- How many calories can you realistically grow in a garden?
This is something I tried out four years ago
when I tried to live off of my garden.
And let's just say it went okay, I lost about 12 pounds.
Most of that was muscle, so I could do it a little better.
So that's why in today's video, I'm gonna give you
the seven best crops to grow for calories.
So keep in mind this video is about
caloric density of crops or energy density of the crop.
It's not about the nutrient density of a crop.
Maybe something like watercress would be a good example.
Extremely nutrient dense per gram of weight.
And it's also not about nutrient diversity
or how many different nutrients
are included in one particular crop.
Keep in mind these numbers will vary
based on your unique climate,
your unique growing variables.
But as a rule of thumb, this is about how much
you can get out of each of these crops.
Starting out with beans.
Kidney beans are thought to have
originated in Peru about 8,000 years ago.
But beans in general, any dried bean
is a fantastic source of not only calories,
but it's one of the few ways
to quickly grow a lot of protein.
It's a crop that loves full sun.
It maybe wants a little bit of a sandier soil than average
and you want to keep it evenly moist
and you really want to pick it as it goes
if it's a fresh bean.
If it's a dry bean, of course,
let those guys dry on the plant, take that plant out,
and then you can harvest those beans
when it is completely bone dry.
Let's talk calories in beans.
For all the crops in this video,
I'm standardizing to a four by four square foot
raised bed type of setup.
So you can get a sense for maybe
the average output in a home garden.
So with beans and kidney beans,
you'll get about one to four plants per square foot.
You'll get roughly two pounds of output in that bed
which equates to 3000 calories, 800 of which are protein.
So it's a huge ratio of protein to total calories
compared to some of the other crops
that you might grow in this video.
And I will say you don't have to grow beans in a raised bed.
You can grow them in grow bags, in rows,
in the ground, in in ground, sort of squared off beds.
I've done it all.
I've even grown them in a huge,
vertical green stock planter like you see here.
So a lot of flexibility, a lot of calories,
and importantly in a lot of protein.
Crop number two for calories is one
that I wish I had more success with.
I've done okay, I haven't done epic levels yet
and that would be sweet potatoes.
This is a crop that is really originating
back in central and South America,
although in Polynesia in a 1000 AD apparently,
there are remains of sweet potatoes.
So they've been around for a very long time.
This is a crop that needs a very long time to grow,
much longer than the actual humble potato
of which it is not really related to at all,
despite sharing the name.
It loves hot temperatures,
it loves a long growing season.
Ideally you want to give it a nice old big sort of barrel
or raised bed structure 'cause it's going to creep
and those tubers are going to form underground
and it wants a healthy amount of water.
But man, is it a calorie powerhouse.
In a four foot by four foot bed,
you can put about one sweet potato slip,
which is how they grow.
It's the shoot with the roots that then form the tubers,
about one per square foot.
So you can have about 16 in a single raised bed.
You're gonna get 26 pounds
of sweet potatoes on average out of that,
clocking in just under 10,000 at 9,840,
which if the average person eats 2000 calories a day,
I eat a little more,
it's five days worth of food out of one bed
and it's just one plant in the garden.
So it's one of the most
calorically dense crops that you can grow
and there's a million ways
you can prepare it in the kitchen.
Crop number three is one that
my brother actually cried when he brought to school
for a multicultural fair.
He cooked a big old bucket of quinoa
before it was popularized and no one ate a single bite.
And little do they know, they were missing out
on a calorie powerhouse.
This is a crop that is a grain
and you can grow grains in your raised bed garden
or your home garden.
We've done it with wheat here at Epic Gardening.
It's a fascinating plant.
Looks absolutely beautiful
and it really is pretty easy to care for.
Thought to have originated around Lake Titicaca
in Peru and Bolivia.
Quinoa is a nutritional powerhouse.
So what you wanna do with quinoa is
it's really more of a grain.
So you're gonna wanna broadcast that seed out over a bed
and it wants sort of loose, lowly soil
but it really wants minimal water,
especially if you're in an area that gets a lot of rain.
So it only wants about 10 to 15 inches of water per year.
What that means in layman's terms
is basically about a quarter of the water
that you'd give to your normal plants.
'Cause most plants want about an inch a week.
This wants about an inch a month
and none if the seedheads are forming
'cause you'll actually sprout the quinoa in that case.
So let's talk calories.
In a four by four square foot bed,
you can take four quinoa plants per single square foot
which will actually output you up to eight pounds
of quinoa per bed if grown really well at least.
And that equates to 13,550 calories
in a single four by four bed.
One of the most dense that you can grow.
I will say it's a little more challenging
to get to that amount,
but given you've grown it perfectly,
Crop four. My favorite crop of all time, arguably.
One I've named myself after,
the humble potato daddy of Epic Gardening.
Well of course it is the potato.
I have some right here in this round, tall raised bed.
This is the sarpo mira variety.
Supposed to be prized for its flavor,
not only for its calories.
But potatoes are hands down
my favorite crop to grow for calories.
They're the most versatile in the kitchen
certainly the one I know how to use the best
but they also grow incredibly easily.
I've grown them in ground, held up, not held up,
in a raised bed, in a five gallon bucket,
and in a grow bag and it all works perfectly fine,
provided you have the patience of a potato.
You have to make sure that these plants
die back almost completely
so that all of that energy and that moisture
et cetera has been sent down to those tubers.
So they're nice and plump.
'Cause when we're talking yield
we're talking some honking calories.
Calorically speaking, in a four by four square foot bed,
you'll probably plant about 12 potatoes
and at a theoretical max, assuming you grew them perfectly,
you'll get about five to seven potatoes per plant
and each of those could be up to a pound.
So you're looking at roughly 80 pounds of potatoes
and that's gonna be about 22 to 23,000 calories
which is an absolute boatload
of one of the most delicious plants that you can grow.
Crop five for calories.
One I grew and my budding days
as a young microgreen growing entrepreneur.
Now, if I had grown it to its full capacity
I would've realized its caloric potential
and that would be amaranth.
Cultivated by the Inca and Aztec peoples
six to 8,000 years ago, not only is it beautiful,
but it is an incredible grain crop
that you're gonna grow very similarly to quinoa.
It's one of those where if you do
have a natural rainfall pattern,
you do not want to give it a ton of water.
You could cut that watering by about a quarter
compared to how much you might water this cabbage here
or some of the other crops that you see in the garden.
But man, is it a caloric powerhouse.
In a four by four square foot bed,
you can throw about four amaranth plants in per square foot,
and each of those plants gives you
about six ounces or so, if you grow it really well.
So you'll get eight pounds out of that bed
which is not insignificant,
nor is the amount of work it takes
to actually get that eight pounds to usable form.
'Cause you do have to winnow that crop
and collect all of those seeds.
But it's worth it because you're gonna get
about 28,000 calories per bed.
Crop number six, it's great for calories,
might not be great for your GI system,
and that would be the Jerusalem artichoke,
lovingly called fartichokes.
I'll tell you, this might be TMI,
but for me they certainly live up to the name.
Not my favorite plant to grow,
but a fantastic plant to grow
if you are trying to grow calories.
There's not a very clear sense of when
and where Jerusalem artichokes originated.
But early settlers in Massachusetts learned
how to grow them from indigenous peoples.
They are hands down one of the easiest crops to grow.
If you're talking about, just put it in the ground
and forget about it.
Although it might be hard to forget about
because even a single tuber in the ground can proliferate
which is why if you're gonna grow 'em,
I recommend containers or raised beds
rather than tossing them in open ground like this.
Let's talk calories now for Jerusalem artichokes.
It's prolific and it's honestly a little bit scary
because what you can do is take one tuber per square foot.
So 16 in a four by four square foot bed.
Each single tuber will produce
at least 20 tubers off of that growth.
So it's hundreds, it's hundreds of tubers in that bed.
You'll get about 35,000 calories
worth of food outta the bed
and you can even take a few of those tubers off
and use it to propagate the next bed if you want to.
That's the thing with these, they are so prolific
they're almost a little bit of too much of a good thing
because at least for me, I struggle to digest them well.
And so you need to figure out
if that's a price you're willing to pay
to grow those calories.
Growing up half Filipino, this next crop
was a staple on my dinner plate growing up.
And that would of course be rice.
In fact, in Japan, I remember staring out of the train
and just looking at all these rice patties
and marveling at them and and really honestly
wishing that I could grow them
thinking that I couldn't because I needed
some sort of pond or some sort of rice patty.
And that might be the case with low land rice varieties.
But you can grow up land rice in containers,
provided you have nice rich soil.
You keep it consistently moist.
Never let it dry out, is what I mean by that.
And also give it a healthy amount of sun.
In a four by four square foot bed,
what you can do is plant an absurd 15 rice plants
per square foot, each of which will produce
about a third of a pound of rice per plant.
So you can get about 80 pounds
of rice well grown in a raised bed.
At least of the upland rice variety.
That equates to almost 48,000 calories,
easily topping out our best crops to grow for calories list.
And a little bonus for those of you
who have watched this long,
anything in a three sisters combination,
that being beans, any sort of squash, and corn
are also fantastic for caloric density.
But there are many different ways
to analyze what makes a crop good for eating.
Calories are just one.
There's also nutrient density and nutrient diversity,
which we'll get into in future videos.
If you want to grow any of the plants
that you just heard in today's video,
check out our seed company Botanical Interests.
If you need a raised bed,
check out our shop at shop.epicgarden.com.
Till next time, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.