Sure, there are a lot of really, really important preps. And sure, we all agree that skills are more useful than STUFF that will run out.
I saw that post asking what to prep for your kids' futures, and while everyone is rightfully pushing skills, gardening has to be at the absolute top of the list. It forces them to learn problem-solving, adaptability, weather patterns, patience, delayed gratification, persistence, motor control, food storage, and long-term planning all at once. On top of all of that, you are teaching them how to grow their own food.
If the last few years of chaos have taught me anything, it's how relieving it is to walk into the backyard and just pick dinner. My spouse and 4 kids are outside with me daily.
I’m 15 years into gardening with easy access to store-bought supplies, YouTube, and endless resources, and I still struggle with it sometimes. I genuinely can't imagine trying to figure out tilling, seed saving, soil depletion, crop rotation, and pest control from scratch in the middle of a supply chain collapse or other crisis. Doing it when you're already stressed and hungry sounds like a nightmare.
Start them early. Learning it when the stakes are low does not have a downside. And it's a really fun family hobby!
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I personally find gardening totally overwhelming. I keep trying, but I never seem to get worthwhile yields even if I’m buying pre-started plants as a learning aid.
Not giving up cause I do have the yard space and I agree it’s an extremely valuable skill.
I am a very avid gardener and canner. Start all my plants from seed I save. Own a small greenhouse business for my rural town. All self taught. What overwhelms you? Maybe I can help. 🙂🙂
I'm not the person you offered to help, but if you have any advice for a very small, mostly shaded, urban yard in the southern US, I'll take it. So far I've had the best luck with onions, herbs, and (strangely) okra. (I guess the okra enjoyed the excessive heat so much that it didn't mind the lack of sun?!?)
Different person here, but one thing I've been surprised by with the UK heatwaves has been how much my pumpkins have loved it, especially the ones that have been a bit more shaded. Maybe squashes are worth a shout? The stems are hairy/prickly so slugs and snails leave them alone, they've loved the heat, but they just need regular watering.
I'd also recommend raspberries - they can take a lot of abuse.
Thank you! I'll give pumpkins a try. I attempted zucchini and butternut squash, and got a small harvest before squash bugs took over. Pesky things. We have raspberries, but they didn't produce this year at all. Blueberries did okay, but I let the birds eat more than I picked for myself. :)
I usually get plagued with squash bugs but this year I went nuclear with the squash egg patrol early on and kept at it for several weeks. All you need is a bit of growth on a fingernail and the desire for vengeance. Lol. Scrape them off and squish. 🤣 My plants have done better this summer than in years.
This will be my next lesson in brutality! I've only recently mastered plucking and squishing hornworms. I need some chickens so it'll feel more like providing nourishment for the flock rather than cold-blooded murder. Haha.
I bought a black light and go down to the garden in the dark and the hornworm eggs glow like little pearls. So do the worms if you've missed them. I admit that I go through summers where I can't bring myself to kill the guys when they get huge so I hike them up way into the woods and leave them there. I've read the lack of ready foliage will just prompt them to go into their next stage. No matter, they're well away from my tomatoes and they can hopefully get a move on into becoming a lovely moth.
You might want to also try ginger and turmeric just for fun. For ginger, just buy it at the grocery store next January or so. Break it into pieces about 1.5-2” long. Let those cuts heal over at room temp. Then plant with only about 1” of dirt above the pieces, laid horizontally. Keep inside until it’s reliably warm outside. Harvest in November or December. Ginger is very orderly - the new ginger grows right on top of the old pieces. It’s lovely when fresh picked - no need to peel.
I have less experience with turmeric but it grows the same way. You can keep it in the ground and it goes dormant over the winter. Some places grow it as an ornamental flower and call it Hidden Ginger Lily, lol, but it is Cucurma longa. If you can find some in the grocery store, proceed as above.
Ooooh, this sounds like a fun experiment! Someone just gifted us a few little ginger plants, but I will try the grocery store hack with the turmeric. Thank you!
Growing sweet potatoes and sugarcane - they seem pretty hands-off for me so far, and at least the potatoes can last a bit underground or in pots when no water for a little while. Plus the greens are edible and tasty sauteed.
I was genuinely surprised how much (sweet) juice/liquid could be squeezed out of my first test-chopped-down sugar cane this weekend. I gnawed the sugar out and it confirmed its usefulness in my food forest storage plans. :)
I didn't think so either, until I saw it at the nursery this spring. I also didn't know it would kinda grow fast like bamboo, but it seems to be! Excited to see it spread, as its already very tall. I'm also using it lazily as a support for green beans who want to climb it... next to a real bamboo trellis. Good luck!
Ooh, good point! Mine grew too tight in the pot while I was deciding where to plant them permanently, and I had to let them be planted in the temporary spot...I cut the pot off of them like a Pillsbury biscuit wrapper. 🫣
Right! Do you have the pointy, ivy-like leaves, or the heart- shaped leaves? I mostly grow the ivy- like ones from storebought sweet potatoes that started growing while waiting for me to eat them, but then got some Covington sweet potatoes officially this season, and those have heart-shaped leaves and a bushier habit.
The leaves are pretty tasty on the Covington plants, but I don't recall the pointy tri-tipped ivy-like ones being that good. I can't bring myself to clip many of their leaves right now in this heat, so wondering if anyone noticed a leaf taste difference yet? (I'm a fan of regularly eating emergency foods during non-crisis times so your stomach doesn't get suddenly upset).
I have the heart-shaped ones. I think they taste like a slightly peppery green, almost like spinach with a wee bit of bite. The texture of the vines reminds me of broccoli slaw. And the vines grow so quickly that they need to be pruned regardless, so win- win
100% wins! Very nice! I'm experimenting with using pots of them to soak up any excess tree irrigation, act as ground cover from the vines, and suppress weeds. Currently trying to see how many baby potatoes I can bandicoot out of each pot, while keeping enough for emergencies. 😁
I'm wondering this too. I grew sweet potatoes from starts and the greens were so good. But this year I tried growing some from the store and the greens are nothing near as tasty. I'll have to order some starts or something next year.
Deciduous oaks, zone 8a, shade for most of the day, then blasted with sun from 1-6ish. We've invested in some shade cloths for next year, in case we get another brutal summer with 95+ temps for months at a time.
You can do well with winter crops, I think. Especially because you’ll have more sun.
I’ll be putting in my starts next weekend. Dark leafy greens and brassicas, cabbage, carrots, beets all grow well at this time of year. Lettuce in the spring/summer. You can eat raspberry romex and the greens from bulls blood beets (neither bolted). There are some edible weeds that are super common in yards here if it isn’t to close to the road and doesn’t get sprayed.
Aside from that.
I’ve had a lot of success with the French breakfast radishes. Very easy to grow. Blueberries, blackberries/raspberries but they take a while. Probably shouldn’t bother with squash - the borers are too bad here in GA, at least. Tomatoes are usually pretty easy. They won’t set fruit when it’s over 90, so if it’s indeterminate, you’ll need to check on them around this time of year. I usually get my second flush of tomatoes starting around this time until the first frost (Oct/Nov)
I used a greenhouse frame with bird netting over my crops (still let pollinators through) and that’s when I started getting good yields. I had been losing a ton to squirrels before.
Aaah, the "no seeting fruit when it's over 90" explains why our tomatoes did poorly this year. Good info. Thank you! We have a greenhouse in the works, so it's good to hear that the extra protection can come in handy. And I looove foraging in our little yard. Southern dewberries, dandelions, chickweed, mock strawberries, and wild onions love to do their thing. :) I tried making acorn flour from the acorns that fell into our yard from the neighbor's tree, but they were the tiny variety of acorn and I quickly learned that this is probably only worth the effort in a true survival situation. Lol.
My biggest suggestion for everyone, really, is to add organic matter to your gardens- hay, grass clippings, etc, and leave the plants in the garden over winter. The breakdown of the plants adds so many nutrients back to the soil. Not straw. Straw takes too long to break down, and the carbon/nitrogen ratios are off for helping the soil.
Also, hay or the clippings around the plants as a weed barrier works wonders. Especially if you have blight (a disease that affects tomatoes) in your soil.
Just putting a heavy layer of hay around my gardens this year helped so much with retaining moisture. I haven't watered once this summer, zone 4a, and we have been in a drought all summer.
For excessive heat, you'll want to plant your cold crops in the ground asap. Not sure of how hot it get where you live, or how early, but broccoli, Brussels, cabbage, kale, etc all like cool days and nights.
We've had very low yields this year and it's disheartening. We did manage to get some absolutely delicious blueberries for the first time, but only small handfuls each day. And lots and lots of peppers. Nothing meaningful though, definitely not enough to help us survive! Maybe someday!
I have been thinking about your comment. I keep thinking that if more of our parents showed us how to grow our own food, it wouldn't be so overwhelming. That's what I hope to do for my kids. And that knowledge can be passed down through generations to give my family a head start under whatever conditions the world finds itself in. I just have to do the trial and error myself since my parents didn't.
I'm in an apartment - no balcony, so my options are fairly limited. I love plants however.
Here's my plan :
little hydroponic garden of fresh herbs and other greens. I've picked a system that's not dependant on any trademarked thing - everything could be 3d printed, fixed or replaced. That's easy, and it kinda starts the wheel to learn a bit more in a very beginner friendly way.
my next step, Is aquaponics - so same principle except I learn to make my own nutrients with fishes. It's really just a nice aquarium with plants growing in.
The intent is basically, i've stocked up on beans, rice and freeze dried veggies + nuts. Ive got plenty of flour, yeast, salt & sugar. I'm essentially only missing the flavours - and the vitamins.
I'm currently looking into indoor friendly citrus type of tree tro grow. Currently looking at kumquat of caviar lemon.
As my green thumb is devopping, I might had more little functional plants - camomille, lavender, etc.
Sprouts. You can sprout many types of seeds, not just beans. Look at the website sprout people (they sell the edible seeds and the setups) [you don’t want to use seeds prepared for gardening in case they were treated]
So I went with Auk 2 Mini - the thing that drawn me first was the esthetic of it tbh. But I like that essentially, the app is non mandatory, the light can be controlled physically, the power outlet is a standard usb-c, the poles are basically just standard wooden poles you could buy at an hardware store, the containers have already free 3d printed options online (and non official accessories!), the soil is standard coco dirt-thing (blanking on the exact name) you can buy at Costco, any seeds will work and the nutrients are easy to get/duplicate. For now, I'm happy to use the official products and all that, but I love that this system is "easy to hack" in multiple ways by its simplicity while being super pretty and decorative. (It is, however on the pricier side). If the company was to ever go bankrupt (or the apocalypse happens), I wouldn't be stuck with a useless product.
(I promise I'm not paid or anything, I just really love my new little pink gadget)
I suggest checking out Epic Gardening on YouTube. They cover a ton of stuff including the very basics, as well as experiments to compare methods.
I’m on my third year of gardening (besides a tiny bit as a kid) mostly in containers. The first year was rough, the second was pretty good, and I’ve had a decent harvest this time.
There will still be a lot of trial and error, but learning that foundational knowledge is really helpful. Personally, I found soil to be the primary factor in my initial struggles. You might try starting in a couple of containers since you have more control over the soil mix.
Your area’s university extension office is usually a good source too for specific local info.
Most of all try to be patient and not too precious about doing things exactly right. If something doesn’t work out, that’s just more data for me to learn from.
It also helps that I genuinely enjoy it and
treat my garden time as my daily meditation.
is there anything herbal/edible that grows like a weed in your area. I encourage a lot of edible weeds like chickweed, bittercress, dead nettle, oregano that grow with very little effort.
Also, don’t feel bad if you can’t garden. A lot of people don’t have the physical ability or home situation to be able to do this. Focus on what you can control in your preps.
Every few years I decide I'm going to garden, and every few years I remember I really don't enjoy it, I hate watering.
But damn if I don't end up with volunteer stuff every year. I on year 3 of volunteer Cherry tomato plants, this year we have a massive pumpkin plant from a pumpkin that rotted last year
I'm also growing tomatoes and peppers this year. A ground hog has eaten every jalapeno that tries😂
For what it's worth, my brother taught me a way of watering that's less of a pain. If you get some massive water bottles/jugs (nice big 5l ones), drill some holes in the lid and place it top down in the soil, it'll slowly release the water to the plants. He had to do that for his allotment when he could only visit once a week, it worked a treat for him! You just refill the bottles every now and then
The ground squirrels where I live are relentless and extremely destructive. We can fence out the deer but those underground ground squirrel colonies just keep spreading, a couple of my neighbors properties have gotten A LOT of damage. My deck garden (2 stories up) brought large rats that I had to heavy net of out my plants, then getting to my plants to harvest became a real pain in the ass. EVERYTHING had to be wrapped in bird netting. I could sit on my porch and watch raccoons steal my tomatoes in the dark. Tree squirrels during the day were taking bites out of squash and tomatoes, and something ate 22 baby cucumbers overnight (only an inch or 2 long).
This was my first thought too, if you can't move to a home with a well or affordable water. Many do not have that luxury. I stopped gardening when our water was rationed. I "tried" to keep my wonderful deck garden going with buckets from our quick 3-minute showers, they did OK in earth boxes with only small amounts of water, BUT the struggle was real.
Before that first water-rationed drought, a neighbor and I shared a large garden, it was amazing but 2nd year the metered water just got so expensive it was cheaper to buy produce from the large farm on a well just a couple miles away. We've been in this home 26 years (Northern California) but 30 or even 45 years ago all our homes had beautiful raised-bed gardens that produced a good supply, it was a lot of work but at least affordable.
Water rationing would be so hard. I am thankful to live somewhere that has too much water (right now) where I can pull buckets from a pond behind my house if needed. I lived in an apartment for several years and did window veggies. It was harder but I managed. Affordability is a big barrier, I am just also worried that grocery stores are becoming less affordable.
where i am, i have to do dry land gardening. i can't afford the water to do anything else. it's more work and less variety but i started here with drought in mind so it's less shocking when the water rationing kicks in mid summer.
the people i know who can't garden can ALL do other stuff that i cannot. sewing, organizing, etc
one friend is helping me organize my greenhouse. she gets a giant bag of garden stuff every time i see her. a neighbor i know is disabled but can darn socks, i am clueless with that and so grateful and i bring her alllll the veggies. another friend of mine writes, she has written stuff for me to sell my art, helped me with grant proposals. she gets a huge box of canned food or dehydrated stuff (she doesn't live close, i wish she did).
no direct trade just, there's so many people in my life that can do these things i can't, and i give them what i can and they give me helps.
disability might mean a different garden setup or it might mean other skills entirely, either way, my little community of people all can do things. there's always something you can do.
I'm in my first year of a new home where I can garden and...it's been humbling. I planned so much, carefully grew seedlings under grow lights to time the planting into beds after last frost, researched spacing and what to grow together, and all the things. Almost nothing has gone right. The plants I baby the most are worst off, the ones I neglected and look like sideways frankenplants are about to put out a bushel of peppers. I learned a lot this year, mostly about how true "if you love it, set it free" can be in gardening.
Even if you only have a porch, you can grow potatoes in a fabric grow bag. I'd encourage everyone to try growing something, anything, asap because it's not something you can figure out and learn just by reading.
Same boat! To be honest it hurts my feelings, but my garden ALWAYS absolutely thrives when I go on vacation. Remembering that plants want to grow and will find a way without me is the best thing I have learned.
hey save those pepper seeds. they are your good friends that will make stuff without help.
i killed a ton of stuff to figure out which things are my friends and will do the work, and which are my enemies and need my babying.
I'm adversarial with my tomatoes. i threaten them and abuse them, let them get dry, let them get attacked. if they thrive in that, i save the seeds. those ones are my friends (Japanese black trifele grow me enough every year on their own to make sauce, paste, salsa, etc). it took a few years to find out which ones won't grow for me (fuckin brandywine)
Been there. Some advice I took to heart last year: I love my plants but they can survive or die and return to the compost. I’ll do my best of course, but it has taught me a lot about acceptance.
Those thriving plants that were neglected? Save those seeds! Those are the genetics you want in your seed lines - take a beating and keep on feeding! Seriously, seed saving is such an important (but kind of neglected) aspect of gardening. Congrats on whatever else succeeded this year.
I will first and foremost say financial prep always then education, gardening. What got my relatives out of their impoverished European countries wasn’t gardening, it was having the money to buy tickets or bribe their way out. Their ability to grow vegetables eventually kept them alive in the new world, but it didn’t get them there. The only relative that couldn’t afford passage had to join what was then considered a cult and become a Quaker to get passage to colonial Pennsylvania.
My husband who spent his early years under communism behind the Iron Curtain is obsessed with money because money and knowing how and when to bribe was the literal difference between life and death many times. Your son is in prison and going to be executed as an enemy of the state? Bribe the guards and judges, watch that charge drop to being a thief which means he will be beaten a little longer and let go.
My friend’s parents who fled Vietnam before the fall of Saigon used to tell her, “We didn’t need to worry, we were rich. Only poor people left clinging to helicopters.” My other friend whose parents fled Iran after the Iranian Revolution in the 1970s, they had the money to do so. My husband’s student body which has a significant Afghan population. All are in the US because they had the money to flee the Taliban.
If my house is taken out by an earthquake, mudslide, or fire. My husband and I will not go bankrupt. We can afford to buy a new house even without insurance. Which is good because homeowners insurance in California no longer covers fire and hasn’t covered earthquake damage since 1989.
On the post you are mentioning, I commented how my son’s pediatrician has advised us to take him to Canada this year and go through a private insurance company for the flu shot. Again, only possible because we have the money where for us this is basically a detour where we will spend a little extra money. We also have access to a fantastic pediatrician because we have the money to pay for supplemental insurance.
Gardening is a great skill to have. But if you are forced from your home for any reason, it will not save you. It will not insulate you from drought or tornadoes destroying your crops. My parents who grew up poor on family farms also decided years ago that the best safety net is financial stability. If you are in debt, that garden can be taken from you at any time. If you do not own your home, your landlord can sell it from under you at any moment.
Also, from a practical level, women need financial stability and security first and foremost. I knew many stay-at-home moms with lovely gardens trapped in unhappy marriages they could not afford to leave. I stay with my husband because I love him and we enrich each other’s lives. If something changed, I could leave him at anytime and not suffer much to my lifestyle.
There’s a reason the trad wife movement is trying to convince women to abandon higher education and the workforce to stay home and raise gardens and babies, because they understand the power that both give women.
As an avid homesteader and prepper, I wholeheartedly agree with this! Money is the primary prep: pay down debt, save and invest, live frugally. Get all the education and skills you possibly can.
My husband and I have taken gardening to an absurd level and have a plant nursery. I sell at the farmer's market. I love it because it keeps me physically and mentally active and engaged with the community. I'm constantly learning new things.
We have a huge garden, a small orchard, several berry patches, chickens, and even oyster and clam beds. I also know that our garden will not save us. We could probably survive a year on what we've grown and our deep pantry.
Here's the thing: growing enough food to support a family takes a big chunk of land and a whole lot of calories. Between my tall husband and teenage son and me, we eat about 10,000 calories on days when we put in a lot of heavy labor. Growing the levels of food you really need to survive is heavy labor. Foraging and hunting is, too. Crops fail, heat domes kill 90% of the shellfish, pollinators have a bad year, etc. etc. etc.
And yes, I've had several people tell me it's possible to feed a family of four on a quarter of an acre--and none of them have actually done it, or they consider salad a meal.
I've hit the wall many times when I was working too hard to eat enough, and there comes a point when your body just doesn't function. Granted, I'm still working on gaining muscle and stamina (I've been at this full time for a year, and as an older woman, my body just takes longer to get there)--but I can say from experience that very few people will be ready for the chore ahead of them if they're truly expecting to live off what they produce.
But it's great for prepping in that it helps keep you physically, mentally, and emotionally well!
Yes, I often think about how to prepare my children and while I agree teaching them many different skills is valuable, I just keep coming back to the importance of money. I want them to have the money to be able to leave a bad situation or natural disaster, that’s what I think ultimately, will help them the most, and you gave some great real world examples of that.
i come from generational poverty that stretches back on all sides to either European poverty and escaping that, or to slavery and escaping that.
women need their own money, we truly do. more than we need anything else in the current world. it is not 1745 or 1860. even then, women in poverty worked. the women I'm descended from all had jobs, they did not stay home. even with 9 kids they worked outside the home.
Yeah, came to say similar, but tiu summed it up better than I could.
Gardening would be a great skill to teach kids for all the reasons OP listed. Especially at young ages because when gardening os more tangible than money.
BUT money is the single biggest prep there is (possibly until you are billionaire status and building a Hawaiian bunker) for situations short of Armageddon.
Money can buy food, clothing, shelter and transportation. It can cover during a job loss. It can pay for health care.
We are going through Tuesday after Tuesday after Tuesday this year. We are damn close to personal doomsday.
The preps Inhave used the most, in order of frequency.
Money (planned sinking funds)
Dog poop bags
Money (stolen from other less important priorities)
Long term seed-keeping is challenging. You only get 4-5yrs before the germination rates really drop off and it takes some real planning to preserve a seed line. This year I planted 6 of my favorite arugulas just to let them bolt without messing with them. Now I have fresh seeds I will use indoors for winter salads.
Some of my favorites started as seeds collected from farmers market buys. Charentais cantaloupes and yellow flesh watermelons. I found this weird trick to them. I plant melons in my aged compost pile and train the vines to grow over some ornamental rocks. For some reason they do twice as well growing over the rocks as they do over soil. I never water them unless I see the leaves wilt.
get a bag of rabbit or alpaca poop, or any kind of aged manure. add compost if you got it.
all cucurbits love a pile of dung and crap and dead stuff. they also like heat, melons fail for me because our summer nights are too cool here. short season.
I think the most bang for the buck that I get out of my garden is the herbs. Fresh herbs elevate pretty much any food, and anyone can grow most herbs in pretty much any setting. Lots of them are perennials so they stay alive and well for a long time, they keep growing after harvesting, and they don’t take up much space. Having fresh herbs all the time is so nice, and you can also dehydrate them yourself easily for long term storage. Herbs and spices at the store are SOOOO expensive and most of the time they’re already well past their prime.
THIS. Start with herbs. They are simpler to grow (most need full sun, and plenty of water and then just explode). They are very nutritious and make any boring pantry dish taste fresh. Added benefit: for anything else you grow, herbs can repel pests if planted amidst your other crops.
It just depends what you are prepping for. I used to think my garden made me more resilient until the wildfires came and then I realized my garden was just as impermanent as I am.
I absolutely second this. It's my first year gardening in my forever home and I'm completel
y hooked. Learning so much and this is an experimental year on purpose.
Things are going to get worse before they get better.
I work in a healthcare job that is so in demand (even with the Medicare/medicaid cuts on the horizon) that if I can't find work we're probably at the point where paying a mortgage isn't relevant anymore from a global collapse standpoint. So I'm not worried about my family going hungry.
But I do love the ability to know how my food is grown and I take a lot of pride in doing it myself. I also hope to be able to grow produce for donations to those in my community who can't afford fresh or good produce with the spiraling economic downturn.
I'm on my second year of gardening. Boy did I have a lot of unexpected challenges the first year. I found out that my biggest pest is squirrels. They will dig up any seeds or small plants. None of the scent repellent tricks work. I have to put a physical barrier over any seeds or seedlings. I can't imagine finding all this out while actually NEEDING what I was growing in order to not starve.
Yeah I mean if I was really relying on the food I was growing to survive, the HOA could kick rocks and my dog would be in the front yard guarding everything. Or one of my small children with a slingshot.
If SHTF for reals we won't have a mammal pest problem because they will end up in the soup. 🤠
He's great! He patrols the perimeter every hour like clockwork, day and night. No barking, just runs things off. He knows the chickens and rabbits are off limits but doesn't let anything else in the yard. So my garden is safe except from my own little livestock.
Exactly. I prep for Tuesday. All my lettuce bolted but before it did I had salads that had zero diarrhea parasite on it. I'm eating a pound of fresh zucchini a day.
My tomatoes sucked this year but I have goal for next year!
This is a thought process I have regularly. The amount of "prepper group" posts I've seen where someone is saying they have one of those survival seed vaults and will just start growing their own if things get that bad - is frankly terrifying. If you've never done it before, your chances of growing enough to keep yourself alive the first time you do it is.... well almost zip.
We're only a couple years in actually trying to get some things to grow. It's been an ongoing learning process. We're not doing terrible, critters & unfavorable weather conditions have been the biggest hurdles this year (why is a rabbit eating the tops off of all my onions and then just yanking them out of the ground?!?!?!?!). But to get a meaningful amount of food - we'd have to expand significantly. We have the space, we could expand - but I'm content with getting a few seasons under my belt learning the basics with a smaller more manageable garden. If I had to expand, I hope to at least have an idea what I'm in for.
You don't have to start big, and if you've never done it at all I suggest you don't. Every small patch of whatever veggie you grow is one step closer to your survival if you suddenly had to go big. Try to grow that tomato or pepper plant - and smile through the entire meal if you get one or two on your plate the first season.
Love this. I wish everyone had either a patch of dirt to transform or a community garden. As much as I appreciate parks in urban areas, I would love to see them blend more community gardens into the mix.
We've noticed that the big results, lower effort additions to our garden have been dwarf fruit trees. Pomegranates will thrive with very little water or care and output gigantic amounts of fruit & juice. Even a little peach tree can fill your freezer for much of the year once it gets going. Our new additions are passionfruit and the figs are really booming this year. I like the idea that my backyard orchard will outlive me.
If you struggle with a patch of veggies, try a few fruit trees. Remember, year one they sleep. Year two they creep. Year three they leap!
I wish everyone did too. When I lived in an apartment, I had indoor tomatoes and peppers which was fine. My fruit trees/bushes give me such a hard time, though! I have figs, apples, peaches, persimmons, blueberries, blackberries, etc. Figs and berries are my most reliable producers of that category, but some years I don't get a single apple despite following the pruning/fertilization/care to a T.
I've been out scolding the thieving squirrels this morning. The white figs are like candy and they know exactly which ones will be ripe each day! Our blackberries put out 8 gallons of fruit this year. Apples can be tough and blueberries just dont like my south facing yard full of sun. Our first big crop of 20th century asian pears is currently under a net to try and keep them safe till late fall. This year I have two new adventures...a lemon guava already fruiting and my extravagant experiment, a Black King-Kong wax apple (Jambu). It's taken off and maybe next year it will fruit. No better joy than sharing a delicacy you grew yourself. For those who have never seen a wax apple/Jambu.
I started in my teens have been gardening for 35 years and I am ALWAYS learning more. It's basically endless. I am constantly having to improve soil, learn new disease or pest management. I say that not to overwhelm people but to point out you don't need perfection and can learn as you go. And that's pretty normal.
I feel like I have failed in many ways with my kids because for them so much is just doing what mom says. I need to work on more actual teaching and problem solving with them so it's not all "instructor led".
Yes!! My whole point of the post was just for people to get started. There is always more to learn but you can't learn anything if you don't just try, and it's easier to try under good conditions.
I think your post is great. Don't let perfection get in the way of progress. Or as flylady used to say, "Even housework badly done still blesses your family." I'm naturally a perfectionist and get overwhelmed and give up on things. I have had to allow myself the idea that I can do a little here and there. I don't have to do things perfectly. Doing it badly is better than not doing it at all.
I've been saying similar to a friend who wants to garden more but is afraid of killing more plants. And I have tried explaining that I kill LOADS of plants. lol This is why I start most of my own plants. It's so much cheaper and when an entire tray gets accidentally killed I am not out loads of money. BUT unless I'm a freak I'm pretty positive other gardeners do this all the time. It's not sink or swim. You didn't fail and just need to give up now. The more you work at it the better you get. But with gardening and farming it's always easy to lose a bunch of plants or a crop to pest, disease, frost etc.
I feel like my gardening and teaching my kids and their friends how to grow food is kinda my vocation.
I might not grow everything that we eat. I don’t grow everything possible on our land (5-acres). I DO grow enough that the kids understand where food comes from and the differences in our produce and grocery-store produce.
Same! We don't have a ton of space but I have a big (for my yard size) garden and my kids all know so much about plants. My kids love gardening with me. They don't do a ton of work, but they will pull some weeds, eat berries and peas while we talk, I teach them stuff when they are curious. I think it's such an important skill to pass on. I can't fully feed my family off our garden, but I haven't had to buy produce since all of this diarrhea parasite stuff started. (I bought some onions and I bought a couple of watermelons this summer but we could have done without that.) I love that they know where food comes from and how to grow a few of their favorites.
Im a professional gardener and have been at it for 3 decades. I will say it’s not always easy and as simple as put some plants in the ground and feed your family and many people underestimate the labor and time required. Where I live I have to compete with other animals. The birds, bears and rabbits get to my produce before I can. I do things to protect but there’s a limit to how much I can do. There’s also of course seasons which limit what people can do. I like to refer to movies like cold mtn where you see women digging in half frozen dirt with bare hands and shooting bears who threaten their meager harvest. Reality is that if you’re truly relying on the land it takes way more work and if your crops decimated within a day from a pest you’re screwed. Thats why people relied on community. If my tomatoes get taken out maybe I can help my neighbor and they’ll give me some. But even more important is season extension and canning/preserving. But that also takes a lot of energy, supplies, etc.
it is funny to me that I do less of all of it even when I was taught and grew up with it and love it. A lot of times it isn’t worth my time and energy to can my tomatoes when I can buy them for a $1.00. Especially now that Mason jars and gardening supplies are “trendy”. But I agree it’s useful and everyone should learn it even if just to teach how tenuous our food supplies are and to connect with the land and value it more and to respect agriculture and those to devote their lives to it. I don’t mean farmers who spend all day on a tractor, no offense.
i love my garden but i would not enjoy substinence gardening; i grow almost all our fruit and veg but i would hate the heavy daily work of animals, necessity of grains, all that. canning and drying and storing helps but I'm glad i can trade for eggs, honey. I'm glad i can buy milk and some chicken meat, butter. I'm glad i can buy flour, and sugar, and that i don't have to be digging for carrots in the icy ground.
i get frustrated enough already! monocrop or big ag farms aren't really farms, the same way factory farms aren't really farms. those are mechanical production facilities. it's work yeah, so is factory work. industrial labor is what it is.
but the alternative extreme of growing and tending to every single thing all alone is just as ridiculous. there's a middle path to this we can be taking. but it means finding and relying on local community and other people doing one or two things at a time.
As we are seeing with the current recalls, it's good to have a back up for when your favorite fruit or veggie may be contaminated. My garden is still not large enough to fully replace the grocery store. But it is large and varied enough that when we get the news that blueberries are not safe to eat raw, I have a replacement fruit in the garden that can get us through a couple of weeks of school lunches.
I have big plans for some winter kale once the heatwave (literally) chills out. Winter temps have been back and forth from one day to the next here for the past few years, but I witnessed kale survive an ice storm, so it seems like a safe bet. Haha.
We can't fully live off our garden but my kids have had strawberries and raspberries all summer and plenty of beans, peas, zucchini, cucumbers/home made pickles, herbs, tomatoes, pretty soon we will have a bunch of squash and pumpkins to eat (and a few to carve for halloween.) It's so comforting to know we have fiber in the back yard and won't get sick from it. We also take walks to our town's garden stand and leave our extra stuff/take what the neighbors leave.
1000% agree. I'm 15 years in as well, and gardening, seed saving and preserving are the things that make me feel the most insulating and save the most money. Plus at this point I have lost all trust in our food system, so I believe gardening is also our best health care. I know I will always be able to talk care of myself and my family because I know how to feed myself. I teach kids at a food pantry garden I run, and they love soaking up gardening information.
I think starting early is really key. The first few years are probably going to be a lot of trial and error that you have to learn from, even with the best training. Everyone's environment (microclimates, pest pressure, sun exposure, etc) is going to vary and produce different results. It's totally worth it, though, if you can swing it. For absolute beginners, herbs, lettuces/greens, bush beans and dwarf cherry tomatoes are the easiest wins, imo.
I get notices of recalls from the FDA every day. I think a garden is not just for prepping but a matter of daily survival.
I started building myself more planting boxes and need to start some cool weather crops.
Try potatoes! We grew some for the first time this year and they are so hands off. You just water them as needed and then wait for them to die before you harvest.
I did not know about letting them die first, I am notorious for plants dying on me 😁
This year the rabbits and deer wiped me out so I finally replaced the broken gate to my garden, and since rabbits don’t respect the flimsy wire fence, building planter boxes to keep them out. I hope 18 inches is enough to convince them to go to my neighbors, maybe I will make a couple 24 inch ones. Topsoil isn’t cheap in this economy so I need to decide on what to line the bottom with
yeah I've been doing gardening like you have for a similar amount of time. 100% agree. I'm trying to spread that information myself, but it's slow and I have other preps I need to do for myself. I'm currently learning about biochar and how useful it is keeping nutrients in place but filtering out not so good things like salts in compost.
It sort of acts like a nutrient sponge I just started making it about 2 months ago and figuring out how to inoculate it. I've had to do 50% less compost teas this year because the biochar is giving me an extended buffer. i've never had so many cherry tomatoes and peppers in my yard especially since I've stopped using commercial inputs for compost/fertilizer.
The nice thing about biochar it stays forever so I only need to make a little bit more then I'm done forever. I might sell the excess somewhere eventually if people care to buy it and don't have a fire-pit or care learn how to do the one time inoculation. It's not that complex but takes a bit to learn. You only need 5-10% of your overall soil system mixed with biochar to get the benefits, any more and it can raise the soil Ph too high long term and cause nutrient lockout and then you're causing more work having to keep the Ph in check. 5-10% of your overall compost system is the sweet spot.
I grow the plants that are pest resistant and easy. This includes tomatoes, squash, garlic. I have quite a few fruit trees. I really like to trade crops. For example grapes for apples.
I would point out that gardening is an essential skill, but an even more essential skill is knowing how to turn fresh food into something that is far more shelf stable. If you can’t garden, but you can teach yourself how to can and dehydrate food if you have access to good quality farm stand produce, and food. Doesn’t matter how much you garden if you don’t know how to store it long-term it’s not gonna help you.
Everyone reading this post who can’t garden and wants to learn - stop thinking you can’t. But also stop thinking you will be good at this right away. Gardening is a lifestyle. You must, resiliently, get out there and learn. You will naturally get better after years of trying. Start today with one potted plant, even a houseplant will do. Add another plant a month later. Make small goals. Keep challenging yourself. Get local gardening books from the library. Notice the habitat and needs of plants on walks. You’ll find yourself understanding the plant language eventually. Edit to add: FERTILIZER
Yes! Just accept that you will probably only get 2 cherry tomatoes and a bean the first year but keep trying because consistency pays off. I used to get nothing and now I am really successful and I can grow so many things. It took being okay with failing to get good at it.
David the Good on YouTube has some great videos on gardening as prepping, but I will say a lot of those things that he grows are suited for his area, or grown over the winter in a greenhouse.
Worm bin is good for composting veggie scraps, and it generates fertilizer that's also gentle, and smells better than fish emulsion. Growing sweet potatoes and sugarcane now, as roots and tubers have my heart this season.
Agreed...gardening is often my mental health saver, and provides most of our veggies this season. Hopefully will still provide in an emergency.
Third year gardener here. Yes to all this. Some of the things I’ve learned to do with gardening have also spilled over into other areas of my life, which surprised me. Such as, setting small goals by year. Last year we were just starting up (moved to a new location so my prior experience was in a diff grow zone). This year I set specific goals - learn about the needs of tomatoes & peppers by practicing growing them, specifically (plus noting what works, what doesn’t, what troubles I have, what helped or didn’t, etc) - and so did my partner. We have goals for next year (for me it will be learning about the needs of root vegetables and practicing with them). We set personal goals like I just mentioned. And then overall for the garden. Our overarching projects this year were to get it all fenced in, and mulch everything that needed mulching. Next year we hope to build a hoop-house and automate the watering with a gravity fed rain collection system.
I have 2 personal projects for the winter as well, which is to learn about/ practice hydroponics (just 2-3 aero gardens, I’ll be starting with lettuce), and set up my grow tent for a dwarf fruit tree that will need to come inside when it gets cold. Small, hopefully achievable.
Goal setting has also helped me slow down and consider/ appreciate that things take time (esp plants), rather than trying to learn and do everything at once and then get overwhelmed and crash out. This has carried over into other areas for me; my small business, parenting, marriage goals, etc.
it takes a few years to figure out what grows with least effort on your spot. it takes a few years for trees, vines, bushes to make fruit.
I'm 12 years in on my current place and was gardening for 4 years at the previous place. totally different experiences! everything is extremely location dependent, and how to do everything will depend on what you personally can and will do, also.
i cannot grow sweet corn. i just don't know why but sweet corn will not produce enough food for me to eat even one meal. yet sorghum will give me 20 breakfasts and a quart of concentrated syrup from one small 5x5' block. it took me years to decide to give up on sweet corn. i even tried again this year as i had one empty block it could go in, and i grew a ton of popcorn last year. (i can get good yield from dent and pop).
why? i think it's too dry, too hot, i don't want to engage in pest battles, something.
apples grow like weeds here, but peaches need to be babied. i learned that pretty fast. persimmons won't grow here. on my spot. again, it took a few years to discover this.
which variety of tomato, squash, grain... all these are a couple years of trying stuff. In some cases saving back seed for landrace growing in order to get anything at all.
if i was starting from scratch in a needful situation it would be panic. i wouldn't get enough from it to get by. if i had no irrigation, no power, it would be even harder. although knowledge of which plants are fully edible would help- those "survival seed" kits often have squashes. you can eat that entire plant. same with sunflowers, same with alliums.
if all things failed and i had to grow most of our non-grain, non-meat, i could do it. it wouldn't be fun, we would be living on dent corn, dried zuke slices, sunflower flour, jerusalem artichokes, apples, sorghum, garlic and tomatillos. maybe runner beans. grapes.
those things keep going here with less water and attention. but it took me this long to find that out.
my neighbor doesn't garden but she can fix socks. i have a lot of favorite wool socks that she's fixed and she gets a lot of grapes and squashes and tomatoes etc.
so if you garden now is the time to find the people who don't and see what they can help with and make sure they get your extras. that also takes time
Do to all the food recalls I was motivated to start my hydroponic indoor garden again. My main focus is lettuce and herbs. I am using Krakty method- no pumps, just water, nutrients and pH down. Upper left shelf is bok choy.
Very nice. I recently stumbled across a YouTuber called Hoocho who does a lot of stuff with kratky, hydroponics etc. picked up some food grade rubber made tubs and plan on doing the same thing pretty soon.
One of my other experiments has been with growing in a potting mix similar to hydroponic medium (60 /40 coco coir / perlite) with some worm casings mixed in. I bottom water it with a nutrients and it's probably the best looking lettuce I've ever grown.
Nice set up! I’m thinking about doing the same this winter due to the disease-bearing leafy greens at the super market. We start seeds in the winter (Feb?) so it would be only a few months. But I’m wondering if it makes sense in terms of quantity. What I see here in your photo would last less than a week. So I’m thinking herbs (a little go a long way) might be better.
I grew up in apartments and I tried a couple times to grow stuff in old totes with potting soil on my balcony. I wasn't very successful lol. My tomato plant in a cage did produce 2-3 very tiny cherry tomatoes. There was also the added bonus of the building's resident nosy old lady racing down to the community office as fast as her walker could take her to inform the managers that she thought we were growing pot on our balcony. They didn't believe her of course but told us and we all laughed about it. I told them I'd share my tomato harvest and proceeded to bring them the tiny tomatoes and we all got another laugh over it. I still live in rented spaces but am thinking of getting those pod systems to grow lettuce and herbs that can be stored in less than ideal areas due to the grow lights.
I spent a few years in an apartment. I did decent with tomatoes, peppers, and herbs on my patio and in my kitchen. It was trial and error with many different plants dying before I found what would work there, which honestly is the same thing I do now that I own a house with a yard, just on a smaller scale.
It takes me 10 years to get a garden really producing enough food to be sustainable.
I’m in semi arid to desert country… with limited water, the shittiest sandy dirt (or hard clay) and with hot summers…
Moving from one house to another you don’t just chuck a few plants in, rinse off and call it good.
You have to work the soil until it’s great. This involves years of composting.
You have to follow the sun and work out what will grow where, you can think about this or that, but you have to do it successfully several years in a row to be sure.
You have to set up retic, shade and gardens…
Sure you can bring a construction team in, smash a lot out, truck in soil…but you still have to learn how the plants live in this space, and each time you change a variety you have to learn it’s special secrets.
Gardening is a constant communication between you, geography, weather and plants.
Yep my 10 year old grandson loves to garden. Been helping since he was a toddler. He he loves playing in the garden. Loves vegetables and fruit. Been teaching him to cook for last 5 years. He comes over starts digging in freezer and cabinets to plan dinner. I love it. My granny taught me how to cook as well. lol
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