less magots and that I can reach to pick because they are pruned to stay in the house. I have been gradually cutting back the mother tree because it is 35 feet tall and by the time the fruit falls it is heavily infested with maggots.
The whole arrangement is experimental. Observe adjust and observe. I sell the berries and plums at or local co-op but it is not my primary source of income but an observational study which I want to share on Permies. I will get to this shortly under projects/Qberry Farm. I will probably copy and past a lot of this post when I post the pictures and explain them.

Tristan Vitali wrote:
I noticed a glaring lack of onion mentioned in this thread

Onion relatives are one of the things I can grow most easily. These are all non-bulbing, perennial onions; Canada Onion, Walking Onion, Garlic Chive, Perennial Leek. But we don't eat enough of them in either bulk or calories for me to really count them as a staple by the definition of "staple" which I give at the beginning of this thread. They are a regular part of our diet, but no more a "staple" than greens are. They are a vegetable we no longer have to buy from the store. It's the calorie foods I need to be able to grow enough of to avoid buying calories at the store, though I expect I will always have to buy calories in the form of oils and fats, and probably always have to buy flour, though bread is somewhat of a luxury food in our household (my husband makes the bread).

As vegetables go onions are fairly calorie dense [Approximately 1/3 of squash] though, and onions go with everything.

Seriously, so long as the cooking was varied I could easily have onions in every meal and never get tired of them.

Hans Quistorff wrote:
I discovered that the seedling pears which taste like unripe persimmons become delicious when dried so that is becoming a caloric source.

Woot! This has made my day.

Of course every seedling pear tree has unique genetics and a different "flavor" profile. But you've given me an idea to try. I have a lot of seeding pears around here (many seem to be descendants of the popular-in-these-parts Kieffer pear that is itself a hybrid) and this year I did quite a bit of experimentation on the tannic fruits from different trees, trying different cooking methods at different stages of ripeness (and also picking the fruits and testing whether they would blett in any useful way under different storage conditions). I never thought to try drying!

Which was, in hindsight, stupid of me. I live in wild persimmon country and they have a lot of variation from tree to tree in the extent to which the astringency goes away as the fruit ripens. Some trees produce fruit that remains inedible even when the fruit is fully ripe, and other trees produce fruit that can be eaten easily enough, but it's not perfectly delicious. Those imperfect slightly astringent fruits become much better when dried. So I should have thought of drying the astringent seedling pear fruits.

Now I'm looking forward to next year's experiments. Thanks!

actually that might be a good idea for me too as I have an old very hard pear I wonder if drying will make it palitable

Tyler Ludens wrote:

Benton Lewis wrote:Dioscorea batatas, a hardy yam

Have they grown well for you? I have one, but it hasn't done much growing. Do they taste like potatoes?

Dioscorea batatas likes a good bit of water, I imagine it would grow better in Georgia, than in central Texas. Here, in SW Ohio, even with our much colder winters, the plant thrives due to the abundant rainfall. It is definitely one of our staples. At the end of the summer we harvest about ten gallons of the air bulbils from four plants growing over a wire trellis which shades our kitchen windows in the summer. The bulbils freeze well, so that's how we store them. Occasionally we dig the tubers and harvest some, but they are huge (often 3 feet long) and take a lot of digging, as they grow straight down. I think a tall box with removable sides would be a better growing location if you want to harvest the tubers.

In a warm, wet climate, these are extremely invasive plants and spread like crazy. Each bulbil will sprout into a new plant, and there are thousands of bulbils per plant.

For those looking for a drought-tolerant, very long-storing, good-tasting winter squash, I would recommend Lower Salmon River Squash. Size in between a buttercup or acorn and a big Hubbard or Sweet Meat. The hard shell is mouse-resistant and helps it keep for a long time--I was eating them early summer from the previous year's crop. They need some water, but, as an Idaho heirloom, they are adapted to drier summers than most maximas. It is a rare variety but you can find it here:<https://bountifulgardens.org/products/VSQ-5463>;
A lot of winter squash don't develop their potential sweetness for me; we have nights in the 50's all summer, even when days are over 100, and many squash just don't develop sugars well in those conditions.

I'm really lucky I'm in southern Spain Zone 10B so can grow all year round. I've been growing sweet potatoes but didn't have much luck with ordinary potatoes, so this year have bought Anya and Nicola seed potatoes from the UK. The great thing is that the potatoes go in in January and then harvest earlies in June, I'll keep the sweet tats in pots till then I also love Fava beans but have only eaten them fresh so far. Has anyone tried sprouting them? Apparently they are a very good source of dopamine when sprouted but need to ensure sufficient B6 though to produce seratonin. I grew a few pinto beans without much success (they were in a new hugel and I do find the hugels take a couple of years to get up productivity. I also grew Jerusalem artichokes for the first time last year, but haven't had much success in cooking them. I also had a huge attack of powdery mildew (will pop across to the Jerusalem artichoke thread shortly). we were also seriously challenged by the fartychoke phenomenon LOL. this year I am also experimenting with runner beans Czar variety which are grown mainly for saving as a pulse (then popping over to the pulse thread). They are supposed to be heavy producers and I love the idea that I may be able to grow them here as a perennial. Would also love to grow chick peas, lentils and favas, but as someone mentioned they need a lot space to produce required amounts and I am short on space. I also bought some ocas from the UK and am excited at the thought of growing another easy to grow crop, will need to keep in the shade as I understand they are not so keen on the heat. We are up in the hills at 1,000 feet so cooler than inland or the coast. I grew yacon (very successfully 11 kilos from 3 plants in giant pots) for the first time last year and while not specifically a calorie crop, I made 680 gms of syrup from 4 kilos. Also fabulous in stir fry or salads - down side it doesn't store well as the high sugar content makes it susceptible to mould. Great info everyone thanks for sharing.

I'm glad Dave mentioned beef and dairy. I am milking a goat who gives half a gallon a day. She didi not breed last fall, so if I don't want to miss a year of milk, I have to milk her right on through. She makes calories available to me that would not otherwise be there. It's high quality food too. In addition to grass, alfalfa and other forage, she eats winter squash.

I make cheeese kefir yogurt and drink the milk. There is so much whey from the cheese, that I give it to the chickens, but many people have various ways to use whey: in soups, smoothies, as a beverage (whey with citrus juice makes a tart and tasty drink. There is sugar in the whey, depending on when you drain it off the curds, the longer it cultures, the more lactose is consumed and the less sweet it is). Whey can be used as the liquid in bread or other baking.

cesca beamish wrote:Please can you suggest any varieties of pumpkin to grow for shelless seeds? Last year I grew Lady Godiva, a basket ball size fruit with lovely big tasty seeds inside but only a handful of seeds. I was hoping for more as the flesh is very bland to eat and there's a lot of it to process.
I'm in the UK about USDA 8

I have been developing a line of Styrian Hull-less For more orange flesh and they have also gotten larger over time. I offered them on seed swap but getting them to the UK may be difficult.Listing

Is anyone trying ground nuts?

I'm still in the "setup" phase of my homestead plot and haven't done much growing there yet... I have planted a lot of support species, trees and shrubs that won't produce much for years. But I have done a lot of thinking about staple crops. I feel that along with heavily caloric staple crops, oil crops should also be considered. Most staples taste better this way, and they provide other essential fats and nutrients.

My plans for staple crops are:

-Potatoes--Which have grown quite well in some test plots without any amendment.
-Sunflowers for oil--Which the rodentia seem to enjoy and so I am working on dealing with them.
-Spaghetti Squash--I planted a lot of seed and got only one healthy plant with no care (thinking the rodents got these seeds too), so this squash will be providing all my seeds for this summer. I am attempting to breed a high-altitude spaghetti squash variety.
-Jereselum Artichokes--Planted some last year, will be planting a lot more this year.
-Rhubarb (low in calories, but high in flavor)
-Horseradish (just a huge fan of the spice)

I want to add ground nuts to this list and I have not seen anyone on this thread talk about ground nuts at all (unless I missed it). This perennial tuber seems like a great low-maintenance crop with three times the protein of potatoes and a variety of positive nutrition traits. And this is not to be confused with the peanut which is also called groundnut sometimes.

These tubers were heavily relied upon by a lot of Native American tribes. Along with the nutritious tuber, it produces an edible bean/seed and is also a nitrogen fixer. It seems like this could be an all-star of permaculture staple crops with all these attributes.

I have done a lot of research, but haven't heard from many individuals on their ground nut growing experiences. Is anyone on this thread trying it?

My groundnut plants died.

Tyler Ludens wrote:My groundnut plants died.

Did you put them in shade? Edible Forest Gardens does say they're quite shade tolerant and I imagine in Texas they might be more shade-requiring.

hey, I right away thought you were talking about peanuts. I had to go googling around to find out what ground nuts are, and found this
http://plants.usda.gov/plantguide/pdf/cs_apam.pdf

There are a lot of resources once I found the genus and species, and got away from the peanut.

I've been thinking of growing peanuts this year, they seem like they would also be a good staple crop, and a good addition to pasture.