As promised, I posted a new video on how to grow sweet potatoes: From starting them in pots, to preparing slips, to planting, to harvest and curing. Also, we will be at the Ferdinand VII Plaza in Pensacola from 9AM – 2PM on Saturday with our plants for sale – hope to see you there. The post How to Grow Sweet Potatoes appeared first on The Survival Gardener ..read more

Laura asks about our cucumber/watermelon/sweet potato ground cover succession in the Grocery Row Gardens: “I had not thought about using cucumbers, watermelons, and sweet potatoes in succession over the course of the growing season. That’s genius. Just to be sure I understand: You sow the cucumbers first, and then the melons a couple weeks later, right? How long do you wait after sowing the melons to set out the sweet potato slips?” Good question. How the Cucumber/Watermelon/Sweet Potato Ground Cover Works We usually plant them these three crops around the same time, sometimes starting wi ..read more

In 2023 we planted our landrace-in-progress pickling cucumber seeds along with some fresh store-bought seeds, mixing them all together so they would cross and give us a wider genetic pool. Some results: We had piles of cucumbers, ultimately harvesting 163lbs of them before letting the rest go to seed so we could save tons for the next year. Instead of growing them on trellises like Normal Human Gardeners(TM), we used them as a ground cover in the Grocery Row Gardens. I can’t tell you how much I love Grocery Row Gardening. It’s the perfect combination of annuals, perennials, high food produc ..read more

What I like to call “Dave’s Fetid Swamp Water” is being used to good effect by Desert Gardens Homestead in the desert: Look at that scary stuff. It reminds me I need to make a new batch! Compost Everything, folks. The post Feeding a 2-Acre Desert Homestead – For Free! appeared first on The Survival Gardener ..read more

This Saturday we’ll be at Plantapalooza in Pensacola at Gary’s Brewery and Biergarten with lots of food forest plants for sale, including mulberries, pawpaws, Everglades tomatoes, witch hazel, elderberries, potato mint, tobacco, sweet potato slips and more. Gary’s is located at 208 Newman Ave, Pensacola, FL 32507 – more details at the link! In the nursery this week: Achira (rare large-rooted edible canna!) Aloes Black cherry trees Cassava Catawba Chaya Cherry (native Prunus virginiana) Chinese artichoke (rare!) Coffee (great houseplant) Cuban oregano Elderberry Giant white sweet potato (s ..read more

You’ve planted a pineapple top before – but did you know you could turn one top into at least four new pineapple plants? About eight months ago, I watched this video: We gave the method a try with a pineapple top from the grocery store. The greenhouse was too cold through the winter, as you might imagine, and we also left the pots in full sun… and yet… …check this out: That’s one quarter. And here’s another one: It works! Of the four pieces we planted, one rotted, one is still green but has not sent up any new shoots yet, one gave us a single new shoot and the last quarter gave us two. So in ..read more

In case you haven’t seen this method of starting sweet potato slips: You can also start with slips, then take further cuttings from those slips to expand your beds. I should have some already started sweet potato slips at Plantapalooza this Saturday. Including from these giant white ones: It’s time to get planting. You can plant sweet potatoes all the way up until about June 1st in zones 8/9, but I wouldn’t go later than that. The post This is how we start sweet potatoes in abundance appeared first on The Survival Gardener ..read more

We had a very nice time at the Spring Gardening Masterclass on Saturday – thanks to all of you that made the trek. If you missed it, we’ll be having SCRUBFEST III at the same location on October 19th. I also hope to release the talks we did at this spring event, via a super secret platform we’ve been working on. Right now in the gardens, our daikon radish landrace project is producing a ton of seeds again. This will be the third generation, and if previous results hold, we’ll end up with more more purple and white roots and less pure red and pure white ones. This is an update from December. Th ..read more

I received a comment today on my popular Terra Preta video: Did you catch that? Ashes and charcoal, chicken manure and fish guts. That’s some highly fertile material. Incidentally, all those amendments are free. We managed to hit over a ton of food from a garden of less than 1/3 acre, feeding with ashes and cow manure. If we planted two acres, we’d be in trouble. You don’t need fancy amendments to grow food. The post Grandpa Knew What He Was Doing appeared first on The Survival Gardener ..read more

I posted a video invitation yesterday – my Spring Gardening Superclass is this Saturday! It’s an intense, three-talk event, with time for plant shopping as well – and the Scrubland Farmz Nursery is LIT! So many great plants. I hope to see you there. Details here. The post Last Chance for the Spring Gardening Superclass appeared first on The Survival Gardener ..read more