Survival gardening is just different than the type of gardening I've done all my life. I've always enjoyed trying new and different plants just to see how they grow, and I've done my share of cluttering up garden space with plants that take up too much room and offer too little food in return.
But the survival gardening ideas I will share in this post are for you if you want to grow a garden that will feed you and your family. Everything is here for you to absorb and learn to grow plants that will provide the nutrition you will need to stay fed and happy.
Contents Of This Article
What is the most important thing in gardening?
The most important thing in gardening is learning to grow the right foods and enough of them. I believe it's time to start focusing on growing the foods that will feed you and your family, the produce that offers the most calories for the least amount of work. Growing foods that will feed you now, and others that will store well for later is of top importance.
In this article I'll answer some of the most pressing questions for you about starting and growing a garden that will feed you and your family – even if you can't get what you want at the store.
1) Fast Growing Plants From Seeds
If you decide on survival gardening when you realize that food is hard to come by, or you simply can't get the foods you like and need to sustain your appetite, then you'll want to start with plants that will take off fast and produce food quickly.
Salad Mix – Try any variety since you will find lettuce and other great greens in any salad mix. These will sprout quickly, and you can either use them right away as microgreens, grow baby lettuces, or transplant them outdoors to grow full heads and leaves. These start and grow best in cool weather, either spring or fall.
Green beans of all varieties sprout and grow quickly. The two main types are bush beans and pole beans. The actual bean looks much the same and tastes great, providing fast nutrition. The main difference is bush beans grow in a small, low growing plant and most of them put on beans and are done in a few weeks. Pole beans grow on climbing vines, produce beans quickly and most varieties provide beans all season long.
Cucumbers, squashes, and melons grow quickly and produce lots of fruit. These are warm weather vegetables, but some of the squashes are great for storing all winter long.
Chives and onions make food quickly and can be harvested all year long – even into the winter months if protected.
Potatoes grow well in many conditions and make a lot of food. You can pick from white or red potatoes, or even sweet potatoes.
There are many more vegetables that could be on this list, so think about what you really like to eat and decide if it's worth the wait for the calories you'll get in return. Survival gardening is all about getting food out of the garden fast.
2) Best Vegetables To Grow For Beginners
Greens of all kinds are great to start with. Many of them can be started indoors at a sunny window in late winter, like all the lettuce types of greens. They can be planted outdoors early in spring and protected from freeze with a light covering.
Other greens grow better in warm weather, like Swiss chard, kale, spinach and collards. Then in the fall you can plant root crops like radishes and turnips and eat those greens for a long time into the winter.
Green beans and squash make this list also because you can plant them around Memorial Day and harvest veggies all summer into fall. Summer squashes, like zucchini and yellow squash fruit fast and feed you well while the weather is warm. Winter squash will keep a long time after harvest.
Tomatoes and peppers are definitely on my list for survival gardening. They start easy, grow quickly in warm weather and are reliable food makers.
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3) Best Gardening Soil For Beginners
For most gardeners the best garden soil to start out with is the soil that is already in your gardening area. It's surprising what you can do with soil that seems too poor to garden once you understand some things.
First off, modern agriculture has convinced many people that the soil is merely a way to hold the plant up and with the right chemicals you can grow good food. If you look at the farm fields you would think that is true, but the reality is that poor, worn out soil produces plants that are deficient in nutrition.
It's been said that there are more microbes in a teaspoon of healthy soil than there are people on the earth. I don't know how you would prove that, but it really makes you think about what's in healthy soil. I'm sure you have noticed that healthy soil just looks and smells like life itself.
So, what's the soil like where you live? What's already growing there? If a soil has been damaged or compromised in the past then plants (weeds we call them) begin to grow that will eventually bring the soil back to health. If you don't suspect that there are any heavy metal contaminations or other chemical concerns, then start with what you have.
Most soil will need some conditioning before you can begin to garden it. One component that is often lacking no matter what the soil type is humus. If you have hiked in the woods and dug through the leaves into the soil, you will notice a layer beneath the new leaves that is partially rotted and turning into black dirt – this is humus. It's full of nutrients and microbes that will help the new seeds germinate and grow.
Humus is important in the garden, too. If your soil is too clumpy, too sandy or just seems lifeless, then building humus is the best place to start. This can be accomplished over time by growing cover crops and tilling them in when mature, and can take several growing seasons to build a nice, rich soil. Even if this is just part of your gardening plan, it's totally worth it. Pick a time when your garden will lay dormant for a couple of months and plant a cover crop, then till it in about a month before you intend to replant crops. Add some nitrogen fertilizer to help the cover crop decompose quickly.
If you want to build great garden soil fast then you will have to add good compost from other sources. Take a look at your surrounding resources. In our area we have two cities that provide finished compost either free or for a small charge – we use a pickup truck or trailer to haul it. One city has wood chips for free. A mushroom growing plant sells compost that they have used. There are farmers that sell manure from their animal operations. And then there's always bagged dirt you can buy, which is great for container gardening.
The best bagged soil for vegetable gardening in my opinion is Miracle Grow Potting Mix. I like it because it has a true compost type texture and is already full of nutrition to start and grow plants. I have used it in containers and to dress the top of garden beds to rejuvenate the soil. Other brands have been disappointing in a number of ways, so I just stick to the best.
I think the best soil for vegetable garden raised beds is actually a combination of soil types that creates a healthy rich environment to both start and grow your vegetables. Here's my example; at our Stebbinsville farm the topsoil is black dirt and was overgrown with forest plants and trees when we started. Underneath this is red clay, but when we dig and till the soil we get a mix of these which turns to gumbo when it's wet ( the kind of dirt that sticks to your boots and won't come off).
We tilled and worked what we had and then added compost from a local city recycling center to give it some body. In the first year this grew healthy plants and we started big seeds like corn, squash and melons. However, we found that smaller seeds would not germinate well in the compost since it wouldn't pack well and hold moisture around the seeds. Small seeds did germinate well in the original clay soil since it held water for days after sprinkling.
The lesson is that season after season of working with your soil will make perfect survival gardening for you area. There are so many good resources now, so if you get stumped just watch a few YouTube videos and figure out what you should do next.
Learning how to make the best vegetable garden soil is a skill that requires your full attention, watching how your plants and soil react and which types of plants do well while others struggle. Here's a rundown of the major soil types and how they can work for you:
- Humus is best as the top layer of your soil, like you get from fresh compost you make or buy. Till your garden bed then sprinkle compost over the top after you work the soil.
- Black garden dirt has a lot of plant litter rotted into it and is probably a rich soil. However it is usually mixed with either clay or sandy soils that make it's texture unique.
- Clay soils, either red, white or yellow are usually tight, hard to work and soggy when wet. Clay soils have a benefit in gardening when mixed with other soils to modify the texture. Clay soils hold water well, but sometimes too well.
- Sandy soils are pretty easy to work but do not hold water well, it runs right through and out to somewhere else. Sandy soils have a benefit but must be modified to work well for garden soil.
- Loam is a mixture of sand and clay soils and is really nice to work with. It too must be modified to make a good garden soil, mostly by adding compost or humus.
No matter where you decide to do your survival gardening you will probably need to modify the soil in some way to get good results. Be patient and observant and do whatever it takes to make your plants happy. If you do well, they will feed you well.
4) Should I Water My Vegetable Garden Every Day?
No, not necessarily. Although water is very important for plants, just like it is for humans and animals, too much water is just as bad as not enough water in the garden. By observing your garden you will learn when your plants need water.
When garden plants start to droop, they are probably asking for water. This does not mean, however that they are dying. Sometimes it's good for plants to struggle a little for water since it will help them build a better root system. Just keep an eye on them and be prepared to give them water.
Check the soil to see if it's damp. In particularly hot weather the soil can dry out quickly and stress your plants. This type of weather may require you to water daily and apply mulch to help hold the moisture.
I would NOT recommend setting a timer and watering your garden daily no matter what the conditions. Keeping the soil moist but not overwatered requires your oversight, so be prepared to watch it closely. If you have to be gone for a time just make your best call with an automatic watering system.
5) Best Organic Fertilizer For Vegetables
I had a really good learning experience in survival gardening this year with using fertilizers on my vegetable garden. I normally use Miracle Grow All Purpose Plant Food on all my veggies and dose it about every 10 days, especially early on when the plants are getting established.
This always works great and gives my plants the boost they need to get up and running. In past years I had also used granular fertilizer like you would buy downtown because it's cheap and you just sprinkle it on. Problem is, it can burn your crops by releasing too fast and do some damage.
This is especially bad for container plants, so I learned this year about Miracle Grow Shake And Feed fertilizer. Seems it is a true slow release fertilizer and won't burn your plants, even in containers. I love this stuff and use it in places around the garden where I'm concerned that the plants need more help, but don't want to overpower them.
So now I use both kinds – I like to mix the Miracle Grow All Purpose fertilizer in a pump sprayer with a couple of gallons of water and just shoot it everywhere my plants need a boost. The Shake and Feed goes on container plants and garden plants that need a steady, season long boost.
6) Best Organic Mulch For Vegetable Garden
Mulch is a part of the survival gardening equation that is often overlooked or put off too long. Mulch plays a very important role in the health of your plants, and therefore how many calories you can produce in a growing season. You can apply mulch in many different forms according to what you want to accomplish.
Applying mulch around your plants cools and modifies the soil to a natural state where microbes can thrive and work to release nutrients in the soil, thus feeding your plants naturally. Think of the forest floor where humus is naturally created by old and dying materials piling up to begin the process of decomposition.
I usually put on mulch after my plants have begun to grow and I have thinned the patch, so now I know where each plant is going to grow. I then give the garden a good weeding and put on mulch around the established plants. I crowd it around the plants leaving just the leaves above the mulch.
My two favorites are straw and wood chips since they are locally available, very effective, and easy to use. Straw gets a bad rap from some of the YouTubers – they say that straw introduces weed seed into your garden. This is, however a misunderstanding by those who are not familiar with farm country.
Wheat straw is what's left after the wheat is harvested and is cut and baled for animal bedding. Although there may be a few weeds in a wheat field, there aren't many since the farmer can't sell wheat with a bunch of contamination in the grain. For the most part it's really pure wheat straw and easy to use as a very effective mulch material.
The reason some are afraid to use it is because they confuse wheat straw with hay. Hay comes from a hay field and is cut for animal feed – it's like stored grass for the winter. Hay is just whatever is growing naturally in the field and is full of grass seed of all kinds. If you use hay for mulch YOU WILL get a lot of grass and weeds sprouting in your garden.
Use straw – not hay!
Wood chips are available to us from local city recycling facilities and we can get them for free. We just use our pickup with a trailer and the city will load them for us. Wood chips are especially nice in trails and around orchard trees. They protect the soil, retain moisture around the plants and suppress weeds and grass.
The thing to watch for with wood chips is that some sprouts will occur, especially willow sprouts. Just like any other material that you bring into your garden, you can bring some things you don't want. Just watch for sprouts and cut them out immediately.
Many other things work well for mulch in survival gardening depending on your needs. Try discarded cardboard boxes, newspapers and even old carpet. Recycling something thrown away and getting good use out of it is fulfilling, and even better when it's free!
There are some nice mulches that you can buy made of various materials and they look really nice, lasting sometimes for years. One of the most popular is Heavy Duty Garden Weed Barrier that you just roll out over the garden before planting.
7) Best Gardening Tools
There are some tools that you simply can't do without when survival gardening. Then there are some that you like just because they are cool and handy for a particular job. I certainly have my favorites, so I'll list them here:
- Hand Trowel is a small shovel just right for digging with one hand. I use it mostly for planting seedlings and digging out weeds.
- Pruning shears are a necessity for keeping fruiting shrubs and trees clean and neat. I find myself looking up my shears all the time to get the job done.
- Garden hoes come in several different ( and handy) shapes and sizes. They are great for weeding, trenching and chopping up the soil. One that is somewhat unusual and really handy for weeding is the stirrup hoe.
- Gardening gloves are one thing I forget about until a sticker shows up in my finger. I recommend putting them on BEFORE you are injured!
- Shovel(s) come in different types for different jobs. The sharp nosed shovel for digging, the flat spade for material handling and short handled spades for close work.
- Gardening forks are great for digging tight dirt, making raised beds and working with materials that shovels don't handle well, like some mulch types.
- Rakes make a nice finish on a garden bed and help remove rocks, roots and other debris. I have found it's best to buy a good quality rake since it's used more than you might think.
- A saw is really handy for keeping your fruit trees pruned and unwanted trees gone. The small folding hand saws are my favorite.
- Don't forget the wheelbarrow. This handy tool will be at your side most of the time to move around most everything you would not want to carry in you arms.
Good survival gardening tools will make your work a pleasure and last for many seasons. You'll find your favorites as you go.
How do I get better at gardening? What makes a good gardener?
Becoming a good gardener is mostly about gaining experience. Season after season you will learn things that will help you succeed, but thankfully you don't have to rely on your own experience. The best resource for my wife and I is YouTube. We don't take everything we see on YouTube as gospel, but after watching several people explain a process we get a pretty good idea of what we want to do.
A good gardener has patience and persistence. Some things will grow and some will die. Every growing season has differences. It's a process of learning that's very fulfilling. Learn to work with nature instead of against it. There's a reason why things happen.
- Bugs happen. Work with it since not all bugs in your garden are bad. Sometimes bugs are eating worse bugs or pollinating plants, so find out why they are there.
- There are lots of chemicals for gardening. My feeling is that most of them are unnecessary or downright harmful. Look around, nature takes care of her problems and you can learn from what you see.
- Study about how plants grow and why some things grow better in your area than others. For the best success you should plant what grows the best where you are.
Enjoy the experience. You may be able to buy a can of green beans right now cheaper than you can grow them, but that may not always be the case. Learn to grow what you like to eat so you will have good food when you need it most. That's what survival gardening is all about.
Why is gardening so hard?
When Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden they were charged to “eat their bread by the sweat of their brow”. Nothing has changed other than many of us now eat our bread by the sweat of someone else's brow, like our hard working farmers. But we earn money in other ways and pay for that bread.
We undertake to grow our own food as a method of insuring our survival through tough times, and it is hard work. But it is also very fulfilling work; surveying our progress and considering our failures is very exhilarating and satisfying.
We till the soil and plant our seeds having faith that we'll get a harvest. We develop the systems to ensure that the plants get water, fertilizer and all they need to produce. We weed and tend the garden and prove ourselves to be good husbandmen ( and husbandwomen, if that's a word).
When it's all over for the season we reap our harvest, consider our successes and failures and eat the fruit of the field. Nothing we do on this earth will bring us closer to complete unity with our God than tending our garden. He used the same principles to create this Earth and universe.
Bottom line – survival gardening is worth the work and effort.
What's the easiest vegetable to grow?
Beans! If you've ever attended a kindergarten class where the teacher sprouted plants for the kids, it was probably beans. This is great since beans of all types are very nutritious and produce all season. Here's a few others to put on your list:
- Lettuce
- Peas
- Radishes
- Carrots
- Cucumbers
- Kale
- Swiss Chard
If you learn to grow this small list of vegetables, you and your family can stay well fed all year.
What plants can grow in 2 weeks?
OK, I get it. You are wanting to get some veggies out of the ground quickly so you can eat fresh food. Here's a list of the most common vegetables that starts out with the fastest producing and moves on from there. Everything on this list of survival gardening favorites will get food on your table FAST.
Garden Cress: 14 Days
In just two weeks, you can harvest garden cress, a peppery, tangy flavored herb. Plant in early spring in loose soil and a sunny location. Seeds can be started outdoors between one and two weeks before the average last frost. Plant seeds ½-inch deep spaced 1 inch apart. Rows should be 6 inches apart. Seedlings should emerge in 5 to 15 days
Arugula: 2 to 3 Weeks
Sow the seeds directly in the ground and cut the outer leaves near the base of the plant when they are large enough. Young leaves can be harvested in as little as 21 days.
Pea Shoots: 2 – 3 weeks
To grow pea shoots, soak dry peas in water overnight and then plant them in a bright, sunny location where you would normally grow peas. Although any variety can be grown for pea shoots, the sugar pod peas are the easiest to grow. Once your pea plants are 6 to 8 inches tall, begin snipping off the growth including one set of leaves. By cutting off the plant tips, it will encourage new growth for future harvests of shoots and tendrils, and eventually peas if you let them mature. After the first harvest, continue snipping the top 2 to 6 inches of the plant every 3 to four weeks. Pea shoots are crunchy and sweet with a flavor like mild peas.
Radish: 3 Weeks
Plant radish seeds directly into the soil, ½ inch deep and 1 inch apart; firm the soil and water gently. Make weekly spring sowings as early as 4 to 6 weeks before the last expected frost. Choose a sunny location and as they grow, thin seedlings so there is a two-inch space between the plants.
Mizuna: 3 Weeks
A mild flavored Japanese mustard is a delicious addition to any salad, stir-fry, soup or pasta dish. A relative to the turnip, Mizuna needs only 3 to 5 hours of sunlight per day. Begin sowing seeds in moist soil, 2 weeks before the last frost and continue to plant every 2 weeks. Tender, young leaves can be harvested as soon as 20 days.
Green Onions: 3 Weeks
Green onions are a quick-growing plant that can be cut back to their base throughout the season. They are ready for harvest once their green shoots reach 6 inches.
Baby Kale: 3 – 4 Weeks
Sow seeds directly into the garden in early spring. When harvesting kale as a baby green, sow the seeds thickly, making for a prolific harvest from a small square footage. Excellent varieties to grow as baby kale include Red Ruffled, Bolshoi, Dwarf Siberian, and White Russian.
Baby Bok Choy: 3 – 4 Weeks
Plant bok choy seeds or seedlings outside as early as 2-3 weeks before your last average spring frost and as late as a few weeks before your first average frost in the fall. Plant about 60-100 seeds per square foot in the garden. When the plants are 4’’ or 5’’ tall, harvest the leaves by giving the patch a haircut with scissors, cutting about an inch above the bases of the leaves. Plants will continue to grow more leaves, allowing for at least a couple more harvests. Replant bok choy every 4-6 weeks for a continuous supply.
Beets: 4 to 5 Weeks
With edible bits above and below the soil, red beet cultivars produce nutritious greens that are ready to be picked about a month after sowing. Beet leaves can be eaten raw or cooked, but only snip off a leaf or two from each plant so as not to impede root production. When beet shoulders begin to protrude from the soil, after another month, it’s time to pull the plant from the ground.
Spinach: 4-5 Weeks
Unlike other seedlings, spinach can grow in partial shade and only needs 3 to 6 hours of dappled sun. It’s an easy vegetable to grow, perfect for beginning gardeners. Plant seeds in early spring and harvest baby leaves in 35 to 40 days.
Zucchini: 5 to 6 Weeks
Plant zucchini seeds in a sunny spot two to three weeks after the last frost and when the soil has reached 60°. Harvest zucchini when they are small and tender, about 4 to 6 inches in length. Zucchini flowers are also edible and are delicious stuffed, in salads, and served as a garnish.
Turnips: 6-11 Weeks
Turnips have been grown for over 3,000 years and quickly mature in a spring or fall garden. Turnips thrive in cool temperatures and are best planted two to three weeks before the final frost of the season. Sow the seeds directly into the ground as they don’t transplant well. Once seedlings are 4 inches high, thin to 6 inches between plants. Small spring turnips will be ready for harvest in four to six weeks, or you can harvest the tender baby greens in just two or three weeks.
Bush Beans: 8-9 Weeks
Beans grow on two types of plants: bush and pole. Bush beans are usually self-supporting and mature more quickly than vining pole beans. Plant seeds two to three weeks after the final frost of the season. With a little time, sun, and water, you can begin harvesting beans in as little as 6 weeks to 2 months.
Cherry Tomatoes: 8-9 Weeks
Choose a sunny location for your cherry tomatoes that receives about 8 hours of sun per day. You can start seeds indoors in late winter, or plant seedlings directly into the garden and begin harvesting delicious fruit in about two months.
To get started just grab some good seeds and plant.
Survival Gardening Resources
Self Sufficient Backyard is a fantastic resource to get up and running quickly, producing your own garden food and everything else you need to live comfortably no matter what's going on outside your door. Learn about these important topics:
- First thing you’ll find out is that all you need to be self sufficient in terms of food are just 1,020 square feet of land per person! Even a small backyard has enough space for a survival garden.
- Don’t pay for irrigation water, just collect and store every gallon you need in these inexpensive tanks.
- 7 plants you really need to have in a medicinal garden, how to care for them and turn them into tinctures and other remedies.
- How to set up a reliable cost-effective hybrid electricity system for your house.
- How to make an automated 24-hour bio insect control system. Instead of using pesticides, you can grow your survival garden organically by making a small swallow or bluebird house and a bat shelter.
- How to make different root cellars and how you can easily add whichever you want to your survival garden.
- Need a backup water source for your property? You will find it here with pictures and guidance to set it up.
- A simple and ingenious solution that you can apply in your house to have pressurized hot water, even if the utilities are out.
- How to set up beehives that will produce both delicious honey and help pollinate your trees and plants.
- How to make a year-round self-sustaining greenhouse for your survival garden.
- Secrets to winter gardening. Hint: like growing highly nutritious microgreens inside the house during winter.
- 6 Crops That Can Bring an Extra Income to a Small Homestead
- Gardening projects especially conceived for people with back problems. No more bending!
- 100 tips and secrets to save money on electricity, on food, on home repairs, on water, on tools, on house taxes, on heating and more…
- How to power up a backyard perpetual compost survival garden using only the daily kitchen scraps you throw away.
- More backyard projects that may find their way into your future survival garden such as: chicken coop, hoop tunnels, walipini, trellises, raised beds, hay and straw bale gardens, container gardening, windowsill gardening, and a lot more.
- Everything you need to know about raising chickens, from egg to your dinner table.
- Discover how to set up a successful orchard that needs almost no maintenance and under the shade of which you can expect to sit sooner than you think.
- Learn all the techniques and methods we discovered in our survival garden about harvesting the best seeds and about the most efficient way to preserve them for the next year.
- We will also show you everything we do to preserve our food: from eggs to vegetables, roots, fruits, meats… everything we produce, we preserve.
There are more survival garden ideas here than in any other one place on the planet. Get over there and check out the Self Sufficient Backyard right now before it's gone.
In times like these learning how to set up your Survival Garden correctly is top priority. You need to grow the right produce that will feed you and your family even if the grocery store is closed.
For more great resources on survival gardening just go to Facebook and join our Ozark Country Homestead Gardening group. Look under the “files” tab for lots of gardening documents.
