I am Natalie and I am Chloe.
We are with the Wild Abundance Online Gardening School.
We are excited to share with you
ten of our favorite vegetables to plant
that will really feed you.
Winter squash, which includes pumpkin,
butternuts and butter cups
and all different kinds
and shapes and sizes of squash
that you can grow to store over the winter,
are an incredible staple crop.
Not only is the fruit edible,
but the seeds are edible and nutritious too.
What is more, they sprawl.
Most varieties sprawl
and cover a ton of ground
so you can plant them on the edge of your garden.
They will even climb up trees in some cases
and they can take up space
that you would not otherwise be able to cultivate.
Perhaps one of the best things
is that they are delicious in
sweet and savory dishes.
Beans are a super-rewarding crop to grow,
in part because they fix their own nitrogen.
So, that means they bring nitrogen into the soil
and they can thrive even in poorer soils.
There are lots of different kinds
of beans to grow,
some form dry beans like the ones
I am holding in these jars
and some form snap beans
or fresh bean pods like these ones.
There are also cowpeas and garbanzo beans
and lots of different kinds that grow well
in different kinds of climate.
Dry beans store well dried in jars like this
and green beans can be
pickled, frozen, or canned.
Sweet potatoes can produce a huge amount
of nourishing, filling food that stores well
after they are cured all through the winter.
They also can thrive even in poor soils
that are low in nitrogen.
They are less susceptible to fungal
and viral diseases than white potatoes,
which makes them a really great option,
especially in warm, wet climates.
One thing to keep in mind is that
they will not mature if it is very cool,
if you do not have a long, hot summer.
So, they are better for warmer areas
and less good for cool areas.
There are so many varieties to choose from
and grow in your garden.
Greens are full of nutrients
and an awesome thing to grow
because they mature relatively quickly.
They have become kind of
the center of a lot of people's meals
these days instead of just being a side dish.
Oftentimes, it will be everything over
a bed of lettuce or over a bunch of kale.
This is kale, which I love to grow.
This is madeley, which is an awesome variety.
I also like to grow cabbage.
I like to grow chard.
Beet greens are awesome,
and then a lot of edible weeds are fabulous.
Magenta spreen is a type of lambsquarters.
Chickweed is awesome.
Callaloo and then all sorts of cover crops
like winter peas can also be eaten.
Corn is another incredible staple crop.
When I am talking about corn as a staple crop,
I am talking about field corn or grain corn
like I am holding here.
Sweet corn is really more of a snack.
The amount of food that you can produce
with corn in even a small garden
is incredible and it stores really well.
It is also the only grain that is easy
to process on a small scale.
You do not need any machines to process it.
And when it comes to heirloom
or traditional varieties of corn,
there is an incredible diversity
of colors, flavors, textures, stories,
and it is much more nutritious
than anything you could buy in the store.
Zucchini and other summer squash
are enormously productive.
We have had plants that yield
well over 20 pounds per plant.
That is a lot of food.
It is not just boring, yucky food.
It is delicious food.
I love to fillet these
and put them in my barbecue.
I like to fillet them and make zucchini casserole.
I like to add them to stir fries.
They are so incredibly versatile.
We do have some pest issues with them here,
but it is just amazing how much food
they produce even so?
Tomatoes are an amazing thing to grow in your garden.
And who does not want to grow tomatoes?
They are iconic for the home gardener.
And I love to eat them raw with some fresh mozzarella.
I love to make sauces and salsas
and can them and store them
and then break them out and be like,
“Yeah, these are from my tomatoes
that I grew in my garden.”
So, whatever the case is,
you can really get a lot of food from one plant.
And they are just so delicious.
So, I really encourage you to grow tomatoes.
Garlic is a really fun and easy thing to grow.
You take one clove,
put it in the ground in the fall
and then in the late spring
you have a whole head of garlic,
all with relatively little labor in between.
It is not only a food, but it is also a medicine.
It is anti-fungal and anti-bacterial,
and it makes other foods taste really fabulous.
Potatoes:
also known as “the enemy of hunger”
by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda
and he knew what he was talking about.
They are an incredibly productive storage crop
that even your four-year-old
and your grandma will be familiar with
and will want to eat.
They are also really fun to dig up,
so they are a great crop to grow
in a community garden or a family garden.
They grow in even cool, moist soils,
and they are a really good option,
especially for northern climates
and places where other storage crops
like sweet potatoes just will not hack it
because ther is not enough heat.
Other root crops can really add
variety to your meals.
Beets, daikon, turnips and parsnips
are foods that grow in the cool weather
and they can generally be stored really well.
Beets and turnips can be stored
just in sand or in sawdust.
Daikons can be fermented to make fabulous kimchi.
These plants are really worth growing.
I highly recommend them for your garden.
Thank you so much for joining us
for ten vegetables that can really feed you.
If you want to learn more about these
incredible, nourishing crops,
we have a whole online class
about it that you can check out,
along with a bunch of other cool stuff,
at wildabundance.net.
Good luck with your garden! Bye!