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How To Get a Lot of Food From a Small Garden
This 12x12 garden should produce about 10kg vegetables, 2kg rabbit meat and 5 dozen eggs if properly maintained. Everything can be built from scrap material. It’s ideal for a small compound with an internal, reliable water supply. Depending on the size of your group you can obviously make this garden bigger.
Planning the garden.
The livestock pen holds 4 breeding rabbits in cages and 12 laying hens on deep litter. For sustainability you can keep one or two roosters separate, only bringing them in when you want chicks. Half of the garden grows vegetables all year round. The other half grows his protein leaf crops to feed to the livestock – although your survivors would also be able to eat a bit of this. You will need about 200ℓ water daily.
The Livestock House
Your livestock house will be a small building 6m long x 3m wide x 2m high. It should be nice and airy, providing shade and shelter from the elements. The walls should be made of wire netting and the roof of thatch.
Crops for Livestock
Comfrey is a fast-growing high-protein crop which grows all year round. Grows best with manure or deep litter. Plant the comfrey 1m apart. Comfrey can be harvested frequently, and rabbits and chickens go nuts for it.
Kale is a nutritious leaf crop of the cabbage family. It’s frost-resistant and will grow well in winter. Plant between rows of comfrey. Two crops will provide plenty of leafy green veggies for throughout the winter.
Vegetables
Use deep litter from the livestock unit and compost made from grass or weeds to improve your soil and give you vegetables all year round. Divide the garden into different sections as in the image below, and rotate clockwise every year to reduce diseases and stop the soil from dying.
You will see that if you rotate the garden plan above, clockwise, the leafy vegetables will be on the plot previously occupied by the beans or other legumes. This is because beans and peas make their own nitrogen in the soil, while leafy greens use up a lot of nitrogen, so everything works out fine.
Don’t plant onions in soil that had beans the previous year, because the nitrogen will make the skin thicken, and then it will be more easily attacked by diseases.
Planning the garden.
The livestock pen holds 4 breeding rabbits in cages and 12 laying hens on deep litter. For sustainability you can keep one or two roosters separate, only bringing them in when you want chicks. Half of the garden grows vegetables all year round. The other half grows his protein leaf crops to feed to the livestock – although your survivors would also be able to eat a bit of this. You will need about 200ℓ water daily.
The Livestock House
Your livestock house will be a small building 6m long x 3m wide x 2m high. It should be nice and airy, providing shade and shelter from the elements. The walls should be made of wire netting and the roof of thatch.
Crops for Livestock
Comfrey is a fast-growing high-protein crop which grows all year round. Grows best with manure or deep litter. Plant the comfrey 1m apart. Comfrey can be harvested frequently, and rabbits and chickens go nuts for it.
Kale is a nutritious leaf crop of the cabbage family. It’s frost-resistant and will grow well in winter. Plant between rows of comfrey. Two crops will provide plenty of leafy green veggies for throughout the winter.
Vegetables
Use deep litter from the livestock unit and compost made from grass or weeds to improve your soil and give you vegetables all year round. Divide the garden into different sections as in the image below, and rotate clockwise every year to reduce diseases and stop the soil from dying.
You will see that if you rotate the garden plan above, clockwise, the leafy vegetables will be on the plot previously occupied by the beans or other legumes. This is because beans and peas make their own nitrogen in the soil, while leafy greens use up a lot of nitrogen, so everything works out fine.
Don’t plant onions in soil that had beans the previous year, because the nitrogen will make the skin thicken, and then it will be more easily attacked by diseases.
Jaggedrain |
Latest page update: made by Jaggedrain
, Mar 29 2010, 11:23 AM EDT
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Keyword tags:
Farming
Food
Homesteading
Sustainability
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| warhamer | Repellant Plants | 13 | Yesterday, 12:33 AM EDT by renet76 | ||
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Thread started: Apr 30 2010, 8:19 PM EDT
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I liked to point out a big flaw in your growing design you do not have any repellant plants unless your using pesticides (in my opinion don't use them unless they are really needed repllant plants can do almost as good as pesticides and doesn't make the food toxic at all as some pesticides do)but if your not you should have a a design with repellant plants
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Keyword tags:
Farming
Food
Homesteading
Sustainability
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