In a long term emergency, people will not have the time to leisurely work in the garden. Instead, they will be gardening for survival, along with a long list of other daily survival chores. Survival gardening will be labor intensive, and large amounts of energy (sweat) will be needed to have the garden produce enough food for the present and enough to put away for the future. In exchange for your energy and time, you will want a survival garden that will provide your family abundantly with food. Keeping certain factors into consideration before starting a large scale garden will help you get the most out your time and energy, provide you and your family with the healthiest vegetable varieties, and help you find the easiest types of vegetables to grow.
Variables to Consider When Growing a Survival Garden
- A survival garden should incorporate dependable and easy to grow vegetables [1] that produce more than one harvest or bears more than one fruit per plant.
- The vegetable varieties should be types that the family will eat. It’s not worth the trouble of growing this food if your family will not eat it.
- Grow vegetables that have high amounts of nutrition and vitamins, as well as finding varieties that possess medicinal [2] properties. According to medical experts, green vegetables such as broccoli, Brussel sprouts, Lima beans, peas, asparagus, artichokes, cauliflower, sweet potatoes and carrots are some of themost nutritious vegetables in the world.
- Find varieties that grow naturally in your area. Environments where plants grow naturally mean that less time and effort will be needed in raising them.
- Need for excessive fertilizing to produce decent sized produce is a waste of precious resources. There are exceptions to this rule of course. Such as, if the fertilizer used will help the plant produce many fruits or vegetables.
- If space is limited, plants that take up as little space as possible, but produce abundantly will make for a good investment. Furthermore, finding gardening techniques such as the Three Sisters [3] also makes good use of space.
- If fuel is needed to harvest vegetables, the noise could be an indicator of a thriving homestead, and an OPSEC nightmare [4]. As a result, the home could be frequented by unwelcome guests. Additionally, this type of farming method would consume large amounts of fuel.
- Find vegetables that can do well for storage. Vegetables such as potatoes, onions, and root crops like beets and carrots that store well can be used when the weather is too cold to grow.
- Varieties that serve more than one purpose is also an efficient use of space and resources. Varieties such as root crops or broccoli leaves are varieties where the greens can be fed to livestock. In addition, some survivalists agree that yellow dent corn has a multi purpose use of making grain and feeding livestock. But this crop requires a large amount of land, resources such as fertilizer, and energy to grow this plant to fruition.
Preppers that are stocking up on non-GMO or heirloom variety seeds [5] to grow, should also have adequate knowledge in gardening skills to get these varieties to produce vegetables and fruits. However, before a survival garden is started, sitting down and planning the garden and considering different factors will save headaches later on. Likewise, researching how much food a family will need and how much of the time/energy yield will be needed to produce these vegetables is a valuable use of time. Also, keep in mind that you know your family best. You know what they eat, you know what they will not eat. Come to your own conclusions as to what type of survival seed varieties are best suited for your family and the environment you live in.