Grow food on this ground

Potato

Your calorie insurance. Stores in a dark 40°F cellar from October to April.

Dent corn (field corn)

Hominy, cornbread, chicken feed, and hog fattening. Sweet corn will not store.

Dry bean

Protein that sits on a shelf. Bush for speed, pole for yield per square foot.

Winter squash

Waltham butternut, Hubbard, and candy-roaster keep until March on a shelf.

Cabbage

Fresh slaw in June, sauerkraut in November. The fermented one is your winter vitamin C.

Kale & collards

The greens that laugh at October. Often still pickable after Christmas against a south wall.

Onion & garlic

Flavor, medicine, and storage. Garlic is planted in October — don’t miss it.

Carrot & beet

Roots that live in the ground until you need them. Beets also give you greens.

Tomato

Sauce, salsa, and the morale crop. Not a staple — a reason to keep going.

Sweet potato

Loves our hot summers. A box of cured sweets lasts until April.

Lettuce, pea & radish

The 30-day crops. Plant them every two weeks from March to May and again in August.

Turnip & rutabaga

Sown in late July, pulled after frost, buried in sand. Peasant food that works.

Sunflower

Oil seed and chicken feed. Mammoth for seed, multi-head types for blooms and birds.

Apple (and pear)

If you have one tree, learn to keep it. Fresh fruit, cider, sauce, dried rings.

Blackberry & raspberry

Wild blackberries are already on your fencerows. Tame a row and you have jam forever.

Kitchen herbs

Thyme, sage, rosemary, mint, oregano, dill, parsley. Medicine cabinet and flavor.

Chickens

Eggs, meat, pest control

Start here. A small flock is the fastest path to daily protein on a Dearborn County lot.

Rabbits

Meat, pelts, quiet protein

The most meat per pound of feed you can raise in town without a tractor. Quiet. Fast.

Goats

Milk, brush control, kids for meat

A pair of does will clear multiflora rose and put milk on the table. They will also test every fence you own.

Pigs

Meat, lard, waste conversion

A pair of weaned feeders in April is October lard and ham. They turn acorns, whey, and garden waste into calories.

Honeybees

Honey, wax, pollination

A living sugar factory and the reason your squash sets fruit. Steeper learning curve, huge payoff.

Ducks

Eggs, slugs, wet-ground birds

Better layers than chickens in winter, murder on slugs, and they don’t scratch the garden to death.