Revisiting the Victory Garden : A Well Rounded Diet

Potatoes and Beans make for good eating, and if you buy some meat, catch fish, or raise chickens and ducks, you will have enough calories and trace minerals to live. But simply living isn't the same as living well. To live well you need variety and vitamins.  Depending on the space you have, and the mulch you can make, and the water you can distribute to plants, you can grow nearly anything from fruits to nuts. If you have the time and space, you can grow grapes or grains sufficient to make wine or beer and call it a victory, but the Victory Garden is about food and survival during hard times.

This last installment of the Victory Garden series is a discussion about the sorts of plants you can add to your Victory Garden to keep healthy year after year. These are the sorts of foods that put color on your plate and give you the thiamine, vitamins (A, B, C, E), magnesium, calcium, and a few other key ingredients for a happy life, not just a full belly.

There are no hard and fast rules for growing these crops since the types of plants are widely varied, but generally the plants I'm talking about are listed below in order of importance and stability. If you have to make difficult choices, grow potatoes and store the excess first. If there is still some room, grow beans and peas and dry the excess second. The list below is for those with more space than they can reasonably use for potatoes and beans. This post is a much bigger garden concept. One where you can potentially sustain yourself and your family for years. Today may not be all too dire a situation for us, but putting these thought into your head now allow you to formulate for the future and gives you something positive to do today.

The plants on the list below are put there in the order I think is most profitable from the daily  nutritional intake viewpoint. Saying this, it must also be said that there are many crops that are more immediately nutritious. Spinach, Kale, Broccoli, and Carrots, are all wonderful crops. But, except for roots like carrots, these crops don't store very well out of season and all are fairly monochromatic as menu items.

Grow all of the food you have room for, but feeding a family the whole year around means making practical decisions and storing foods for Winter and Spring eating to come.

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1. Squash, Cucumbers, and Pumpkins

There are two basic types of squash plants: Summer and Winter.

Crooked Neck Summer Squash

The Summer squash varieties are harvested in Summer, have a soft rind which is sometimes edible, but doesn't store well. Many people grow Summer Zucchini in their vegetable gardens, and you still might. The plants produce heavy harvests and are very much worth growing. Yellow Squash and Patty Pan are two more wonderful Summer varieties with a large followings. All of these are good to eat, but hard to store. So these should be grown only in quantities that you can eat fresh. Grow Winter varieties in much larger quantities to eat well through the off-seasons.

Patty Pan Summer Squash

Round Zucchini Summer Squash

Zucchini Summer Squash

Butternut Squash

Winter Squash is harvested in late Fall and has a hard rind which stores well. The best Winter variety choice is the Butternut Squash because it has a wonderful flavor, can be prepared in many ways, stores very well, and is extraordinarily nutritious.  Each cup of Butternut Squash provides:

• Vitamin A: 457% of the Reference Daily Intake (RDI)
• Vitamin C: 52% of the RDI
• Vitamin E: 13% of the RDI
• Thiamine (B1): 10% of the RDI
• Niacin (B3): 10% of the RDI
• Pyridoxine (B6): 13% of the RDI
• Folate (B9): 10% of the RDI
• Magnesium: 15% of the RDI
• Potassium: 17% of the RDI
• Manganese: 18% of the RDI

Acorn Squash is a good second choice for Winter Squash. As with Butternut, it grows well up until the first frost and stores easily. This is a much smaller squash fruit but has nearly as many uses.

Growing Squash

Growing squash and melons uses a lot of sunny space and well drained soils, so mounds make more sense than rows. Pots will work, providing that you give the tendrils space and the roots sufficient water and drainage.  The soil you use needs to be high in organic matter. Leaf and well  matured manure composts in mixes nearing fifty percent is ideal, but not required. A cheap way to get a lot of organic mulch is to collect leaves in the late Fall. Many neighborhoods with large street trees would likely be happy to have someone collect bag loads of the leaves and, with the Winter and Spring to break the stuff down a bit, they make a great compost in early Spring.

Corn, cucumbers, and beans can all be planted in with the squash. Corn is hard to store, so grow no more than you wish to eat in season. Corn can be frozen but is usually disappointing and with little nutrition left over afterward. Cucumbers store rather easily as pickles and offer a better payoff both nutritionally and as a menu item. Beans are always a good idea. You can also plant marigolds in with the plants to hold off the beetles too.

Harvesting and Storage

Acorn Squash

Harvesting is as simple as waiting for the tendril that feeds the fruit to wither slightly before cutting the fruit loose. Store  Winter Squash by putting the ripe fruits in a cool dry place, turning them every few weeks to allow air to move over the the skin more evenly and  avoid mold and fungus outbreaks. The Squash will last through the Spring and into the next Summer, so growing too much Butternut Squash is not easy to do if you eat it often. And, just as with beans and potatoes, the seeds you collect (wash and dry, then store in a paper sack), can be planted in the next year. 

Pumpkins

Pumpkins are an acquired taste. Most people like the taste of Pumpkin pies and cakes, but pumpkin chunks baked with a bit of sugar and spice takes some getting used to. Cooking pumpkin requires a lot of sugar and spices to mask the native flavors, but Pumpkins are easily grown, stored, and they are very nutritious. In many countries Pumpkin is common on Winter plates as a side dish. The bottom line on Pumpkins is that they are very good to grow, but not so much to eat. So it might be better to give the space over to Winter Squash.

Planting Pumpkins

Pumpkins require little care, not a lot of water, but lots of sun. The soils you can use are what farmers call "marginal". Once a Pumpkin gets established it will climb on nearly anything and grow whether you want it to or not. But it is easy to remove the plants as needed. My advice is to put pumpkins in where there is extra light and not much else. Preparing the soil with a bit of Manure compost will give the plants all they need to grow. Follow the seed packet instructions and they darned things will grow unattended, choking ot weeds better than anything else.

Harvest and storage

Pumpkins are harvested about the same way as squash Wait for the feeder tendril to wither and leave the stem on the fruits. Store away from light and turn the pumpkins ever few weeks to avoid rot. Pumpkins have a very think skin and store very well as they come from the garden. You might can pumpkin but the process is long without much payoff since they store whole and can be processed into food at any time. My advice is to process them into pie filling in Winter. 

Cucumbers

Cucumbers don't bring much to family nutrition, but they are easily pickled and so add life to otherwise dull plates. In Summer they make fine eating when soaked for a bit in vinegar with a bit of sugar and pepper or garlic. In Fall the bet thing is to pickle them and keep them in the refrigerator, or learn to make fermented pickles which do well at room temperatures.

Growing

Cucumbers are a bit of a fussy thing to grow, but once established are hard to stop. They climb on anything they can and won't do well laying on the dirt. They require lots of sand and compost mixed into the soils and regular water during fruiting of about an inch a week deposited directly on the roots. Watering leaves will lead to rot and plant stress. Cucumbers set fruit quickly once planted in the ground and grow from seed easily once the hot weather hits the soil.  Make sure to put out cucumber beetle traps and spray with the same detergent solution as described in the first Victory Garden article if the numbers of bugs gets too high.

Harvesting

Harvesting must be done daily or you'll soon find huge yellow fruit where smaller green fruit is more useful. Better to grow Cucumbers with the Tomatoes where they will receive as much attention. 

Storage

Storing Cucumbers means pickling and pressure canning, or fermenting for storage at room temperatures.

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Tomatoes and  Peppers

While caloric light-weights, Tomatoes and Peppers grow prolifically, store easily, and add thousands of menu items to the list of possible recipes. Both of these two types of plants ought to be eaten fresh in season, both carry a heavy load of vitamins and minerals which make fine Summer eating. The excess of both types are easily to preserve for Winter eating and the canning process doesn't decrease the vitamins or mineral delivery out of season.

Peppers

There are two broad categories of  peppers:

1. Hot Peppers carry capsacin, the chemical which brings the heat to dinner. capsacin is known to dramatically increase metabolism (evidenced in sweating), but has few other heath benefits. The peppers themselves carry large doses of vitamins A, B7, B12, C, E, and Folate. But these healthy vitamins are not at all dependent on the capsacin being in the peppers. The flavor of these hot varieties often are masked by the heat. Anaheim and Poblano Peppers are low in heat, large in size, and make the great pickled peppers. 
2. Cool, or sweet, peppers carry little capsasin, so they are generally not hot, but do carry the same amounts of good stuff.  They also add a flavor which some people simply don't tolerate very well. Sweet peppers, particularly Bell Peppers, are not universally loved.

There is a third, more modern, set of "cool" peppers, these are crossed breeds like "Cool Jalepeno" and "Cool Habenero". These are wonderful varieties which bring all of the rich flavor of the hot varieties without the heat. I recommend the Cool Jalepeno, (especially for canning).

Both types are good to have in the garden and, just as potatoes pair well in the garden with beans and onions, Peppers pair well with Tomatoes. This increases yield without adding much space for growing them.

Growing Peppers

Peppers like a high heat environment, so their growing season is short in Northwestern Oregon.  We solve a bit of this problem by starting the plants indoors from seed. When the plants put on their second set of full leaves you might want to cut the new growth off using a clean sharp scissor to encourage branching and higher yields. Keeping the plants in their pots in the house until late May is a good idea. Once the sun shines hot most days it is time to move them into the garden. Make sure to "harden off " the your plants by putting them near an open door or window a few days before putting the plants into the garden.

Peppers have strong roots and stems, usually not requiring any sort of support unless the soil is too loose to keep the plants upright. The plants grow very well in heat above eighty-five degrees and begin setting fruit soon after becoming established. Peppers demand well drained soil but are not at all fussy about over-watering. Build your soil using more mulch because peppers like a moist soils. Both peppers and tomatoes like a lower acidity level than most other plants, so try to include a large quantity of Peat Moss into the soil mix.

Except for mildew, peppers are fairly disease resistant, unlike tomatoes. Water ought to be delivered as close to the roots as possible early in the day, never in the evening. A half inch of water per week is a good general rule for watering. Fish emulsion fertilizers are the best naturally balanced type for peppers.

Harvesting and Storage

Peppers don't need a daily harvest. Plan for a twice weekly harvest and don't worry at all that the fruits won't last on the counter. You can collect peppers for a month or so before you need to do something with them.

Putting the fruits in a basket and storing them in a cool place will likely make them last well over a month.  But if you want to have this fresh flavor in Winter and Spring you will need to preserve them by canning after removing the seeds and stems before-hand. Make sure to wash the fruits well before cutting them and wearing latex or vinyl gloves when handling hot peppers is always a good idea.

At the end of the season, allow a few peppers to remain on the plants until fully ripe. Pick them if there is any sign of mildew. Cut these few open and wash the seeds for dry storage and for making next years crop.

Tomatoes

Beefsteak Tomoatoes

People love to grow tomatoes in Summer because they are fun to grow and usually very good at producing fruit. Some tomatoes are sweet, some a bit more acidic. The sweet varieties are hard to store, but both types are good for eating in-season and for canning.

Tomatoes are high in Phosphorous and Potassium, and have a lot of vitamin C.

There are many types of tomatoes, and many varieties within these types.

• Beefsteak tomatoes are your traditional tomato, Usually large, plump, and round. Within this type are most slicers and some sauce tomatoes.
• Cherry tomatoes. are small and round, grape, or pear shaped. They are sweeter the beefsteak tomatoes. These can be eaten as they come and are wonderful on salads.
• Cocktail tomatoes are a golf ball sized tomato. These are very good for juicing.
• Roma tomatoes are wonderful when fresh, but are also very well suited to making sauces because of their low acidity. 
• Heirloom tomatoes are too many to describe. I won't spend time on this here.

Cherry Tomatoes

Cocktail Tomatoes

I'll going to leave Cherry and Cocktail Tomatoes out of this list since they are nice to have but store poorly. For the Victory Garden to work as it should, you ought to be able to serve the fruits as they emerge from the garden and preserve the excess for eating out of season.  You may well preserve the Beefsteak varieties by canning and the your best bet for this is the Superbush variety for making sauces and paste. But the best overall tomato crop is the Roma tomato since is slices, dices, juices, and sauces very well.

Heirloom Tomatoes

Planting

Unlike most other crops, Tomatoes like more sand in their mix. The best sandy loam mix is sixty percent sand, thirty percent organic mulch, and some remaining clay. Make sure to get river sand or you might get salt into your garden soil. Strawberries also love sandy loam and grow very low, so inter-cropping these will add another crop while reducing the available light for weeds. You can also put parsley in with Tomatoes without danger of adding another flavor to the fruits.

Starting your plants indoors in March will give you a leg up on the season. Plant the starts after any chance of frost has passed. 

Trellising tomatoes, or caging, works well for keeping these fast growing plants in check, but nothing beats pruning for keeping the fruit well formed and diseases away. Make sure to only deliver water to the roots, never the leaves, since water promotes mildew. Fertilizing tomatoes is easily done. Epsom salts, fish fertilizers, and composted Horse or Cow manure applied to the surface layer of the beds will work well. Since tomatoes use up a lot of Potassium and Phosphorous you should fertilize twice monthly when fruiting to keep sugar production up.

Harvest and Storage

Tomatoes don't sit around very well. They are high in sugar and have very thin skins so mold forms quickly and ruins the fruit. You should harvest tomatoes every day and keep them at room temperature until you have time to prepare them for storage or eat them in season. Keep tomatoes separated from each other until used or processed to avoid early mold and fungus..

You can removed the skins by hot water blanching, then can the skinned whole tomatoes in a simple hot water bath canner, or you might want to cook them into sauces and can the sauce for use throughout the year. If you use meat in your sauces, then canning requires a pressure canner to safely store the sauce. 

Spaghetti Sauce is a favorite for canning, but leaving the spices out will allow for many other things, (such as chili and soup) later on. Plain tomato sauce needs inclusion of citric acid or lemon juice to preserve color and flavor. Freezing tomatoes destroys the texture of the fruit and cuts nutrition.

Onions and Garlic

Edible bulbs, like onions and garlic are absolutely the right sort of choices to make when planning your Victory Garden. Nothing brings the flavor to dishes better than onions and garlic. You can harvest onions every season, replanting those you find too small to use, and have a good crop which stores easily. The one problem with onions is that the sustainable crop probably won't look like those found at the grocery store unless you put in onion "sets". These are merely baby onions which go into the ground to grow larger. If you leave onions in the ground they will propagate there, but the resulting fruits may not look much like the store bought.  

Planting Onions

We routinely plant onion sets bought in late Winter, but most onions stored in the pantry will sprout in the Spring and do very well when re-planted. Onions inter-crop with potatoes well and should be planted in rows between the potato plants where the discourage beetles and other bugs, as well as rodents. Onions take very little room to grow, so planting them wherever you have a little space is a good idea.

It is usually  possible to buy  onion "sets" for planting in early Spring and this is by far the easiest way to get the job done. But you can plant pantry onions once they have sprouted too. The root side of an onion, used in meal preparation, can often be regrown as well. (Just put the bottom of an onion, the end with the roots showing, onto some moist soil in a pot and wait a few weeks for green to sprout.  Often there will be more than one sprout emerging so one onion can become as many as eight onion plants once you carefully cut them apart and remove any of the old onion remaining.)  Onions grown from seed are a major hassle project so I will leave this out for now.

Varieties of onions are many, but for the Victory Garden we just need three.

1. White Onions are often spicy, sometimes even hot, and most often used in meat and vegetable dishes. Baby whole white onions are popular in roasting and large onions chopped over soups, stews, and chili dishes is wonderful.
2. Yellow Onions are a bit sweet and best for cooking in sauces. You will need twice the Yellow onions as the other two.
3. Red Onions are wonderful raw and add color to dishes. These are usually mild, but have a distinctive flavor.

All three types plant as you might a daffodil. Just press them into well drained soil, about six inches apart, pointed side up, and mulch right on top of the dirt. The mulch will feed the plants as they emerge and keep weeding to a minimum.

Harvest and Storage.

Onions are finished when the leaves begin to wilt slightly or when the plant tries to begin making seeds by flowering. Flowering in Onions is called "bolting" and so if a flower stalk begins to emerge it is best to harvest that plant right away and remove the stalk because it will no longer put energy into growing the onion fruit any larger. (A "Walking Onion" is one which goes to seed, the flower stalk then falling over and creating a new onion site.)

Harvest is as simple as pulling the plant up by its leaves and leaving the onions out in the shade for a day to dry the outer skin. Never wash onions until needed for use since it increases the chances of rot. Store your onions by braiding the leaves and hanging the braids in a cool dry place. Or you can put them in a mesh bag. The only thing to be sure of is that the storage onions get enough air to stay dry. Some people like to dehydrate chopped onion too. If you have the equipment then this is a fine way to preserve you crop indefinitely.

Garlic

Garlic comes in cloves, or bulbs grouped tightly together. Most grocery store-bought garlic will grow just fine so seed garlic is plentiful. The planting and harvest of garlic is much the same as with onions, but inter-cropping garlic ought to be avoided since mature garlic in the ground may make other plant fruits a bit sour tasting.

Garlic takes 270 days to grow, so planting garlic is best done in early Fall for harvest in Early Summer. Prepare the ground using a great deal of organic matter, we use straw sewn directly into the ground because it provides drainage in Winter and plant food in Spring. Break the cloves you have into single bulbs and plant them four inches apart.

Harvest at nine months. You probably won't have the same results as the Farmer who sold you the cloves, but you will definitely have a sustainable product every year  from the first purchase. Whatever you get out of the garden should have its leaves braided and then hung dry in shade until used. The longer a garlic is hung, the heavier the flavor will become. Replant one bulb to get twelve new cloves of garlic. It is hard to grow too much.

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Other possibilities.

The list of foods you will need to grow to establish your garden as a viable supply of food, a Victory Garden, is short. Potatoes, Beans, Squash, Tomatoes, and Onions, ought to give you plenty of food choices. These alone are a Victory Garden. Growing all of these in sufficient quantities means you win. But there is always room for improvement in your diet.

Growing patches of herbs adds flavor while using little space or time. Basil is a favorite here at Creekside Farm. Rosemary, thyme, and parsley are perennial plants which require only planting them once.  The list of herbs you ill find necessary is short, Nearly every herb can be dried and stored easily for use the whole year around,

Carrots and radishes can be very finicky to grow, requiring purpose made soils with very little nitrogen in the mix. You will need a lot of peat moss and perlite mineral to make the light soils these root drops require, and no clay at all. These soils need annual renewal, so growing roots like this is a bit expensive. But, once you break to code, carrots and radishes store well, grow from seed well, and are hard to beat for nutrition with huge amounts of Vitamin A so it is well worth doing.

Cabbages, kale, and lettuce, along with broccoli and cauliflower are good nutritionally and fun to eat in-season, but these require a lot of water, time, and care. Storage of these crops is pickling. Making fermented Kim-chee using carrots, and garlic is really the only way to extend the life of these plants once harvested.  Fermenting plants is an investment in time, cash, and know how.

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I am sure there are other good choices for your garden, but the Victory Garden is not about luxurious  eating, just about subsistence eating. So making choices about what you put your time into is like planning your savings account investment: How much do I need to put in so that I can withdraw enough to get by for a long time?

The simple answer is that an adult needs about four pounds of food per day to thrive while doing laborious work.

How you grow it, how you store it, and how you prepare this four pounds a day requires that you do some careful planning, planting, and storage. What the food looks and tastes like is completely up to you.  The Victory Garden can produce enough food, if planned well, if considered carefully, and if understood by all who will eat from it as necessary.

Not everyone can do it, most simply don't have the space, but whatever space you have, whatever sunlight there is, will allow you to do some of it, reducing your food costs and increasing your self-esteem and general health. But before any of this good stuff  can take place, there is some learning to do, some plans to make. And there is no day better than today to start.