We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.
Prepper Basics for Growing Your Own Garden? Putting aside canned foods for future use is a good idea. But before that food supply runs out, you’ll need another way to take care of your family’s food needs. That’s why many preppers use gardens.
Growing your own food for your family is a great way to stretch the budget, eat wholesome foods and prepare for the future. You don’t have to have acres of land to plant and harvest the foods from a garden.
You can start a garden anywhere you live – even if you happen to live in an apartment. If you live somewhere, space is limited; you can create a garden in containers. But if you have a nice plot of land where you can plant, you need to choose the location wisely because plants have to have sunlight to survive.
Prepper Basics for Growing Your Own Garden
A garden also has to have good soil. Use organic fertilizer to enrich your soil before planting. You can have your soil tested before you start planting if you want to make sure that it’s healthy enough to sustain a garden.
Irrigation and drainage are important. You’ll want to make sure the area where you plant your garden isn’t in an area that holds standing water in heavy rainfall. If the water has difficulty running off, it can drown the plants.
Positioning is everything. Write down the foods you want to plant and how much of it you’ll need. Check out the climate zone for your area. This will help you learn what kinds of gardening foods will grow best in your area.
Will the plants get along with each other?
Make sure the plants you choose can be good neighbors. The types of food you decide to plant need to be placed in conjunction with their compatibility with other plants. Some plants will make it more difficult for other plants to survive, so separate them.
Some preppers plant a garden using seeds, while others use starter plants. If you want to be able to keep replanting your garden from seeds, then you’ll need to buy the heirloom ones since they’ll last for many replants.
What planting style?
You can plant your garden using rows, or you can use the raised bed method. There are pros and cons to each method. By simply using rows, you don’t have to create the raised beds.
But with raised beds, you can easily keep track of what food is in what location, and you won’t have to worry about one food shadowing another food. Raised beds also make it easy to harvest the foods when it’s time for them to be picked, and if something goes wrong in one raised bed, it won’t wipe out the entire garden.
Planning Your Prepper Garden According to Your Region
This is important when considering Prepper Basics for Growing Your Own Garden. Gardening is not the same in every state. If you’ve ever planted food in your garden and had it fail, you may have made the mistake of planting foods that are outside your region. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a map that can help show preppers which foods will grow the best in their region and when they should be planted.
Whether you buy seeds or plants, foods are labeled by their hardiness. Those labels are referring to the specific areas of a state where the plant will thrive. There are eleven regions divided by temperature into zones 1 through 11.
Southern states are divided by whether the area is coastal and tropical and whether they fall under the upper, lower, or middle South zone. A state can be all of one particular region or a mixture of two or three. For example, Florida’s region is entirely coastal and tropical, while South Carolina is a blend of coastal and tropical and lower and middle South.
Some states are located in the Southwestern Deserts region. California is divided into zones by whether it’s northern or southern California, and divided b coastal regions and inland valleys.
The Pacific Northwest is a region, and the Western Mountains and High Plains is another. The remaining regions are the Northern Central Midwest, the Middle Atlantic, and the New England Region.
To locate your region, look on the USDA map for your state, and it will tell you what zone you’re in. The map will also tell you when to plant your garden. When planting a survival garden, you want to plant what will grow well in your region.
Grain and corn can grow well in almost all the regions, as will beans and peas. You can grow staples such as oats and barley, as well as tomatoes. Potatoes and carrots grow easily in most regions.
Cabbage, lettuce, and squash make excellent foods for gardening as well. Broccoli and herbs should be in a survival garden, and you don’t want to forget to grow fruits for making jams and jellies and for use in pies and other desserts. Fruits from the berry family (blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries) are easily grown. Don’t forget to plant a section for herbs.
Almost everything you grow in a garden, fruits, and vegetables, can be scanned and safely stored as long as you make sure the food boils for at least 10 minutes. Foods that you can from your garden can keep for years; they’re healthier for you and will hold their fresh taste.
Survivalist Seeds Are Vital to Long-Term Nutritional Needs
When there are no longer ways to purchase the foods needed for long term survival, you will have an alternative solution. The best solution is to have seeds that can be harvested from the foods grown and replanted again. These kinds of seeds can continually provide for your family year after year.
Picking the type of seeds you’ll want can be done in one of two ways. You can individually choose the seeds you want, or you can buy them in prepackaged containers. What you’ll want to look for are seeds that are clearly labeled as survival or heirloom seeds.
You want to be specific with this because these are the seeds that are packaged in a way so that their viability is guaranteed. Whichever seed choice you make, be sure that you look for ones that say they’re hermetically stored.
The way they’re packaged will keep them safe no matter when you need to open the container. They also continue to produce food gardens. You want these continually producing seeds because when there is no access to grocery stores and the types of prepackaged foods we get now if you plant seeds once and that’s it, you’ll be in trouble.
You can choose individually according to the types of seeds you get. You can buy vegetables in one group of seeds and fruits in another. You can also purchase what’s called medicinal seeds. These are seeds that will produce plants that are well known to treat specific ailments.
Some people, however, choose to create their own survivalist seed supply rather than buying them. If you decide to do this, you’ll have to follow a few rules. Don’t use wet seeds.
The seeds must be completely dry before you store them. The storage containers you use are vitally important. You have to protect the seeds from the ability to grow fungus, from marauding insects and animals, and heat.
For the best results, you’ll want to store your seeds in glass containers. You’ll want to maintain the right temperature for the seeds, and remember that some seeds can handle a colder storage temperature while others can’t.
Light and humidity will negatively impact a seed’s ability to produce a viable plant. You want to keep the seed’s temperature-controlled below 50 degrees and remember that while some seeds can last in storage for up to six years and still produce a crop, other seeds can’t. You’ll want to do a seed rotation to check and make sure that the seeds are still good before you need them.
Other articles you may find helpful if you liked Prepper Basics for Growing Your Own Garden:
- Wilderness Survival Experts: Essential Skills for the Great Outdoors
- Nutrient Survival Food: Optimal Nourishment for Emergency Preparedness
- Best Survival Games on Switch: Top Picks for Challenging Adventures
- The 7 Biggest Bug Out Bag Mistakes People Make
- Best Handheld Radio for Survival: Top Picks for 2023