You're further south than me, with the additional moisture from the gulf...
I'm actually in the ozarks.
I wish that your profile reflected this....
Anytime I try to discuss growing stuff... I always check to see where the OP is gardening (whether in this forum or any other) It makes a huge difference in the advice that I'm going to offer.
When I read "gulf coast", I think lower alabama/florida panhandle... and make statements relative to those conditions.
The Ozarks get pretty good rain... comparatively speaking... And... yes, I know about that cracked clay in August.... but you have a nice long spring... with the rains associated with that...
Spring here now... with frost until the middle of April.... summer starts soon after... Interesting gardening in that....
Gardening in the clay.... gonna be different plants thriving in that...
Sun chokes (ja), should be a good choice... If you ever get a deer fence!
Not sure what kind of food you can grow without fencing...
Have you considered something like hardy orange or osage orange as organic fencing?
Neither of them grow well enough in my sand to work.... I seem to need to create a garden before I can even get them to grow!
Working now on rooting roses for planting next to the existing deer fence...
Have you tried any of the chenopodium species?
Most people are familiar with chenopodium album, I have a better variety, chenopodium giganteum... But... I have to fence it in.... to prevent the deer from killing it....
Here's a neat post from tumblr:
So I just learned something that ****es me off.
Y’know quinoa? The ~magical~ health food that has become so popular in the US that a centuries-long tradition of local, sustainable, multi-crop farming is being uprooted to mass-produce it for the global market? Potentially affecting food stability and definitely effecting environmental stability across the region?
Ok, cool.
Y’know Lamb’s Quarter? A common weed throughout the continental US, tolerant of a wide variety of soil conditions including the nutrient-poor and compacted soils common in cities, to the point where it thrives in empty lots?
These plants are close relatives, and produce extremely similar seeds. Lamb’s quarter could easily be grown across the US, in people’s backyard and community gardens, as a low-cost and local alternative to quinoa with no sketchy geopolitical impacts. You literally don’t have to nurture it at all, it’s a ******* weed, it’ll be fine. Put it where your lawn was, it’ll probably grow better than the grass did. AND you can eat the leaves - they taste almost exactly like spinach.
This just… drives home, again, that a huge part of the appeal of “superfoods” is the sense of the exotic. For whatever nutritional benefits quinoa does have, the marketing strategy is still driven by an undercurrent of orientalism. You too could eat this food, grown laboriously by farmers in the remote Andes mountains! You too could grow strong on the staple crop that has sustained them for centuries! And, y’know, destroy that stable food system in the process. Or you could eat this near-identical plant you found in your backyard.
