Ulla Bisgaard

Last fall, I finally had my first big harvest of ginger. I started them indoors in February, in my nursery, so they would get plenty of sun and heat. Then I transplanted them outside in May, in a raised bed with plenty of room, mulch and drip irrigation. I harvested them all just before thanksgiving and we got a nice big harvest. I think I could have left them another month, but I was afraid we would get too low temperatures for them to handle.
The picture shows them all curing on a tray. I had 5 plants, and got 8 pounds, if I remember correctly. Some of the ginger was minced and frozen, and some was juiced and frozen. I used mini ice cube trays.
I am going to start a new batch next month.
What I have learned, is that they need 8 to 10 months of grow time to produce. They rot if they get too much water, so the soil has to be well drained or use drip irrigation. Straw mulch has helped a lot it’s keeping the soil temperature steady instead of fluctuating.
That said, we are in grow zone 10b in Southern California, southeast of San Diego, so it’s hotter here than where you are. To grow them, I think you will need a heating mat and a grow light, so you can extend the growing season.
Also, I change the growing setup I showed further up. I now use shelving units with light underneath the shelves.
It’s the same one I use to start my seeds.

@Nathanael Szobody
I love the buy nothing group I am part of. 2 years ago, I started offering garden tours here (a gift of knowledge), and now I have 40 people showing up regularly for tours. This month I am starting small free classes in food preservation, after some of them asked. For the first class, they will join me, while I make cranberry juice and cranberry sauce.

I choose based on several things:
1. Grow the things we use a lot of
2. Don’t grow things I still have in my pantry, from the years I get an abundance.
3. What we eat
4. What can be used as livestock feed
5. What I can grow during months, when food production is low
6. What can be preserved for later use
7. As many of our herbs and spices as I possible can. Both culinary herbs and medicinal herbs.
8. What will thrive in our climate.
9. What I have trouble sourcing because of price or scarcity
10. What will improve our soil and create tree guilds.
11. What will cover our nutritional needs like vitamins and minerals

That’s a very interesting question. Up until now, I have preserved whatever we get a surplus off. I have a freeze dryer, so it is easy to freeze dry any surplus and put it away for later.
Our chickens take two breaks. The first one when it gets too hot and the second when we get fewer light hours. I used to water glass eggs. But now I freeze dry all of my extra eggs. Eggs are very expensive here. I do want to try pickling eggs though, since we have heard so much good about that. I have never tried eating pickled eggs, but it’s something to explore. I  also do a lot of canning and fermenting.
I also give garden surplus to my neighbors, and now that our children are moving away, so we have fewer mouths to feed, we are probably going to start selling some on the farmers market.
We also trade some crops for different ones. Lastly I feed a lot of garden surplus to our chickens. If I end up with so much i don’t know what to do with it, I give it away in a buy nothing group I am part of.

Kate Downham wrote:

That is a good point about year-round fruit. Apples alone in this climate, if the right varieties are chosen, can be ripening for 5 months of the year, and then there’s the stone fruit, berries, and in the right microclimates some citrus too. I could grow avocado here, but I'm the only one who eats it, so I'd rather grow other things.

It's also really exciting to hear about how much you are producing on that amount of land.

Medlars are not a well known crop, but they aren’t ready to eat until they’ve been stored for weeks or months, so are another good choice for low energy storage fruit. Some apples store better than others - we are growing a couple of different reinette trees, which are said to be the best storage apples. I make a lot of apple sauce as well.

I have the rocket-assisted solar dehydator plans and I’m keen to try making one of these sometime for dehydrating fruit, vegetables, and jerky. Currently we dry some things in the bottom of our woodstove oven, but this has limited capacity and gets too hot at times.

We do produce a lot of food here, but keep in mind, that since we are in grow zone 10b, we can grow food all year round.
Also don’t forget to grow herbs and spices. Depending on our needs, I grow between 30 and 40 herbs and spices each year. It’s where I really save money. It’s way too much for us, but we feed them to the animals too. For chickens it helps keep pests out of their nesting boxes and feathers, for all of them it boost their immune system. Right now, it’s nettle season which means a good calcium boost for me and help with my allergies.
One thing I find is important, is to look at homesteading, not just as a source of food, but a way to have a life that feeds the body, mind and soul. Nothing beats the feeling you get by sitting, with a cup of homegrown tea surrounded by wildflowers, watching the wildlife thrive and the neighborhood kids sneak in to grab a snack.
Gardening and homesteading isn’t just about survival, it’s about thriving and knowing that each year the earth heals and regenerates. It’s about community, about supporting and teaching others about these old skills, Showing children where food comes from and teaching their parents a way to food security.

tuffy monteverdi wrote:

Lastly, fruit trees - these qualify as dessert, in my book. Not a main source of calories.  
However one fruit tree to be sure to plant in your livestock areas is mulberry. The leaves are fantastic and branches are pollardable yearly. The bush form is easy for ruminants. The tree form gives more shade. etc

I just want to point out, that fruit and berries might be dessert, it’s also an important source of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. For example, I grow bananas for potassium, citrus and currants for vitamin C and elderberries for immune support. I grow raspberries not only for the berries, but because the leaves help relieve menstrual cramps.
We also have mulberries btw, and we love them. Mulberries are always the first berry to ripen, so they are an early source of freshness.
I wish we could keep more livestock, but our homestead is only 1/2 acre, so we only keep rabbits, chickens and ducks. We raised 500 pounds of meat this year, so it’s not too bad.

Sam Shade wrote:

That's fantastic.  And cashews, another dream crop for me! I used to be in 9b in the Inland Empire but I didn't grow anything but dust and bamboo... but in my defense I had less than 1/10 of an acre...

How much did your freeze dryer run you? I want one but it will take a propaganda campaign to justify it to the wife.

It takes time transforming dirt to soil, and we started with dirt. You can see how we did it, in my blog (building a food forest on the edge of the desert) here on permies.

As for the freeze dryer. We paid three thousand dollars for it, and then later upgraded to an oil free pump. We have the medium freeze dryer from blue alpine. I only got it, because I inherited some money, it’s definitely not cheap. That said, when you produce as much as we do, it’s a blessing. In the fall of 2024 we grew 800 pounds of squash and pumpkins. While I canned some, and froze some, the main load was put in the freeze dryer and Mylar bags. The frozen ones start loosing nutrients after about a year, the canned ones 5 years and the freeze dried ones 25 years.
I also grow and make my own flour mixes from grains, roots and vegetables. Only the freeze dryer makes it dry and crumbly so it can be milled into flour. The biggest saving though, comes from herbs. I grew 58 pounds of herbs last year (herbs is a passion of mine), and the freeze dryer locks in the flavor and don’t destroy the essential oils. In herbs alone, I saved 2000 dollars last year and the quality of them is fantastic. I make dinner leftovers into camping meals. Our chickens produce 3000 eggs a year, but due to the heat, and molting they only lay eggs 6 to 8 months of the year. While I have tried waterglassing eggs, freeze dried eggs are so much better, and will last up to 25 years if stores in cool dark areas in Mylar bags. Eggs cost a lot here, especially if you want a good quality. Often the price is 75 cents up to a dollar each.
So you can see why I needed and love my freeze dryer.

Sam Shade wrote: Seasonal distribution is a very important consideration esp. in areas that get below 32 F;  jealous of your sapote. I've planted a lot of persimmons in hopes of having some fresh winter fruit. I rely heavily on my freezer to keep the mulberries and blueberries we pick in spring and summer to give us some variety amidst with all the winter root/tuber crops.

It's the reverse in the summer when I'm loaded with fruits and greens but I don't have any more tubers.

Another big factor in self sufficiency is having food for your animals, with seasonal distribution again key.  This is why I'm such a big advocate of goats... lots of evergreen browse for them. Chickens are sort of easy too because their diets mirror ours pretty closely.  

If you are jealous of my sapote, you would probably also like that we grow both coffee and tea here. I also grow peaches, apples, bananas, strawberry guava, Meyer lemons, oranges, plums, cashews, tangerines, elderberries, any berry you can think off and so much more. My Barbados cherry and my Surinam cherry are still too small to produce, but grow nicely.
As for food preservation, getting a freeze dryer has been a game changer, and has paid itself off, in the 2 years we have had it. I also do a lot of fermented vegetables and fruits, I can fruits and freeze them too. This is how we get through November and December, and part of January.
Spreadsheets and Calendars has become my new favorite gardening tools LOL
We grow a lot of the food for our chickens, ducks and rabbits. We have tree collards and other greens year round, I grow extra pumpkins and squash for them, and grains. As of now, we grow about half of the feed we need as of now.

Ra Kenworth wrote:I gather importing is a big no-no in order to protect the ecosystem.
I have a friend in Tas who has giant beetroot (mangelwurzels)  that grows wild and I would definitely take advantage of that!. Personally I find anything in the squash family is easy to grow and high yielding, but I would check into chayotes as well if I were in your zone, if they are available at a market, I would ask to arrange for some plants, otherwise take your chances growing them from store bought if available.

You can buy the seeds for those beetroots at rare seeds dot com. That’s where I get mine.

Here we are very close to self sufficiency. Our homestead produced 1 million calories this year including 1700 pounds of produce. Part was meat and parts where fruits, vegetables, grains herbs, berries  and nuts. I have a 3300 square foot food forest garden and 23 large raised beds.
One thing I have learned, is that there are limits to how many vegetables you can eat, so you might produce it, but the volume will be too large to eat. This means you have to produce calorie dense vegetables or seed to press oil from. If you have cattle, you can get your fat that way.
Another thing you have to think about, is logistics. You need pick varieties where you prioritize covering a year. Here that means picking fruit and berry varieties that ripens at different times of the year. If you get snow, you need to produce things that can be preserved for winter eating. If you don’t get snow/frost or only get a little, but have hot summer you plant to fit that. A good example here, is avocados and strawberries. Hass avocados can be harvested from spring to fall, and a fuerte from fall to spring thus covering a full year. Growing 7 different varieties of strawberries means we have fresh strawberries 8 to 10 months of the year. This year I added sapote fruits, to cover November and December, since we don’t produce fruit during those two months, and rely on storage apples. I use planners and calendars to make sure this happens. Also, remember that if you get frost, you can grow food in cold frames or caterpillar tunnels. Cold hardy strawberries thrive in tunnels during winter time.
Calories that stores well are beans, peas and corn, since they can be dried for later use, and store very well for a long time. A good root cellar will also keep root vegetables, pumpkins and squash fresh, for a very long time.
A lot of this is hands on, so finding perennials is a must, or you end up overworked. We also plan harvest times, so my family takes time off work to help harvest, preserve and plant. A good layer of mulch will cut down on water needs and keep weeds away.
You also have to take into consideration what your family likes to eat. Just because you grew it, they might not want to eat it. For specialty fruits I suggest buying some of it first and then ask your family if this is something they want me to grow for food. I grew passion fruits at one point, but no one wanted to eat them, so it was a waste of space.
I hope these suggestions will help you in selecting your crops.