Dominic-Luc Webb wrote:
On Fri, 8 Jul 2005, Antipodean Bucket Farmer wrote:


Hi, Everybody,

My vegetable garden is small, so I want to maximise the
nutrition per square metre of space.



I have this Summer for the first time starting looking seriously
at this question and have come to a sarcastic, but seemingly very
accurate answer: Grow weeds, such as dandelion!

Purslane! It's reported to be extremely high in vitamins and minerals
and it grows like a weed because it is a weed. I grow the large leaf
domestic purslane but actually harvest more it the small leaf wild
volunteer purslane. After several years of growing both, I have a lot of
wild crossbreed purslane with medium sized leaves. Purslane is the most
common weed I have, growing in almost every container, pot and bed. Some
people eat it raw but to me that tastes like grass. Cooked it's delicious.


I have yet to fully quantify this formally, but consider the
following thoughts. Weeds grow very well in the local soil
with only minimal maintenance. The need for year-to-year fertilizer
and other soil treatments is almost eliminated altogether. Some,
like dandelions are fully edible. Every part of this plant can be
consumed: leaves for salads; flowers for wines and jams; roasted roots
for coffee like beverage. The jam, by the way, is very tasty. I think
another weed, Rumex acetosa could be quite similar.

I believe you mentioned tomatos. My experience thus far is that this
plant is something more for bragging because it is a greater challenge
than many other common garden plants. I would place them at the higher
end of the maintenance issue and nutritional output could be very poor
without continuous monitoring to ensure high yield.

I do not know much about asperagus, but around here, people are getting
some pretty substantial plants and they eat a good chunck of them. Ditto
for rubarb, which seems to do well with not much more than a lot of
water.

Just another tip.... a friend pointed out that some people in Germany
were trying to maximize potato production by sequentially burying
the plants in dirt. As the season progressed, the pot got
progressively deeper and it finally was filled top to bottom with
potatos. They got a very high yield per square meter by growing up,
as it were. I tried this last year and it kind of worked. We had
really bad weather. This year my garden is 3 times bigger (300 sq
meter), so I did not aggressively pursue this.

This year I tried growing Catalina potatoes which are grown from seed.
Real seed seeds, not seed potatoes. Haven't harvested them yet so can't
report on normal use but I had one extra six pack of potato plants that
I didn't have room to plant. I finally got around to dumping it in the
compost bin yesterday. The six pack (it was the medium sized ones, 36
cells to a 1020 flat) was full of little potatoes! Just packed so full
of little potatoes from a half inch to about a inch and a half that I
had to tear the plastic to get them out. I had no idea that the plants,
which never got more then about six inches tall, would ever produce in
such a tiny container. Just enough for one large serving and they were
delicious boiled and served with fresh parsley and butter. Next year I'
put the extra potato plants in gallon pots and see if I can get a little
more.


I will be curious if an agriculture specialist will pop in with a
list of most nutrition efficient plants (beans, maybe???)...

Dominic



Lorenzo L. Love
http://home.thegrid.net/~lllove

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
Cicero