I keeps seeing posts here about buying seeds and encouraging other preppers to buy seeds but I’ve got to ask- how many of you lot know how to tend crops self sufficiently?
Growing food is a heck of a lot more than seeds -> soil -> water -> ??? -> profit.
Where are you growing the seeds? What’s the soil like? Does it hold water and the relevant nutrients? Is the soil contaminated (eg. Reclaimed bricks and wood can impart toxins which will make the food dangerous to eat, and improperly managed waste can make food toxic)? Do you know how to grow the food and get the most harvest when the flowers appear (sometimes you need to manipulate different flowers in different ways)? Are you familiar with that plant’s specific pests and diseases that will impact your plant? Do you know how to treat it?
What about watering your crops? You don’t want root rot from over watering and what will you do when your waterbutt runs dry when it is unseasonably dry for a few months?
Do y’all know how to compost? It’s fun and complicated but lots of people struggle to do it properly. It takes months to achieve so start now so you will have the compost ready for when your seed related doomsday arrives. Anyone living in a house that was built in this century is likely to have piss poor soil quality and you’re going to need to start amending your soil NOW to have a chance of growing seeds on doomsday. Good soil quality is rich in microbial life and it takes a very long time for the ground to be inoculated with that huge and complicated network of fungal confections and diverse colonies of microbes.
Seeds are great and all but not the most helpful thing if you’re not armed with knowledge.
Suggest not over thinking it. Try / test growing before you have to, to understand basics Many seeds / plants are easy to grow in different environments - choose heritage ones which may be more resilient Perpetual spinach, various types of kale, winter lettuce (good to -12c) are easy greens Lots can grow under cover / indoors.
See but this is all excellent advice, thanks for sharing. Growing food can be as simple as popping a seed in the ground but I really want to encourage those considering this route to get into it now or they will be in for a disappointment when they need it.
Heck I was shocked how hard it is to grow a dang lawn.
Also fertiliser, what will you do when you cant whip down the garden centre for tomato feed or blood, fish and bone, or whatever else youre using. You mentioned pests but how many have contingency food and seeds for if their harvest fails? Have they even provisioned seeds for saving the next batch of seeds? For example, if you need 50 potato plants you actually need 55 potato plants so you have seed potatoes for the next year.
Definitely! I don’t want to put people off trying at all as it is extremely rewarding but we should definitely banish the assumption that growing food is always going to be easy
Yeah i totally agree. Theres a huge difference between someone who already grows some/all of their own food and someone who just buys seeds, we should be encouraging the latter to become the former.
Horse shit, preferably bedded on straw, in deep beds or raised, you need 2-3 compost bins on rotation as well,
I see your point but spuds are easy you to grow in dustbins,or similar
Where are you getting the horse shit? Do you have a horse? Have you done a cost benefit analysis of using 3 acres to keep and feed a horse vs green manure or chickens or pigs or whatever else?
But yeah i wasnt referring to spuds per se, i was just making the point that most of the people who just prep to collect seeds and then plant them on doomsday probably wont let any of their crops go to seed and then will be buggered the next year. I could have said beetroot, radish, garlic, onions, carrots, or just about anything where you arent harvesting a fruit with seeds.
Anywhere that has horses, will probably be glad to give it away, might even deliver (with onions) for a price, and digging manure in bad ground now, could bring benefits later,
Got you
Congratulations! You probably just killed your potatoes. Herbicides are often present in horse food and grazing fields. The herbicide passes through the horse’s digestive tract and creates a herbicide manure which will absolutely kill tomatoes, beans, and potatoes in low concentrations.
Who said put the spuds in the horse shit
Plus it needs to rot for at least a year before using, but ....
Yes, it is definitely a skill that you need to take time to learn.
I started growing my own 3 years ago, I did not have a clue what I was doing, and have been learning more every year. I now have 2 waterbutts on my property, a compost heap, a small green house and 6 raised beds.
Last year I had great success with a huge crop of French beans, 3 varieties of tomatoes, Aubergines, Salad Potatoes, Spinach, and Swiss Chard. I also had my first harvest of Walnuts from a tree planted a few years ago.
I froze the beans, and made bulk cooking sauce with the tomatos, so still getting through that now.
I buy plenty of fertiliser at the beginning of the season, I didn't realise how much I would need, but hopefully this year, I will have more compost than I did last year, and not need as much, soil quality is important. It has been a real learning curve, and what I produce is a good supplement to what I buy in the shops, but I could not live off it.
Don't forget to learn how to save the seeds from your crops, that's also important.
Look at you! That sounds absolutely fantastic. Congrats on taking the time to invest in such an important skill :)
I’ve only been in this community a few months but don’t recall anyone giving this advice. If anything, I’ve been impressed by how practical UK everyone is about preparing for likely, short term scenarios rather than doomsday because, let’s be real, in a doomsday scenario most of the UK will be an irradiated wasteland. That said, having a veg patch or allotment definitely improves your resilience on a day-to-day basis as well as in an emergency.
I mean don’t let the fallout games skew your perspective on what the country will look like after MAD. Many irradiated parts of the world are thriving with wildlife and are very green indeed. Plants will almost certainly grow and the survivors will almost certainly die of cancer :/
I'm planning on having a veg garden in the future. I was already planning on having a large waterbut. Now thanks to you I'll plan to get barrels somewhere that I can fill up with water from the but in winter when rain is plentiful.
Also this might not fit here, but if you have got a veg patch that's doing very well and is over supplying there might be a way to make money from it. Once you've had your food from the patch and preserved what you can, instead of doing what I've seen a lot of gardeners do and give it away, go to https://www.country-markets.co.uk/ and see if there's a market near you. It's 5p to join for life. And £10 for the sales book and apron to be able to sell. My mum used to sell baked goods there (when it was the WI market) and they're really good ways of getting some extra cash. So brilliant if you're prepping for retirement or job loss. You can sell home cooked food if your kitchen is up to scratch and you have a food hygiene certificate, plants, vegetables, cut flowers, honey, eggs, and gifts and crafts.
Best of luck with your veggie garden! Love that for you :)
That’s such an interesting bit of info, thanks for sharing it here
Tbf if you start now, in 3 years by trial and error you will begin to know whats what
This is why I started doing some kind of gardening. Anything to start so at least I had some clue.
Still my most successful plants are fruits or vegetables that I threw out into the flower bed.
Great work. It’s kind of like the irony of houseplants. Ferns will thrive in the most difficult circumstances but die when I carefully tend to them :)
I did a veg garden last year on my balcony. The crops were satisfactory but I can do better. Partly not my fault as tomato plants blossomed this year for everyone while ground/pot crops did poorly.
Good job with the balcony garden! Just goes to show how temperamental crops can be though, there are so many factors than can really interfere with harvest
Yeah I feel like nuclear winds would probably render farming impossible lmfao
Proximity to an allotment will help. Everything is standing by (obviously how you deal with the original growers is a factor) but in some sort of country wide emergency not many people will be thinking about their brassicas.
I dunno man… people can be passionate about their cabbages!
Yeah it's hard if you want to be fully self sufficient but I think the post is too overwhelming.
I think if everyone tries to get it perfect straight away and do too much, they're inclined to give up.
I've grown my own off and on for 20 years. This last year I've gone for the food forest type thing and it's much easier. I have a big variety of berries, fruits, and perennial greens. It's satisfying to just going pick breakfast berries etc. I gave up growing my own when I moved to the south west, the damp weather just meant endless slugs eating all my salads. Now I grow my salads in hanging baskets and it's working better.
I keep my hand in by trying a few different grains, greens and a variety of winter squashes as well as the summer salad crops. I could dig up the lawn for calorie crops if needed but honestly I think just pick a few things each year to try out.
I think if you just get started and do a bit but don't aim for perfection, you'll have a happier times of it. Then if it does hit the fan you can scale up and dedicate more time to it
I meant the post to challenge people to think more than “just buy seeds for doomsday”. I was highlighting that it is a very impractical prep if you don’t have gardening knowledge.
I would love people to take up gardening now so they can learn and develop their skills. I mean I was flummoxed at how difficult it is to just grow a tiny patch of lawn in a new build garden. I didn’t think something as simple as grass could be so difficult to grow but I took the time to learn and now I understand how foolish I was to think it would be easy. My garden is looking great now and it’s nice going out to pick stuff for dinner.
I’m not say strive for perfection, but people should think beyond mere “I’ll buy seeds and grow my own food on doomsday as a form of prep.” Because it’s more than that and I want to encourage more thought out preppers :)
What berries did you plant in your garden?
Why prep for a total breakdown of society that probably isn’t going to happen, when you can be self sufficient against economic problems that are already here?
Get an allotment or grow in your garden already. On my standard plot I grow pretty much all the vegetables I need for myself for the year. They’re cheaper, they taste better, I’ve learned about things like seasonal planting, pest control, fertilising, composting, storage, preservation etc. it gets me outside and works my cardio. I’d recommend it to anyone.
Definitely, that is a great attitude to have. Prepping is all very well but the biggest part of it expanding our self reliance and general knowledge. I feel like people kinda lose that spirit as they start trying to check off tick boxes of prepper supplies without really knowing how to use it
Funny enough, I’ve learned to grow veggies and greens at home and it’s pretty easy. But do I want to rely on it when shit hits the fan? Oh no. I will continue buying good food from people around, as I just want to paint, listen to music, watch films. I want to enjoy the end of the world.
You’re right, it’s a lot of work growing food. When things take a turn for the worst I wouldn’t want to be growing veggies either. But I have respect for anyone who does :)