One thing is for sure, going it alone is tough.
Find other people in your area who garden and with whom you can share information, seeds, tools and techniques as well as trade surplus produce or fruit.
There is probably someone who has been gardening in your area for decades and can give you proven advice and may have more of a given plant or seeds or produce than they can ever use. Get to know the old folks and ask them who else you should talk to.
People rarely place great value what they know, even after they have mastered something like how to graft a fruit tree, get certain things to grow etc. They will be delighted to share their knowledge with you.
There are a couple of gals here who have started an exchange where they put down a blanket at a park every saturday morning and people show up to give away their produce, seeds, tools, cuttings or to just chat and exchange information. The key to its success is that no money changes hands, no one is selling anything.
Is there some reason that you could not start such an exchange where you live?
I promote the Crash Course to everyone that I meet and on our noncommercial
Food prep need not be costly. The basic need is 2200 calories/day (generous) including 50 grams of protein/day.
For my calculations I used current Sam’s Club prices. One should have pounds of Texturized Vegetable Protein (TVP) (Whole Foods $3.25/lb) 80 pounds ($260), Rice $.40/pound) 238 pounds ($95) and vegetable (fat) 52 pounds at $.66/pound $35 (vegetable oil to be used in cooking as in a curry heavily oiled). total cost $390 $1.06/day.
You will not win any awards for your cuisine and you will be getting no vitamins or other nutrients but…if you are serious about preparing for a real food shortage and you just want to stay alive until endive is back on the grocery shelves…this is doable. I have actually used this in food prep. I added cheap spices to my shopping list and with foresight and imagination I could eat this for a year. Eric Shipton, the great Brittish explorer gave his men no dietary variation on his expeditions, “they just complain too much if you give them a choice”
[quote=xkguy]Food prep need not be costly. The basic need is 2200 calories/day (generous) including 50 grams of protein/day.
For my calculations I used current Sam’s Club prices. One should have pounds of Texturized Vegetable Protein (TVP) (Whole Foods $3.25/lb) 80 pounds ($260), Rice $.40/pound) 238 pounds ($95) and vegetable (fat) 52 pounds at $.66/pound $35 (vegetable oil to be used in cooking as in a curry heavily oiled). total cost $390 $1.06/day.
You will not win any awards for your cuisine and you will be getting no vitamins or other nutrients but…if you are serious about preparing for a real food shortage and you just want to stay alive until endive is back on the grocery shelves…this is doable. I have actually used this in food prep. I added cheap spices to my shopping list and with foresight and imagination I could eat this for a year. Eric Shipton, the great Brittish explorer gave his men no dietary variation on his expeditions, “they just complain too much if you give them a choice”
[/quote]
xkguy,
Just a heads up. Unless one is living in abject poverty in an urban area with absolutely no other alternative, skimping on food quality by eating a “mono”, poor macro-nutrient quality, low micro-nutrient content, processed food based diet is not the wisest strategy and, in fact, is a ticket to substandard physical and psychological health and lowered physical work capacity and mental functioning. If you spend your money on nothing else, spend it on high quality food.
I agree XKguy-- opt for sacks of brown rice, whole wheat and other grains (organic). Invest in a grinder. Rather than highly processed soy protein buy raw soy beans and make your own tofu or soy milk. Sprouted grains will provide lots of vitamins .I feed sprouted barley to my chickens here on the West Coast of Canada and they love them!
After all if we go over the cliff you’ll probably have lots of time to do all this.
Too expensive for me and fear the rubber rings may not be available some day. That being said (do not try this at home,at all) i regularly reusemy ball lids with success. The lids i reuse were previously used in hot bath high acid canning, not pressure canning. Please re read the
warning.
Robie, i got the habit from Grandma who was born in 1908 and married in 1929, Harold and Melva raised us boys
Here’s a recent review of those lids from a blogger I regularly read. She sounded quite impressed by her experience with them and plans to switch over to them for all but gift canning. I’m thinking about picking up a few boxes of them myself.http://justincasebook.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/now-for-a-short-commercial-break/
xkguy here
trust me I would not plan to eat this for a year if I had a choice (hey I do). I added a few luxuries but they cost more.
I believe that all decisions cost us. Over-planning has a price. What I have suggested is a moderately high calorie diet that is VERY cheap. I am a physician (and before you give me the ‘doctors don’t understand nutrition’ lecture, I was also a high school wrestler and a rock climber for 35 years, I know basic nutrition) If you want to plan for a (hopefully ) low probability event and commit resources to that likelihood then what I have suggested is the most EFFICIENT expenditure you can make (I believe). I will HAPPILY hear challenges to that point. If you have a diet that costs less, provides as many calories and provides better protein at lower cost I will be very grateful. In fact I challenge (friendly) anyone to produce a diet for less. It must provide calories and protein to prevent starvation and kwashiorkor, be available in the USA and easily storable. cheers
My actual personal plan involves several modifications. It is for a bank holiday of 3 to 6 months. I assume that food is gone from shelves before I get there.
xkguyThe diet suggestions you make cause me concern. Nearly all the soy in the US is of the GMO variety and is IMHO of concern to eat the stuff at all given the liberal dosage of Roundup that is in the final product - not to mention that many tests & studies done lead one to at least be concerned about eating unfermented, non organic soy products on a routine basis. See Dr Mercola http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/09/18/soy-can-damage-your-health.aspx for some comments.
Similar concerns about the vegetable oils you suggest as most are highly modified by the manufacturing processes and most are also GMO, all of which are seriously suspect in my opinion. Good quality cold pressed olive oil or organic butter may be better alternatives
I suggest that you include (organic) beans and corn products on the list. Many of our primitive cultures in North America essentially lived on beans, corn, a few seeds and squash & with very little else to supplement their diets and have led active healthy lives
Anyway, I suggest that the quality of the food one plans to live on needs to be good quality if survival under difficult conditions is included as a requirement
Some thoughts for consideration
Jim
xkguy,
It almost sounds like you’re saying high school wrestlers and rock climbers know more about nutrition than physicians.
What you recommended is indeed inexpensive but I’m not sure efficient is how I would describe it. I know in my preps, food was actually the cheapest item so is absolute minimum cost really needed and desireable? If I had absolutely no money and lived in an urban area, I’d trap pigeons and rats, eat wild greens, acorns, etc., and dumpster dive. Cost? Zero dollars. How bare bones do we want to get here? During the Battle of Stalingrad, people ate every dog, cat, bird, and rat in the city, scraped wall paper off for the potato starch in the glue, boiled leather belts and shoes, and the German troops even recycled feces from latrines for undigested kernels of corn and grains. The more desperate the times, the more desperate the measures.
I’d echo Jim’s concerns about GMO food and vegetable oils and the desirability of high quality foods. In a rural area, one can forage foods and be healthier than the vast majority of the population stuffing themselves with the standard American fare. A northern person bagging a moose (legally or illegally) can live a long time and fairly healthily on that alone for the cost of a bullet. A Norwegian explorer looking for the perfect food for his men found raw seal meat met virtually all their nutritional needs and his men didn’t seem to mind the monotony of that meat diet too much. On the other hand, American POWs held in the jungle in Vietnam and forced to eat rice day after day after day often simply couldn’t tolerate it any more. Many developed severe GI distress from this “mono” carbohydrate diet that they weren’t used to and some even chose to starve to death rather than continue eating rice.
[quote=Zankel]I can not grow anything where I live. I would like to know the source of dried food. can anyone help? Thanks!!
[/quote]
Welcome to the site.
So how long have you lived in Antarctica? Also, the source of dried food is moist food that has had the moisture removed.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Is your question, “Where can I purchase dried food?” If so, are you interested in food that has been dried (like garden vegetables that have been dried in a dehydrator) or dry food (like whole grains and powdered milk) or freeze dried food like Alpinaire and Mountain House foods?
Check the archives. There’s tons and tons of information on all of the above.
For those of us with small gardens rather than multiple acres of land, total self sufficiency is obviously out of the question, so what’s the best way of using a limited space…
Personally I’m aiming to supplement my diet rather than attempt to raise high calorie staples, so things like herbs, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, in addition to a few established fruit trees and bushes.
The benefit of herbs and peppers is they take up very little room, are fairly easy to dry and store… and a source of fresh herbs and spices complement dried food storage… as well as having medicinal uses.
Having fresh salad and fruit in the summer is a nice lifestyle/health plus as well as a useful resource for tougher times…
I’ve set up a cheap gravity powered drip irrigation system, basically a 40L plastic tub reservoir + 4mm plastic tube connected to drip emitters, so I don’t need to remember to water - one of my weak points !
Plato, I’m fascinated by the idea of your drip irrigation system. Could you post photos?As far as best uses for a small garden, I would submit, after three years of growing in my backyard, that the best use is to learn from it – to test grow as wide a variety of the foods one is willing to eat as possible. I’ve tried a few calorie crops such as potatoes, winter squash, grinding corn and beans, just for the experience of growing them. The ones that are tricky, I try again the next year, in hopes of learning what they need to thrive. I think gaining a basic understanding of growing calorie crops is very useful, even if you can never grow more than a few servings of them in your backyard. Should push come to shove, we can always head out to some vacant land, or barter our labor for someone else’s growing space and put our knowledge to use on a broader scale. But the time to learn is now, so that all we’re faced with if TSHTF is finding the room and water to grow on a larger scale.
FWIW,
Sue
p.s. I do devote the lion’s share of my garden to the things we love to eat and that do well for us – tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, raspberries, broccoli and greens.
[quote=suesullivan]As far as best uses for a small garden, I would submit, after three years of growing in my backyard, that the best use is to learn from it – to test grow as wide a variety of the foods one is willing to eat as possible. I’ve tried a few calorie crops such as potatoes, winter squash, grinding corn and beans, just for the experience of growing them. The ones that are tricky, I try again the next year, in hopes of learning what they need to thrive. I think gaining a basic understanding of growing calorie crops is very useful, even if you can never grow more than a few servings of them in your backyard. Should push come to shove, we can always head out to some vacant land, or barter our labor for someone else’s growing space and put our knowledge to use on a broader scale. But the time to learn is now, so that all we’re faced with if TSHTF is finding the room and water to grow on a larger scale.
Sue,
That’s what I’m doing. Learning something different every year. Reading a lot. Improving the soil. Trying to learn to eat things I didn’t think I liked (like Swiss Chard) because it will grow. The time will come when we will need to implement everything we’ve learned.
I don’t have room for corm. And I have a hot summer that is good for tomatoes, peppers, squash, and sweet potatoes. I have lots of herbs in pots. I don’t have enough space for watermelons or Id have them too.
WooHoo!
I got my berry bushes in the mail yesterday!
Bluberries, Rasberries and Blackberries. I’ve never planted these before. They come with good instruction but does anyone here have first hand experience with the do’s-and-dont’s of berry bushes?
There are a couple ways to do a small garden:1. Grow what you love and eat it and preserve the extra.
2. Grow plants that produce continually or are a huge crop for the small space. Zucchini comes to mind, but green, wax beans, certain tomatoes (non-determinate) will produce forever, eggplant, pea pods, swiss chard, kale, brussels sprouts.
3. Grow succession plantings or in a greenhouse. Succession planting use the same space over and over and there is plenty of info on what to plant early and what goes in after. But you can extend harvesting on some plants for an indefinate period of time. We have cherry tomatoes over winter in a sunny window. We also had celery, kale, swiss chard, pea pods and some herbs in the winter window - all winter. When doing this - you want to establish the plant before fall (it should be producing already). Once the plant is mature, it doesn’t need as much sunlight to keep producing - it just needed the sun hours to get to the size to produce though. There are many other plants you can do this with and extend your HARVEST season vs your growing season. If you have a warmer house than me (gets 40 at night here), you can grow warmer things - eggplant, green peppers and maybe even a cucumber plant.
And I agree - if you have space for a fruit tree - plant away. Nothing tastes better than the fruit off your own trees,
EndGamePlayer
I have grown raspberries here. I bought one gals from the nursery first year, had about half die, I think from inconsistent watering when they were trying to root. Luckily, the nursery had a free replacement policy and I kept returning the dead ones to them for replacements. After I got through that first year, I’ve had no problem with those raspberries thriving. I do water them in our high plains climate and I top mulch with used straw (and the attendant nitrogen bombs in it) from the chicken coop in the winter or spring.I have planted from bare-root as well into our front yard, lost a couple of the 10 canes, didn’t worry about replacing them, and the survivors filled in. Raspberries run like mad. My only problem with them now is keeping the patch from getting too wide and un-pickable. I dig up new sprouts in spring, giving them about a shovelful of soil (and root system), and transplant them to other parts of the garden or give them to neighbors. I may need to go into the raspberry bush business soon, as our yard is getting quite full.
The other issue with raspberries is staking them up properly so the canes don’t break when they become heavy with fruit (I lost dozens of canes last year to breakage and while I still got tons of fruit, I hated to find them snapped). Still working on a good staking system. Twine is okay, anything less thick gets sawed to shreds by the thorns, wire I believe is the recommended material.
Raspberries, at least, come in summer and fall bearing, and have different pruning requirements – summer bearers bear fruit on second year canes (that’s how they can bear earlier in the season, the canes have been growing for a year already) and fall bearers bear on first year canes, so you can clear cut their patch each fall or spring with impugnity.
Whilst the plants will grow and spread, once established, without additional water, in our dry climate I water regularly because I want them to bear maximally. I’ve seen unirrigated patches and the output is pretty puny.
FWIW,
Sue
