A sign of the times!

[forgeblast]

Zucchini!!!! how true that it shows up everywhere even when you dont plant it. My mother in law dropped off 3 zucchini breads after i gave her some zucchini--kind of defets the purpose of giving zucchini away. but i do cut it up and use it in soups all winter long, i have two gallon freezer bags full of it. But every spring i replant it.

The rhubarb will definatly need another year before harvesting.
the asparagus i can harvest a bit next year and then normal the year after that.
I got it from nourse farms, excellent stock there btw, i ordered 10 blackberry bushes 25 or 50 asparagus plants and was amazed at the quality. I can highly recommend them.

 

[dooleysm]

I planted asparagus seeds 2 springs ago. Over the course of this past spring I harvested about a handful from my 50' patch. It grew well this summer though so I'm hoping for better things this year.

I planted 2 rhubarb plants at the same time as the asparagus. I picked it twice last year (not picking all the stems either time). I think we had 4 pies, but we had to supplement all of them with a few strawberries to fill out the crust. One of the plants is doing significantly better than the other, which is about 3 feet away.

 

[Chuck52]

We get so much asparagus that we get tired of it. So far we haven't tried to put any up....I don't like canned asparagus much, but maybe frozen would be OK. Might make some soup out of it and freeze that.

I also get gallons of blackberries, and after DW makes all the jam she wants and we eat as much cobbler as we can take, we'll use the rest for wine. I make a semi-sweet wine and also a fortified sweet wine something like port. They go fast. They are good in sangria-like mixes, too.

One of the first thing any pioneer population has ever done is figure out a way to make alcohol. That would probably be a priority for the after-the-fall folks, too.

Chuck

 

[Oleozz]

Our sweet corn business has grown over the past three years partly because folks are looking for local produce. Have I made money on it, well no. Just to many expenses. If I counted my labor I would be in the hole big time. I enjoy seeing the corn grow and I always meet many interesting people during the selling process.

 

[forgeblast]

Speaking of local food, there are a lot of websites out there that list what farms are selling and where you can get it. A way that some schools around us make some money is by picking fresh sweet corn and selling them to help them raise money for trips. You could do a 50/50 split with them.
Did anyone catch 100 mile diet? It was filmed in BC. they took a town and they cold only eat food that came from 100 miles away. It was pretty interesting. I felt bad for the people who went cold turkey on coffee....one of the reasons we have a coffee plant growing in our house. The hardest thing for them to find was wheat, for sugar they used honey, and they were close to the sea so people boiled down sea water for the salt. Really makes you think when your eating an apple and you dont see usa, but Chile on the sticker.

 

[Taylortractornut]

I supply 2 cafes right now with the squash and zuccini and some okra. Last year I sold okra 8.50 for a 5 gallon bucket and this year at a market garden sale it was 45 a bucket. I still sell mine local for 8.50 depending the cost of the fetilzer. I sold a ton of tomatos this summer. I learned alot about the benfits of muching from another forum and had been buiding my soil. Muching saved aot of water and kept the weeds down. I cultivate with a FarmallCub but on the few things I hand planted I mulched with leaves and pine straw and soild hores bedding. When a weed popped up throw on some more mulch or pull it. I just turned the straw mulch under with a 22 inch Hester disc plow on one of the Cubs. The ground was great under neath and some i did last year was really great.

I also started my own plants and that I think was the biggest help because they didnt get root bound. Next month my blackberry plants are comming in. I have a south east facing hill across the road from the house that not doing anything so I may put in a mini orchard there with a row of black berries and some blue berris and mybe a few apple trees. I just hate to see hat space wasted.
Has anyone here tried inside bucket potatos yet. I just started some this week. I have a friend that does it by putting some soil in a bucket about 3 inches and then a little fertilizer and his cuttings. Then he puts in a layer of soil and then some straw and a some compost. He puts it in a south window or any one with a good lightand a grow light. he has a few buckets in his house and has just picked a bunch. he takes them outside and dumps them into another bucket and gets the taters. In the straw filled ones you can fish for them for new taters and not hurt the plant.