Survival garden in a hurry

oowolf · Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 2:52 pm Post subject: Survival garden in a hurry

This is for those who feel a sudden need to start growing food but don't know where to start. This is a temperate zone survival garden of plants that are: Easy to grow. Hardy. Disease resistant. Provide maximum nutrition for effort expended(high nutritive EROEI). Some have the advantage of not being easily identifiable as "food".
These plants grow well at 48 degrees here in Montana and will grow in Contenental Europe and Asia.

Forget, for now, about "luxury" vegetables like tomatoes, radishes, cukes, etc. You will starve trying to grow them. This is a basic group that will provide minimum nutrition quickly. I'm not interested in whether or not you "like" eating garlic or horseradish. Go for a couple weeks without eating and you'll find out they're delicious!

Calories and protein are the hardest nutrients to find in nature. You can forage for vitamins and minerals--get a book on edible wild plants. I am comparing the plants below to potatoes to give you an idea of their nutritional value. I do not recommend growing potatoes for the following reasons: While potatoes are an excellent food and easy to grow they are also subject to over 60 diseases, the plants are not frost hardy, and the potatoes themselves are difficult to store properly for beginners; they will be destroyed by frost and may not survive to the spring to be replanted(remember, seed may not be available). Burdock, garlic, and horseradish, on the other hand, are very hardy, and the roots can be left in the soil until needed, and will even "winter over" to provide food next spring. Amaranth and quinoa are recommended because they are easier to harvest than grains like wheat, barley, etc.

Basic survival garden: figures are: first grams of protein per pound, second: calories per pound. (facts from "How to Grow More Vegetables" by John Jeavons.) Potatoes; 7.7, 279.

Burdock (Gobo)Arctium lappa, recommended variety "Takinogawa" 9.4, 400
Serpent garlic (Rocambole) Allium sativum, recommended variety "Roja" 25, 565
Horseradish Amoracia rusticana 10.6, 288
Grain Amaranth Amaranthus spp. 69.5, 1775 and/or
Quinoa Chenopodium quinoa (Warning: Quinoa seed is coated with a bitter saponin that must be rinsed off before eating. The saponin makes a fair expedient soap!) 73.5, 1600
Sunflower (seed) Helianthus annus, 109, 2540
Kale, Siberian perennial, Brassica napus, 14.1, 128

I would also recommend growing some beans. Beans are not very frost tolerant but if you're going to grow frost intolerant plants, beans are more worthwhile than potatoes. As you can see above, burdock garlic and horseradish are more nutritous than potato and will virtually "grow themselves". Even deer prefer other plants.

Fava Bean, Vicia faba (Warning: a very few people of Mediterranean descent are very allergic to Fava). 113.9, 1533 (Fava's are somewhat frost tolerant-grow in cool weather.)
Bean, common green bean Phaseouls vulgaris, 104, 1600
These are dry weights, green beans can, of course, be eaten in the unripe stage if you're really desperate for food. Grows in warmer weather.

70% of your garden area shoulb be planted to grains and beans, as it takes much more area to grow seed than roots. It takes around 700,000 (kilo)calories per year to feed a human. You do the math. A grown person can "survive" on as little as 25 grams protein per day.

Perhaps someone in the more tropical zones could prepare a similar garden list. Comments?
LDF

uNkNowN ElEmEnt · Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 3:03 pm Post subject:

Excellent post! couldn't have picked a better list myself.

bobaloo · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 14, 2004 Posts: 476

I don't have the nutrition numbers, but some of the old-time staples are parsnips, turnips and rutabagas. Rutabagas are incredibly tough and produce huge amounts of food. They taste somewhat turnip-like if you haven't had them. Parsnips are like big white carrots, extremely hardy and very tasty. In addition I would highly recommend winter squash, such as Hubbard and the variants thereof, which are highly nutritious, tasty and easily stored. All of these store very well and are easy to save seeds from.

I'd still go with potatoes. The advantage, they're fast, first crop in 60-90 days, and produce lots of good food. In some parts of the country you may need to figure out your storage situation, but they're well worth the trouble. Yes, they can get diseases, so can everything else. I've got 8 varieties in about 1200 square feet at the moment, they're all looking great and better than knee-high. By growing several varieties you minimize the disease risk, plus today you can get heirloom varieties that have been around for a long time, proving their toughness.

Finally, don't forget the Japanese greens bred from Brassicas, such as Mizuna and BokChoy and all the variants. They grow super-fast and are full of vitamins and very nutritious. Sort of minuature collards. They sure make for good eggs when you supplement the chicken's diet with them!

JR · Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 4:05 pm Post subject:

I can attest to garlic being easy to grow. There was some in my yard when we bought our home. It comes up like a weed and spreads each year. I initially tried getting rid of it, but gave up.

JR

NeoPeasant · Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 8:52 pm Post subject:

I know your ultimate goal is to be all natural and sustainable, but would it be a good idea to have some bags of fertilizer on hand to jump start the growth of your subsistence garden in an emergency and work on organic sustainability later? I would guess hungry kids beat philosophical purity every time.

OldSprocket · Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 9:39 pm Post subject: Other allia

I happen to like the allium food group far more than I like people. Other perennial allia that I grow are:
o Evergreen Hardy White onions (Allium fistulosum)
o Potato onion (Allium cepa (aggregatum group))
o Dutch Shallots (Allium cepa (aggregatum group)) (again)
All these onions need very little care and pop up early in the spring along with the garlic.

Sunchokes (Helianthus tuberosus) hide well and multiply when you're not looking. I think they taste great. They also cause more farts than any bean.

bart · Posted: Fri May 20, 2005 10:37 pm Post subject:

Good topic. Here are some thoughts (not sure if they will work in your climate, though.) I'm in SF Bay Area.

Collards. Southerners evaded nutritional deficiences despite a lousy diet because they ate collards and other greens. In my limited experience, collards are a bigger producer than kale and hardier. Long growing season; they taste sweeter in the winter. Tree collards are a perennial.

Like bobaloo, I would plant potatoes. They maintained the Irish and other N. Europeans for centuries. Also, we are accustomed to eating them. In an emergency situation, familiarity is a morale-booster.

I would start planting perennials now, before any sort of emergency. It's like money in the bank to have food-bearing shrubs and trees. In an emergency situation, wouldn't it be wonderful to have apples and berries to cheer you up?

bobaloo · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 14, 2004 Posts: 476

NeoPeasant, if your thought is that you're going to have to leave your home and go somewhere else, then take a very barren plot of land and start trying to farm it, bags of fertilizer might be a good idea.

On the other hand, if you're talking about being somewhere at least a year in advance, there's no need. There's very few crops that really take a lot of fertilizer, really corn is about the only think I can think of that needs a ton of ferts to really yield well. Nothing too terrible about chemical ferts if used very sparingly, but they're not good for the soil's microbial life and earthworms if used regularly or to excess. Remember soil is a complex ecosystem, not just a bunch of rock particles, and for best plant growth you want that soil ecosystem to be as healthy as possible.

I'm a big fan of the Ruth Stout method of gardening, just lay down a thick layer of newspaper, then cover with 8" of straw. It will kill the grass underneath, the straw will rot and provide nutrients, and the ground underneath will loosen up and start to breathe. A newer variation on this is "lasagna gardening", which just means the same idea with layers of various types of organic matter to provide additional nutrients. I take the bedding out of the sheep barn and the chicken house, straw and manure, then run it through a chipper and spread it on the existing layers of straw or in between plants in the garden.

The single biggest thing you can do to improve your yields is to make permanent beds so that you never, ever, step on the soil that your plants are growing in. Nothing is worse than soil compaction, a loose, airy soil will make plants really grow. Make the beds 3-4' wide with a 12-18" wide walkway between. Take a shovel and remove the top 6-8" of soil from the walkway and put in on the beds, leaving a lowered walkway and raised beds. Don't use rows to plant, or put them close together, so that your plants make a solid mass across the bed when they're mature, the yeilds are much higher this way than with the old-fashioned long skinny rows in a garden space. Once your beds are established you never need to till again, just keep adding some compost on top each year, and once the weeds are under control they don't come back because you're not tilling and exposing new seeds.

Just a few ideas garnered during the last 40 years of gardening, always looking for an easier, more productive, way to do it.

erl · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 21, 2005 Posts: 791

I am interested in trying some amaranth or quinoa. But, where do you get the seed? I can get wheat, barley, rye easily enough.

Also, anyone know a source for kamut or spelt?

erl

Ludi · Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 11:22 am Post subject:

erl,

amaranth here:http://www.nativeseeds.org/v2/default.php

amaranth, quinoa here:http://www.bountifulgardens.org/

Pops · Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 1:54 pm Post subject:

Good idea OO, my rules are:

Easy to grow
If it’s in a hurry then readily available seed - maybe even from the cupboard
Complete food

Answer: corn, beans, squash - the Three Sisters. Google it.

Plant them all together, the corn is the trellis for the beans and the squash has big arms to shade out weeds and conserve moisture. They all can stand some drought but if you have to carry water, plant them in a depression (in the ground that is) NOT a hill - they grow most anywhere other than the mountains of Montana –and maybe there too.

You may have popcorn and a bag o’ beans in the cupboard, better than nothing. In a pinch plant anything from the cupboard that looks like a seed including your spices, plus, try to dry out whatever seeds are contained in the vegetables in the fridge – they are certainly hybrids but might produce something edible.

Don’t forget the potatoes in the drawer, they may be worth the gamble – though they will grow you most probably will have bugs. Anything canned will of course be useless for seed.

Your lawn will probably be getting pretty high if you are doing this, so make a machete from the lawn mower blade or just a kitchen knife and use the grass for mulch on your improvised garden.

Diluted soap can be used for an insecticide, fertilizer and to make soil more friable.
Same with mouthwash its a good fugicide but only for the soil – the alcohol will kill your pants.
All protein decomposes to nitrogen in the soil, bath water, table scraps?

But why not get some open pollinated seeds and store them like any other emergency item - and by all means get some Miracle Gro and a powder insecticide (sevin?).
_________________
Make a plan and work it:

CarlinsDarlin · Moderator Joined: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 1395

k_semler · Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 11:09 pm Post subject:

bobaloo · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 14, 2004 Posts: 476

CarlinsDarlin, I don't clean out the chicken house too often, and the chickens run outside all day, so there's not a ton of manure in the straw bedding and it's fairly rotted. Mixed with the sheep bedding and put on top as mulch, so that the rain runs through it and takes nutrients down into the ground as it rots, seems to work ok for me.

How "hot" it is will vary, so you might experiment with a small area, plus some plants will suck up all the nutrients you can throw at them, others just get brown and crispy.

oowolf · Posted: Mon May 23, 2005 12:33 pm Post subject:

re: Jerusalem artichokes=farts.
Jerusalem artichokes, as well as salsify, chicory root, burdock, camas, and many more plants contain inulin:
http://www.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/129/7/1402S
which is essentially "indigestible", particularly to those accustomed to a diet of processed foods.
Heat or cold will break down inulin into fructose primarily, which is easily assimilated. J-arts, especially, are best left in the ground for a while to go through several freeze cycles, or baked-this is why the Native Americans built fire pits to bake roots and tubers thoroughly.
Is IS possible to adjust one's digestive system to such foods by slowly increasing the amount of them you eat. After years of eating J-arts I can now eat them RAW without flatulence. However, they are much more nutritious (calorically) if the inulin is broken down.