Musings from the Chiefio

How Much Can You Grow In Small Spaces?

With various kinds of intensification, you can produce a LOT of food in modest spaces. One of these is urban Southern California, mostly making added vegetables to give freshness to a mostly shipped in grocery market. The next is a backyard farm in a mid-west climate. Then there’s a backyard Florida Food Forest approach.

All of them yield significant food supply, but by different means and styles. Each illustrates the need to adapt your farming / gardening approach to the local climate and needs.

The Urban Microfarm

First up, we have 1/10 th of an acre making vegetables for 30+ families via high intensity vertical growing in a mixed “media & hydroponics” system. Yes, in the nearly ideal climate of Southern California (in terms of sun, temperatures, and no big wind) so there’s that. But also in a functional desert, so water conservation is critical; and where land is horribly expensive – so he essentially makes his own.

Some of “City Prepping” thumbnails look a bit OTT with things like “only 77 days left” and “the grid is about to collapse”… then again, California is a mess and I left due to it failing on so many levels, including rolling blackouts and a disrupted shipping / farming system, so maybe it’s just the local POV. This video, though, is more positive. Growing A LOT of vegetables in a very small space.

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Note that in Southern California, it is basically never really cold, nor is there any real risk of extreme wind. I once stayed in an apartment near LA. The “heater” for the entire apartment was a 1 square foot thing mounted in a wall with resistance elements in it. Basically a big toaster. Perhaps 1.5 kW. Even then, when I fired it up just to see it work; it smelled of burning dust – having not been used in years.

Similarly, that kind of vertical structure just sitting on the ground would be “Gone With The Wind” here in central Florida. Yes, I suppose one could make something similar firmly anchored into concrete and only have to replace / repair sections taken out by flying / falling tree limbs… /snark; Then there is our oscillation between frozen winter (down to 23 F this year) and summer heat / humidity. So no, you can’t grow lettuce outdoors here year round. One of my biggest adaptations here was realizing that I WILL be strictly calendar driven down to the 1 week granularity on planting and harvesting.

Yet this demonstrates what can be done in an ideal small space. The nearly perpetual sun of So. Cal also helps with the vertical grow system. With rows running N-S the daily sun arc will give each side of the row tower a few hours of direct sun – enough for most “leafy greens”.

FWIW: I’ve recently bought 2 “table top” sized hydroponic systems and assembled them. In the next few weeks I’m going to start them up and try growing some “leafy greens” in my Florida Room. The intent being to get “saladings” year round, even in frozen winter. Also I’d like to grow some Zone 10-11 things that just die here (yes, I tried outside. Between the flood/drought cycle and the frozen/roasting cycle and the Wind From Hell season… let’s just say “controlled environment” came to mind.)

IF this test works well, I’ll be expanding the system over time.

I did a small test of “pots & soil under grow lights” and while it did work well, I also found that the particular potting soil I used was happy to provide a lot of gnats, too. Now that the freeze is past, those pots are outdoors to be “potted on”. Along the way I found a video about potting soils that pointed out some cheaper brands come with a load of gnat eggs included… So I’ve moved to a better brand AND left it solar heated in the car for a couple of weeks. We’ll see if I can get past the “gnats included” problem and have an indoor nursery, of if it will be hydroponics all the way.

The Country Lot

Here, on this mid-west micro-farm, there is the need to cycle with the annual climate, growing different plants in tune with the seasons, and having an emphasis on the plant/grow/harvest/preserve cycle with preservation for use over months being very important. Succession planting and continuous crop rotations in natural dirt.

I visited ‪@morethanfarmers‬ in Ohio who showed me that you don’t need a giant garden to feed your family!
[…]

Huge THANK YOU to ‪@morethanfarmers‬ for letting us tour their homestead and being such great hosts! Go check out their channel and give them a subscribe, they are the real deal.

0:00 Intro
0:32 Root Vegetables
1:49 Corn
3:39 Dried Beans
5:14 Sweet Potatoes
6:33 Basil Bushes and Cages
7:39 Butternut Squash
8:42 Banana Peppers
9:02 Red Beets, Radishes and Carrots
9:52 Tomatoes
11:19 Cold Frames
12:44 Herb Garden
13:37 Asparagus
15:17 a quick word from our sponsor
18:22 How do you manage this?
21:43 “Our personal grocery store”
24:36 Cold Room
29:54 Dried Beans Drying
30:57 Freezers
32:24 Carrot Storage
33:20 Freezers cont.
34:39 Herb Drying and Soaps

What I’d thought would be the model in Florida, but it turns out isn’t well suited to my plot.

Florida Food Forest

I have a small issue with this posting, in that he calls these “forever crops” in Florida. While theoretically true, the recent hard freeze makes several of these “Zone 10” crops really only “forever” down by Miami in Southern Florida. Yes,there are ways to grow a Zone 10 or 11 crop in Zone 9, but…

So I will be doing a posting on “post freeze recovery” that will cover what died and the need to plant more Zone 8 and 9a crops and NOT 9b-10+ in my plot. BUT, with that said, I’ve also ordered some seeds for things recommended in this video. Some I will grow in pots and pull indoors during freezes. Some will be regrown from cuttings (or from the roots) if frozen out. And some may end up proving they don’t do all that well. But that’s what “trialing” in all about.

The key point in his POV is that lettuce & tomatoes will NOT get you through food hard times. You need protein, starches and fats in quantity. Much like the Ohio farm above, where corn & beans (and potatoes) are key energy sources; in Florida it’s sweet potatoes, peanuts, cassava, and other energy foods.

FWIW, I’m going to try 2 different kinds of peanuts as a legume cover crop. Hopefully they will spread and take over as much as he suggests ;-) What can I say? I just like the idea of “Invasive food” ;-) Note that while he calls them “perennial” he clarifies in notes that peanuts are an annual crop, but it tends to reseed all by itself and when treated as a cover crop in Florida, it’s more of a plant once thing.

Notice too the emphasis on surviving high wind and heat. It’s a Florida thing…

Most gardens need you to start over every season. That is cute for hobby folks. This video is for people building food systems, not flower boxes. These are ten crops you plant once and they feed you again and again. Low effort, high nutrition, storm tough, and built for long term security and health.

⚠️ Quick clarification: when I mentioned perennial peanut, I was referring to how peanuts behave here in Florida. While peanuts are technically annuals, they reseed easily and often come back on their own year after year, especially in warm climates like ours. Because of that, many growers treat them as a functional perennial groundcover. Appreciate everyone who caught that and keeps the conversation sharp.

If you want a backyard that pays you back in food, medicine, and peace of mind, start here. This is generational gardening. Family gardening. Real resilience. Nature doing the heavy lifting while you build your legacy.

Inside this video you will learn
• Perennial crops that produce year after year
• Florida proven and heat tolerant plants
• Beginner friendly food forest staples
• Backyard crops that store energy and support your health
• Why these plants matter for long term nutrition and self reliance

This is not aesthetic gardening. This is strategy. This is independence. This is how you turn dirt into abundance and take one step closer to a life where your family always eats and always thrives.

Grow intentional. Grow powerful. Grow forever.

His 10 include:

Peanuts, Pigeon Peas, Sweet Potato, Seminole Pumpkin, Sugar Cane, Katuk, Cassava, Banana, Plantain, Moringa, Jackfruit.

For me, Jackfruit is not going to work as the tree is too large for my available space. Katuk wants one zone warmer than mine, so I’ve ordered some seeds to try growing it indoors. My plantain died due to not enough water getting it started, so I’ll be replanting it. The rest I ether already have growing (bananas, sugar cane, Sweet potatoes) or have seeds for them to trial (peanuts, pigeon peas, seminole pumpkin, cassava cuttings on the way). My Moringa is not thriving, so I need to find out why. Ants in the soil, or too dry or fertilize the sand? TBD.

But generally his list is reasonably good for my location. I’ve added Avocado and some citrus, along with passion fruit and papaya.

That’s a good example, though, of how the local micro climate variation changes choices ( I think I’m one zone colder than he is) and how there are alternatives to consider as well. Avocado are slower to produce (grow large) but provide a LOT of calories and fats once producing.

In Conclusion

A lot of preppers think that a “50 varieties seed assortment” in a bucket or freezer will let them just start growing food any time the Aw Shit happens. It absolutely will not.

A garden (or farm) takes a few YEARS to get to the properly productive phase. You MUST be growing and producing prior to the AwShit, or you will just be wasting a lot of time and energy on learning how to fail.

1) Soil Prep: Figure on a year or two of getting the soil properly productive and alive. Your lawn is NOT garden soil. I’m into it my third year here in Florida and I’m only about 1/2 way done. In California it took me about 3 years until I had a properly working “squares” system of in ground beds about 4 x 4 foot each. Double dug and amended.

2) Finding the right crops for your climate and soil. This is also about 1 to 2 years. Not everything grows well everywhere. This can be sped up a lot via the current crop of “10 best crops for (your location} YouTube videos”, but it still requires you have the seeds and have learned how to grow and care for them.

3) Pests & protection: From freezes, drought, rodents, insects. It isn’t just YOU that wants to eat. Again, after your soil is right, and you are successfully growing food: THEN you get to learn who shows up at the buffet and how to discourage them. Yeah, the locals can help educate you … but it will take a year or so to get the right solutions in place. I’m still working on ant repelling plantings…

4) Harvest and preservation: This isn’t just for home farming. Even in a “just a disaster” situation, if you don’t have a handle on harvesting and preservation, you will end up hungry at some point. While ideally you can just go pick something every day, the reality is that there will be a Hunger Time in each climate. Hurricane or 4 feet of snow, at some point you need to eat from stored foods. The harvest and preserve only comes after the first 3 are successes.

So think about it, and then start some kind of garden. Even just a single 3 x 8 foot row will get you started learning 1-3 above…

Update / Postscript

This video is a bit conspiracy theory (as are most / all videos from “Forbidden Harvest” channel) with a lot of “so it was banned” and “they” got rid of something or other. It tends to ignore things like the 20% yield of wheatgrass vs modern wheat hybrids, and the simple fact that few plants have recalcitrant seeds and most are orthodox, plus that seed banks for recalcitrant seeds do exist. But yes, the fundamental economics do tilt toward mass production of high productivity hybrids using orthodox (dried) seeds and leans away from “vegetative reproduction” unless the crop is widely grown (potatoes for example).

BUT, it does make some good points. Tubers and other underground food parts are more resilient to catastrophe. My sweet potato patch looks like a morning glory flower bed, not weeks of food. The “groundnuts” I’m planting will look more like a thin grass than a complete food nodule underground. So yes, it IS important to get these going in any Survival Garden (and before the AwShit happens). That’s why I’m doing it.

Do allow for a bit of “sellers puff” in his presentation. There just are not that many cultivars of cassava to save, as just one example. The plant is an outcrosser, so yes you can buy seeds, but what you get when you plant them will be highly variable and may not produce well or taste good. I’ve ordered stem cuttings to plant for exactly that reason. BUT it is NOT a conspiracy of some kind that seed banks are not storing a lot of cassava seeds. The plants grown from such seed mostly constitute an array of plant types that can be used in a plant breeding program, but are not suited to direct use on farms. A FEW selected types of the best are the ones where having a plot of growing plants from which to take cuttings is the best approach to preservation.

Anyway, in any survival garden you ought to have a fair number of tubers and bushes and berries and fruits that are NOT suited to growing from seeds. Avocados, for example, also are out-crossers and to get a reliable type are made as grafted cuttings onto root stock grown from seeds. This is true of many fruit types. So plant them, and get them established now, not after the AwShit is in the news.

One other sidebar: I trialed some Jerusalem Artichokes in a barrel. They grew a little, but did not thrived here. Needed more consistent water and deeper soil. Not everything that is “invasive” is invasive in all areas… So I’m going to try again “someday”, with more consistent water. In The Great Plains areas? Oh yeah it will grow like crazy… here not so much (so far). Thus my ordering some cassava stems to trial.

With that said, some generally good comments on seed diversity, saving recalcitrant varieties, and the importance of “older types” of subsistence garden crops: