ahhh, so you are handling them as a weed? as in they will show up anyway even though not really planned?
Never thought of it that way, but yes, kind of... About half wild grown.
Rotten straw/hay, weed cuttings, etc become compost and I grow directly in that.
Throw some bales/thatch on top for winter, just go turn it until I find potatoes as I need them.
If I have greenies, or they have bad spots I turn the loose compost until I find them, let them get warm, they sprout, then I replant... It's all pretty self contained and what you don't find either sprouts or gets composted.
I have a pretty severe back injury, so either I sit on the ground, or use a raised garden so I have somewhere to sit while working.
Potatoes were just a pain for me in the ground, or handling half barrels, etc. The loose compost hay/straw/weeds makes it VERY easy to extract, and a potato doesn't complain where it grows...
Rotten hay/straw is free around here, you can have it if you haul it off kind of thing. Water it, cover it with black plastic or tin or whatever, add some red wiggler worms and use it the next year kind of thing.
I'm on sand and yellow clay, so it's either too loose/dry or hard as a rock.
I have to mix/maintain all my growing bed/garden soil, so there is always a compost pile all across the far end of the garden to enrich the soil as the garden expands and marches up the hill...
As I extract potatoes, the first thing that I've found that will produce in early compost, im turning (aerating) the compost. So it's two jobs at once since you need to turn compost once in a while.
Even compost being on the high side is intentional, as nutrients wash out of the compost pile it runs into the garden.
I learned that over time, weeds grew really well on what ran out of the compost pile so I decided to let that run into the garden.
I just till the last stage every year turning it into garden while adding more first stage compost further up the hill. It has 4 years/stages at any given time. Great for potatoes and tomatoes since tomatoes love the acidic soil and like potatoes don't care much where you plant them.
I 'mow' the woods. People think I'm nuts.
The blades are all the way up, I'm just chopping/vacuuming/bagging leaves.
Leaf mold is great, it's actually black gold for compost if you have 3 or 4 years to let it properly compost. Add some lime dust or small chips to control the tannic acid and that's about all it takes.
If you have a bagger mower the neighbors rarely complain if you haul their fall leaves off in a city or suburbia! ?
Free compost! You can't beat the price!
We planted fruit & nut trees instead of decoratives, so about everything produces something. Even the thickets along fence rows are berry briars.
We use them on right of ways next to the road to keep trespassing to a minimum and produce fruit. Easy since they take no maintiance.
People have no boundaries these days but they do respect thorn thickets...
What's not easy is wild mushrooms, but they pay REALLY WELL.
They need wet soil, ventilation and shaded from the sun to propagate, but if you can get them to grow, it's up to $100/pound (USD).
The market was a little saturated this year, natural conditions had a lot growing wild, but still $75/pound.
They do quite well around compost/leaf mold, so when you see random pieces of plywood leaned up against posts (shade) on my compost piles, it's probably waiting for mushrooms to pop up in the spring.
Once you get them started, they are there forever unless you use a fungicide. Just water and make shade and they'll be back.
I make ground grain based growing medium, rince the spores off existing mushrooms and use that water in the medium, freeze it for later use when I start a new compost run.
Quick & easy, good source of income, and the plywood scraps are cheap/free too.
Then all I have to worry about is the deer & turkeys beating me to them...
When I say 'Sustainable' it has nothing to do with 'Survival' or that 'SHTF/End Of The World' crap, I grew up with wild mushrooms on the table, lots of potatoes, green beans, corn, peas, etc on the table. It's what I like to eat...
Since the produce gardens pay pretty well, apparently others like it too.
When you produce excess, or it's 'Ugly', take it to the food bank and get a big tax credit for donation receipt.
Green house or hot boxes for the first produce of the season, pays the highest.
The 'Pretty' produce sells well, but you are going to have brown spots and bug damage on some stuff.
Raised beds keep every creepy-crawley on the ground out of your beds,
Nets keep birds, flying bugs and wildlife out of your garden beds and let sun/rain in,
I use lady bugs and praying mantis to control afids and other bugs that get into my nets... as little chemicals as possible since most of my food comes out of those beds too...
If you go commercial, check with local higher end restruants, see what they want in specific. They will pay reduclous amounts of money for some specific things that have to be imported otherwise...
That's a really good source of steady income, and if you stagger planting, you can get premiums for the front end and back end of the growing seasons.
www.thompson-morgan.com
