Sunday, December 28, 2014

"New" Home, New Year

This little house has a nice yard for a garden. The soil is in better shape than I thought, but still needs a deal of work to set up garden beds and amending the soil.



While I injured my knee during the move to this house, and it is still not healed, I was able to do far more in terms of physical work than when I started this blog. I do use a cane because of the banged up knee, and I still use the electric wheelchair at the grocery store, but I'm able to stand a good deal longer and walk much further than only a year ago. My weight continues to drop to the point where I now need to replace or alter all of my clothing. 

Building a garden large and varied enough to improve how I eat is key to my plans to continue to improve my health.

For the last few days, I've been working out how much to plant to feed us both fresh and preserved produce for the year. From there, I can work out how much square footage of garden needs to be built.

Part of my research involved old agricultural extension bulletins, and I compiled this list of quantities of foods needed per person over a year. 

Milk – 75 gallons – 5 ounces of cheese counts as 1 quart

Meat / Poultry / Fish -100 lbs broken up as: 40 lbs fresh, 30 lbs cured, 30 lbs canned (5 quarts)

Eggs – 30 dozen

Fats – 60 lbs as butter, bacon, oils

Sugars – 50 lbs (includes 5 lbs honey and 15 lbs molasses)

Vegetables – 300 lbs Tomatoes 2.5 bushels, can 30 to 40 quarts. Green vegetables 60 lbs fresh, 125 lbs stored (includes cabbage) 25 lbs canned (about 10 quarts)

Potatoes – 180 lbs sweet and white potatoes

Fruit and juices – 100 lbs fresh, 20 lbs dried (which is about 5 pounds after drying), 100 lbs canned (50 quarts)

Flour & Cereal – 160 lbs wheat (for bread and cereals)

Dry beans – 15 lbs dry peas & beans

Nuts – 10 lbs – 5 lbs each of peanuts and tree nuts

When I started looking at these numbers, I realized that when broken down to a weekly amount, I was not eating sensibly in far too many categories. I have been doing much better than I was only two years ago, but there is a lot more to be done.

I'm also planning to start setting up at the Saturday farmer's market when it re-opens for 2015 at the end of March. I will be able to sell my artwork and crafts there as well as produce from the garden. This figures into how I will plan amounts to plant. 

Here are the plants & numbers:

Beans – Broken across several varieties for both eating fresh and drying for storage. 45 plants total. Kentucky Wonder, Pole Lima, Speckled Calico, and Jacob’s Cattle Gold.

Beets – Succession planting for beet greens, baby beets, and beets for storage. 100 plants (or more) Using a beet mixture that has a wide variety of colors, sizes and days to maturity.

Cabbage – I like Gonzales Mini Cabbage, but I am also getting a mix packet for other sizes and days to maturity. I will likely have 10 plants.

Cucumber – I have experience with Lemon Cucumber, and the Poona Keera variety has some of the same qualities that I particularly enjoy. Both are never bitter, even if heat-stressed. 6 plants.

Eggplant – I’m growing a variety called Turkish Orange. They resemble orange tomatoes on tall, productive plants. 7 plants

Lettuce – I’m using a mixture of leaf lettuces that will be used in succession plantings. Per medical advice, I should be eating a salad a day, so I’ll be growing at least 70 plants.

Melon & Cantaloupe - I’ll be growing 2 plants in each of 4 varieties for 8 plants total. American Melon, Green Nutmeg, Minnesota Midget, and Hale’s Best

Onion – I’ll need to get sets locally – 100 sets. I’ll also plant a packet each of chives and bunching onions.

Pea - 70 to 100 plants in succession planting for both fresh eating and drying.

Peppers, HOT - This is Texas. I’m just not interested in bell peppers. 2 plants of Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Pepper) 5 plants of Chinese 5 Color, 5 plants of Black Hungarian, and 10 plants from the hot pepper mix packet. Ghost pepper is a mega-hot pepper in the million+ Scoville rating area. The house mate is growing them mainly for bragging rights, not for eating. Chinese 5 Color & Black Hungarian are both jalapeno-level peppers that have nice color and flavor.

Potatoes – Medical advice tells me to cut back on the white potatoes, so I am planning on having several sweet potato plants.

Radish – I really like radishes. A little butter, some sea salt… Radishes are so quick to grow, I’m not even going to put a number on these. I’m using a mix of colors, sizes, & days to maturity.

Spinach - I’m ordering a mixed packet. Again, I’ll be sowing these in succession for fresh eating and freezing. 180 plants overall.

Squash – I’ll be growing 2 plants each of Butternut, Acorn, Yellow summer squash, and Eightball zucchini.

Swiss Chard – I like a variety called Bright Lights. The different colors are interesting, and the ability to harvest repeatedly from the same plant is great. 20 plants total.

Tomato – I expect to end up with at least two dozen tomato plants. Rio Grande is a small paste tomato that tolerates a fair bit of heat. Aunt Ruby’s German Green and Kellogg’s Breakfast are two of my favorites. Both are great producers with fantastic flavor.

Herbs – Cutting celery is my answer to the difficulty of growing celery in this climate. I’ll have a couple plants of it, and will try to keep one plant in a container so as to keep it growing over next winter. The other edible herbs I’ll be growing are dill, oat grass, nasturtium, rosemary and several varieties of basil.

I’ll also have several varieties of sunflower, Hopi Red Dye Amaranth, Elcampane, Golden Marguerite, Indigo, Henna, Woad, and Black Hollyhock for use as dye plants.


A multiflora petunia mix and some marigolds will add to the appeal of the front yard, and I’ll be growing three varieties of gourds for crafts. Bushel gourd is used to make storage containers, Luffa gourds can be eaten like a summer squash when young, but the main use is as vegetable sponges / scrubbers. Spinner gourds are tiny bottle-shaped gourds that are useful for a number of crafts.

The house mate will be doing the heavy lifting of building the garden, but I do plan to do most of the planting and tending. This will also add to the total amount of exercise I do!

Thursday, December 4, 2014

The Self-Induced Disaster Of Packing And Moving

There is a quote from Benjamin Franklin - "Two removes equals one fire" 

I believe that he was understating the situation. Packing, storing my belongings, finding a new residence, moving everything, getting services arranged for, getting unpacked and reorganized has been a nightmare. It seemed that every aspect of this move has taken at least three times as much effort, funds, and time as necessary.

I'm still working on the unpacked and reorganized steps. Living in this swamp of boxes is leaving me somewhat unsettled and disgruntled.

The future garden site
I injured my knee during the move and I'm still not walking very well three weeks later. The fact that today is my 57th birthday is leaving me with the reminder that I don't heal as well or as quickly as I did twenty years ago.

There is some good news in the midst of this. My new neighbors have been very helpful. One young man came over when we were unloading, and gave some much needed assistance. Another neighbor has offered his help in getting a washing machine set up in the house.

I am truly looking forward to building a productive garden in both the front and back yards. The dappled shade here will help keep a garden productive even in the north Texas summer heat.

One of my favorite seed catalogs arrived this week, and I've been enjoying reading the descriptions and dreaming of tomatoes, peppers, and summer squash.