Survival Garden Food

 

Grow Your Own Food To Rely Less On ‘The System’

Growing your own food is one of the best ways to begin to liberate yourself from the system – to help you become better prepared to survive hard times – to be more self sufficient – and to add high quality nutritious food to your diet and food storage preps.

You can plan and grow a survival garden, no matter how big or small your yard. Even if you don’t have a ‘yard’, you may have space for some planters, pots, or containers.

Gardening is very rewarding, therapeutic, satisfying, and provides a feeling of accomplishment when your plants grow and then produce. It is liberating!

 
It is amazing to realize that it doesn’t take much space to grow a significant amount of food. In addition to the possibilities for preservation and food storage, the amount of money that you can save growing your own food is also potentially quite significant.

For example, not long ago, one particular harvest from our small patch of tomatoes yielded 250 pounds from just 8 hardy plants throughout the year! At lets say, $2 per pound at your local grocery store (prices vary depending on season), that’s $500 worth of tomatoes!! The key is to preserve them after harvest since there is obviously no way you could eat them all before they rot. You could ‘can’ them, or make sauce for the freezer or canning, or you could even dehydrate them. The result will be having delicious tomato throughout the winter months with the wonderful flavor of fresh home grown.

 

Is There A Best Survival Food To Grow?

Choosing the best ‘survival’ foods to grow depends on your growing zone, your abilities, your tastes, garden size, climate, soil, desired calories, etc.

If someone is just getting started with gardening, better choices are easy-to-grow vegetables while more experienced gardeners will likely choose a wider variety with other considerations in mind including nutritional balance, caloric viability for survival purposes, methods of preservation and long term storage capability, etc. 

Having said that, one’s survival garden for an experienced gardener should be heavy on calorie foods such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, dry beans, root crops, nuts, sunflowers (for their seeds), and if you have space… wheat, corn, oats which can be stored for years if done correctly.

List of high-calorie garden vegetables

 
The following short list of garden vegetables are easy and good for beginners, not necessarily for maximum calories.

Tomatoes

There are lots of great varieties to choose from, and they are VERY EASY to grow.  All they need is sun and some water. There is nothing like picking a fresh ripe tomato off the vine and experiencing that homegrown juicy sweet flavor as compared with the bland taste of your typical grocery store tomato. Preserve them for later (canning, freezer, dehydrate)

Pole Beans

Pole beans produce nearly twice as many beans as bush beans, they taste sweeter, and are more tender (harvest them before they get too big). They provide great nutritional value, and are beneficial for the soil because they provide nitrogen back into the ground.

Zucchini

This summer squash is another easy to grow survival food to consider in your survival garden. It is one of the most common vegetables grown in gardens.

Onion

When you harvest them, you can slice and dehydrate them (or freeze them) to be used throughout the winter.

 

Get Started With Your Garden

Quit thinking about it, and do it! At least start with one or two vegetables and give it a try. If this is your first attempt, be careful not to do too much so as to avoid becoming overwhelmed or frustrated if things get out of control ;) Start with the easy vegetables like tomatoes, beans, and zucchini. You will be rewarded beyond your imagination.