This should have been posted 3 weeks ago already – but we have day jobs! 😀 We had our first mini harvest recently and we are still getting produce from our very young kitchen garden. We have used permaculture principles to plant and so far so good! This means we did all companion planting and included lots of plants for pollinators. We don’t use pesticides here at all, all organic for us.
Spinach has been the most prolific by far! Even better that it is one of the most nutrient dense foods on earth! If you are just starting out with planting something edible, we recommend planting spinach as well as beetroot. They are ready to eat super fast! Herbs are easy too.
Once you get the hang of planting anything to eat, immediately learn how to use the produce. There are many different ways of using and preserving food, choose one that suits your situation. If you aren’t going to eat it immediately, look at freezing, dehydrating, juicing and vacuum sealing. Growing and preserving just one thing will liberate you in ways you can’t even imagine yet.
Here’s what we’ve planted so far. Since these were taken, we’ve harvested all the candy striped beetroot and planted plain red beetroot. We’ve also put in cauliflower.
The peppers finally turned red so we could pick them too.
We’ve got mielies on the other side of the farm, but the monkeys are helping themselves to those. We just can’t get to them before the monkeys too. Such a pity because they were doing so well. We learn from this of course, in future, all edibles will be planted where we can see them!
But we’ve got plenty in the ground and it’s all doing well. Looking forward to our first big harvest!
Posted in Food Forest, Year 1