Vegetables

Available 31 July 2010

Welcome to The Change Underground System Vegetables Page!

Vegetables

This class of plants provides food for humans, feed for animals and "wastes" for the worms. Quite simply we can live on vegetables alone but it can be a bit tricky. Balancing protein requirements without meat or dairy products talks some skill but it can be dome. Mastering the art of vegetable production is a vital yet a simple process using The Change Underground System.

Some vegetables worth considering from a stock feed and human food perspective:

Summer

Beans	Potato	Squash/Pumpkin/Zucchini	Sweet Corn	Tomato
These are excellent and very easy to grow. Frost tender but very productive. Choose between climbing, bush and perennial. I would recommend all three, to some extent. Scarlet runner beans are the perennial variety. These are good around the edges of the growing areas. Climbing and bush are great for fresh, drying and pickling.	Quite simply, you can live on these. Great source of Vitamin C as well as a staple. If you've grown comfrey, place some leaves on the ground then the spuds then as much compost as you can on top. You can feed spuds raw or cooked to all stock. Boiled is better and far more digestible, so it worth the effort.	Great again for all stock and for people. Can be used in a multitude of ways, they are full of vitamins. The hard skinned varieties can be stored for winter and the soft skins will disappear off dinner plates in no time. The leaves and stems are loved by stock and anything not eaten by them will feed the worms.	Another very frost tender plant. The cobs are wonderful eating and we never get sick of them. The great resource that is often forgotten is the leaves and stems. These are known as stover. All ruminants and the rabbits will devour this product. For this reason alone, it is worth growing. A layer of wood ash below the seeds works wonders at planting time.	This versatile and useful food is technically a fruit but we'll treat it as a vegetable. The leaves and stems must never, ever be fed to stock. They can cause poisoning. They are all go into the worm beds. The fruits can be used fresh, bartered with others, pickled, turned into chutney, sauces or relishes. A really useful vegetable for storing vitamins for the winter.

Winter

Broad Beans	Cabbage	Carrots	Kale	Peas
Like their frost sensitive cousins, the summer grown beans, Broad Beans fix nitrogen in the soil and thus make it available to later crops. The beans can be feed to stock but improve with twelve months drying. The straw makes a great fodder, relished by all stock. Really a filler crop with food/feed bonuses.	Great fodder crop. One of the earliest domesticated species and consequently almost endless varieties. Chose as many cultivars as you can. They mature at different times and will provide both you and your animals have access to fresh greens all through the colder months. Can be pickled but I like them raw.	Great source of vitamin A and although slow growing, the large varietal choice means a constant harvest. The tops are loved by all stock but rabbits especially. When feeding to anything bigger than rabbits and chickens the roots will need to cut up. This avoids choking hazards. Pigs are probably OK but why risk it? Toss some in with potatoes you cook for stock.	Closely related to the cabbages, Kale is excellent green feed for stock. To my mind, it is a poor vegetable for human consumption but others love it. Almost as many cultivars as cabbage and so provides feed all winter with the right choices. Can taint milk, as can cabbage, if over fed.	The King, Queen and all other nobility of vegetables. I love them. The peas can be eaten fresh, dried, frozen or salted. The great product of peas is the pea straw. Highish in protein, great in dry matter and loved by all stock from the worms up. I can't sing the praises of this stuff highly enough. With any luck pea straw, cabbage kale and comfrey will all be available together and your stock will flourish.

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