Why Plant A Garden?
As you know, there are no guarantees about future events. There is no guarantee that SHTF won’t happen tomorrow. These are things beyond your control. What is not beyond your control is that you can guarantee that you and your family have food to survive when push comes to shove. Now, that is a guarantee you need to get behind and take seriously. The only way to do this is to make sure that you are food independent. One of the most basic ways to start your independence journey from commercial food sources is to get in touch with the earth. Plant a survival garden.
Where Do I Start?
Take some space in your backyard to use but it doesn’t have to be a plot that takes up your entire backyard. Especially, when you’re just getting started. You want to make it manageable and simple. The key to starting a garden is making a plan, by using knowledge that you have acquired on the things that you want to grow and when to plant them. You need to choose vegetables that will thrive where you live. This is important to your garden’s success.
Permaculture
A big trend in home gardening is the application of permaculture, which means emulating patterns in nature to design your garden. Some of the principles include planting things together that are mutually beneficial like corn, squash and beans; planting things in your garden that will deter pests like oregano and marigolds; or using mulch as a natural fertilizer. These are just a few simple ideas, but permaculture gardening has become an ideology that could encompass your entire property and its landscape, if you really want to dig into it (Pun totally intended). When you first start, though, you should keep it simple.
Green House Garden
Green house gardens allow you to create a more controlled environment for your garden, especially, against unexpected frosts and pests like rabbits and birds. A rabbit can take out your garden almost before it gets started. A green house also allows you a little more leeway on which vegetables you want to grow because of the controlled environment. However, when you first start your greenhouse garden, just like a garden plot, you will need to adjust your plan to the realities of the environment that you have created.
Start Now!
Once you’ve made your gardening plan, you need to put it into action. In other words, do it now! Don’t wait until SHTF to start because that is way too late. Gardening is something that needs to be practiced and done through trial and error. You need time to learn because you can’t expect the first time you plant that everything will meet your expectations and needs. You need time to learn and adapt your plan, based on the results and reality of your individual garden plot and its environment. You won’t know this until you’ve been through a season with your garden. In making your gardening plan, you should have put together your list of vegetables that should be planted in the summer or in the fall. You can start simply, with just one season for the first year and expand later.
Summer Garden
When I think of a summer garden, the first thing that I think of is tomatoes and cucumbers. You can also fill your garden with summer squashes, zucchini and okra. Don’t forget the watermelon for the Fourth of July! To get you started, our
BugOut SHTF Summer Garden pack has heirloom seeds to grow all of these veggies and more. The high-quality, high-germination seeds come in a resealable Mylar bag and the individual seed packs have full instructions on when and where to plant, care of, when to harvest and the nutritional value of the vegetable.
Fall Garden
If you’re planting a fall garden, you’re going to look at root vegetables like carrots, beets, radishes and turnips. Then you can fill it with a variety of greens like cabbage, lettuce and kale. You’ll find a variety of these vegetables in our
BugOut SHTF Fall Garden heirloom seed pack. Assuring you of a bountiful harvest, the fall seeds are packaged in the same way as the Summer Garden pack, in a resealable Mylar bag, guaranteeing that they remain viable.
Year-Round Garden
Once you get through a couple of seasons with your summer or fall garden, you should expand to a year-round garden or if you’re feeling ambitious, you could start with a year-round garden from the get-go. Either way, the
BugOut SHTF Mega Garden pack gives you 38 different varieties of heirloom seeds. It combines the Summer Garden pack and the Fall Garden pack, plus, a variety of other seeds for the different planting seasons. You should also check out the
ReadyWise Heirloom Vegetable Seed Bucket. Another thing to consider is that these heirloom seeds can be used for barter or trade after SHTF. They could be worth their weight in gold in a post-SHTF world.
Final Word
When you have your garden growing and producing vegetables, you can really start enjoying the yummy goodness that goes straight from your garden to your kitchen. Nothing beats a truly fresh tomato or cucumber. But when you’re in it for the long haul, you need to make sure that you can enjoy that yummy goodness all year round or when your tomatoes just didn’t make it, which no matter how much you plan, can happen. You need to plan for the future and the best way to do this is to preserve a percentage of your vegetables by canning or freezing them.
