How can I grow more of my own food?

For years now, me and my family having been planting vegetables and stuff, but what tends to happen is we get about a week when we've got a few tomatos, some rasberrys, celery, carrots, etc, then the rest of the year nothing, does anyone have any tips on how to get the maximum harvest from them to make it more worth my while?

 

have you not heard of canning,freezing,drying.lots of things will store for months in a cold room

 

Hi, we grow all of our veggies and have stuff to eat all year long, here's what we do, it might give you ideas:
(we live in brittany btw, in an area where it rains a lot and temp aren't that hot)

In summer, end of summer we plant leeks, brussel sprouts, brocoli,endives, salads; we sow various cabbages, salads, radishes, cornsalad, turnips, leaf beets. All that will be eaten either in autumn, winter or at the beginning of spring.

In spring we have sown red beets, parsnips, that we'll eat in winter. We sow various beans and peas, to eat in summer or to keep dry for winter. Carrots also, spinach, squash, tomatoes. We plant potatoes, onions.

My partner has been gardening for decades so he knows pretty much always what to plant or sow at various times of the year, but we also google websites when memory fails (stuff like "what to plant/sow in may or june" or whatever) and we have a couple or organic gardening books.

I do a lot of caning, drying, pickling too.

 

If you're in Manchester your conditions should be similar to mine...albeit a little wetter maybe

I grow a lot of stuff to carry over the winter -

Leeks - leave them in the ground overwinter, use as you need them.

Swedes ditto.

Onions - harvest around now, store by hanging up somewhere cool.

Potatoes - also harvest now, store in sacks.

With those four, you've always got something to eat over the winter.

Rest of the stuff, its a case of using when fresh and maybe freezing - Peas, Beans, Carrots, etc, if there's a glut.

Surplus fruit I tend to turn into jam. Wine is another option...you can make wine out of pretty much damn well anything.

 

Tomatoes - open pollinated seed, which means NO HYBRIDS, and you must make sure they are INDETERMINATE, as that way you will harvest the whole season. The only hybrid tomatoe I recommend are Rutgers, which are my favorite of all time, and what I grew this year (see my garden pics in my profile). Determinate tomatoes are what the commercial growers use, and all your fruit ripen up at the same time, so they can do a harvest economically, and basically that is it for them then, and they plow them under and plant something else. Tomatoes love lime, like their bases covered with mulch, and water the same time every day. I've had frits since May, and will continue to harvest them untill at least mid November here in the South. Good luck!

 

I think the OP - being on the same latitude as me - will have the problems I have with Tomatoes - basically, if you want to guarantee a crop you have to grow them under glass.

I dont have a glasshouse, so I've experimented with various outdoor varieties, but its very hit-and-miss...get a reasonable crop maybe every 4 or 5 years.

It was looking quite good this year then - bang - unseasonal frosts and there they go. No home-grown Tomatoes for me this year

A pity, because they're one of the crops in which home-grown is so far superior in taste to what you can buy at the greengrocers.

I'm thinking I may have to knock up some kind of temporary glass or plastic structure for next year's attempt.

 

Winters here are similar to southern UK. We have heavy clay soil, with drainage problems similar to the heavy chalk soils of Kent. Raised beds keep your garden out of the water if you have soggy ground in winter.

Despite mild winters we get the odd cold snap from out of the north. This makes cold frames a good choice for the more tender cool season vegetables.

Various pea vines, suitable for your climate are very economical with space if you train them on a trellis. You get a high yield per square metre if you fertilize well. Cow dung or chicken manure (aged a bit) works well.

Further north, some of the cold frames go quite deep to take advantage of the trapped heat of the earth.

 

You can store carrots for the whole winter by trimming off the tops immediately and storing them in damp sand or sawdust in the fridge.

 

organic gardening is best and its ECO friendly.organic products are free from chemicals and really good for health.

 

Sowing more seeds throughout the growing season allows you enough crops to preserve during the off season.
Investing in a greenhouse system can pay off big time in this department if you want to get hardcore about being self-sufficient!

 

Uhh, I'm all for organic gardening but your post has absolutely nothing to do with the OPs situation.

Op, find some kind of ever-bearing berry bush that grows well in your area. Also plant some french dandelion, they tend to grow all year unless it snows. White clover probably already grows in your yard, and it's a source of protein

 

Gooseberries ! Not exactly ever-bearing [is anything ?] but wonderfully suited to the Op's part of the world.

 

I've been told there are kinds of raspberries and I've definitely eaten off of one bush at very different times of year and the berries were good both times

 

Maybe in your part of the world... dont think it'd happen in northern England somehow.

Though I have seen Autumn-fruiting Raspberries grown successfully here. After that, though, its nothing till next Summer.

 

that's what they do here, they're called high-hoop tunnels but there may be other names for the idea

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with a few people you can pick this thing up and move it, and they're cheap to boot

normally our growing season is june-september [though it snowed last september] but these give us an extra month or two at both ends

 

how durable is that thing? you may have just solved a big problem I was having

 

called polytunnels here in the uk .... very simple to make.. just a few lengths of gaspipe (2+ inch diameter) and a nice big sheet of polythene .... they can last a few years if the wind is feeling kind too :sunny:

EDIT alternatively they can last just one night if the wind isn't feeling kind ........ always keep a spare polythene sheet too, just in case

 

don't know, they're fairly new around here

[sorry]

 

eek, this is one of the windier places on the planet

there must be a trick . . .