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Step 3: Buy the best of plants for surviving

I have listed the vegetables below that I have planted and that have proven successful for me. Also, I have ordered the following plants from 1-5 with #1 needing the most sun and #5 needing the least sun. They will all benefit from the most sunlight they can get, but tomatoes need full sun and heat. It is a short list but an important one. These are the plants that you, as an inexperienced gardener, will have the best chance at growing, storing, and surviving on. You may have to supplement your diet with animal protein of some kind, but remember “any food is better than no food”. When it is time to buy seeds, you may want to think about buying enough for your neighbors who surround you. This is inexpensive insurance to protect your own garden. If they plant their own garden then it is that much more food for everyone. If they do not want to grow food, then they will eventually have to steal from someone. Therefore, most will likely not be alive at harvest time anyway. (This is a time you may also want to study up on home/self protection.)

1. Tomatoes: These are a basic ingredient for stews and an excellent source of vitamin C. We prefer the “Early Girl” variety because of its quick maturing time, abundance, and meatiness for canning. [Editor’s Note: This is a Monsanto-patented, non-GMO but hybrid seed.] You may not be progressed to the point of canning or have the supplies to do so, but a tutorial for the proper procedure can be found on this website. It is easy with the right equipment on hand. You may not want to waste valuable fuel canning, but remember that tomatoes can also be dehydrated. Simply slice and place on cookie sheets or another flat surface in a well ventilated warm area, free from dust, until dry. Store them in jars, plastic bags, paper bags, Tupperware, or anything to keep germs and animals out. Tomatoes like frequent, deep watering to their roots but want dry leaves, so keep the plants dry and ground moist.
2. Winter Squash: I am recommending the “Sweet Meat” squash. We have found that it is an extremely long keeper and an excellent producer. It will easily take over a whole yard, but don’t let the prolific nature of the Sweet Meat deter you from planting it. Preppers with small yards will appreciate the fact that you can trim the runners back to any size you want. Squash prefers a wet/dry watering cycle with dryer ground towards the end of season. Avoid watering the leaves, as it is prone to mold/mildew. Harvest when the leaves are dying back and before the first frost.
3. Garlic/onions: These are for seasoning of stews as well as eating fresh. Cooked onions and garlic add flavor to any meat you may be able to obtain. They will also keep you healthy and help avoid bland food burnout. Water them evenly, and let them dry out towards the end of the growing season. Harvest when the tops are dying down and brown. You may remove flower heads on garlic to increase bulb size. Next year’s garlic can be grown from garlic cloves. Let some onions go to seed for next year’s crop. Harvest in the fall and store in a cool dry place away from potatoes and squash; they will not keep as long if they are stored with these other vegetables.
4. Cabbage: A word about cabbage pests– destroy all pretty white “butterflies” you see. They are cabbage moths, and they will lay eggs on your plants that will hatch into worms that will eat your cabbage. Hand pick any you see and squish them. If any of your plants look like they have been cut at the stem by the soil and literally look like they have been fallen by a lumberjack, cutworms are the culprits. Dig around by the stem and within an inch deep you will find a cutworm. Immediately destroy it. You can save yourself some grief by putting cutworm “collars” around the stem of the plant when the plants first come up. I make mine from the cardboard centers of toilet paper rolls, but you can fashion them from any pliable cardboard or plastic you have on hand. First, cut your toilet paper rolls in half so that you have two smaller rings. Then, cut the small rings lengthwise to enable you to wrap it around the stem and push it down into the soil about an inch. This will prevent the worms from gaining access to the tender young plants. There is no need to remove the collars; the plant will just push them out of the way as it grows. Slugs and snails may be a problem for you also if you live in a damp area, such as the Pacific Northwest. They can quickly destroy a garden, so keep an eye out for them. If you have a flashlight, look at night for them when they come out to eat. Laying boards or cardboard nearby your plants will encourage them to crawl under to escape the sunlight. Check underneath everyday, and collect the ones you find. If you are lucky enough to have snails like we have in the Northwest, they are edible. Fry them up with a little oil and garlic or steam them, if all you have is a pot and water. Also check underneath the leaves of mature plants, since they love to hide there also. Other pests include gophers, moles, rabbits, deer, et cetera. If you are in a fenced, suburban neighborhood, the larger animals may not be a problem for you; however, the smaller ones can dig their way in. If you have a bb gun or pellet gun, you can keep watch until one pops his head up and take aim. If you don’t have a gun suitable for this chore, you may have to be more creative with a trap or poison. Remember to water evenly to prevent splitting of the heads and harvest when heads are full and solid. You can eat your cabbage fresh; however, for survival purposes, it is best to turn it into sauerkraut with this recipe. Cabbage’s vitamin C absolutely soars when turned into sauerkraut, and the microbes in it will keep your insides working properly. You can store it for many months.
5. Carrots: These are another vitamin-packed veggie that can be eaten raw, dehydrated, or stored in buckets of sand (my personal favorite method). The sand method of carrots storage is something we have been using for years and works amazingly well. We have crisp, sweet carrots up to and over a year old. If you live where an abundance of sand is available, you are lucky. It doesn’t matter whether it be beach or desert, as long as it doesn’t have any serious contaminants, like oil or gasoline. If you plan ahead, you can buy a couple of bags of sand from the hardware store. To use this sand storage method, when you harvest your carrots cut the tops off and rub the cut end in dirt to cover any cut area. Only keep carrots that are free from rot or rodent damage. When you have finished this chore, fill the bottom of one of your 5-gallon buckets with about an inch of sand and lay your carrots side by side (but not touching each other) until there is no more room on that layer. Cover the layer of carrots with sand, and repeat the process until you reach the top of the bucket, covering the last layer with sand. Place the lid on the bucket and store in a cool, dry place. You may use them at any time, but make sure they are always covered with sand. While growing carrots, be sure to evenly water them. They like moist soil but will crack if they are too dry followed by a large amount of water.

Step 4: Building your circle garden

All this being said, if you make it to the point of being in your back yard with a shovel in hand, we will now begin to garden as if our lives depended on it. Read the following in entirety before starting!

First Circle- Carrots

For the first and inner circle, pound a wood stake (or a kitchen knife, pencil, or anything you can push in the ground) in the spot of your yard that you would like to be the exact middle of your circle garden. Attach your string and measure out to where you can still reach the center stake. You will make the first circle this size for your carrots. This allows you to properly tend and weed them, and it protects the tender morsels of carrot tops from animals by being enclosed by the rest of the garden. Take your shovel and dig in a shovel’s depth around the perimeter of your circle, following the length of the string around until you have come back to where you started. Do this partial digging all over your circle, leaving the grass in place. If your grass is easy to remove, do so by hand. If your soil is hard packed, like many suburban yards, you will then get your garden claw and work the grass until it is loosened enough to remove. When finished with this step, you will have a circle of exposed dirt. Work the soil with the claw and shovel to make it loose to a depth of 12 inches, if you can. If not, six inches would be the bare minimum.

Your soil may need some additional nutrients, which you may or may not have on hand. If you don’t have any compost or fertilizer on hand, you may use your own feces and urine. [Editors note: As usual, SurvivalBlog will add a strong proviso here. In our opinion, the risks of this practice far outweigh any potential benefit. Please search the blog for “night soil” or “humanure” for more details.] This suggestion may be repulsive to many but watching a loved one die from lack of food from a crop failure or reduced yield is much more repulsive to me. Human waste fertilizer is used in many parts of the world quite successfully. You should avoid using human waste from anyone that is obviously ill. You will not have public sewer service anymore, so use one of your 5-gallon buckets for a toilet to collect waste. Urine may be used anytime, but human or animal feces will require a cooling off period, so it won’t “burn” your plants and kill them. Find an area of your yard that is far from everything else and use 1/3 manure with 2/3 of the grass you have scalped off to reveal the dirt for your garden circles. Just pile alternating thin layers of greens and “browns” until you end up with a compost heap that is one square yard and a bit taller than that. Mix the fertilizer into the soil and water until moist. Let sit and turn over for a few weeks. If this may not be something you want to do, consider getting a rabbit or two. They are prolific poopers that will eat garden scraps and can be used for meat as well. You will need a male and female of course, if you plan on having more. You may plant one packet of carrot seeds now. Spread the seeds evenly over the soil and cover with 1/4 inch of soil. If you live in a hot area, you can plant in the evening and each following day. Keep the soil moist. If the planted seeds dry out, you may lose them; so, moisture is VERY important. Carrot seeds may take up to three weeks to sprout, so be patient. When you do start to get carrots or weeds sprouting and you are not sure which is which, snip a little off and rub between your fingers. Carrot tops do smell like carrots. Remove the weeds of course but do not thin (removal of carrots that are too crowded to reach a mature size) until they are much larger. You may not have to thin at all, depending on how evenly your seed was sown. Carrots are biannual, meaning they only produce seed on the second year, so you will be leaving the middle six inches of your circle of carrots in place so that they will produce seeds the following year. The second package of seeds will be to plant next year in the same spot surrounding the seed carrots. The third year you will be using your own seed. Filling in this first circle of your garden may take you an hour, a day, or several days depending on your stamina. Work in the morning or evening if your Spring weather has extreme heat. Don’t be discouraged if this sounds complicated, just follow step-by-step and know that the rest of the veggies will be much easier

Second Circle- Cabbage

Measure out about three feet and dig out 12-inch diameter circles, spacing them about three feet apart. This will give you about twelve planting holes for your cabbage. Dig in the same manner as the carrot circle, using your shovel and garden claw. As you can now see, you are not tilling up your whole yard but leaving yard grass between. This is used for your walking paths, and the grass can be kept down by walking on it or clipping it in your spare time. If you are not spry enough to step over your cabbages to get to your carrots, just leave one cabbage circle undone for an entry in to your carrot circle. Build a dam/saucer of soil around your plants to keep the water from running off and away from your plant. Hand watering at the stem is the most efficient method of watering. You can also use newspaper or any paper to “mulch” by laying it flat over the soil around the bottom of your plants in order to help retain moisture.

Third Circle- Onions and Garlic

You will have to have viable garlic on hand to break up into cloves and onion seeds. Measure out from your cabbage plants about two feet, creating a new circle. This circle will be a solid ring. Half will be for garlic cloves and half for onion sets. (Onion sets are small onion plants that have been started indoors first. Onion seeds are hard to direct sow, and inside starting will be your best bet. If you have any crop failure, it will most likely be the onions; so don’t be discouraged. Garlic is super easy to grow and will provide you with the same seasoning flavor.) This circle of garlic and onions will help protect your cabbage and carrots from pests, as they do not like the strong flavor of them.

Fourth Circle- Tomatoes

Measure outward in the same fashion to a distance of two feet and plant your tomatoes in a circle around the last. This circle will be like the cabbage circle with individual spots for the tomato plants. Tomatoes will also need to be started from seed indoors, like onions. They are not as temperamental as onions, and you should have no difficulty growing them. Make sure they have plenty of sunlight while indoors on a sunny windowsill. Transplant outside when they have true leaves and the danger of frost is over. Bury them up to their “necks”, so to speak, as they will produce roots all along the stem. You can train them to climb up a support or just let them grow on the ground. The main concern is plenty of sunlight and heat.

Fifth Circle- Squash

Measure out at least four feet to plant your squash in the same circle manner as cabbage and tomatoes. Squash may be directly sown into the ground after the soil warms. Squash will be the plant that needs the most space but can be trained to go almost anywhere– up fences, down driveways, on porches. You get the picture; it GROWS! You can always trim it back, if it starts to invade your other vegetables and probably will have to. As you get to this point, the circle planting pattern can morph into an oblong one, especially since most suburban yards are rectangle in shape. Once you have planted the basics of your survival garden, you can add any other seeds that you may have on hand, such as lettuces for shady places here and there. Summer squash/zucchini can be planted in any corner of your yard and is quite prolific also. You can eat them fresh or dehydrate, as they are not really good keepers but may last a few months. I have drawn a diagram of the circle garden for a visual aid. As you can see, it is not perfect. Your garden doesn’t need to be either. The dark shaded areas are exposed dirt, and the white areas are lawn.

I write this in memory of my elderly friend, Helen, who lived through the Great Depression and said to me, “It got to the point of all we had were turnips, but they kept us alive.” Now I’m not a big fan of turnips, but I can see the wisdom of something being better than nothing, and it is my hope and prayer that you don’t give up on yourself, your families, or your neighbors but try to be as prepared and determined as possible to work together with a Christian attitude for a life beyond an EMP.

Being descendants of Native Americans and Swiss/German immigrants, my family has survived and thrived off our land for generations. We hunt and gather an abundance of local food– venison, salmon, elk, smelt , crab, clams, acorns, huckleberries, and seaweed– from the Redwood Forests, Wild Rivers, and Mighty Pacific Ocean, and we cultivate our “civilized” gardens and orchards, grown in the manner brought by our European ancestors. Having the best of both worlds so to speak, we have never really experienced a lack of food in our area. The art of gathering, growing, and preserving food for winter has always been the top priority for us. Preparing for disasters has also been a full-time job around our home, and believe me where I live in the Pacific Northwest there are plenty of disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, wildfires, drought, economic collapse, foreign invasion, and/or EMP to prepare for. While all these can strike quickly with little or no warning, only the EMP can cause major world-wide or national damage to civilization as we know it. Unlike a regional disaster, this will effect a large area with no one really left to help you because of a major societal collapse. If you are lucky enough not to be radiated by a nuclear meltdown or freeze in the winter, you will still want to eat at least a few times a week. In pockets here and there across our great nation, there will be hundreds of thousands of people (perhaps millions) that will be living in the quiet desperation of starvation. Any food at all will be like gold. I often think, “What if it was just me, a woman alone? How would I do it? How could ANYONE do it? What if I only had a handful of seeds and a few hand tools? What would I need to have on hand to make it as easy as possible, or just possible, period?” Let’s not be sexist; many men will be in the same position. I hope to help a portion of these people by teaching non-gardeners how to start a garden, even if all they have is your basic suburban back yard with a lawn that has never had the soil turned over.

Growing your own food is a skill that takes practice, practice, practice. We have heard this mantra so many times. For those of us who love to garden, this is no chore. We “practice” like it’s play rather than work. However, for the majority of people the “practice” will only begin after having the nerve to start. I am a gardener with over 40 years experience, but when faced with an article that rambles on in extreme depth of information, my eyes glaze over. I can’t imagine someone who cares very little about gardening being able to even get through the first couple of paragraphs! How can we encourage people to start if the information is so overwhelming?

I would like to share the Circle Garden, which is a simple low-cost garden plan that can be started and successfully completed either today or at worst after a catastrophic event by the inexperienced gardener (IF your gardening tools are purchased NOW and seeds are bought and kept fresh YEARLY). The plants selected are easy to grow, long keepers, and high in nutrition and flavor with low maintenance. With enough plantings, you will have extra to share or trade, and although you may still have some crop failure from lack of experience, for the most part you will have some food and some seeds for next year, and some is certainly better than none!

I am going to say right now that you need to modify your store plans from three months to a year, where you are right now, so stock up on nonperishable food!!

Food that you have stocked up on will eventually run out and you will become fully dependent upon the food you and your neighbors can grow. Although my family lives on an acre of property with a well established garden with fruit trees and hundreds of acres of farm land around us, I know most of the population is not as well placed as us and furthermore may not even have a basic understanding or desire to garden. Most of us will have shelter (unless you are driven out by nuclear meltdown or gangs), but having food and the water required to grow/raise it will be a different story for all of us. Hopefully, if an EMP happens, it will be at the beginning of the growing season, allowing for maybe three months before you can start to harvest. As the realization of the magnitude of what has happened, emotions will be running high. I would hope you will have a means of self defense for yourself, your family, and your food source. Remember there is safety in numbers. Get your neighbors on board with this simple plan. The more neighbors around you that have food, the more you will be protected. As you start your garden, you may feel overwhelmed by everything that is going on around you. It’s okay to dig and cry. I’ve done it many times for reasons much less devastating than what will be happening to you during an EMP event. Always remember our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has said, “I am always with you even until the end of the earth. I will never leave you or forsake you.” So let’s get busy!

Step 1: Go shopping!

The following list contains those items that you must have for this bare-boned gardening operation. Like-minded neighbors could share the cost and usage of the tools but would need to buy their own buckets and garbage cans.

Seeds: You will need at least two packages of the following seeds:

• Tomato,
• Squash,
• Carrot,
• Onion,
• Cabbage, and
• whole Garlic.

  These must be all non-hybrid (heirloom) seeds, which means they will produce seed that you can plant and have the same crop the following year. Hybrids may or may not be true to what you plant. For example, hybrid carrots may have been cross bred with turnips. This means the seeds may produce turnips, carrots, or a mixture of the two; at worst, the seeds may produce nothing at all. Nothing is stopping you from purchasing more seed than this but money. Another reason to bring your friends and neighbors on board is bulk purchasing. Walmart sells cans of “Non-Hybrid Survival Seeds” by the can for less than $25 and includes over 8000 seeds. Keep seeds in a cool, dry location out of direct sunlight until needed. You may certainly start your garden before a disaster strikes, and it is always preferable to practice. Just be sure to always keep your seeds and equipment fully stocked.

Tools:

• Shovel: the best you can afford, because it will be doing a lot of work!
• Garden claw: to break up hard, packed soil. It does the same type of ground tilling work as a rototiller but using no gas or electric power. These are indispensable for breaking up the hard packed soil of a suburban backyard.
• Flexrake Hula Ho: These can be purchased on Amazon or Walmart. They come in different lengths, and depending on your height you should pick the size that is most comfortable for you. Weeding is a most time-consuming chore and hard work. The Hula hoe can blast through the weeding in a fraction of the time it takes with other methods and is not back breaking. These are indispensable for weeding a large garden! Make sure you are using it correctly and not upside down.
• Ten 5-Gallon Buckets: Food grade buckets can be purchased at any hardware or Walmart type store for a few dollars a piece on sale. These will be used for the following purposes:
  1. Manure tea to fertilize your crops.
  2. Water (individual bucket and cup watering of plants reduces weeds and encourages a one-on-one relationship with your plants which will keep you aware of any pest and/or disease problems.) You will need two for watering, so you can carry an even amount of water in each hand to balance yourself. You don’t have to fill them up to the top the first few times around. Slowly each day add more water, and soon you will have the muscles to carry full buckets. My 85-year-old aunt waters hundreds of her tomato plants this way, and if she can do it, so can you!
  3. Carrot root cellar storage, only without the root cellar.
  4. Making sauerkraut
• Large Plastic Garbage Can(s): for rain barrel on down spouts of roof. You may buy as many as you have down spouts and can afford. Roof water off composition shingle roofs is probably not the best water for drinking, but it’s fine for watering a garden. It may also be your only source for water if municipal services are not available.
• String or twine: (In a pinch you can use shoestrings, belts, or even tied together plastic bags or an actual measuring tape.) This will be used to measure your garden circles so you know where to dig. This is not something that has to be exact.
• Small Wagon or Wheel Barrow: To use for hauling buckets of water and gathered materials to bring home and so forth.
• Salt: For canning or pickling and for making sauerkraut. (If you are lucky enough to have some meat with excess left over, you can also use this for a salt rub on strips of meat to hang to dry for jerky.)

Step 2: Secure a Water and Soil Source

If you still have running water after the disaster strikes, store as much as you can. Ancillary generator pumps may be working for a while. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS! Fill bathtubs, kiddie pools, and any and all empty containers you may have. Later, you may be forced to gather water from outside areas to get water to your home. These areas might include ponds, streams, rivers, and irrigation ditches. Your large plastic garbage can can serve as a rain barrel or you can also fill it up with your 5-gallon buckets. A small wagon or wheel barrow will be very useful to haul the water-filled buckets back home. Your plants can get by on an amazingly small amount of water, if you hand water. This means applying the water directly from a container to the bottom of the plant. Next, you need to have soil to work with. When you get right down to it, we are basically all made of dirt (well, carbon, but it’s from the earth). To survive in this world, you need food grown from dirt. So, first and foremost, if you don’t have any dirt, now is the time to acquire some. If you currently live in a situation, such as an apartment/condo/motel or any place without a stitch of soil, consider moving, or if that is impossible then join together with like-minded people for a community garden. City, county, or state parks, churches, and fraternal organizations are places to start. If you are like a lot of Americans, you have a small back yard to work with. That yard must be totally given over to food production. You may ask, “When can I start working the ground to prepare my garden?” This link gives information for planting for each state. You must use some common sense here though. if your area in still freezing cold or raining so hard that everything is muddy, it’s probably not the right time to start. Once you have water and soil, you must choose a sunny location within your yard with at least 8-10 hours of sun a day. Without proper sunlight you might as well not bother to plant anything except maybe lettuce, and that won’t see you through a long cold winter. Southern exposure is the preferable spot.