Growing enough food for your family can seem like a daunting task when we first start down the path of self-sufficiency. Surprisingly, the fall is the simplest time to start that journey! When most people think about growing more of their own food, it is usually the summer garden they have in mind. Visions of pantries filled with canned tomatoes, green beans, and jams. However, starting a self-sufficient garden in the fall is the perfect time to begin growing more of your own food.
A few years into trying to freeze enough green beans and can enough tomato sauce to last all winter, I had the realization…if I could just shift the base ingredients to homegrown I’d be 30-50% closer to self-sufficient. Half of my soups and roasts would be homegrown with so much less labor input. Realizing how this baby step would so radically shift the percentage of food we’d be able to raise for our table, changed how we planned our gardening.
Why start your self-sufficient garden in the fall?
So many of our pantry staples and base ingredients for recipes are cool-weather loving crops. Think about the base ingredients in all of your favorite recipes. I bet you will probably find one or more of the following ingredients on the list:
- Onions
- Carrots
- Garlic
- Celery
- Herbs
Another bonus, is that these crops are also easy to freeze, dehydrate, or store in the cellar. No canning equipment or experience required! Not to mention these crops are less labor intensive, have less pest issues, and there’s minimal weeds all season long. Fall gardening for the win! What’s not to love about starting your self-sufficient garden in the fall?
Onions
Let’s start with the humble onion. There’s usually one or two of these guys in most dinner recipes. Or at least some onion powder called for. I like to dice my onions and then freeze them for dump and go meals. Making onion powder is also super easy. Simply slice thin and pop into your dehydrator. When dry, grind into a powder.
Depending on where you live, you’ll be looking for long-day or short-day varieties. In the South where we live, winter days are relatively short compared to the northern states. So if we tried to grow a long-day onion, we’d never get any bulb development because we just don’t have enough sunlight. So pick an onion variety that is suited for your region. Just getting on the fall garden bandwagon a bit late? You can purchase onion sets and onion transplants to jumpstart your garden.
Garlic
The classic flavoring of garlic is found in so many dishes or can even be a side dish in their own right. Minced garlic in oil is a great way to preserve garlic for quickly adding to home-cooked meals. Dehydrated garlic can be ground into powder for some garlic toast or a that extra dash to make the soup taste right.
Similar to onions, there are two categories of garlic. Soft-neck and hard-neck. The main differences between the two are storage capacity and cloves. Soft-neck garlic is the one you’ve probably been buying at the grocery store all along. It tends to have an abundance of cloves and will store over 6 months in proper conditions. Hard-neck garlic will have larger (yet fewer) cloves and will last only about 4 months in storage. The choice is yours! We’ve grown both, but personally prefer soft-neck down here in zone 7b.
Carrots
Great as a raw snack, salad topping, roasted, or chopped up in a soup, the carrot is a must-have in your self-sufficient garden. They freeze great and can also be stored in a damp sawdust or sand in a crate in a root cellar. No refrigeration required!
Carrots come in so many colors, shapes, and sizes! Some varieties store better than others, so be sure to check the description if you’re hoping to fill up your root cellar. Carrots are a bit trickier to germinate as they are picky about the soil and water quantity. Also important is to keep the weeds out of your carrot patch! Weeds can easily choke out your root crops or malform the roots beyond usefulness. However, a freshly harvested homegrown carrot is totally worth the early season challenges!
Celery
Like carrots, celery can be a great snack raw and is often a key ingredient in your soup, stirfries, and roast recipes. Stalk celery, like you’d find at the grocery store, has a long growing season and can overwinter in milder climates. While you can harvest the whole plant, picking individual stems as needed will help the plants produce over a longer period of time.
If you’re like me and don’t love the flavor of raw celery, consider growing cutting celery to add flavor to your recipes. The stalks are much slimmer and regrow quickly. It’s perfect for easy dicing for chicken salad or adding to soups, stocks and broths. The plant keeps regrowing all season long, plus the thinner stalks and leaves can be easily preserved by dehydrating. Dry celery is great to have on hand when fresh celery is not in season or you’re trying to throw a quick meal in the slow cooker before running out the door.
Herbs
While most herbs won’t grow outside in the winter, many of them can grow in a pot in your kitchen window. Fresh basil, parsley, oregano, cilantro, and more will happily reside on your window sill or, if needed, under a grow light. There’s nothing like the flavor fresh herbs add to dishes, and having a ready supply of them at your fingertips will take your recipes to the next level.
No yard? No problem!
Becoming self-sufficient with onions, carrots, garlic, and celery isn’t limited to those with large backyards and farmland. All of them can be grown in a container garden on your porch or patio!
Make sure your containers will fit the crops you want to grow. For example, if you’re growing carrots that are supposed to be 7-9 inches long, make sure the pot you plant them in will be deep enough.
Starting a self-sufficient garden in the fall is a rewarding first step down the road of growing your own food. Interested in what else you can grow in the fall? Check out our top 10 fall vegetable garden favorites.