5 Essential Foods I d Grow If I Had To Feed Family in Florida

I'll admit, I'm a little bit of a food hoarder and it kind of goes back to my childhood and teenage years where I had a bit of food insecurity. So nowadays, I'm one of those people, my husband is too, that we kind of keep a lot of food in the house. Part of that is because we grow a garden and you get all of the food all at once in the garden and part of it is because I really love preserving. So I've got canned goods, I've got freeze dried food, dehydrated, fermented, all the things. And the other half is we just, my husband's like a Boy Scout, so we're prepared. But it got me thinking, if the grocery stores closed down tomorrow or we lost our income in some way and we're not able to pay for our food, what would I grow in my garden to make sure that we had the most calories and the best nutrition, the protein, all the things that we needed to limit how much we had to buy? I'm going to break it into five sections. So we're going to go with carb sources, fat sources, sugar sources, protein, and then items that give us the most vitamins or micronutrients. So let's start out with carbs. So I went and I tried to figure out what would grow best here in Florida because that's where I am and that's really the first place you need to start is where you live and what items work the best in those particular areas. For me, I was able to find four items. So sweet potatoes grow really well, cassava grow very well, taro, and yams. Of those, when we look at how much carbohydrates each one of them gives you per item or per vegetable, cassava gives like 38% carb yield. Then you have taro, which is 26, yams, this is not the same as sweet potatoes. Yams is 24 and sweet potatoes is 20. You also have to look at that and try to figure out which one of those are going to give you the greatest volume, right? So of those, the one with the largest yield is also the one that's going to give you the largest volume. Cassava basically grows like this giant tree and then the roots are all underneath it. The cool thing is it is a perennial, so you rip that out, take some cuttings and put it back in the ground and grow some more. It does take a long time, but I think all of these kind of take a long time. Yams would be a second best because that one does grow in a similar way and it grows very large roots. Then you have taro, which I honestly, if I'm going to go between sweet potatoes and taro because I've grown both, I'm probably going to go with sweet potatoes. I think taro has stuff where it kind of bothers your hands and I don't think you can eat the greens of taro. You can eat the greens of sweet potato, so that adds a nutritious element there as well that you can enjoy until the potatoes are ready. I feel like sweet potatoes produce faster than taro. I think sweet potatoes produce the fastest out of all of them at four to six months where most of these take somewhere between like six and twelve months or maybe even a little bit longer and they really want that hot weather climate. Sweet potatoes are going to give it to you a little bit sooner, but the longer you wait beyond the four months of when they're ready, the larger the sweet potatoes are going to get. Sweet potatoes in all of these, honestly, don't really mind if you don't have super nutritious soil, which is a benefit that if the grocery stores all close tomorrow, cool. We may not have access to things like fertilizers and stuff and thankfully all of these starches that grow down here work very well regardless of that. That's why it's super important to find vegetables that grow naturally in your area, especially perennial vegetables or ones that you can hold on to. So all of these fall into that hold on to situation where you can just plant them and let them regrow or reroot or you can take like the cassava, the taro, the sweet potatoes inside and kind of cure them and let them get into a dried state and then use however much you want but save some so that that way you can replant them, which is really cool. Next thing we're going to need if we're unable to go to the store anymore is going to be a protein source. So for the protein sources, we have cow peas, I really love Puerto Rican black beans, amaranth surprisingly because that's really a grain, it's like an ancient grain and most people don't think of it as a protein source but it is. Then you have sunflowers, you have your typical beans like your dry beans like kidney beans and then you have peanuts. Of those, the protein yield percentage for each one of those with the highest being peanuts at 26%. Next one down is going to be cow peas, which are black eyed peas if you're not familiar and they're at 24%. Underneath that is going to be regular dry beans, which would be like kidney beans, cannelloni beans, that's at 22%. Underneath that is going to be sunflowers at 20%, sunflower seeds, think of it that way. And then underneath that, the amaranth kind of comes dead last at 14%. There are other things that you can grow but these are the ones that I feel like are going to grow during a majority of our season and give the highest protein amounts. I personally am going to pick cow peas and peanuts. The reason why I really love cow peas is they turn over really, really quick. You can eat them green. You can eat them as like a green bean replacement. You can eat them as like a pea replacement. You can let them dry completely on the plant. They grow for like nine months out of the year. You could save the beans and save them and regrow them for next year. All good things. Peanuts kind of fall into the same range. But while peanuts take a lot longer to grow, they're like more of a six month crop versus like a three month crop that cow peas are. But they're fun to grow and there's so much you can do with peanuts and it's not just protein. We're going to talk about this. Peanut falls into the fat category too, so you're probably getting two for the price of one here. But peanuts take a lot longer to grow. They don't mind growing in non-nutritious soil, kind of like the sweet potatoes that we talked about before. Things like amaranth, while low in the protein at only 14%, it does grow very well. It self-seeds, so you probably, once you plant it once, you never have to seed it again. I never have. I planted it once in my garden like six years ago. It still pops up. It still pops up, even though I've never allowed it to continue growing. Those seeds will survive the apocalypse. It's crazy how much they re-seed. Sunflowers is another one of those. They constantly pop up in my garden, but there's a little bit more to sunflowers, the drying and the crushing and the trying to get rid of the seeds and stuff, but there are ways around that where you can let the sunflower head just about dry, but before it gets to that full dry stage where the birds and the squirrels start picking at it, you cut it off and you can cook the whole sunflower. People do this all the time. You can eat it like a corn on the cob when the shell of the sunflower seed is not hard. It's still soft and you can eat it. I think that would probably be the easiest way. And then beans, I like dry beans. I love to grow them myself personally, but they're not really like a summer crop and they're not a winter crop either. So in some ways they're a little bit harder because they're not going to really grow very well during our summer months. I have some in right now. I was trying to see how long I could grow them into the season and I did great up until like the beginning of June and then it got really bad. They don't want to grow anymore. So you can see there's going to be certain months that they won't grow. They won't grow during like December, January, February because we get cold weather here where I live and they won't grow after July, August, that time period. So you have to take these constant breaks and they take a while. They're like a four month plant. So personally, my favorite one is going to be the cow peas. I'll probably stick to the peanuts as well and the amaranth. Now let's move into the fat source because this one is interesting. If you had to grow all your own food, fat is going to be probably the hardest thing to come by. But there are some sources that you can grow in your backyard. Some of these are going to be a little bit more available versus some not so much. Like for me, there's two that are absolutely not available. So the first one is going to be avocados. You can grow avocados. I've grown avocados. I had to replace my tree recently to a more cold hardy variety. But my avocado that I used to grow, the day avocado produced wonderfully. Peanuts, just like with the protein, peanuts actually provide a lot of fat as well, sunflowers. And then the bigger trees are going to be pecan trees and macadamia nut trees. Now let's talk about the percentage of the fat yield. The biggest highest one is going to be macadamia nuts at a 75% fat yield, which is crazy. Right underneath that at 72% is pecans. Now a little bit farther down, but still really good, 50% is peanuts. So you can be growing your peanuts for your protein or your fat and get quite a bit of protein and fat from them, which I think makes them a heavy contender here. Then underneath that you have sunflowers or sunflower seed oil that you're going to produce or just eat the whole sunflowers and that's going to be at 40%. And then underneath that is going to be avocado. I think some of us would have assumed avocado was much higher, but it's actually at 20%. And that is pretty low compared to these other ones. But when I look at the difference between a pecan tree, a macadamia tree, and an avocado is I can grow an avocado. My area, I can't grow a pecan or macadamia. It's just too big. These are some big trees. They also take a really long time to fruit. An avocado takes a long time to fruit too, but not like a nut tree, like a tree nut. An avocado, if you start it from a grafted tree, is probably going to take about three to five years to produce. If you start from a seed, it's going to be like eight to 10 years. So that's some crazy numbers. But the pecan trees, they're at minimum 10 years. You know, the macadamia nuts are at minimum 10 years. That's a long time to wait. You'd be having to plant that now and just, you know, hope that nothing bad happens for the next 10 years. So let's talk about some of the ones that are a little bit more of an option. So the avocado, you could get a grafted tree and within three to five years you'll have avocados, which is a really good fat source. Then you have peanuts and sunflowers. The cool thing about peanuts and sunflowers, which we haven't mentioned before, is how well they reseed. So the sunflowers, I think we all understand that because, you know, the birds will pick them off and float them around, the squirrels will tear them up, and sometimes they just drop into the compost bin and they just pop up. All my sunflowers so far this year were all compost or volunteer sunflowers. They popped up, I didn't plant them. When it comes to peanuts, almost always whenever I've harvested my peanuts, I will rake through my soil really well, till it up, and really find as many of the peanuts as possible. But I never find them all and some eventually pop up the next year. So they do reseed themselves. You would just probably want to be a little less aggressive with trying to find all of the peanuts that you left behind or leave the smaller ones in the ground and they will naturally reseed and resprout themselves the next summer. The peanuts do take longer than sunflowers. Sunflowers generally only take about 90 days, I would think, like 90 to 120 days, depending on how dry you want to get them. And peanuts are going to take about six months. So that's a lot longer of a time period. But the sunflowers and the peanuts grow very well through our summer season. And I'm talking all the way from like March to November for most of Florida. There's going to be a few people in the north that won't be able to grow all the way into November or they might have to wait a little bit till April. Those in South Florida, y'all could grow this stuff year round. So that is an amazing fat source. Also in North Florida, I think you have to consider like avocados may not be an option for you. I mean, I am borderline when it comes to avocados and I'm kind of the north side of central Florida. So it might not be the best route. It doesn't mean that the tree can't survive. But to get a consistent production year over year, avocados might be out for you. I believe pecans and macadamias. I think they can grow through the whole state, if I'm correct. I think they can even grow in South Florida. If you know the answer to that, head down to below because I'm very curious. So now we lead into sugars. So we've got to get sugars, right? And a lot of us are going to think fruit trees, right? That's what I thought, too. So I have mangoes, mulberries, figs, citrus, peaches and berries. And let's go down the sugar yield or content for these guys. The highest one of those is going to be mangoes at a 15% sugar. Right underneath that is going to be mulberries and figs in second place to each other at 14%. Underneath that's going to be your different kinds of citruses like oranges and mandarins. That's at a 10% peaches that are at 8% and berries are at 5%. So those are berries are going to be things like blackberries, blueberries, strawberries. Now of all of those, I'm going to tell you that berries wouldn't make my list at all outside of mulberries. Let's separate mulberries from the rest of the traditional berries. Strawberries don't like to live through the summers. Blueberries need all this acidic soil and maybe blackberries would make it on the list because they seem a little less dramatic and needy. Then the next one, peaches, man, I love my peaches and I probably would still grow them, but they have some difficulties and they are a little bit of high maintenance plants. And when you just want sugar, I don't know if that's like the best choice. Citrus, I love citrus, but then you have citrus greening disease, which requires like a lot of maintenance around, you know, feeding them properly and trying to keep the bud bug off. And then there's like disease and stuff like, you know, at 10%, I think there's other ones that will grow even better. So the top three for me is going to be figs, going to be mulberries, going to be mangoes. Now mangoes doesn't make my personal list because where I am, I am that borderline of too cold versus too hot and mangoes, it just gets too cold. I'm on my third tree. I have tried it three times and each time my winter has killed it. Even when I protected it, even when I moved it into my shed, the poor mango just doesn't make it. So mangoes won't make it for me. But if you're a little bit South of me, like the Tampa area or below, you could definitely do mangoes. Mangoes produce a lot. You can even buy like a pickering, which is a smaller mango tree. So you don't have this giant mango and you can keep it small. Mulberries, the whole state, mulberries work not only for the whole state, but almost the entire country. There is a mulberry variety that grows in every single zone except for, I don't think it's zones two or one, but every other one, you know, three to 11, there is a mulberry that grows in that. I love the dwarf ones, but you can do a larger one like a Pakistani mulberry. But I like the world's best and the Thai dwarf. There's an everbearing. There's red mulberries. There's lots of different kinds. And so you just find the one that works in your area at the height that you want, planted a little bit away from your house, and you're going to get a tremendous amount at that 14%. The other one's going to be figs. Some people have had some challenges with figs and I kind of get it, but I kind of don't. I haven't really had that bad. I've noticed that they do succumb to some fungal disease, but they drop all their leaves, you know, in winter, which is deciduous. So it's cool. Like they're used to doing that and it almost like it refreshes it every single year. So like it gets a little bit of fungus towards the end of the growing summer and then it drops those leaves in fall. And then when it comes back the next spring, it's like perfectly fine. And figs are absolutely incredible. They dry really well. They make a good jam, high sugar content. You can get them in different flavors. I think they come in like honey, sugar and berry or different flavor profiles that they make. So really great options for adding sugar to your diet. Now the last one, which I think most people don't think about when they're trying to consider what to grow for, you know, self-sustainability is going to be your vitamins. A lot of people think, oh, I'll just grow spinach and that'll be good for me. But I think that there are other things that you can grow that have better vitamin qualities. So chaya is a green spinach, basically tree spinach. Tropical spinaches, they're going to be really good for down here because while spinach grows great in certain climates in certain northern states, tropical spinaches grow year round here in Florida. And even if they die back during the winter, they come back. Now this one might surprise you because this is actually a fruit tree, but it's making it onto the vitamin list, which is going to be Barbados cherries. Barbados cherries are not a typical sweet cherry variety. It's a tropical cherry. An acelia cherry, I'm going to say that wrong, but that one has incredible amounts of vitamin C and so does, you know, oranges and mandarins. But if you're not growing those, you might want to grow the Barbados cherries and it's meant for colder or it's meant for warmer climates. And so it's going to produce really well. It doesn't really need chill hours, none of that things. But my favorite one, all right, let's put all of those to the side because I feel like this other one, like it could give you protein, it could give you some carbs. It's going to give you a lot of nutrients is going to be Moringa. I have grown Moringa for years. I love it. I make my own vitamin capsules with it. We take the leaves and you can put it in salads, you can put it in smoothies, you can dry it. I really like drying it because I don't necessarily love the flavor of it. It's a little, I guess, spicy to me or weird. I don't know. I just don't particularly love it, but I know it's good for me. That thing has so many nutrients. I'm going to put a little thing right here that says all of the nutrients that Moringa has in it because it is outstanding. Besides its nutritional elements, it's really a great cover crop and you can cut that tree down at the base every single year before winter, pile it up with some leaves, it will resprout. Then you can take all of those leaves, whatever you don't eat, and then you can put it down as like a ground cover and it will be a cover crop and it'll add nutrients to the soil. Or you can eat it yourself and it adds great nutrients to your body. It is like a super food and it grows down here in Florida. Now I don't think it, you might have a little bit of trouble with it up in the North side, the very, very North side of Florida because it doesn't love winters, but I have known some people that live up there that still are able to keep Moringa because they just kind of basically pile all their leaves on top of it to insulate it and that's usually good enough. This is never a topic that we ever have to get into and we can always just enjoy the process of gardening and harvesting our food and growing it and getting those wonderful flavors and varieties and just taking it inside and when we don't have a crop that works that year we just go to the grocery store and get it. While I fully think that nothing is ever going to happen and the grocery stores are always going to stay open, I think it's a good exercise to think about these things, not just from a perspective of survival or prepping, right, because we're not really into that, but from a perspective of what can I grow that we're actually going to eat that will take the place of some of the things that are from the grocery store. So while I'm enjoying my hobby of gardening and I'm enjoying my hobby of growing fruit trees, I don't want to grow things that we're not going to eat or is not going to give us a tremendous amount of yield or meet some of our nutritional requirements. I don't want to just grow for the sake of growing, I want to grow for a purpose. And so this exercise gave me an opportunity to kind of look around the garden and see what should stay in the garden and what shouldn't stay in the garden. Maybe what I should grow more of versus what I shouldn't grow as much of and really streamline my garden. And I hope that that maybe gave you something to think about today too with your garden. It was fun hanging out with you today. Happy gardening.