Category: Gardening

Letter Re: A Year’s Supply of Food on a Budget by J. H.

HJL, Regarding your question regarding cooking oil that doesn’t stand out like sunflowers, I researched oil seeds for producing biodiesel. Canola rapeseed oil was the highest yielding and some varieties are grown for cooking oil. Some are genetically engineered so you need to find the right variety, but it grows well in Washington and British Columbia. It’s a brassicus with a yellow blossom so can be mistaken for wild mustard by passersby. – M.W.


Learning How to Grow Food in the American Redoubt, by AJ

What happens when our food preparations run out? This question has kept me awake more nights than I care to remember. Whatever your scenario– economic collapse, electromagnetic pulse (EMP), pandemic, a nuclear attack, or another devastating TEOTWAWKI situation– there will be a point when food becomes scarce. Learning to grow and preserve our own food will become necessary at some point, and the time to learn these essential skills is now. I literally “woke up” one day, after months of digging deeper into the alternative media in an attempt to explain why I had this feeling that something was incredibly …


Letter Re: Our Experience Growing and Storing Our Own Food- Part 1

Dear Survival Blog: I share Tennessean’s love of pole beans (and second the nomination of Rattlesnake as a wonderful variety), but up here in NY, where you have to wait for the soil to warm up before planting, bush beans will produce something edible 7-10 days faster than pole beans. So, in a must-eat situation, that may be important. The fastest maturing pole bean variety I have grown is Golden Gate. If using horse fence as a trellis is out of your price range, take a look at Herrick Kimball’s bicycle tire trellis. Go to his Gardening Ideas Book page …


Letter Re: Growing and Storing Our Own Food

Dear Hugh, Tennessean wrote a very useful article regarding providing your own food, but I wanted to point out one remark about choosing Yukon Gold potatoes. One lesson from the Irish Potato Famine was that most farmers had gone to planting only one variety of potatoes, the Irish Lumper. Other countries had a variety of potatoes, some more resistant to the fungal blight that hit Europe and so the blight did not hit them as hard. The lack of potato variety was only one contributor to the famine but nevertheless an important factor. I humbly submit that it might be …


Scot’s Product Review: REDHED Modular Tools

Tools are essential for prepping and life in general. One must have them, unless you are a wastrel who hires others to do all of your work. I doubt if that applies to any of our readers. Working with and moving dirt are two of the most important jobs for which we use tools. We might need to rearrange soil for gardening or construction. One could imagine creating protective barriers should things take a bad turn. Removing dirt from places it doesn’t belong could happen after a storm. The shovel is the basic tool for these chores, and we need …


Our Experience Growing and Storing Our Own Food- Part 3, by Tennessean

Farming Equipment Farming equipment is useful in various functions of gardening, particularly when growing a large garden for a family’s self-sustenance. Mechanical Seeders Two months ago we were on a UT field trip visit to a farm several counties northeast of us. I was extremely impressed with “Farmer Bob”. He demonstrated a Jang Clean Seeder. it actually worked! Two other push hand seeders we have tried have been about as useless as a screen door in a submarine. This gizmo is NOT inexpensive, but it does the job. We bought a fertilizer attachment, a row marker attachment, a rough soil …


Our Experience Growing and Storing Our Own Food- Part 2, by Tennessean

Seed (continued) Winter Squash One needs to give these cultivars a LOT of room, planting on a grid 8’ by 8’ is about right. This year we are growing two winter squash cultivars that keep a long time in a root cellar. Anna Swartz is a C. maxima and Waltham Butternut is a C. moschata and will not cross pollinate (this is why you must have Suzanne Ashworth’s book!), so we will be saving the seed from these. Insects pollinate the cucumber family, and we’ve oodles of all sorts of pollinator insects in East Tennessee, and they fly for many …


Our Experience Growing and Storing Our Own Food- Part 1, by Tennessean

A recent post commented on how it is next to impossible to grow one’s own food. It’s very hard work, has a difficult and long learning curve, but it can be done. This essay explains how to efficiently grow and store your own food. You can learn from our mistakes. Both my sets of grandparents farmed with a team of mules. We know a couple in a county north of us who farm using with a team of mules; they are able to feed themselves, the mules, and also customers at a farmer’s market. About Me I’m 73 years old …



Little Things WILL Become Big Things, and Food Will Be Everything!, by L.T.

When everything falls apart there are plenty of plans for “bugging out”, “bugging in”, and so forth. Whatever path you choose, things won’t return to normal soon and quite possibly never. Much has been written on beans, band aids, and bullets, but there will also be a huge demand for little things that we take for granted. Of course, there will be an even bigger demand for fresh food. Decent food is a major issue; you can’t live forever on storage foods, and most people can’t live forever in the woods. The following is information from our experiences to help …


Two Forever Foods, by Northern Forager

2

Disclaimer: The author and SurvivalBlog take no responsibility for the information or use of information resulting in or from the following article. This article is intended for informational purposes only. There is a world of food that exists outside of the supermarket– types of food that people who only get their food from stores never see or learn about. In my effort of sustainable and self-reliant living, I have become an advocate and convert to the idea of eating local plants in the area where I live, even to the point of eating “weeds”. Doing the same will greatly improve …


Protecting Your Home, BOL, and Supplies from Pests, by JC

Pest control is an industry that touches almost every part of the average person’s life. From the food we eat to the items we buy, each step along the process chain is protected in some way by pest control services. So what will happen in an event or breakdown scenario? Will all those Pest Control Operators (PCO’s) unselfishly leave their families to report to work along with the truck drivers and grocery store clerks? The answer is “no”, of course not. That is why we prepare our supplies now. The coming dangers and breakdowns will effect so many aspects of …


Letter Re: So You Think Starting a Garden Will Be Easy After

Greetings Jim & Hugh: I read with interest the SurvivalBlog postings “So You Think Starting a Garden Will Be Easy After TEOTWAWKI” by Dr. Prepper and was very happy to see a modicum of analytical insight on the concept of growing a garden for sustenance. Too often the “idea” of having a garden lulls us into a feeling of self-sufficiency, while the produce derived from this garden would be woefully inadequate for proper family sustenance, if the S truly HTF. Of course, growing one’s own food in any capacity is admirable. However, Dr. Prepper’s analysis of caloric necessity derived from …


Food Less Fortified: Vitamins in a Time of Grid-Down Existence – Part II, by PA Jes

Today, we’ll conclude the article reviewing the vitamin situation in a SHTF scenario and how to provide our body with necessary vitamins without bottled vitamins or vitamin-enriched foods. Vitamins D, vitamin C, vitamin A, and vitamin E are reviewed in Part 1, so go back and read it if you missed it yesterday. Vitamin K Vitamin K is necessary for the body to produce blood clots. Blood clots are the body’s method to control bleeding. Without enough vitamin K, people could easily bleed to death. Worldwide, vitamin K deficiency is a major cause of death in newborns, a result of …


Survival or Sustenance Gardening, by D. B. Prepper

I’ve had a garden on and off again over the past 30 years, depending on where I lived, whom I was married to at the time, and whether or not my job allowed me to be at home frequently enough to care for it. So I have followed the recent spate of gardening posts with some interest, especially those who have struggled to start a garden. I thought I would take an opportunity to add my own two cents on how to create a garden that can support you and your family in good times or bad. It’s a Learning …