I’ve been growing a vegetable garden for years, but it’s changed. Before prepping was on my mind, it was all about the yield: What I most wanted to eat, for the least work input. Now that I’m using it as intentional skill development as a prep, some choices are different. Here’s a few things to consider:
Heirloom vs. hybrid
Heirloom varieties breed true: Plants tend to look and yield like the plant that produced their seed. Hybrids are crosses between two varieties. They often yield better than either parent. Because plant genetics are weird by mammal standards (it’s not just one set of chromosomes from each parent in many cases), plants from the seeds of hybrids can’t be trusted to resemble the plant that made the seed, or either of that plant’s parents, or even somewhere in between. You have no idea what you’ll get and it varies from seed to seed from a single plant.
These Cherokee Purples are a heirloom variety I tried last year. Not as disease resistant as a hybrid, but I could save seed. This trade-off looks better now that I’m a prepper.
Hybrids are often the choice of gardeners, and many of the plants and seeds you find for sale are hybrids. Heirlooms are a much better choice if you need to save seed yourself for the next year — like, say, a prepper might want to do. (My garden usually has some hybrids because I like them, but some heirlooms Just In Case.) Many heirloom varieties are specially labeled as such, particularly for species where hybrids are the norm such as tomatoes.
Organic vs. Conventional Garden
Some people prefer to avoid extra chemicals in their garden, while others favor the larger yields and reduced pest losses of using pesticides. In the situation a prepper might *need* a garden, will the pesticides be available?
Well, some will in the Salty and Spice garden, as I’ve got a bag or two set back. That’s an emergency-type solution though. In general, we (preppers) should learn how to maximize yield without the chemicals. You never run out of technique.
That means learning to garden organically, and using only local materials. Neem oil is a great organic pesticide, but unless you live in Brazil you won’t find a lot of neem trees to collect it.
We can however plant onions, garlic, nasturtium, and other pest-dissuading plants close to the things we’re trying to protect, and use other organic gardening strategies such as rotating what crops go into a particular region. Not everything you read works (I’ve learned by sad experience), so experimenting now is important.
Commercial fertilizers may not be available either. Compost always works, though. Compost needs to be started about a year in advance of need, so setting up a bin is helpful. How to do that? Well, here’s a bit of help:
https://beansbulletsbandagesandyou.com/index.php/2018/02/25/one-mans-garbage-is-anothers-gold/
I’ve found one real difficulty, in that without keeping any animals (yet) we don’t produce enough compost for our needs from household and yard waste. We currently buy. I hope to remedy that in future years, as I want to keep chickens. You can trust a chicken to make poop!
Staples vs. Exotic
Before I started prepping, I never planted potatoes. They are so cheap to buy, don’t taste much different coming from the store (to me), and maybe I held a bit of a grudge over certain Saturdays in my childhood spent toiling all day with a fork to harvest the rascals. They do produce one whale of a lot of food for garden footprint spent though. So now, I’m experimenting with potatoes.
My original motivation to start a garden was liking the food. Fresh picked and homegrown is just better than one can get at a store. I can choose tomato varieties for taste, not ability to be shipped across the world without spoiling. Fresh grown herbs are wonderful, but Ridiculously expensive. There are some nifty exotic things I wanted to eat that aren’t available in our small stores.
If a time comes when I *need* this garden, it won’t be about tasty exotics that spoil in two days. I want to be able to reliably produce a whole lot of food that’s easily stored for up to a year. Potatoes. Onions. Beets. Carrots. Beans. Foods that dehydrate well and still make good eating, such as squash and tomatoes. Now I plant some of these every year, as skill development and seed producers.
I also discovered that the potato bins that look so good on the internet don’t fit my garden situation.
(If you want to read about the potato bin experiment, you can go here.)
Plant What You Plan
Most people now, even out here in rural areas, don’t bother to put in a garden at all. It is a very important prep, though. Having good ground ready to go and (critical!) the skills to make a garden produce reliably is a very big deal, in my opinion. Sure you’ve got stored food, but it’s limited and frankly, it looks pretty monotonous, doesn’t it? For every level of crisis from ‘lost my income’ to ‘This inflation is making everything unaffordable!’ to a full on societal collapse, having that source of food and trade items might save your bacon.
Note: That bit about bacon was just an expression. To literally have bacon to save, you’d need to seriously upgrade your homesteading game to stock keeping. Salty and I aren’t there yet.
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This post contains some information that has previously appeared in a different form on 3BY but now has been superseded, expanded and updated.
I am happy your actually doing the garden. Way to many of my prepping contacts plan to garden AFTER SHTF as they are “too busy” right now so they have some canned seeds. Food production is too important to be “too busy” to learn. Gardening is a skill learned on the job. Here in NE I have a short often variable early and late frosts growing season and while I can deal with Deer the Voles are my main garden pest. You cannot learn your garden pests until you DO it.
Grow what you eat, grow for the area and mostly grow for calories. I find success with potato grow boxes. The hardware cloth bottom prevents rains drowning the potatoes and keeps the voles out and I can easily shelter my potatoes from unexpected frosts.
Slightly off topic have folks actually opened their 30 year survival food kits to taste test them? I’ve tried many and most are pretty awful in taste, texture, serving sizes and nutrition. Would be bad to wait until your in SHTF to find out that food is nasty or way to light in protein and calories.
Sing it, Michael! We are *so* much more successful now than in the first gardens; and I didn’t come in at zero since we had a garden when I was a kid. Seeds in the freezer is nowhere near being prepared to make food. Our thrust is a little different though. We have a lot of calories stored; but it’s bland, monotonous, low in vitamins and minerals. Tasty, nutritious foods that store well — even if not very calorie dense — are a big theme. So do you have to water your bins a lot? I’ve tried them and had little success; it seemed that the potatoes were trying to grow along the stems but were stunted by lack of water.
Another thoughtful article. Now we need a follow up article on old-fashioned canning practices (Mason jars, Ball Jars). Ideally, a garden should produce more than can be used at the time…which is also a way of saying that perishable goods need preserving. Pickling and drying are also interesting topics.
Spice you don’t want me to Sing, I’ve been asked to leave church choirs. Glad it’s “Make a joyful noise to the Lord”. 🙂
As far as bare minimum survival gardening look to the 3 sisters garden of GRAIN Corn, Winter Squashes and Dry Beans. If you treat your corn with a bit of clean wood ash and water you unlock the full nutrients and avoid that “Southern Disease” of Pellagra. Most 3 sisters failures I’ve seen were not following the proper sequence of planting and choosing the wrong vegetables. I’ve seen sweet hybrid corn, zucchini and sweet peas planted. Not bad for a summer snack but not sustainable. When I do the Wal-Mart 5 gallon survival bucket I select a good multi-vitamin and vitamin C for daily use. Cheap way to reduce the hazards of Nutritional Diseases like Scurvy etc. For the price of a box of ammo you can get man years of vitamins.
As far as Brian’s excellent canning thoughts I favor fermentation as I know it improves the nutrition of most foods as well as I cannot make effective canning lids BUT I can make clay fermentation jars. Cabbage for example is an excellent survival food but making it into Kimchee like I saw in Korea far better nutrition. I saw man sized jars in the Temples that fed the monks all year with out refrigeration through steamy summers and frozen winters.
Sometimes I fear we preppers want to have post SHTF our current lifestyle and food choices but I doubt I’ll see bananas again after the “Change” occurs. Thus I ask folks to develop a taste and skills to grow and cook survival foods that will be your new diet. Or as my Grandmother would say a good cook can make beets into a delight. Pickled and fermented they are quite good.
Spice my first tries at potato boxes were not very good. You need to use late season potatoes to get that grow and layer effect to work and YES potatoes need a lot of water but good drainage. Sandy loam mixture and hardware cloth bottoms works for me.
I’ve gardened all my life but the gardening posts by Preppers finally inspired me to order Heirloom seeds online and plant an all heirloom garden for the 1st time this spring.
The main pesticides we’ll have after a SHTF of major proportions are a soap spray made from homemade lye soap (most commercial pesticidal soap sprays are lye based) and tea made from Habanero peppers. Both are very effective but also need to be approached with caution because, until you are experienced with making and using them, you can burn plants severely.
Yeah, I managed to burn my trees the first time I tried a pepper spray. Then the blasted deer showed they liked their trees spicy anyway….
Spice I also found that garlic will not keep voles away despite several experts advising that truth. I suppose we have Italian Voles :-). A single fencepost supporting a coil of fencing keeps deer away from my trees thus far. That and I view them as portable protein. Once trees mature enough Deer are more an annoyance than a problem.
Voles, My backyard had hundreds of them UNTIL my daughter decided I needed a dog. That 85 pound beagle has a nose that is unbelievable. She digs holes up to two feet deep to get them. By the time I get one hole filled in she two more dug.
I hope my peach tree survives all the holes.