Have you ever worried about having a source of calories in case of societal collapse?
I have. And I worried about being able to grow what I needed in the backyard. Turnips and potatoes were a pain. Chickens needed feed. Jerusalem artichokes were disappointing.
…and then we discovered cassava. Easy to grow, pest-free, full of calories, tasty, and it thrives in hot weather and so-so soil, making beautiful wheels of starchy tubers.
We once grew it in pure construction sand with a little buried manure beneath and it did great.
If we can do it, you can too!
Tomorrow we’ll be back at the Palafox Market (South) in Ferdinand VII Plaza tomorrow in beautiful Pensacola and we’ll be bringing lots of cassava with us, so you can get this important staple crop in the ground now.
Once you have it, you can keep it going indefinitely via propagating your own. Plants are only $10 each, or 12 for $100, if you want to start a good-sized survival patch for 2024.
If you plant now, you can get roots like these by winter:
We also have other survival crops, including rare “achira” cannas with edible roots, taro, potato mint, tobacco (great trade good!), and more.
Like last week, our booth will be at the Plaza Ferdinand in downtown Pensacola at the Palafox Market South.
Note that we are NOT in the median on Palafox Street, where the old market takes place. We are at the new market area in Plaza Ferdinand.
The market is open from 9AM to 2PM. We’ll have the “David The Good Plant Sale” sign out front.
In the nursery this week
Amaranth (beautiful purple)
Blackcurrant Mint
Cassava
Catawba
Chaya
Chinese artichoke (rare!)
Chitlpin Pepper
Coffee
Dill
Elderberry
Mulberry
Lamb’s Ear
Lemongrass
Galangal
Vetiver grass
Gingers
Giant yellow timber bamboo
Saw palmetto
Oxalis (two beautiful varieties)
Tobacco (limited)
Tomato (Roma)
Tomato (Everglades)
Wild Blueberries
Yacon
Yaupon holly
Gardening books
T-shirts
…and lots more that I’m not listing here. We have a crazy collection of plants!
We always bring a couple interesting specimen plants if possible, so get there early if you’re a rare plant hunter.
The sale is THIS SATURDAY!
We can now take both cash and credit cards. Also, we always need pots, and we’ll take any trade-ins we can use from one-gallon size up for $0.50 store credit per pot. Recycle your pots – get free plants.
The market is friendly, and there are woodworkers and beekeepers and bakers and painters and all sorts of interesting vendors there. There are also other nurseries worth seeing along with ours.
See you there.
8 comments
Hey David, I wish I could come to the Pensacola plant sale but it’s nearly six hours from me. I’m from South Georgia and have admired that you have managed to grow cassava. Could I pay you for cassava shoots and have them ship through mail? Also if I could buy Chaya seed I’d do so.
Thank you for the videos you make, you helped me better appreciate nature and alternative lifestyle.
Thanks, Matthew – much appreciated. Unfortunately, I won’t have cassava cuttings again until late in this year. We might have some chaya cuttings earlier. Most of what we have has been grown in pots, now, and I don’t think they’d ship well.
Are your mulberry trees female or just luck of the draw?
They are all female – we don’t propagate male trees.
…just a newb question…how do you know if a mulberry is female or not?
Males make longer, fluffier blooms that do not turn into fruit.
Hey David,
I just discovered Aardaker (Lathyrus tuberosus) from the recent Going To Seed podcast episode with Padraic Flood.
I was wondering if you have any experience with this crop? I did not find anything searching this site.
It seems almost too good to be true. High protein root crop with good flavor, edible leaves, and nitrogen fixing!
I purchased some seed off ebay to experiment with it.
I have not tried it. According to PFAF, yields are low, but I’m sure it would be fun to grow.