Hi, I'm Marjory Wildcraft, and back to my garden.
Today we're going to be talking about survival gardening in the heat.
We're here in Central Texas.
Right now, it's about 60 days that we've had that are over 100 degrees.
Let's talk about how you would possibly grow food under these conditions.
First of all, I've done a lot of interviews with older Texans in their 70's and 80's,
and asked them what it was like especially if I live in rural environments.
A large majority of them were not gardening at this time of the month
... at this time of year.
This is August right now.
Most of them got their gardens in March, and were working them, and had everything harvested,
and processed, and canned, and done up by mid-June or July at the latest.
They weren't out here at this time trying to be involved in this.
They'd go back into...
They might be working on seeds, but they would not be back into the gardens until September
to get things going again for the fall garden.
The very first thing is don't garden in this heat if you don't have to, but we're talking
about survival gardening, and you may need to be out here trying to grow food at this
time.
What are some of the things that you can do?
The most classic and well-known foods that you can grow that do well in heat, in drought,
in tough environments like this are black-eyed peas, okra, and also sweet potatoes.
Actually sweet potatoes do really well when they're slightly stressed, and they grow
bigger tubers.
These three foods, the black-eyed peas and the sweet potatoes especially have a lot of
caloric value.
The okra of course is a nice green that will have some more nutritional content for you.
Also today, I want to talk about three other plants and crops that you might not have considered
that are doing well in this kind of conditions and in this kind of heat.
The first one I'm going to talk about are lambs quarters.
This is a lambs quarters bush.
This is typically about the size it grows.
Itís a common weed throughout the United States.
It does seem to like a lot more fertility.
Often you'll see it, especially if you have an area where your chicken manure has been
piling up for a while; the chickens love to eat the seeds that this produces.
One of the wonderful things about this clearly has a good time is not at all been fazed by
even the 108 degree days that we've had.
That's a 108 real degrees.
Not any kind of index.
That's what the temperature was.
It's a fresh green. It's very tasty.
You can either eat it raw, or you can cook it.
Like a spinach, unbelievably high in calcium and a lot of other nutrients.
It's a really great plant.
This is not going to be huge for calories, but it's a very good vegetable and nutritional
plant.
Grows super well, and then you can also collect the seeds, and save the seeds, use them to
grind them up and add to breads or soups or stews for more nutritional content.
Really, even just one or two is enough for a family of four.
Growing some more, and possibly drying the leaves later on that you could dry and grind,
and use as a flour, or just to add them to soups or stews for that extra nutritional
boost.
A very, very useful plant and it's probably already growing as a weed in your garden right
now.
Also, doesn't require very much water.
This is the lamb's quarters.
I highly recommend using this plant in a survival summer garden.
Next, we'll move on to a plant you probably haven't heard of.
It's called nutsedge.
This is another plant you probably heard about.
If you grow a lawn, and you think of it as a weed, it's called nutsedge.
I first heard about this when I was at the farm and garden store, and I was looking for
some feed for the wildlife.
They sell this as a crop for wild turkeys ... to attract wild turkeys.
What this ... They call it chufa.
What happens is this plant makes small little nuts on its root nodules about the size of
a pea, or about the size of your pinky.
They're actually very delicious little nuts.
This particular species has been grown, and it's still very close to its wild cousins.
It's a plant that's generally a weed, and very difficult to get rid of.
Those are the kinds of plants that you want to find and use, because this means this thing
can tolerate the heat, and it can tolerate whatever climactic changes that are coming
at with us.
I have not a whole lot of experience growing this, but my understanding is it's about
three months to maturity, where you would dig this up, and then dig up all those little
nuts.
I have eaten the nuts, and they are very sweet and nutty tasting, and actually a surprising
amount of calories.
This is nutsedge.
I want to bring that to your attention as another possibility for survival gardening
in the heat.
It doesn't really require a much care.
The next thing we're going to go to, and you might not have thought about this one,
is a Cana Lily.
This is a Cana Lily plant.
Actually, a neighbor gave this to me.
She gave me some of the tubers, and she said, "Hey Marjory, this is a great plant. It survives
anything."
Whenever anybody says that, I get excited.
"Great, I want to plant this to survive."
This is not really good for anything.
It makes these beautiful blooms.
It does make these beautiful blooms.
This is actually not as well as it could be doing.
This plant in better years is often six or eight feet tall with these magnificent blooms
everywhere.
I got to do some research, and she's right.
It does grow really well with a minimal amount of care.
It does like water if it can get it, but when it doesn't, as you can see it, it's obviously
surviving pretty well.
I did some research on this.
While this particular variety is more focused on developing beautiful flowers, it turns
out that the roots and tubers, or the roots that it makes and the rhizomes like a tuber
are edible.
It's a nice starch.
It's like a cross between a potato and a water chestnut, but a very simple plain starch
that you can make big chunks of it like a potato, and add it to soups and stews.
The real value of this plant that I really like is it survives, and it does well in this
crazy weather, and in the dry periods.
Then when it gets the chance in a wet period, it will just go crazy and explode, and you'll
get a huge amount of food production just from digging up the roots and the tubers.
This again is going to be a plant that will die back in the winter, so I won't be messing
with its tubers too much there, but you almost can't kill it.
You almost can't dig up all the tubers, and not have it come back the next year, and grow
back a whole another crop for you.
Another plant that's similar to this that has that same characteristic of being able
to withstand the very hard times may not produce a lot, but then will produce tremendously
when you do get the times with a huge amount of downpour is a bamboo, which is another
plant that again is a food.
It's also a building material and forage possibly.
Anyway, this is a Cana Lily.
It's available as an ornamental.
It's also available as a ... where they've developed it more for a food source.
As you may know, I'm very interested in food sources that I don't have to do much work
for.
These you just plant them in the ground, and leave them there, and then come dig out the
extra tubers around the edge as they grow them, and then leave a core base of tubers
to continue to regrow and resprout.
In tough years like this, it survives.
You'll get a little bit.
In years when you'd get a lot of rain, you'll going to get a lot of food production, and
it will be really easy.
This is the Cana Lily.
There are some great tips and suggestions for alternative food sources that you might
not have thought about for growing and survival gardening in intense heat.
This is Marjory Wildcraft. We'll see you on another video.