Ulla Bisgaard

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.

This time of year we are harvesting and eating broccoli, cabbages, celtuce, lettuce, tomatoes, Boc Choy and radishes. We also have kale, collard greens, Asian vegetables like mustard, pigeon peas and many different herbs.

Nathanael Szobody wrote:Thanks Ulla, so helpful.

Ulla Bisgaard wrote: During a season it will grow, produce a flower and then die down for a little while (when too cold or too dry). Once conditions have improved, it will start growing again.

Do you think they'll survive 6 months with high temps and no water? No I tried that, and the plants died without haven grown any rhizomes. When we get high temperatures, I water underneath the mulch to keep it all moist. I use drip irrigation now. I also have shade cloth over them, also to prevent evaporation. Very few things can handle a desert climate without irrigation. I do hope, that once the food forest has matured, the trees will lower the temperatures and increase moisture, but that’s another 5 years ahead of us. We started 10 years ago.

Also,  do you think a 4- month rainy season is long enough for production?

no, turmeric takes a minimum of 8 months to produce, and will do better with 10 to 12 months.

December 2025
Another year has almost passed here on our small homestead. It has been a year of successes and failures, surprises, and lots of learning. That’s how it will always be, since I love experimenting and pushing the limits of what and how much we can grow. I absolutely hate it when someone tells me what I can’t do—it usually makes me want to prove them wrong. We’re in grow zone 10b, so we’re able to grow food in our gardens all year round.
We didn’t reach the metric ton we achieved last year, but I’m okay with that, and I know why. We grew over 1,600 pounds and raised more meat than ever before, so we’re still in good shape.
Here are the two main reasons we didn’t hit our goal:
1. Rats ate all my corn. I had two 4’ x 8’ beds filled with beautiful corn until the rats found them. Next time, I’ll have to put a cage over them or maybe rub red pepper flakes on the ears.
2. I forgot to add potassium phosphate to my sweet potato beds, and then the irrigation broke. When I harvested the first bed, we only got 16 pounds. Last year, I got 200 pounds from that same bed. I decided to leave the second bed for another year.
Here are some highlights of the year:
1. We built a strong trellis for black pepper, long pepper, Yerba Mate, and tea (Camellia sinensis). They’re all thriving. The tea plant had lots of flowers this year. I also added mountain tea, Florida tea, purple basil, and bergamot to my collection of plants and herbs for brewing. Purple basil tea is a new favorite.
2. We added three new raised beds and placed them in the forest garden. The beds are for strawberries and cassava, with some onions thrown in. We planted 150 new strawberry plants. The strawberries are around the edges of the beds so the berries can hang over the sides, away from slugs and bugs. The cassava is in the middle, so they can provide shade during the hot season and are kept away from gophers and rats. The onions will also help repel wildlife. We have another 25 alpine strawberry plants coming, which will go into my wishing well planter. We now have seven different varieties of strawberries that ripen at different times of the year. We should end up with fresh strawberries 8 to 10 months of the year.
3. We also added a Fuerte avocado tree to complement our Hass avocado. Once it starts producing, we’ll have avocados all year round.
4. Since we have a few months without homegrown fruit, we planted two sapote trees to fill the gap. Sapote is a favorite for us all. Now we wait and see if they produce. I forgot to check whether the trees are male or females, or have been grafted to have both. Once I know, I may have to do some grafting or buy another tree.
5. I had the largest turmeric and ginger harvest yet.
6. We got plums for the first time.
7. My coffee plants are thriving, so I’m hoping for berries next year.
8. I had 40 people show up for tours this year and have been asked to teach the community how to preserve food. This will be possible now that Peter gave me the outdoor stove I’ve been pining for over the years. Now I can do my canning outside, away from a hot kitchen.
9. I finally figured out the best hibiscus for tea. I grew Florida cranberry (roselle) hibiscus and will grow more of it next year.
10. The easiest and best plant for chicken feed turned out to be pigeon peas. I had two plants this year and have harvested 20 pounds of peas so far, with lots more to come. As a bonus, the hummingbirds love them—there’s always a flock feeding from the flowers. I’m definitely planting more in spring, and I hope they behave as perennials here. Livestock feeds have gotten very expensive.
11. Because I found a bird’s nest with eggs in my collards this year, I decided not to harvest until it was empty. This resulted in them going to seed. I now have collard greens growing all over the backyard, in and between the beds. Free food for our chickens, ducks, and rabbits! I’m planning to start growing duckweed for the ducks, as they are picky eaters.
12. We got grasshoppers this year, which is a sign that the garden is very healthy with plants having high Brix levels. This is good news, but I’m not happy that they ate most of my parsley and now have devoured all the red cabbage seedlings I just transplanted. Catching them and feeding them to the chickens, will give both me and the chickens some exercise LOL.
As you can see, there are ups and downs, but that’s life. Nothing will ever be perfect, and that’s okay. It’s a balance, and something we can learn from. Two years ago, I was sure the gardens were done and that I’d only need to do maintenance. Well, I was wrong. A gardener’s job is never done. There will always be new challenges, things that don’t work out, or that Mother Nature disrupts. As the years pass, the trees and shrubs will grow bigger, and I might not have room for my strawberry/cassava beds—but that’s okay too. I’m sure I’ll find more space somewhere. We’ve already planted our first tree among the raised beds in the backyard, and we have a volunteer peach tree we’re also moving there.
Gardening has also brought us closer to our neighbors and community. Delivery drivers ask for tours and tips, and so do the nurses when I’m in treatment (LOL). The neighborhood kids frequently stop by to pick flowers, pet the animals, or get a snack from the trees or bushes. They know I don’t mind, as long as they don’t clean me out (LOL). I’m looking for places where I can install a fairy garden and a garden gnome village. A plan for next year is also to install a bamboo fence. I found a type of clumping bamboo that produces edible shoots in spring. They will provide much-needed shade for our rabbits.
Now I’ll go and pack up some freeze-dried foods for our daughter to take with her when she returns to college in Oregon on January third. She has now learned just how expensive food is in the grocery stores.
Happy New Year to everyone here. I hope you all have a blessed year in 2026.

December 2025
Another year has almost passed here on our small homestead. It has been a year of successes and failures, surprises, and lots of learning. That’s how it will always be, since I love experimenting and pushing the limits of what and how much we can grow. I absolutely hate it when someone tells me what I can’t do—it usually makes me want to prove them wrong. We’re in grow zone 10b, so we’re able to grow food in our gardens all year round.
We didn’t reach the metric ton we achieved last year, but I’m okay with that, and I know why. We grew over 1,600 pounds and raised more meat than ever before, so we’re still in good shape.
Here are the two main reasons we didn’t hit our goal:
1. Rats ate all my corn. I had two 4’ x 8’ beds filled with beautiful corn until the rats found them. Next time, I’ll have to put a cage over them or maybe rub red pepper flakes on the ears.
2. I forgot to add potassium phosphate to my sweet potato beds, and then the irrigation broke. When I harvested the first bed, we only got 16 pounds. Last year, I got 200 pounds from that same bed. I decided to leave the second bed for another year.
Here are some highlights of the year:
1. We built a strong trellis for black pepper, long pepper, Yerba Mate, and tea (Camellia sinensis). They’re all thriving. The tea plant had lots of flowers this year. I also added mountain tea, Florida tea, purple basil, and bergamot to my collection of plants and herbs for brewing. Purple basil tea is a new favorite.
2. We added three new raised beds and placed them in the forest garden. The beds are for strawberries and cassava, with some onions thrown in. We planted 150 new strawberry plants. The strawberries are around the edges of the beds so the berries can hang over the sides, away from slugs and bugs. The cassava is in the middle, so they can provide shade during the hot season and are kept away from gophers and rats. The onions will also help repel wildlife. We have another 25 alpine strawberry plants coming, which will go into my wishing well planter. We now have seven different varieties of strawberries that ripen at different times of the year. We should end up with fresh strawberries 8 to 10 months of the year.
3. We also added a Fuerte avocado tree to complement our Hass avocado. Once it starts producing, we’ll have avocados all year round.
4. Since we have a few months without homegrown fruit, we planted two sapote trees to fill the gap. Sapote is a favorite for us all. Now we wait and see if they produce. I forgot to check whether the trees are male or females, or have been grafted to have both. Once I know, I may have to do some grafting or buy another tree.
5. I had the largest turmeric and ginger harvest yet.
6. We got plums for the first time.
7. My coffee plants are thriving, so I’m hoping for berries next year.
8. I had 40 people show up for tours this year and have been asked to teach the community how to preserve food. This will be possible now that Peter gave me the outdoor stove I’ve been pining for over the years. Now I can do my canning outside, away from a hot kitchen.
9. I finally figured out the best hibiscus for tea. I grew Florida cranberry (roselle) hibiscus and will grow more of it next year.
10. The easiest and best plant for chicken feed turned out to be pigeon peas. I had two plants this year and have harvested 20 pounds of peas so far, with lots more to come. As a bonus, the hummingbirds love them—there’s always a flock feeding from the flowers. I’m definitely planting more in spring, and I hope they behave as perennials here. Livestock feeds have gotten very expensive.
11. Because I found a bird’s nest with eggs in my collards this year, I decided not to harvest until it was empty. This resulted in them going to seed. I now have collard greens growing all over the backyard, in and between the beds. Free food for our chickens, ducks, and rabbits! I’m planning to start growing duckweed for the ducks, as they are picky eaters.
12. We got grasshoppers this year, which is a sign that the garden is very healthy with plants having high Brix levels. This is good news, but I’m not happy that they ate most of my parsley and now have devoured all the red cabbage seedlings I just transplanted. Catching them and feeding them to the chickens, will give both me and the chickens some exercise LOL.
As you can see, there are ups and downs, but that’s life. Nothing will ever be perfect, and that’s okay. It’s a balance, and something we can learn from. Two years ago, I was sure the gardens were done and that I’d only need to do maintenance. Well, I was wrong. A gardener’s job is never done. There will always be new challenges, things that don’t work out, or that Mother Nature disrupts. As the years pass, the trees and shrubs will grow bigger, and I might not have room for my strawberry/cassava beds—but that’s okay too. I’m sure I’ll find more space somewhere. We’ve already planted our first tree among the raised beds in the backyard, and we have a volunteer peach tree we’re also moving there.
Gardening has also brought us closer to our neighbors and community. Delivery drivers ask for tours and tips, and so do the nurses when I’m in treatment (LOL). The neighborhood kids frequently stop by to pick flowers, pet the animals, or get a snack from the trees or bushes. They know I don’t mind, as long as they don’t clean me out (LOL). I’m looking for places where I can install a fairy garden and a garden gnome village. A plan for next year is also to install a bamboo fence. I found a type of clumping bamboo that produces edible shoots in spring. They will provide much-needed shade for our rabbits.
Now I’ll go and pack up some freeze-dried foods for our daughter to take with her when she returns to college in Oregon on January third. She has now learned just how expensive food is in the grocery stores.
Happy New Year to everyone here. I hope you all have a blessed year in 2026.

We live in a similar but more desert like climate than yours, but here is what I have learned about growing turmeric.
1. Turmeric is a perennial plant in tropical climates. To harvest you dig down and remove what you need, leaving the rhizomes closest to the stem intact. Then you replant it. During a season it will grow, produce a flower and then die down for a little while (when too cold or too dry). Once conditions have improved, it will start growing again.
2. To get large crops/plants they need compost and regular watering. Otherwise the plant won’t have the energy to produce large crops.
3. Turmeric loves full sun, as long as they get a thick layer of mulch to protect the roots from overheating. Mulch also prevents water evaporation during the dry season, and will suck up some of the extra  water during big rain falls. I only provide shade when temperatures go over 105F. At 120F (July through October) most things need a little shade.
4. To get a large harvest from new plants, wait at least a year before you start harvesting and preferably 2 years.
This year I got 17 pounds from 3 clusters of plants. Since the clusters had gotten too big, I divided them, and removed some of them, but the rest are still growing. Though most has died down, to rest until spring. I am growing lettuce on top of them right now. I will add a photo, where you can see it poking through the greens on the right side of the picture.

My mother would take oranges and put cloves into them. She would then use them as Christmas decorations. It always made the whole house smell of spring. Then after Christmas she would use them to make mullet wine.