1. Irish Potatoes – My father was from Ireland and asked my mom to make a potato with every meal, even if the meal was spaghetti and meatballs. Potatoes are great sustenance crops, easy to grow and store well. They can be grown in buckets or bags and love woodchip gardens. Best to buy certified seed potatoes as they are disease free. You may also dust them with garden Sulphur to keep them even more disease and insect free. Depending on the variety, potatoes can be harvested in 80-100 days in general and like to be planted when temperatures are cool. Kennebec potatoes store up to 6 months and one pound of potato seed can produce 10 lbs of potatoes. Potatoes are planted whole or in cuttings with at least two eyes. 

2. Sweet Potatoes- My farm was in upstate NY zone 4 so I didn’t plan on planting sweet potatoes. Once though, I was shipped a load of sweet potato seed by accident. I planted them and harvested a pretty good crop. Having said that, I am no expert on sweet potatoes but plan on incorporating them into our new North Carolina homestead garden. Touted everywhere as a survival crop, cured sweet potatoes last up to 6 months according to masterclass.com. In fact, sweet potatoes are not that tasty unless they are cured. For an in-depth article on curing sweet potatoes go to https://morningchores.com/curing-sweet-potatoes/ 

3. Carrots – Like it cold and can be planted even through light snow if ground is workable. Your ground needs to be soft in order for carrots to be happy and grow straight. Raised beds are perfect for growing carrots as you can start with perfect raised bed soil or potting mix ensuring straight and happy carrots. I use a variety called YaYa from High Mowing Seeds in pelleted form. The pellets are easier to plant, and you don’t have to weed out 80% of the seedlings. If planned correctly, carrots can be planted and harvested twice, both in Spring and Fall. YaYa carrots store up to four months and are harvest ready from seed in about 60 days 

4. Garlic- is both food and medicine. Planted in fall, garlic is ready to harvest once the seed stalks (scapes), curl two times in early summer or late spring. This is our number one go to medicine in the Riordan household. IF we ever run out of organic garlic, we always have a bottle of Dr. Christopher’s Super Garlic Immune formula in the fridge. Garlic can last up to four months in dry storage. If you don’t like the taste of garlic, make fresh garlic pills using a garlic mincer, let sit out for 10 plus minutes, put into a teaspoon and swallow like pills with liquid. Avoid Elephant garlic as it is the least potent. 

5. Butternut Squash – is a great storage crop but needs 110-120 days to mature. Like potatoes Butternut Squash can store up to 6 months. Plant 2 seeds per hole and cull one if both grow. You may also start seeds indoors if your growing days are short. Despite disease and insect and disease pressure you will reap a good harvest if you plant enough seeds. If you wanted to fight the good fight you could plant bait crops like Hubbard Squash or even cut out the Squash Vine Borer with a razor knife. I have saved many an embattled squash this way. 

6. 3 Sisters – are beans- corn- zucchini utilized by Indigenous peoples for time immemorial. This is a good survival crop set. Pole beans climb up the corn and the zucchini’s broad leaves shade the soil for the other two sisters. Corn, beans, and zucchini can be eaten fresh or canned. Or choose dry beans and dent corn for long storage. We make Ratatouille with zucchini and can it. You may also bless your entire community with zucchini as it often over produces all expectations. 

7. Cayenne Pepper – I included Cayenne pepper because it is my favorite crop. It is both a food and a traditional herbal remedy. When dried it lasts almost indefinitely and can also be ground and tinctured. It’s a migraine buster and a great blood circulation help. We have a friend in cold upstate NY that has heart issues resulting in cold hands and feet. We gave him some of our cayenne tincture and voila – no more cold hands and feet. Now our friends make their own cayenne tincture, and it is a staple in their house. In my Family Herbalist training I recall how Dr. Christopher would sustain himself throughout the morning with wheat germ and cayenne pepper alone. Cayenne is God’s gift to man, used as a spice, stomach aid, bleed stop, and catalyst to move other herbs throughout the body. 

That’s all we can fit in one article. Honorable mention storage crops are Cabbage, Onions, Turnips and Beets as they store well and are easy to grow. There are many more. Grow what you like to eat, but above all, “Grow Your Own Food!”

I promised a cheat sheet for new Woodchip Gardens. It’s simply this. Dig a 8” furrows into your newly installed, 12” deep woodchip garden (see my previous Garden to the Rescue article published here on 4/27/22). Fill the furrow with a combination of finished garden soil or good topsoil along with finished compost at a 50% ratio. See picture above. In this way you will be creating a suitable growing area from the get-go and do not have to wait for woodchips to break down. By this time next year your woodchips alone will be suitable to plant in.