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Backyard Food pump plants !!!!

posted 3 weeks ago

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paul made a great thread about 'plant and forget' crops for an easy gardening life: Automatic Backyard Food Pump . Lots of ideas also mentioned in William Bronson's thread for plants that are food in the ground when you need them.

These are plants that will multiply year on year with no special attention - self seeders and spreading plants; ones which can supply a good proportion of dietary needs rather than herbs and medicinal plants. Also excluding woody perennials such as trees and shrubs which usually take several years to crop

So we have started making a table organising plants by how good they are at multiplying with no attention and feeding us year round. Some of the figures are guestimates, and the yeild and ease of growing may be very different in different locations.

Please make suggestions below for other plants to include, with scoring and best reference threads, and we can add them to the table!

plant	annual increase by weight	hassle factor (0 (good) - 10 (bad))	calorific value	nutrient density	harvest spring	harvest summer	harvest autumn	harvest winter	hardiness (USDA)
Camassia	x5	6 (traditionally roasted for a very long time, can be confused with poisonous death camas)	excellent	good	yes	yes	yes	yes	3-7
skirret	x10	3	excellent	fair	yes	yes (leaves)	yes	yes	4-9
Sweet potatoes	x15	3	excellent	fair	no	yes (leaves)	yes	yes
Sunroot	x20?	4 (need to introduce gradually to diet)	excellent	fair	yes	sort of (greens)	late	yes	4-8
irish potatoes	x6 -10	4 (can be susceptible to disease)	excellent	fair	only in warm climates	yes	yes	only in warm climates	6 and higher?
parsnip	N/A (self seeding biennial	5 (leaf sap can cause skin blisters)	excellent	fair	early	no	yes	yes	4-8
hardy yam	x5?	6 (difficult to harvest, large vine maybe aerial tubers)	excellent	fair	yes	?	yes	yes	4-11
Garlic	x2-8	1	good	excellent	yes (roots, leaves)	yes (scapes, bulbs)	yes (bulbs, leaves)	?	3-?
Ramps	x2	2	good	excellent	yes (roots, leaves)	flowers	roots	roots	4-9
kale	x10	1 (birds and butterfly food too)	fair	excellent	maybe	yes	yes	yes	6 and higher
tree collards	x5	1 (birds like them too!)	fair	excellent	yes	yes	yes	yes	7 and higher
nettles	x4	4 (stings!)	fair	excellent	yes	yes (if cut back)	yes (if cut back)	no	3-10
walking onion	x4	1	fair	good	yes	yes	yes	yes	?
Milkweed	?	3 (sticky sap, needs a quick boiling)	fair	good	yes	yes	early	no	3-10

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Christopher Weeks

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posted 3 weeks ago

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It seems like the general consensus in the great big long sunchoke thread is that they don't really expand exponentially with no care. They have to be harvested to be thinned if you want to see steady growth. How do things like that get accounted for here?

Also, garlic on my land doesn't seem to behave like that. It probably loses weight year-on-year if left alone because it only produces tiny bulbs instead of the great big ones that get planted to start a patch.

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M Ljin

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posted 3 weeks ago

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Christopher Weeks wrote:It seems like the general consensus in the great big long sunchoke thread is that they don't really expand exponentially with no care. They have to be harvested to be thinned if you want to see steady growth. How do things like that get accounted for here?

Also, garlic on my land doesn't seem to behave like that. I probably loses weight year-on-year if left alone because it only produces tiny bulbs instead of the great big ones that get planted to start a patch.

I agree—maybe we assume a steady harvest and some care? Garlic here splits neatly into four every year if harvested and replanted, with a bonus of bulblets or scapes.

My suggestion is we classify as fast, medium, or slow growers for this and other reasons.

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Ac Baker

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posted 2 weeks ago

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Robin Wall Kimmerer has done work on sustainable harvesting of free-living plants as an Indigenous botanist. She observed that there are many different sustainable relationships between plants & harvesters, depending upon the plants needs, the local conditions, the benefits of the plants to the harvesters etc.

I believe the first plant Robin Wall Kimmerer studied explicitly in this way was Turtle Island sweetgrass. Without appropriate traditional harvesting, the Sweetgrass dwindled. I believe the term Robin Wall Kimmerer used from botany was "compensatory growth": traditional harvesting stimulates sweetgrass to thrive rather than be out-grown by other plants.

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Nancy Reading

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posted 2 weeks ago

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Anyone got suggestions as to how to rate the growth of self seeding annuals/biennials like parsnip? I'm thinking it would need averaging over several years....

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Ben Zumeta

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posted 2 weeks ago

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I would add tree collards. Very nutritious and tasty. Zone 7+, grows 5x+ annually even with steady daily harvest. I have some that will grow as tall as I can trellis them (8ft+). They are my favorite greens, and are at their best in winter. The only time they are not abundant is when snow makes them the only food available for birds, which eat them down to the stem. They come right back though once its above freezing. It is also very easy to propagate then with cuttings, but they never seem to bolt or go to seed after 6yrs here.

This is all just my opinion based on a flawed memory

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Nancy Reading

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posted 2 weeks ago

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Ben Zumeta wrote:I would add tree collards. (zip) The only time they are not abundant is when snow makes them the only food available for birds,

Added!
Good idea - very similar to perennial kale, so I have changed the easiness rating on that as some people may have trouble with cabbage white butterfly and/or birds on either crop.

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M Ljin

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posted 2 hours ago

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Maybe ground cherry too?

They are perennial and very hardy in my region, and produce delicious nightshade fruits when grown in good soil. I’ve found them very easy and a lot of people around here find that they reseed and resprout abundantly. They were grown by native Abenaki people in the “seven sisters” polyculture that they are known for. I believe they are Physalis heterophylla that is most common here, but people also find their exotic ground cherries resprouting easily.

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