I'm ready

[dragonlady7]

My last two days have lost great swathes out of them-- wait, three now-- due to my discovery of Shorpy.com-- "History in High-Def". It's a blog made up of historical photos. It's a little schizophrenic in the more recent entries, with a lot of blatant 70s nostalgia pics, but it started out as consisting largely of photographs of a century or more ago. I know the Library of Congress has released a lot of digitized images from the Farm Services Administration and the like, and I've glanced through their Flickr pool, but Shorpy.com has a smaller selection of just the interesting ones, and it also has an active comments section that often comes through with interesting research and information-- like tracking down who the people in the photos are, or plotting buildings into Google Maps and seeing what's there now, and the like.
Randomly, there are Civil War photos mixed in, and breathtaking Kodachrome slides of WWII aircraft manufacture. They're almost all fascinating. Basically the only photos that make me yawn are the ones about people's relatives from the 60s and 70s. Really, I don't need to snark about people's hairstyles. Show me the interesting old stuff. And honestly I don't give a shit about cars, another of the moderator's minor obsessions-- but President Taft's steam-powered touring car was pretty cool to see.

So I actually clicked "next page" um... 595 times. Yes. I'm that obsessive. But I'm done now. I may have to order an art print or two, though. ...

It's cheered me up slightly about our inevitable descent into the next Great Depression. Seeing as the other thing I did yesterday was sort out the small amount of money I'd given my brother-in-law to invest a couple of years ago. Yes, I've lost a huge chunk of it. That'll teach me. I won't worry too much, though-- the way my career's going, I'll never have any spare money again (and to be fair, that money wasn't exactly actually spare, but I may as well pretend it was because I'll never see it again). And the likes of me shouldn't be investing. Sit down, fool, and get ready to eat dog food for your last thirty years because you come from a long-lived family, but unlike all your ancestors, you will have no pension, and no Social Security either.
Bitter? Not yet. Ask me in 50 years. Unless I die from my almost-total lack of access to our world-class health system in the meantime. In which case the point is moot.

Anyhow, having seen all those ragged urchins picking coal out of industrial dumping sites, and living in the backs of abandoned cars, I'm oddly cheered. If they survived then so will I. And if I don't, well, "If you die, you're dead," as one of them told Dorothea Lange.

Am I insane, meanwhile, that I am utterly consumed with a desire to plant a Victory garden? Because I am. I haven't been able to find any plans for one, though-- I had sort of assumed that the government had distributed leaflets with, say, a sample plan, with what you ought to grow, and layouts for making use of small plots, or something-- I thought I remembered having seen such a thing, but now I can't.
So instead I ask you gardeners:
What are the top things you'd grow in your Victory Garden, if you had one?
(FYI I am in USDA climate zone 6a and have, uh, about 500 square feet, but not in a square.)

Comments

[gasslight.livejournal.com]

I have a number of raised beds, many of which used to belong to heebiejeebie. I'm interested in tomatoes, so I try to grow a lot of those. I like to grow easy stuff, peas, beans, beets (who know they were so cinchy?!). I also like to tuck various plants here and there...last year I successfully grew pumpkins in my front bed, this year not so much. Generally speaking, I find we can rarely grow enough of anything to put by, but certainly enough to supplement our meals. For putting by, I do well with wild berries and peppers (we dry them, or make pepper jelly.) We also do salsa. This year I ordered garlic to put in in the fall.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

I have had zero luck with beets. I mean I planted a whole crop and did not get one. I did radishes too. They grew on top of the ground. I think my soil is too heavy... maybe I should buy some sand?
i want to do raised beds but I just don't have the heavy lifting capacity to put them in. I've had good luck with a few things in pots to supplement the garden-- mostly I think because my soil is so punishingly heavy that it is absolutely agonizing to get a garden bed bigger than about two feet by two feet, and the weeds are unmanageable.
I still have this fantasy, though...

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

Potatoes, onions, carrots, parsnips, courgettes, a couple of apple trees (you can get ones which don't take up much space), raspberry canes.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

If I get a tree it will shade other areas, though. That's my dilemma. I have a tiny yard, divided in half by the house. Half is out front and half in back. If I put one apple tree each place, they'll be too far away to cross-pollinate. Maybe if I put one out by the road and one back by the walkway? But the area nearest the road is city property so the tree would technically be theirs, and it would be subject to a lot of salt and road damage.
I have been debating where to put a tree since I moved into this place...

Z's mother's parents lived in her house (.2 miles away) and had a whole orchard out back, and tons of gardends-- they were refugees from WWII and had been farmers in Old Country. She seldom gets a decent harvest from her apple or pear trees...

Courgettes-- zucchini? Those famously go crazy and produce more than anyone can eat. I have been wanting to grow them anyway because given my track record that would be a nice problem to have, but Z is a hard sell on that one.

Your selection is very slightly different from the standard one around here, which is interesting. :) I think any root vegetables would have to go into containers, but that is an option I have-- my soil is so heavy... I have been wanting to grow parsnips for ages. Maybe I'll make that a priority, getting a parsnip-growing spot made up.
Mmmmmm, parsnips.

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

You can get apple trees which will go in pots. I think they're called 'ballerina' trees - they've been bred to form a single stem. You don't get much from them, but for just two people you don't need much ;)

I guess my selection is more of a traditional English one, but also I like root vegetables, and I don't like things like cabbage and lettuce which would also be traditional. Parsnips are great, though, and they make lovely crisps :)

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

Parsnips just aren't very common in the US-- I had never encountered one until I went overseas. My mother loves them, though, and convinced the farm she belongs to (do they have Community-Supported Agriculture over there?) to grow them. They're very late-season, though, aren't they? I'd heard they were best after a frost.
I think I will figure out a way to grow them-- the local grocery store usually carries them, but it carries the same ones the whole season, and I once bought some that were actually limp. (I was desperate, as it was for a recipe, but ew. They cooked up... all right, but it wasn't pretty.)

Crisps!!! Wow, now I really need to try that.

Ballerina trees. I love the idea! I'd never heard of them, so I'll have to look.
Things like trees in pots, I am really considering because if I put the pots on casters, I could wheel them into my sun-porch over the winter so they wouldn't have to withstand such hard frosts as we get. I had hoped maybe I could get a lemon tree but they need temperatures over 60 F in the winter, and not even my house is reliably that warm.