Food The Highest Calorie Crop You Can Grow

Bps1691

Veteran Member
Well done simple piece talking about the importance of calories and what you need to think about in growing a home garden for substances.

Good reminder during this year of the constant crisis after crisis. Especially with this latest insurrections and race riots going on.

Has good information on crops you need to consider to grow enough calories to feed yourself and family in limited spaces.


 

Wildwood

Veteran Member
Well done simple piece talking about the importance of calories and what you need to think about in growing a home garden for substances.

Good reminder during this year of the constant crisis after crisis. Especially with this latest insurrections and race riots going on.

Has good information on crops you need to consider to grow enough calories to feed yourself and family in limited spaces.


Very useful info...thanks for sharing.
 

Old Gray Mare

TB Fanatic
Here are a few guerrilla garden crops I've never seen posted on these type of lists:

Sesame. This is the same plant that produces sesame seeds that can pressed into sesame oil or made into tahini. I've read it's high in fats and calcium.

The plants have pretty pink flowers that produce the seeds. They would look lovely in a flower garden or bed. I think of it as a guerrilla garden plant because chances are good few would look at it and think: Food!

I've grown sesame in Pennsylvania from a bag of organic seeds designed to be used for cooking purposes.

The same can be done with the seeds in the bags of organic flax seeds designed to be used for cooking purposes. Mine had pretty blue flowers.

Another plant that produces fats and oil is sunflower. There are plans on the internet on how to adapt a home vacuum cleaner to use as a de-sheller. I haven't done it some of them look feasible.

Squash was mentioned in one of the earlier posts but I didn't see any mention of the seeds? Pumpkin seeds are edible and have a good percent of fat/oil. I'm not sure about other squash seeds. I wouldn't eat Turk's Turbine seeds because it's classed as a gourd.

Sweet Potatoes have morning glory like flower and make a nice trailing vine. They make a nice looking ground cover. Thinking edible ivy looking plant. Different types produce different colored leaves from shades of pale green to dark green some have a burgundy like color.

I'm not sure all sweet potato leaves (young buds and leaves) are edible. I've eaten them cooked like spinach. The tubers are good too!

Buckwheat produces a seed grain from flowers. It us used as a cover crop for disturbed ground and poor soil.

There are also ornamental millets that seed companies say make good wild bird food. Not sure if they'd be ok for humans.

Not all guerrilla gardens have to look like a weedy lot or forest edge.
 
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marsofold

Veteran Member
Mangel beets gives you the most calories of any crop PER SQUARE FOOT of garden. All of the grains, especially buckwheat, give much lower calories per square foot. If you have lots of space, buckwheat is the FASTEST yielding grain. Winter squash get you the most yield for the least labor since you only need to dig up the source hill for each vine cluster,
 

AlaskaSue

North to the Future
I can grow potatoes, cabbages, peas, greens, and beets without half-thinking about it. Onions, squashes and beans (all of which I'd really like to grow a great deal of) require some dedicated effort. Tomatoes and peppers grow well in the greenhouse, when I have one :) Sweet potatoes and peanuts are - alas - beyond me up here. Main effort will be getting things that I can grow safely stored; would love to create an earth-bag 6-foot-deep root cellar; would keep everything without freezing if done right. Caloric density is what I'm mainly going for in my veg gardens, as well as being able to store to the next harvest.

This year I am growing garlic and horseradish in addition to the usual herbs (parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, basil, dill, parsley, cilantro, lemon balm, mints); all doing very well so far :) The only grain I've attempted to grow was buckwheat, it was quite successful; barley is another that does well but I've not yet grown it here.
 
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