Survival seed banks are good… but…
Because there has to be a “but”, right?
I recently read a good article on a very popular, well run prepper site which extolled the virtues of survival seed banks. It’s a good article, and I’m throwing a link in right here for you to check it out.
But…
There’s something seriously missing from the article that I want to talk about, and that’s the fact that while Spice and I think that it is critically important to have, that seed bank will do you very little good unless you have the ground, the preparation, the gardening supplies, the knowledge and (likely) the water to make it all work.
Let’s look at the challenges of using a Survival Seed Bank
First, let’s just do a quick run through of the challenges of actually using these seeds if you are not currently a gardener.
- You have seeds, but you don’t have ground prepared to put them in. This means that you are going to have to clear off an appropriate amount of land and till it somehow. Do you have the tools you need? Do you have a tiller? I’ve dug garden plots with a spade, and it’s not for the faint of back or the short on time. Re-digging a former garden with a spade is much more doable.
- Unless you are exceedingly fortunate, your land will need some work the first year in preparing it and fertilizing it. You may live in prime truck food production country and just need to till and grow, but chances are you will need to add things such as topsoil and manure or other compost. Gardeners certainly will need to have mulch on hand that’s appropriate for gardening.
- You need a way to start some of your seeds inside unless you are living in the deep South or some other warm area. Without that, your growing season is greatly limited. Also, you will need to know HOW to do this.
- Do all of the seeds you are storing (and if the SHTF, you are betting your life on) grow well in your area? In your soil? With the amount of water they will likely get? Heirloom seeds do tend to be more challenging and less productive than commercial hybrids — which is why the hybrids are so popular.
- Speaking of water, will you have to water your garden if the SHTF and your life depends on this crop? If so, what are your plans for doing this? Where will the water come from?
- Let’s say you get all of these nice plants planted and happily growing. Is rabbit fencing one of your preps? Do you have a way to keep pests like turtles, squirrels, birds and groundhogs out of your food?
- Do you know how to prune plants & trees?
- Some fruits and vegetables, when ripe, have a VERY short shelf life. In your preps, do you have a way to preserve them that doesn’t require electricity? Do you have the canning supplies you need? Happen to have have an open-air dehydrator, or at least the netting to keep pests off of your drying racks? How are you set for jars, lids, and necessary consumables?
- Do you know how to can fruits and vegetables and/or do you know how to dehydrate them?
- Have you already learned how to collect the seeds from this year’s harvest? Do you know the proper techniques to clean and store them so that they will germinate next season?
Survival Seed Bank in a can
I’ve got several different types of survival seed banks in my supplies. One I see often (since it’s in the pantry with all of my #10 cans is an Augason Farms Vegetable Seeds Supply.
Here’s what the advertising blurb says about it
Augason’s specs:
- Yields over 2300 pounds of fresh produce!
- 13 Hardy Seed Varieties
- All Natural
- Non-Hybrid & Non-GMO
- Up to a 5 Year Shelf Life!
I have no idea how good these are, so I also have several other types in storage. (We also have our own seed we save from year to year. I know some of that’s good, because we’ve tested out the system.)
In all honesty, I suspect it’s a load of nonsense.
Next spring, I’m planning on opening the can up and giving it a try… finding out what works in my North Missouri climate and what doesn’t.
The fallacy of instant, just add water food production
Growing food is hard. Oh, the odd plant here and there isn’t; but a garden with a lot of species that must be relied upon to feed you and yours for the next year is hard. Weather, pests, and randomness take their toll (as the time I came home from work to find the roofers had been chucking the old shingles onto my garden). Inexperience and lack of good prepared ground and ready water supplies magnify the threats.
Knowing how to grow food requires experience. I say this as someone who has learned a lot ‘the hard way’ to get to the place we are now, where most of our year-round veggies come from our garden. Sure, I read up on things before I started … and that was valuable; but no substitute for practical experience.
There’s no time like the present to fail, because if the SHTF failure can kill you. Planning to not fail is wise. Accepting that in a new-to-you, long-term project like food growing that planning might not cover every problem is even wiser. It’s a great time to find out what your plan doesn’t account for.
The Bottom Line
Buying a Survival Seed Bank is a sound idea. The problem comes, of course, with the fact that having seeds is just the smallest part of actually turning those seeds into food in a SHTF situation (or even in an every-year I-want-fresh-veggies situation).
Buying a seed bank and not addressing all of these other issues (and the many more not mentioned) is just another example of the axiom that we have developed here at 3BY…
“You cannot buy your way to preparedness, you have to earn it.”
Very good advice. I have seed banks from several sources as well as tools to break new ground if I need to expand my garden but for the people that plan on turning your lawn into a garden ( as I would have to do ) you are completely right about the amount of work it takes and the fact that soil for growing grass isn’t the best for growing plants. I make my own compost and find that all the old leaves,food scraps ,lawn clippings, ect make about the equivalent of 2-3 bags of compost so I still have to buy more each year. Then you talk about fertilizer. People are going to need at least a couple of years of food stored to get through the learning curve it is going to take to grow enough veggies to try and feed a family.
Why not place extra seeds in pvc schedule 40 then bury them. They will last for years if necessary. That is what we do with extra seeds from our garden. thanks
I’ve been saying this for years. A stash of seeds without the experience (and, as you point out, the garden space) gives a false sense of security. “If SHTF lasts longer than my freeze-dried foods, I’ve got my seed vault…”
It’s akin to someone (who’s never shot a gun before) stashing a pistol and box of rounds in his SHTF vault, thinking he’ll go all Rambo when he needed to.
Most preppers know they need to practice with their firearms to be ‘ready’ if/when the time comes. Yet, some of them think they’ll start a survival garden with no practice. Just like the odds being poor that a first-time shooter will hit 1-inch groups right out of the box, the odds are poor a first-time gardener will produce a ‘tasty and nutritious bounty” in his first season.
That said, someone who DOES practice their gardening doesn’t usually have a stashed-away seed vault. They’ve got their regular box of seeds they use each year (such as saved seeds from the prior harvest) They have what gores in their area and don’t bother with things that (through practice) do poorly.
I have a problem with the short shelf-life of the so called survival seeds. So far, in 50 years of life on this Earth I have never had a SHTF and had to grow my own food. I do not anticipate needing survival seeds in the next 5 years…so basically, that means I would have to repurchase packages of seeds every 5 years or so to ensure that I have viable seeds on hand. Seems like a waste to me, so I simply save my own garden-grown seeds every year…and I place them into containers and write the date on them. Sticking with “heirloom” varieties, you should have “stable” varieties with every generation.
For those of us that garden, that’s the much better plan. Will those seed bank things grow well under our conditions? We don’t know unless we’ve tried them. Will seeds from last year grow well in our conditions? I’m thinking Yeah. To be honest, we bought our seed banks before I got as into gardening; now I either save my own seed or stock up during fall sales for a season’s worth of planting.
Great article love you site. A seed vault seems like a good idea to have on hand, but I don’t like the idea of it only having a 5-year shelf life, “if stored in the perfect conditions”. About a month ago I decided to see just how green my thumb was and decided to start to save money and grow some of my own food. The results have been poor, almost everything I planted from seeds has died. Out of the 72 seeds that I planted, I have about a dozen that have survived and I have another month before they are supposed to be ready for harvest. Every seed sprouted, and I started to think, I’m going to have way too much food in a couple of months, and now I’m glad that the grocery store down the road is still open. It has taken more time, more space, more resources and mainly more WATER than I realized. I knew it was going to be difficult, I knew that not everything was going to make it and now I know time is wasting, learn how to grow something, get your hands dirty. Having the tools and equipment on hand are great, but doing is better, keep notes or a journal for future reference. Not everything is going to grow in the same spot, each plant requires, water, light and nutrients, and I have quickly found that the combination is not the same for all plants, it varies greatly. If you wait for the scenario to hit it will be to late, practice today to survive tomorrow.
Exactly this. It really is a LOT harder than it looks to get started. Now, in good times, your struggles are disappointing and frustrating, but if the S had HTF and you were trying to depend on this food to live through the winter? Wow, that’s just bad. You are doing EXACTLY what we recommend, the next step is to evaluate, fix, and try it again. Water for plants is a REAL issue, more than anything else the proper amount of water is the difference between success and failure. The ONLY way to figure out the proper amount for your particular climate/soil/weather is trial and error. Great job on starting now, it may save your life.