How Will The Floods And Freezes Result in Shortages at the Grocery

[greenthumbomaha]

The photos say it all. Flooding then freezes.
Of course California and the southern states have the climate to respond quickly when conditions improve. Or maybe not ...
Is there anything that we should now consider planting that we don't grow because it was easy and cheap to buy?

- Lisa

[Lemonboy]

Lettuce would be my suggestion if you're a salad person. Especially if you don't have rabbits or geese you'd have to keep out of it. There are lots of varieties. It grows quickly. But when the weather turns hot it tends to bolt. Maybe by then California will be producing again.

Napa cabbage is also fairly easy to grow although the outer leaves may need thinning. Bok choy too if you like stir fries.

Most fresh herbs are grown indoors under lights these days.

Beyond that it will depend on what you normally grow.

[karstopography]

Lettuce is super quick to grow from seed to being harvestable. Fresh Lettuce at the store is expensive to buy and even more so when there’s general bad weather or other issues in the traditional growing areas. However, a packet of lettuce seed is inexpensive when you consider how many seeds are in the typical package. You can sow a little heavy and use the thinnings for salad starting in just two or three weeks after sowing.

Arugula is another that is rocket fast. A little bag or clam shell of arugula at the store is ridiculously expensive. A seed packet is cheap and one package will give you more arugula than you can use. Some people don’t like arugula, but I think it’s delicious.

Radish is crazy quick. The tops are something that can be used as a green, although, my radish tops often get munched on by various insects.

Celery has been a surprisingly easy fresh vegetable to grow and have available. So many recipes call for celery. Tuna salad, chicken soup, mirepoix, cajun trinity, etc. One bunch of fresh celery here now is $1.50. Maybe the recipe calls for 2 or 3 ribs, while the rest of the celery goes limp after a few days. Now, if I need a couple of ribs of celery, I can go out at cut them fresh from the plant and the plant grows more. No more plunking down $1.50 every time I need a couple of celery ribs. Celery only needs about a foot of space, each plant can be about a foot apart. I had seven plants, I dug up two to give to friends. Five plants are still more than we need.

Kale is a good one as you can snip off the leaves you need and the plant will keep on growing and making more. I like the tuscan, dinosaur kale the best.

What vegetable is getting less expensive these days? I try to make the garden so that I can bypass the produce department of the store as much as possible. Growing Onions seems like a good bang for the buck. The sets are pretty cheap, onions aren’t garden space hogs, don’t require pest control, or a lot of time or material inputs, and store pretty well. Seems like onions offer a large multiple on return for investment.

[Tormahto]

Lettuce is nearly nutritionally worthless. I'd grow just about anything else.

[bower]

A good romaine lettuce is as good a source of folate as other greens.
In general though, growing your own supply of greens of various kinds is easy and a no brainer. I got more serious about this when we started having recalls due to salmonella, listeria and other foodborne pathogens on grocery produce. Even if there's no flood, freeze or other disaster to mass produced crops, your own greens are always fresher, cleaner and safer.
All of the green vegs mentioned by karstopography are easy to grow in the winter, under lights in a colder climate. Napa cabbage is a huge pest magnet in the growing season, but a fabulous off season crop. Celery is really tolerant of all sorts of neglect (low light, failure to pot up or feed) they just don't grow until you feed them and stop growing if you don't. As an indoor or greenhouse crop the quality is also much better than under growing season stress outdoors. Plus the benefit of harvesting stalks as you need them from a 'plant once' crop. Every green especially lettuce is super tender and luscious when grown in cool of winter/ under lights.
Besides arugula (which is fast but soon bolting and done) I will add Yu Choy to the list, as a fast (40 day) and easy crop that likes a fairly high density planting in pots and will give you several cuts of delicious flowering stems tasting like a very sweet broccoli. Kai Lan is like broccoli and napa cabbage, a 60+ day veg that wants a large pot. Once they start producing their buds/stems they will just keep going all season if you continue to cut. (The Napa needs outer leaves to be kept harvested when grown to 60+day size in a pot, the regular harvesting encourages growth). I'm also trying "Purple Sprouting Broccoli" this year. Big, cold tolerant plants that need to overwinter before they produce repeat flushes of purple tinged broccoli spears. Overwintered kales also produce "mockoli" shoots as they bolt and a steady crop if kept harvested. They are as good as broccoli (unless you have a reason for wanting a piece the size of a dinner plate).

[karstopography]

Lettuce is nearly nutritionally worthless. I'd grow just about anything else.

Very low in calories for sure, but good leaf, romaine and other lettuce are packed with vitamins and minerals, especially vitamins A and K.

[Tormahto]

Lettuce is nearly nutritionally worthless. I'd grow just about anything else.

Very low in calories for sure, but good leaf, romaine and other lettuce are packed with vitamins and minerals, especially vitamins A and K.

I'll have to do some more reading, but from decades ago, all I can remember is marginal amounts of K, and low mounts of anything else, in comparison to more potent veggies.

[Tormahto]

A good romaine lettuce is as good a source of folate as other greens.
In general though, growing your own supply of greens of various kinds is easy and a no brainer. I got more serious about this when we started having recalls due to salmonella, listeria and other foodborne pathogens on grocery produce. Even if there's no flood, freeze or other disaster to mass produced crops, your own greens are always fresher, cleaner and safer.
All of the green vegs mentioned by karstopography are easy to grow in the winter, under lights in a colder climate. Napa cabbage is a huge pest magnet in the growing season, but a fabulous off season crop. Celery is really tolerant of all sorts of neglect (low light, failure to pot up or feed) they just don't grow until you feed them and stop growing if you don't. As an indoor or greenhouse crop the quality is also much better than under growing season stress outdoors. Plus the benefit of harvesting stalks as you need them from a 'plant once' crop. Every green especially lettuce is super tender and luscious when grown in cool of winter/ under lights.
Besides arugula (which is fast but soon bolting and done) I will add Yu Choy to the list, as a fast (40 day) and easy crop that likes a fairly high density planting in pots and will give you several cuts of delicious flowering stems tasting like a very sweet broccoli. Kai Lan is like broccoli and napa cabbage, a 60+ day veg that wants a large pot. Once they start producing their buds/stems they will just keep going all season if you continue to cut. (The Napa needs outer leaves to be kept harvested when grown to 60+day size in a pot, the regular harvesting encourages growth). I'm also trying "Purple Sprouting Broccoli" this year. Big, cold tolerant plants that need to overwinter before they produce repeat flushes of purple tinged broccoli spears. Overwintered kales also produce "mockoli" shoots as they bolt and a steady crop if kept harvested. They are as good as broccoli (unless you have a reason for wanting a piece the size of a dinner plate).

I'm dim sum of the time, when getting technical with growing things.

[bower]

@Tormato I'm really stoked about this year's experiments. I always have way too many seedlings. Can't seem to start the right amount of seeds EVER. So this year I just put extra lettuce and brassica seedlings in their cells out into the greenhouse. Some in 4 inch pots went out at an early stage too. What I tried is, potting up a few into larger pots and giving them space and time under lights. Then when they get large, they move on to the greenhouse (or to my Mom's) and the next round, from seedlings that are chilling and still small, gets their turn under lights, long enough that they want to move, and so on. The greenhouse has filled up with good sized greens that are not growing but they're big enough to eat and quality still AOK. Quality is actually excellent at this point, they've just been chilling. It'll be more of a challenge when we start to have hot days and big temperature swings. But then that should get the broccoli sprouting so I'm not worried.
Just potting up peppers for my windowledge today. Peppers have been super expensive since last fall.

[Tormahto]

If you're ever looking for brassicas, the MMMM 2022 non-tomato/pepper thread has a list.

I don't even know what hongtai choy is, and that's why I ordered it.

[worth1]

I substitute Swiss chard for lettuce.
Works every time and better for you.
And the reason I'm growing it.


https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... yQnguEGI-W

[karstopography]

Iceberg lettuce is pretty pitiful as far as having much of anything like Vitamins or minerals.

[Lemonboy]

Lettuce is nearly nutritionally worthless. I'd grow just about anything else.

Given that you named a tomato Bacon, Lettuce and This I'd guess nutrition isn't the only factor for what you put on a sandwich. And lettuce seed is cheaper and more likely to germinate than bacon seed.

[bower]

I substitute Swiss chard for lettuce.
Works every time and better for you.
And the reason I'm growing it.


https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... yQnguEGI-W

I was going to mention Swiss chard as a must-grow vegetable for all seasons. Simply because you plant it once and it keeps on producing all season long. It tolerates both heat and cold. It is so easy to grow. Even if it's not your favorite vegetable, WRT the original post, when grocery vegs go missing or skyrocket in price because of a crop failure, the vegetable you have on hand is the thing you'll be glad to eat. And it's pretty effortless to have chard on hand, as long as you have room for a little patch or even a pot.

The challenge for chard is to find ways to enjoy it. I like your link @worth1 because I see recipes! Mostly I use it for color in a stirfry, or I do a quick pickle and keep it in the fridge for a ready side dish.

I have a little project on the go, a cross between sugar beet and chard. The sugar beet greens are tender and not bitter. Maybe some tendency to oxalate got bred out of the sugar beet as they were selecting for sweet. So the hope is to select for sweeter chard. I have a ton of F2 seeds and just started some to begin selecting. If anyone is interested in growing some to try selecting sweeter chard, let me know. Another possibility would be to select for a dual purpose vegetable, where you can eat the stalks all summer then harvest the roots to make sugar. Not that we're likely to need to make sugar but, you never know. It's always nice to know you have a food security backup of any kind.
The only tricky thing for the breeding is, you need a milder climate or a greenhouse to overwinter the selected plants and get seeds the second year. And the chard gets increasingly bitter as it gets into that second year, so it will take some space to get seeds without contributing much in the way of food in that second season. But they do make a ton of seeds, and they make a nice microgreen or baby green, so it is still food forward to grow seeds!

Another tip I learned about swiss chard, the oxalate is water soluble, so even a good soak in cold water may reduce the amount of bitter somewhat. Blanching before freezing is another process that would remove even more oxalate, and make for a more palatable frozen veggie. Cooking with yoghurt, milk or sour cream also binds the oxalate, and makes it a healthier food, afaik. I'm not sure about saponins in the beet family and whether they contribute much to the bitter or just the pleasant bit of 'bite'.

[brownrexx]

I always grow both head and leaf lettuces as well as spinach and bok choy. They are some of the first things that I can harvest which is one reason that I really like them. I have to wait until later in the season for the warm weather veggies.

[JRinPA]

With onions up to $1 a pound regular old yellows, I'm planning to grow more. My month old seed starts did not do well, so I guess I'll have to buy sets. We don't buy many fresh vegetables other than onions. Fruit, yes, vegetables, not really, I grow plenty. I will continue to grow as many peppers as I can, and dice and freeze right up to November.

I think you have to look at what you normally buy, decide if it is possible and worthwhile to grow, and whether it can be stored.

[pepperhead212]

@Bower If you like Mexican food, that's something you can use a good amount of chard in. I started growing chard when I started collecting Rick Bayless's cookbooks - he has many recipes with it, and he usually calls for lamb's quarters or Swiss chard, and I actually liked the chard better (I tried LQ once, and it didn't grow as well, and I didn't like it as much as the chard). I always save the stalks to cut up, and toss them into stir fries or Thai curries.

[Tormahto]

Maruba Santoh Round Leaved - leaves for salads and sandwiches, stems for stir fry. If a salad has several other ingredients, one leaf is enough.

[worth1]

When my mom got to Missouri from Central Texas she went wild with excitement.
We got there in mid summer.
My mother was raised in the North West in Montana.
We had several hundred acres to play on.
The woods were full of food to eat and she knew every one of them.
Lambs quarters were growing wild everywhere in the following spring not 200 feet from the house.
The woods and fields and all manner of berries nuts and fruits to eat.
Plus plenty of wild game to eat as well.
I remember picking wild lambs quarters with her and my first taste of Swiss chard from the garden.
I remember seeing her run up to the first sight of a gooseberry bush and an elderberry plant.
She was about 45 years old at the time because she had me when she was around 37 or so.
Sorry for the side steps but I just had to share part of my life.
Maybe I'm growing Swiss chard in memory of my mom more than anything.

[Julianna]

@Bower we would be happy to help with your swiss chard project! I like it but the boys love it and we go through it like crazy. It overwinters here and will bolt. I can easily collect seed for you.