Open Source Plant Breeding Forum

Here's the poll you want.

In my small garden in NW Arkansas with untilled clay soil I grow Russian kale as a staple crop.

Also parsnips, favas, and sunchoke. Haven't yet explored the favas and sunchoke in a culinary sense but they grow great here in western montana. 

Can't consider sweet potatoes a staple here yet. Don't grow well. Though I haven't yet had time to try sweet potato breeding.

Thinking in a strict sense in my area: Flour Corn, Dry Beans, Dry Favas, Sunchokes, Parsnips, Sunflowers, Potatoes, and Salsify can probably be thought of as calorie dense enough to be staples. I grow wheat and other small grains but never clean it well enough to use for human food. On a farm scale those are grown in my area though.

Garlic, Leeks, and Elephant Garlic are calorie dense but probably cannot be eaten in suitable quantities to be a staple.

Vegetables which are not strictly staples include: tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, lettuce and other salad greens, carrots, peas, and squash among others.

I achieve a 12 month supply of carrot, lettuce, popping corn, grinding maize, radishes (both a summer and winter types), beetroot, onions, garlic, plus celery, get roughly 10 months from the potatoes. Then 6 months from parsnips, tomatoes, peppers.

Potatoes, onions and carrots are major staples in my climate.

Turnip and cabbage are also part of the traditional staples list.   Peas and broad beans/favas.

Our own list of staples is a bit different, includes lettuce and asian greens of various kinds, continuing under lights in the winter.

Quote from: Woody Gardener on 2019-11-23, 09:39:26 AM
Here's the poll you want.

Thanks! I though there might have been an option to set it up correctly, I just missed it.
My garden here in Indiana is also small and I don't use any purchased inputs at all. I'v recently switched to basically no-till and ditched gas powered equipment.

As far as producing a full harvest to harvest supply of a crop, outside of canned beans and tomatoes I only have two real staples that are producing reliably for me. Those being dry beans and sweet potatoes. I also have year round supply of things such as onions and garlic and some winter greens but I don't really consider them staples.

I want to add corn and winter squash. I'm confident I can accomplish the corn but squash fails probably two out of three years. I already dropped potatoes for the same reason only from different causes and  because sweet potatoes turned out to be so much easier.

Bugger, forgot onions and garlic

I forgot garlic too.    I grow enough for our family and more, and growing more every year now because of a growout of 20+ varieties from a friend in Finland.    Garlic is something I can grow here without much worry about animals.

My staples for survival (in no particular order):

Peas
Carrots
Tomatoes
Potatoes
Parsley
Sunflower seeds
Sesame seeds

These, plus meat, eggs, and milk, can be used to create a diet that will provide 100% of all macro and micro nutrients needed by the human body. Granted, I'm still working on being able to grow these reliably, but I consider them essential to my dreams of self-sufficiency.

(Several years ago I suffered from deficiencies in a few essential minerals. My appetite was just too small to get much out of what I was eating. It got bad enough to land me in the ER twice. Since the supplement pills made me throw up, I started researching and playing with spreadsheets to find ways to get better nutrition through real food, and pack it into as small a volume as possible to account for my appetite. I was very surprised by the results. This list is the bare-bones version of that research.)

I'm still doing research to try and come up with a similar list for livestock feed, to supply those meats, eggs, and milk without having to buy supplemental feed.

Other gardening stables, just because I love growing them:

Beans (both green and dry)
Corn (I alternate between flour and flint)
Squash (both summer and winter)
Melons
Garlic
Berries
Other assorted fruits
Beets


I'm sure I'll think of more.

Looks like squash and potatoes are winning the pole. Not surprised, they are pretty traditional and can produce lots of food that keeps good. I wish they grew better for me.

It's harder to grow potatoes here than used to be but I do still grow them. I don't consider them a staple in my little garden anymore cause in last few years I lost an entire crop to a late freeze. I admit I had planted pretty early but they looked beautiful, almost ready to bloom when they got froze down to the ground. Other years they make ok, but not great cause of hot dry weather. That's why I didn't replant after that freeze, cause I knew it would get hot before they matured. If I plant later to avoid possibility of late freeze there is near certainty of hot dry. I was excited when I got seeds from folks in trades but my tries at getting seeds and keeping the little tubers for the next year have been pretty pathetic.

I love winter squash but have never been overly successful at getting a solid harvest. Last year was a very good year, I had beautiful vines that stayed healthy and produced enough to last into the next year. I planted those Tetsukabuto F1 and and some other Japanese kinds as well as butternuts and some others. Even got lots of seeds from the Tetsukabuto. I expanded the patch this spring and they looked great at the end of May. Then cool rain set in first three weeks of June and they never recovered. I planted another patch thinking a get a few late ones and they also looked good but the bugs came in mass and killed them all. I didn't get any squash this year. We visited a farm in Kentucky this fall and they had wagons full of beautiful squash. I asked and they said theirs were just getting going in June and they lost some but most recovered, they sprayed the bugs.

I don't like have so many eggs in one basket but sweet potatoes are replacing both potatoes and squash for me. I'll keep growing potatoes and squash but not counting on them as staples anymore and not devoting a lot of space or effort into breeding them.

I don't know how to complete the poll.

Are you asking what are staples to me for eating or staples in growing? I would assume the first question and if im correct then sweet potatoes are consumed in great quantity at all times,  but I don't grow sweet potatoes yet.


These are two different questions:

What are considered staples in your diet?

Vs.

What are considered staples of production in your garden / farm?

Quote from: Andrew Barney on 2019-11-25, 07:07:14 AM
I don't know how to complete the poll.

Are you asking what are staples to me for eating or staples in growing? I would assume the first question and if im correct then sweet potatoes are consumed in great quantity at all times,  but I don't grow sweet potatoes yet.

These are two different questions:

What are considered staples in your diet?

Vs.

What are considered staples of production in your garden / farm?

My curiosity is what do/would folks focus on to produce a good portion of or even all of their own food.  Whether they do that by choice or necessity. What are the crops and why choose them?

For me the nutrition or calorie content of a crop is certainly important but actually takes a back seat to whether or not I can reliably grow it in sufficient quantity. For example if crop A was highly nutritious but very difficult to produce I might choose less nutritious crop B if I could easily grow lots of it.

I don't currently live on sweet potatoes and beans but if I wanted or had to make it on just my own garden they would be very high on the list. Happily they are both filling and nutritious but just as important is I can grow them more easily than any other substantial crop that I've tried so far. I have never experienced a total failure of either one.

I've found sweet potatoes easily store just at room temp even past time to plant the next year so there is potential for year round food even if you eat mostly the greens at the start of a season. As for greens sweet potatoes can easily be grown in a south window over winter, don't even need a green house.  Their seeds keep for years even if not frozen.

I've planted beans seeds that were 5 years old or more with near 100% germination and they were not frozen either. Dry beans stored well and freeze treated to make sure there are no bugs keep good for a long time.

I don't want to stop growing other stuff but I consider a lot of it to be secondary for lack of a better word. Tomatoes, lettuce, chard, radishes, mustard, turnips and so on but even they have to meet the test of being relatively easy for me to grow. 

I'm just curious about other folks choices and reasons because I want to expand my own selection of core staple crops. I'm particularly short on green leafy things I think and am working to breed/select for winter hardiness so we can have them fresh for a longer part of the season.

I'm more than a little tired of "trialing" individual varieties of about anything so I hope to acquire diverse mixes of some new stuff for next year. Top of the list is cowpeas, I already have a supply of them but also gonna get some tepary beans and peanuts.

O' and I'm gonna expand with my corn. Even if I have to kill every squirrel and coon within a mile.

It seems as though most of you are interpreting "staple" to mean something you eat a lot.

I voted just for squash and potatoes because I harvest and store them, then eat them over the next year.  However, maybe my definition of "staple" should be expanded. I have boxes of apples, and I also store other crops, like dried tomatoes, and  frozen fruits and vegetables.  Then there are the plants that grow and are harvested all year.

I really think that some of what the "How to Grow More Vegetables" book by John Jeavons is highly relevant to any discussion of staples. Not many of us are vegan, but if we were, or virtually had to be for reasons of necessity. It is interesting to think about growing your own in that context.

Jeavons lists just seven root crops as being extremely important: potatoes, sunchokes, salsify, sweet potatoes, parsnip, garlic, and leeks. They are both highly productive and high enough calorie to live off of. The list convinced me to try growing salsify and leeks. I ended up fall planting some seed of both. Will see if they germinate survive the winter and make a seed crop for me. I don't think I can grow sweet potatoes yet, though a breeding project makes sense if I ever have time. The other four I'm already growing. Or have grown. My true seed grown potatoes died out when I tried to let them overwinter in the ground a second year. 

I think flour, flint, and or dent corn make a lot of sense in a garden context.

Some kind of legume makes sense. Favas seem the most carefree legume in my garden. Though only with early seeding which I learned from Joseph.

Sunflower seeds make sense for an oilseed.

According to Jeavons we should actually think of squash as a smaller dietary portion. It sure is an easy vegetable to grow though.

I'd really like my soil to be as productive as John Jeavons is. Not sure about all the double digging though. Tried one bed this year. Will see how it does.

Quote from: Diane Whitehead on 2019-11-25, 09:01:43 AM
It seems as though most of you are interpreting "staple" to mean something you eat a lot.

I voted just for squash and potatoes because I harvest and store them, then eat them over the next year.  However, maybe my definition of "staple" should be expanded. I have boxes of apples, and I also store other crops, like dried tomatoes, and  frozen fruits and vegetables.  Then there are the plants that grow and are harvested all year.

I think thought about casually it is anything you grow a lot of. Though I think if we were super serious about growing our own or about feeding people calories it's a far more restrictive list. Like per John Jeavons squash might not count.

William - You spoke of being new to leeks and planting autumn, try sowing in spring and transplanting in to deep shafts early summer, you'll have large plants by the end of the growing season that should still make it through to spring, if they can survive winter in Quebec they should ok for you

I'm in the same position, Reed, of trying to expand the core staples that I produce myself.
I could make a list of the things I've stopped buying over the last 9 years.
First would be seeds of everything.  By growing some and swapping some I have basically stopped buying seeds - but I acknowledge there have been things I wanted and couldn't get my hands on.  I bought carrot seed last year, and my experiment of 'carrots after tomatoes in greenhouse then grow out for seed' was a big fail due to aphid infestation.  So I have a way to go yet to establish a seed inventory to cover all needs for the staples I can and will grow and eat.
Tomatoes are the first crop I stopped buying, and peppers.   Mainly in greenhouse or indoors (peppers).
Green onions and leeks - successfully established perennial patches of these.  We also have rhubarb, currants, sunchokes (don't use) and perennial arugula now (2 yrs so far).  I dispute that sunchokes could be considered a staple?  More of a dubious condiment to me.  ::) :P
Garlic next.  Discovered animals don't bother garlic.  Easy to produce all we need.
Peas I grow every year but I need to work on my selection and seed saving to grow as many as we can eat (do love peas!).
Leafy greens of all kinds.   I don't buy any, it's true there are gaps in supply from time to time but I just tough it out until I can get more going. Lettuce, bok choy, yu choy, arugula, mizuna and more have turned out to be very easy to grow under lights in a cool room in the winter.  So the lights I bought for tomato starting are now in use from fall to spring.   It may not be much for calories but for health it's very important.  The quality of produce grown indoors winter is also great - no bugs, no 'lashed by foul weather or hot winds' toughness, just primo tender stuff. :)

So the problem is, I'm not producing the core crops that really feed us in bulk - potatoes carrots and storage onions.
One side effect of growing more garlic every year is that I need 2X the beds for just a single year rotation.  That means finding alternate crops to fill those spaces in rotation.  I've done carrots, beets, potatoes, and tried barley, flax, triticale, peas, zucchini and bush beans with varying success but not enough to say I'm covering those in the garden.  Potatoes, carrots, onions are the three vegs I'm continuing to buy.
Incidentally, I found that row cover is the best deterrent for the usual suspects here: moose, hare, and squirrel.  They will leave my vegs alone and browse the medicinals and shrubs and grass as long as vegs are in a small bed festooned with white cover around or over it.

Reed, row cover and rotation is also the way to get brassica crops without insect defoliation.  I know someone who uses tulle in a warmer climate and that is just right to let air in and keep cabbage butterflies out.  Just jaw dropping to see the beautiful organic broccoli and cabbage grown under cover at my friend's farm.  :D   
Also, in conversation with gardeners across the world it turns out that chard is the one green that is a survivor no matter what - from coldest to hottest conditions.   Although our chard didn't do much this season (so cold overall, the lettuce and parsely never bolted from spring to fall).

My staples are honey, deer, sweet corn, greens, berries, peppers, onions, tomatoes, tomatillos, apples, carrots, beets, sunroot, asparagus, plums, cabbage, kimchi, eggs, chicken, squash, popcorn, peas, melons, pickles. By diversification into smaller quantities of lots of different kinds of crops, I feel like I am enhancing food security. Some years, the cool weather crops do better, other years, the warm weather crops thrive. I also feel like it enhances nutrition to eat lots of different types of things.

I grow a lot of beans, flour corn, and flint corn They are more valuable to me as seed than as food, so I don't eat them often. A lot of the corn gets fed to chickens. I grow large amounts of wheat, barley, oats, and rye which are easy to grow. I rarely eat small grains due to their high carbohydrate load.

I listed kimchi and pickles as staple crops, because my strategy is that whatever suitable vegetables are available on any particular day can be added to the current batch.

I listed greens, because there are many species of both wild and domestic plants that I forage on during my daily activities. Sometimes, I gather them for culinary use or food preservation, but mostly these are eaten as found. I listed berries for the same reason, there are a lot of wild and domestic fruit bearing species in my area that can be significant forage foods.

I didn't list sunflowers as a food, because the labor of eating them is more than I want to expend.

Though I checked corn I really mean the old corns: wheat, rye, oats and I have plans to expand this with millet, barley, sorghum and whatever other small grains can produce as well as wheat. This year was my first year growing corn and it was marginal at best though I will certainly try again because I do eat tons of corn in the form of polenta, popcorn and masa.

Though I checked beans I really mean lentils, and peas. I've had about as much success with beans as corn. Cool weather crops fit better into my current watering/ growing regime. I eat lots of chickpeas too though I have not grown them.

I didn't check squash mainly because it takes such a large space to grow so little bulk food. Though that is based on my own experiences. I recently bought a bunch of overstock pumpkins after Halloween for a $1 a piece and it's amazing how much delicious seed comes out of a single squash. As a dual purpose veggie-flesh and fatty, grain-like seed I can see how it would be considered a staple.

I would also include: onions, garlic, beets, peppers, tomatoes, turnips, and cooking greens like orach, spinach and arugula. These don't provide the bulk of my calories but they are usually cooked alongside the staples. They are more like staples for the staples.

Richard thanks for the tip on leeks. I should buy a couple more packets and spring sow. Had the packets in hand just used all the space for tomato projects this spring. So it wasn't until tomatoes were about done that I got the relatively short lived seeds that I thought should be planted in the ground. Will be curious to see if anything comes of them anyway. The local seed co-op has a variety they claim is winter hardy here.

Potatoes are by far the most versatile, reliable, and calorie dense crop that I grow.  They are also pleasant to eat consistently in large amounts.  I also eat a heck of a lot of carrots, turnips, rutabagas, parsnips, oca, ulluco, and mashua.  Sunflower family roots like sunchokes and yacon produce a lot of material, but I just can't eat that much.  I doubt that there are many people who can really use sunchokes as a staple crop, at least without processing them to reduce the inulin content.

Wish I could grow oca Bill, and we do so love them so much too. Dont know why they dont do well here

I wasn't really thinking of foraged or animal based things but wow, honey is a big one. I've thought about trying my hand at bee keeping lots of times but never followed through, maybe it's time to do that. I also forage and eat lots of cultivated things in season but as far as putting something up for winter from that, other than processed stuff like jellies or such not much. But then I remembered nuts, walnuts, hickory and especially pecans. Always collect lots of them each fall.

As far as animals the only ones I raise are chickens and an occasional turkey but don't think I could be self sufficient with them. Can't raise a big enough flock to keep up healthy bloodlines and of course they have to be fed too. Better to partner with neighbors on critters. I don't hunt much but we eat a lot of fish. Don't care for deer but they make good dog food. Squirrels and rabbits are abundant, not especially fond of either one as food. Wild turkey and geese are also abundant and they are both very, very fine eating IMO.

That Jeavons fellow doesn't have much useful to say it seems to me.  Doesn't he know that locations and conditions differ and accordingly so do crops? I'm sure me and mine would stave right quick following his advice.  I'm not fond of garden writers and advisers in general. Much prefer people who garden with their own little fingers and relate their experiences about it. What they do, why they do it, how it turns out and recognizing it might be different for others. Deppe, Kaupler, Lofthouse and people here on the forum have interesting and often useful things to say.

For me a staple, besides being nutritious a crop has to produce relatively easily and reliably in my conditions. It has to be sustainable which with few exceptions means it has to make seeds and it can't have any wild poisonous relatives.

And why in the world if squash grows well for them would someone not eat a lot of winter squash? I sure would and also potatoes if they were more reliable and made seeds in my climate.

reed:
"That Jeavons fellow doesn't have much useful to say it seems to me.  Doesn't he know that locations and conditions differ and accordingly so do crops? I'm sure me and mine would stave right quick following his advice.  I'm not fond of garden writers and advisers in general. Much prefer people who garden with their own little fingers and relate their experiences about it. What they do, why they do it, how it turns out and recognizing it might be different for others. Deppe, Kaupler, Lofthouse and people here on the forum."

Words of wisdom.
There are so many very different ways that successful gardeners use. After a few years most gardeners develop their own style of gardening. I wonder how many beginning gardeners have failed after following a "this is how to garden" book to the letter and have quit gardening in disgust.

Quote from: William S. on 2019-11-25, 08:19:00 PM
Richard thanks for the tip on leeks. I should buy a couple more packets and spring sow. Had the packets in hand just used all the space for tomato projects this spring. So it wasn't until tomatoes were about done that I got the relatively short lived seeds that I thought should be planted in the ground. Will be curious to see if anything comes of them anyway. The local seed co-op has a variety they claim is winter hardy here.

William, I will be really interested in hearing how your fall-sown leeks do. I have only had fall sown leeks germinate once, and I thought it was a bit of an anomaly. If I'm wrong about that it would be useful information for me to have.

I'm not sure if the leeks germinated and if so, I'm not sure if they are still making it. The salsify germinated and is still plugging along despite some leaf predation.

Will see what happens in the spring on the bed. Incidentally I planted them on my new double dug bed. First and only one I've ever made.

Incidentally I didn't follow the directions to the letter. Reread bits of the book after and noticed I made some substantial variances from it. I added more sand then recommended. I added some old sawdust down in deep. I didn't pulverize the lower layer of soil. Left it clumpy.

In fact I've never gardened from a book to the letter. I've also never really been a beginning gardener. I learned from my parents who learned from theirs probably back into time immemorial. Methods do change and adapt but there are consistencies as well. I learn things from books and they influence my gardening, but never completely. That Jeavons guy and his team do garden. So do most gardening authors. Some are shockingly ignorant newbies themselves who write to support their gardening habit. Thats a neat trick. Most have at least some small insight. Though take Pat Lanza for instance. I read an magazine article she wrote that preceded her book on lasagna gardening. Politely looked at her book on the store shelf. Pretty sure I got what I needed from the magazine. Never have enough mulch to really try mulch gardening like Ruth or Pat or that fellow with the wood chips. If I come into a source I may try it someday. Or I may garden however I have the means.

Thanks, William. I'll try to remember to ask you again in the spring about them.

I'm a lazy gardener; if plonking things into the ground works for me (and it does, after the application of a lot of manure) then plonking things into the ground is what I'm going to do.

Leeks is another disappointment for me, love them but ever time I tried to grow a crop leek moths ruined them all. Just thankful they didn't target my onions and garlic too.