Survival gardening in the heat

Most of them got their gardens in in March and were working them and had everything harvested and processed and canned and done up by mid-June, July at the latest. And they weren’t out here at this time trying to be involved in this. They’d go back into, they might be starting seeds, but they would not be back into the gardens until September to get things going again for the fall garden. So the very first thing is, 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.

And so 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 and drought and tough environments like this are black-eyed peas, okra, and also sweet potatoes. And actually, sweet potatoes do really well when they’re slightly stressed and they grow bigger tubers. So these three foods, the black-eyed peas and the sweet potatoes, especially, have a lot of caloric value. And then the okra, of course, is a nice green that will have some more nutritional content for you. But I also today 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.

And the first one I’m going to talk about are lamb’s quarters. So this is a lamb’s quarters bush. This is typically about the size it grows, and it’s a common weed throughout the United States. It does seem to like a lot more fertility, and 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 phased by even the 108-degree days that we’ve had.

And that’s 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. It 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.

And really even just one or two of these is enough for a family of four, say, and growing some more and possibly drying the leaves that later on that you could dry and grind and use as a flower, or just add them to soups or stews for that extra nutritional boost. 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. So this is lamb’s quarters, and 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. Now this is another plant you’ve probably heard about if you grow a lawn and you think of it as a weed, it’s called nutsedge. And I first heard about this when I was at the farm and garden store, and I was looking for some feed for the wildlife, and they sell this as a crop for wild turkeys to attract wild turkeys. And they call it chufa. What happens is this plant makes small little nuts on its root nodules. They’re about the size of a pea or about the size of your pinky, and they’re actually very delicious little nuts.

And this particular species has been grown. It’s still very close to its wild cousins, and it’s a plant that’s generally a weed and very difficult to get rid of. Those are the kind 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 out with us. Now 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 kind of sweet and nutty tasting, and actually a surprising amount of calories. So this is nutsedge, and I want to bring that to your attention as another possibility for survival gardening in the heat. It doesn’t really require much care. The next thing we’re going to go to, and you might not have thought about this one, is a cantaloule. Alright, this is a cantaloule plant, and actually a neighbor gave this to me. She gave me some of the tubers, and she said, Hey Marjorie, this is a great plant. It survives anything. Whenever anybody says that, I get excited.

I want a plant that survives. This is really not good for anything. It makes these beautiful blooms. Now this does make these beautiful blooms, and 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. But I got to doing 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, and while this particular variety is more focused on developing beautiful flowers, it turns out that the roots that it makes and the rhizomes like a tuber are edible, and it’s a nice starch.

It’s kind of like a cross between a potato and a water chestnut, but a very simple plain starch. 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, and then when it gets a chance in a wet period, it’ll 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 other 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 bamboo, which is another plant that again is food. It’s also building materials and forage, possibly. But anyway, this is a can of lily, and it’s available as an ornamental, and it’s also available as 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, and so 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 re-sprout. And in tough years like this, it survives. You’ll get a little bit. In years when you get a lot of rain, you’re going to get a lot of food production, and it’ll be really easy.

So this is the can of lily. So 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 Marjorie Wildcraft, and we’ll see you on another video. [tr:trw].