If you haven’t started growing your own food yet, start now. Food shortages are imminent, and it takes power away from big companies if we don’t rely on them.
First off, we need to harden people. We have gotten too soft. We have no idea how easy our lives are compared to 100 years ago. The closer you are to the earth. The happier life you live.
You are spot on SirRupert. When I go to West Virginia to visit family, I am always amazed at how very self sufficient people are. I mean, you have elderly people farming, chopping wood, hunting, fishing, raising cattle, goats and chickens. Not to mention the younger generation who follow in their footsteps. Its like stepping back in time.
It's mind blowing to see children as young as 10 years old handling rifles like it's second nature. These children learn to hunt and put food on the table. There's a lot of steps in between they must also learn. (bleeding out, skinning etc) That's their way of life. Totally normal to them. I love it.
Expensive to set up and space- and labor-intensive. Plus I don't have that much space to place a hydroponic garden, enough that would render sufficient food for the winter. Also it takes energy (grow lights, temperature settings) to do it right.
Now if I had access to a barn or warehouse (neither of which I have) and enough capital to invest in it (which I don't) then it might be feasible. Economics plays a role in these decisions, so with cash and space, I don't have the requisite basics to start a hydroponics garden that would provide meaningful amounts of food.
You'd be better off growing potatoes inside in containers over winter. They are amazingly hard to not grow. All they need is a sunny window & water, they'll do the rest. Put containers outside after last frost March/April and harvest in 2 months. Good way to kickstart your good weather gardening.
labor wise is no worse than outdoor gardening, in fact some may argue it’s easier because no weeding. You’re correct that it’s pricey to set up though, especially the grow lights.
There are other options however. You can grow a lot of things over. winter in cold frames for example. Kale, carrots, spinach, many other cold hardy veg will do just fine in a cold frame. If you have southern facing windows in your home you’d be surprised what you can get to grow in them in containers.
The main thing though is planning and growing things in the summer that store for many months. There are varieties of onion, carrot, squash, and potatoes that will store in the ground or in a root cellar for several months. And although relying on the power grid isn’t ideal, you can get a chest freezer and stock up a LOT of veg (i currently have several pounds of frozen okra in my fridge) and don’t forget learning to can. Canned veg can last up to 2 years.
While it is the wrong time of year to start on a lot of these things, it’s never the wrong time to start learning and planning.
Look up growing food indoors wall hydroponics ....there's too many vids on youtube to count. You only need a wall and it can be done cheap with materials you can pick up at any home depot, like plumbing pipe. I picked a really easy, cheap one to get you started on the search
We can’t do it alone. We need to work as a community. You can easily fit a 5x10 tent with lights inside and just focus on 1 plant like organic tomatoes. Then trade the tomatoes with others for whatever veggie you need. Food can easily be traded in a nationwide indoor farming economy where we all focus on at least 1 kind of veggie.
So if carrots are lacking in 1 neighborhood, I would grow carrots because I can easily trade them due to high demand and low supply. No competition.
Learn/teach yourself how to fertilize soil by planting seeds; then grow your understanding of perspective...your choice represents the seed; the reality you perceive represents the soil. Fertilize that. Use your neighborhood for growth, and the more you do this; the more help you will get. Any empty garden is only a question away from being usable for growth. Show others how to grow food or make fertilizer on a balcony.
Still one of the best & least expensive ways to put back a lot of food quickly.
I was amazed at the variations between different brands for flavor & texture. Some of the store brands (beets, carrots, tomatoes) are much better & cheaper than branded ones. I like canned beans over dried as they are easy, less prep. If I found a baked beans recipe that I liked am sure I'd change my opinion. Have yet to make anything with dried beans I wanted to eat again. Rice & pasta, about as easy as it gets. I keep them stored in tightly lidded containers otherwise bugs will love them. Same for flour. They keep a long time this way if kept away from high temps without oxygen absorbers or gamma buckets.
Look for the baked bean recipe from Durgin Park. It was one of the oldest restaurants in the US before it recently closed down. I cater and I sell them at every bbq I do, to rave reviews.
Thanks, will give that a shot. Have actually eaten at the Durgin Park at Faneuil Hall Boston years back. Don't recall having their beans though. I grew up on the west coast and there was a BBQ chain called Love's. Their baked beans were spectacular, have been looking for a replacement ever since.
I did read to freeze all beans, flour, grains for several days first ( to kill any larvae like pantry moths) then remove from freezer and store in a dark place. Freezing will help those foods stay fresher for longer!
Same thing I was thinking.
Then I considered setting up in my basement, but then my cats would destroy it, the grow lights would probably get expensive, yet my computers would help keep the temp in a decent range down there this winter, and I just overall don't have enough space down there.
I planted a garden this spring, and have every year past since I've lived here in 2013. I want to do raised beds or get plastic, because the weeds grow a lot and takeover what I planted.
As I learned as a young lad, when my parents always had a garden out back, "weeding" is a necessary activity and we kids had to do it once a week. Backbreaking work, pulling up weeds in a garden (ours was about 1/4 acre) but undesirable weeds steal nutrients from the desirable plants so they HAVE to be pulled up by the roots. Today I grow (in spring and summer) a smaller garden plot with tomatoes and other edibles, and even as small as it is, I weed once a week. It keeps me in touch with the earth and in touch with the way I was raised.
My nemesis these days is the horn worm... a.k.a. the tomato worm. It's green and hard to spot amongst the green leaves of the tomato plant... but to spot one you have to look for parts of the vine that have been stripped of leaves. Look closely on that vine or nearby and you'll find the little bugger. I always dispatch them by removing them to a spot on my driveway where they can be seen, and the birds do the rest. It's interesting to watch as the birds swoop in for the kill.
And that's been my problem. We have about 40 or so chickens, 10 peafowl, cats, and dogs, and an almost 1 year old son, and another child on the way. Plus I have my own biz. So finding time to weed my garden was hard. Our tomatoes did pretty good after I addressed blossom end rot. The horn worms I would also find them from the nubs. When I found them, I took them straight to my chickens to tear apart.
Our broccoli didn't do great. The plants got big but didn't produce a lot of heads. Our cabbage and lettuce did real well in late spring/early summer. The peppers took forever to grow and produced but the weeds took over by then and I didn't have much time or interest in maintaining it.
Same for the potatoes.
i’m hoping to try garden fabric next year and see how that does. I used mulch this year and it was definitely helpful but I still
had loads of creeping charlie and some dandelions to deal with.
This year I did raised beds with cinder blocks. Not the prettiest option but cheap and I put my herbs in the holes of the block on the perimeter. First year doing it and it worked great. Had cilantro and dill when I harvested my cucumbers and maters.
people advocate having a 50lb bag of rice on hand as a backup. but think about it this way... 1 cup of rice is 200 calories. 1 lb of rice is 2.5 cups. so that 50lb bag of rice is only 25k calories. if you're solo, and you drop to only 1500 daily calories in a food shortage, you're still only at around 16 days worth of food for a single person.
another thing to up the calorie density is olive oil or avocado oil. a single tablespoon (half oz) is 110-125 calories. you can get a 5L jug at a bunch of places, which is ~176 oz. so now you're talking roughly 40k calories in a 5L jug. now you've extended for a bit over 26 more days per person.
so if you're rationing to 1500 calories per day, a 50lb bag of rice and 5L olive oil per person will last you roughly 42 days.
you probably have some other stuff sitting around you can add to your diet from your pantry, but if shit hits the fan, you're going to burn through that all pretty fast. when actual food shortages start, if you don't know how to grow food, you're so fucked.
people are getting those hydroponic auto-growers, but many of them can't handle any real volume, and they're always for vegetables and vine fruits... caloric density is way too low in a SHTF scenario. the variety is nice, but you can replace them entirely with a multivitamin.
wheat takes 4-8 months to grow, and that's assuming you do it right the first time. and this isn't even factoring where you live, whether food is actually growable there.
the only consolation is that most americans are overweight or obese though, so with a multivitamin and water alone, most americans can literally go 4+ weeks with no actual food. if you're not a fatass, this doesn't help you.
then you have to factor in the simple fact that if shit actually hit the fan, you're going to have to fend off people in your outer circle who didn't prep, and choose carefully who is in your inner circle. if shit hits the fan, you WILL need other people, because if you're solo, all you've really done is stockpile food for the gangs/cartels that will emerge.
my stash:
100+ lbs of dry uncooked rice
15L+ of olive oil
1+ year of adult daily multivitamins
20+ lbs of unflavored whey protein isolate
portable water filtration system with extra o-rings and extra filters
small stove with tons of solid fuel
as ridiculous as this sounds, that's roughly only 4 months on ration for a single person, plus anything still in the pantry, plus any carried body fat. for the rice, olive oil, and protein, i eat those on the regular, so any time i get lower than those limits, i open the oldest one and get another.
Just to add a tiny bit here, olive oil does have a shelf life, keep using and replenish your supply to keep it fresh. Opening a bottle of rancid oil when you are counting on it will be a serious setback
If you haven’t started growing your own food yet, start now. Food shortages are imminent, and it takes power away from big companies if we don’t rely on them.
First off, we need to harden people. We have gotten too soft. We have no idea how easy our lives are compared to 100 years ago. The closer you are to the earth. The happier life you live.
You are spot on SirRupert. When I go to West Virginia to visit family, I am always amazed at how very self sufficient people are. I mean, you have elderly people farming, chopping wood, hunting, fishing, raising cattle, goats and chickens. Not to mention the younger generation who follow in their footsteps. Its like stepping back in time.
Excellent observation. Or stepping back into a long time established organic rhythm.
It's mind blowing to see children as young as 10 years old handling rifles like it's second nature. These children learn to hunt and put food on the table. There's a lot of steps in between they must also learn. (bleeding out, skinning etc) That's their way of life. Totally normal to them. I love it.
Hard to do that with winter coming on. I've stored canned goods and dry foods (rice, beans, pasta) and water for whatever is coming.
Hydroponics is year round. Indoors.
Expensive to set up and space- and labor-intensive. Plus I don't have that much space to place a hydroponic garden, enough that would render sufficient food for the winter. Also it takes energy (grow lights, temperature settings) to do it right.
Now if I had access to a barn or warehouse (neither of which I have) and enough capital to invest in it (which I don't) then it might be feasible. Economics plays a role in these decisions, so with cash and space, I don't have the requisite basics to start a hydroponics garden that would provide meaningful amounts of food.
^^^All the above.
You'd be better off growing potatoes inside in containers over winter. They are amazingly hard to not grow. All they need is a sunny window & water, they'll do the rest. Put containers outside after last frost March/April and harvest in 2 months. Good way to kickstart your good weather gardening.
labor wise is no worse than outdoor gardening, in fact some may argue it’s easier because no weeding. You’re correct that it’s pricey to set up though, especially the grow lights.
There are other options however. You can grow a lot of things over. winter in cold frames for example. Kale, carrots, spinach, many other cold hardy veg will do just fine in a cold frame. If you have southern facing windows in your home you’d be surprised what you can get to grow in them in containers.
The main thing though is planning and growing things in the summer that store for many months. There are varieties of onion, carrot, squash, and potatoes that will store in the ground or in a root cellar for several months. And although relying on the power grid isn’t ideal, you can get a chest freezer and stock up a LOT of veg (i currently have several pounds of frozen okra in my fridge) and don’t forget learning to can. Canned veg can last up to 2 years.
While it is the wrong time of year to start on a lot of these things, it’s never the wrong time to start learning and planning.
Look up growing food indoors wall hydroponics ....there's too many vids on youtube to count. You only need a wall and it can be done cheap with materials you can pick up at any home depot, like plumbing pipe. I picked a really easy, cheap one to get you started on the search
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLEVQw-bHhc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UB7HEy4WJk
We can’t do it alone. We need to work as a community. You can easily fit a 5x10 tent with lights inside and just focus on 1 plant like organic tomatoes. Then trade the tomatoes with others for whatever veggie you need. Food can easily be traded in a nationwide indoor farming economy where we all focus on at least 1 kind of veggie.
So if carrots are lacking in 1 neighborhood, I would grow carrots because I can easily trade them due to high demand and low supply. No competition.
Learn/teach yourself how to fertilize soil by planting seeds; then grow your understanding of perspective...your choice represents the seed; the reality you perceive represents the soil. Fertilize that. Use your neighborhood for growth, and the more you do this; the more help you will get. Any empty garden is only a question away from being usable for growth. Show others how to grow food or make fertilizer on a balcony.
Or if you cycle the hydroponics through a fish tank, the nutrients from the plants can feed the fish and the fish poop fertilizes the plants.
True. That is called aquaponics.
Aquaponics
Still one of the best & least expensive ways to put back a lot of food quickly.
I was amazed at the variations between different brands for flavor & texture. Some of the store brands (beets, carrots, tomatoes) are much better & cheaper than branded ones. I like canned beans over dried as they are easy, less prep. If I found a baked beans recipe that I liked am sure I'd change my opinion. Have yet to make anything with dried beans I wanted to eat again. Rice & pasta, about as easy as it gets. I keep them stored in tightly lidded containers otherwise bugs will love them. Same for flour. They keep a long time this way if kept away from high temps without oxygen absorbers or gamma buckets.
Look for the baked bean recipe from Durgin Park. It was one of the oldest restaurants in the US before it recently closed down. I cater and I sell them at every bbq I do, to rave reviews.
Thanks, will give that a shot. Have actually eaten at the Durgin Park at Faneuil Hall Boston years back. Don't recall having their beans though. I grew up on the west coast and there was a BBQ chain called Love's. Their baked beans were spectacular, have been looking for a replacement ever since.
I did read to freeze all beans, flour, grains for several days first ( to kill any larvae like pantry moths) then remove from freezer and store in a dark place. Freezing will help those foods stay fresher for longer!
Same thing I was thinking. Then I considered setting up in my basement, but then my cats would destroy it, the grow lights would probably get expensive, yet my computers would help keep the temp in a decent range down there this winter, and I just overall don't have enough space down there.
I planted a garden this spring, and have every year past since I've lived here in 2013. I want to do raised beds or get plastic, because the weeds grow a lot and takeover what I planted.
As I learned as a young lad, when my parents always had a garden out back, "weeding" is a necessary activity and we kids had to do it once a week. Backbreaking work, pulling up weeds in a garden (ours was about 1/4 acre) but undesirable weeds steal nutrients from the desirable plants so they HAVE to be pulled up by the roots. Today I grow (in spring and summer) a smaller garden plot with tomatoes and other edibles, and even as small as it is, I weed once a week. It keeps me in touch with the earth and in touch with the way I was raised.
My nemesis these days is the horn worm... a.k.a. the tomato worm. It's green and hard to spot amongst the green leaves of the tomato plant... but to spot one you have to look for parts of the vine that have been stripped of leaves. Look closely on that vine or nearby and you'll find the little bugger. I always dispatch them by removing them to a spot on my driveway where they can be seen, and the birds do the rest. It's interesting to watch as the birds swoop in for the kill.
And that's been my problem. We have about 40 or so chickens, 10 peafowl, cats, and dogs, and an almost 1 year old son, and another child on the way. Plus I have my own biz. So finding time to weed my garden was hard. Our tomatoes did pretty good after I addressed blossom end rot. The horn worms I would also find them from the nubs. When I found them, I took them straight to my chickens to tear apart.
Our broccoli didn't do great. The plants got big but didn't produce a lot of heads. Our cabbage and lettuce did real well in late spring/early summer. The peppers took forever to grow and produced but the weeds took over by then and I didn't have much time or interest in maintaining it. Same for the potatoes.
You should record their tiny screams of "Noooooooooooooooooo..."
i’m hoping to try garden fabric next year and see how that does. I used mulch this year and it was definitely helpful but I still had loads of creeping charlie and some dandelions to deal with.
Get 2 chickens and let them in the garden every now and again. They took care of my potato beetles and they love horn worms.
Mulch or weed barrier FTW
This year I did raised beds with cinder blocks. Not the prettiest option but cheap and I put my herbs in the holes of the block on the perimeter. First year doing it and it worked great. Had cilantro and dill when I harvested my cucumbers and maters.
This is a good idea and I like it. I'm assuming you used potting soil in the block holes?
In Guam I learned cats are tasty and a good source of protein
don't forget the seasoning.... CATsup!
Yeah, no, none of that.
this.
people advocate having a 50lb bag of rice on hand as a backup. but think about it this way... 1 cup of rice is 200 calories. 1 lb of rice is 2.5 cups. so that 50lb bag of rice is only 25k calories. if you're solo, and you drop to only 1500 daily calories in a food shortage, you're still only at around 16 days worth of food for a single person.
another thing to up the calorie density is olive oil or avocado oil. a single tablespoon (half oz) is 110-125 calories. you can get a 5L jug at a bunch of places, which is ~176 oz. so now you're talking roughly 40k calories in a 5L jug. now you've extended for a bit over 26 more days per person.
so if you're rationing to 1500 calories per day, a 50lb bag of rice and 5L olive oil per person will last you roughly 42 days.
you probably have some other stuff sitting around you can add to your diet from your pantry, but if shit hits the fan, you're going to burn through that all pretty fast. when actual food shortages start, if you don't know how to grow food, you're so fucked.
people are getting those hydroponic auto-growers, but many of them can't handle any real volume, and they're always for vegetables and vine fruits... caloric density is way too low in a SHTF scenario. the variety is nice, but you can replace them entirely with a multivitamin.
wheat takes 4-8 months to grow, and that's assuming you do it right the first time. and this isn't even factoring where you live, whether food is actually growable there.
the only consolation is that most americans are overweight or obese though, so with a multivitamin and water alone, most americans can literally go 4+ weeks with no actual food. if you're not a fatass, this doesn't help you.
then you have to factor in the simple fact that if shit actually hit the fan, you're going to have to fend off people in your outer circle who didn't prep, and choose carefully who is in your inner circle. if shit hits the fan, you WILL need other people, because if you're solo, all you've really done is stockpile food for the gangs/cartels that will emerge.
my stash:
as ridiculous as this sounds, that's roughly only 4 months on ration for a single person, plus anything still in the pantry, plus any carried body fat. for the rice, olive oil, and protein, i eat those on the regular, so any time i get lower than those limits, i open the oldest one and get another.
Just to add a tiny bit here, olive oil does have a shelf life, keep using and replenish your supply to keep it fresh. Opening a bottle of rancid oil when you are counting on it will be a serious setback
Get into indoor growing. The tech exists for it. Hydroponics.
Its a little late to be planting anything unless its a field of wheat or barley