Post by cowgirlup on May 25, 2012 17:54:14 GMT -7
How would you feed yourself if TSHTF and you had to stay in a city? What would you do for protein? Could you grow veggies tucked into your landscaping, so no scavenger would think to steal them? Could you grow food inside your house if you had to? Where would you get water and how could you purify it?
Protein: Can you shoot a pigeon, lizard or snake with a BB gun? You wouldn't want to waste valuable standard ammo on a pigeon, would you? Besides, guns are so noisy, while you can usually bring down a bird with a BB gun with minimal sound and no gunpowder smell whatsoever. Pellets from a BB gun are inexpensive, potentially reusable, and widely available right now without any pesky ID questions. Even better is a bow and arrow, because you can always find the arrows you shoot and reuse them, as long as they are undamaged. Get yourself a good pump action Daisy and start practicing now, so if and when TSHTF you'll be prepared. And no, you won't "shoot your eye out."
Landscape vegetable gardening: You want vegetable plants that grow belowground or are not usually recognized as food plants. Disneyland has Swiss chard and herbs growing in planters in Frontierland and crowds of people walk right by every day without realizing what they are. Who would expect a raised planter full of Swiss chard at Disneyland anyway, for crying out loud? By the same token, who would expect to find Swiss chard growing in and among the landscaping plants in your yard? How many people would recognize it as a food plant? I'm sure folks would know a cabbage when they saw it, but chard and kale and collard greens and mustard greens are less well known, while at the same time are valuable food plants full of vitamins and minerals. They are a renewable resource, because as soon as you harvest leaves, the plant begins cranking out more of them. Belowground plants include beets, carrots, onions, potatoes, parsnips, radishes, turnips, rutabagas, sweet potatoes, and even peanuts. Onion plants are fairly easy to recognize, but who knows what a potato plant looks like? With its pretty little flowers it could easily be just another landscaping plant. Beets and turnips might be identifiable, but for food value (because both the root and leafy greens are edible) are worth taking a chance on. Radishes are a sleeper vegetable. The tops are not edible but did you know that radish roots, the standard of relish trays, are a good cooked vegetable? Boiled up and served with a little salt and butter, these were a favorite in Shakespeare's time. This is a sleeper vegetable because under good conditions, you can harvest ordinary varieties of radishes three weeks--21 days, folks--after planting the seeds. Some radishes grow to enormous sizes (baseball!) and take longer, but again, are good food in a relatively short time. Sweet potato plants look like lovely vines aboveground, with beautiful flowers that will deceive everybody. (Sweet taters are a relative of the morning glory.) You could even grow cantaloupes up a trellis against a wall! Who would think to look for cantaloupes up seven feet in the air? You could camouflage the developing melons to hide them. I did this last year and have photos if you don't believe me.
Growing food inside: Vegetable plants need sunshine to grow, so if this is something you might consider, plan ahead to move any pots into the sunshine for at least 5 or 6 hours a day. That's going to mean wheels under the pots, because a five gallon pot of dirt is heavy. Container gardening has a different set of requirements than growing in the great outdoors. It is not efficient to grow a one-time-harvest plant in a pot. That means no carrots, no turnips, nothing that when you harvest it ends the plant. You want continuous harvest plants for container gardening, so you get a long season for your efforts. Indeterminate tomatoes, zucchini, pole beans, Swiss chard, day neutral strawberries, etc. There are two kinds of tomatoes, indeterminate and determinate. With determinate varieties, the plant produces one big harvest and that's it. Indeterminate varieties of tomatoes keep producing more and more all season long. The same with green beans, only the types are bush and pole. Bush beans (and some half-runner types) make one big crop and they're done. Pole beans keep producing and growing all season long so you get more and for a longer period of time, but they have to be grown on a fence, frame or trellis, so they can get taller and taller. (One variety, Emperor, AKA Scarlet Runner bean, can grow as tall as 10' and produces tons of bean pods up to 12" long.) Zucchini is famous for being a huge producer, but for container growing, select a dwarf variety, as the plants can get very large with a wide spread. Strawberries can be grown in containers very successfully, but pick a day neutral variety so you have a long season, instead of a short burst of productivity as with Junebearing.
Water: Think about your neighborhood. Where are readily-available water sources, other than a municipal water supply? How could any of them be utilized? Think golf course water hazards, irrigation canals, lakes, rivers, streams, water features in municipal and commercial architecture. How far away would they be for you if you had to walk, carrying two buckets on a pole across your shoulders? Would you have the means to purify water? How would you? Strain it through coffee filters, then boil it on the BBQ grill on your back porch? How long do you have to boil water to make it safe? Do you know? Do you know how to distill water if you had to? Have you stockpiled chlorine bleach as an alternate for purifying water? Is the bleach you stockpiled three years ago still good? Do you rotate your supply? How much bleach do you have to put in a gallon of water to make it safe to drink? Are you sure? These are all things you should know, huh?
Protein: Can you shoot a pigeon, lizard or snake with a BB gun? You wouldn't want to waste valuable standard ammo on a pigeon, would you? Besides, guns are so noisy, while you can usually bring down a bird with a BB gun with minimal sound and no gunpowder smell whatsoever. Pellets from a BB gun are inexpensive, potentially reusable, and widely available right now without any pesky ID questions. Even better is a bow and arrow, because you can always find the arrows you shoot and reuse them, as long as they are undamaged. Get yourself a good pump action Daisy and start practicing now, so if and when TSHTF you'll be prepared. And no, you won't "shoot your eye out."
Landscape vegetable gardening: You want vegetable plants that grow belowground or are not usually recognized as food plants. Disneyland has Swiss chard and herbs growing in planters in Frontierland and crowds of people walk right by every day without realizing what they are. Who would expect a raised planter full of Swiss chard at Disneyland anyway, for crying out loud? By the same token, who would expect to find Swiss chard growing in and among the landscaping plants in your yard? How many people would recognize it as a food plant? I'm sure folks would know a cabbage when they saw it, but chard and kale and collard greens and mustard greens are less well known, while at the same time are valuable food plants full of vitamins and minerals. They are a renewable resource, because as soon as you harvest leaves, the plant begins cranking out more of them. Belowground plants include beets, carrots, onions, potatoes, parsnips, radishes, turnips, rutabagas, sweet potatoes, and even peanuts. Onion plants are fairly easy to recognize, but who knows what a potato plant looks like? With its pretty little flowers it could easily be just another landscaping plant. Beets and turnips might be identifiable, but for food value (because both the root and leafy greens are edible) are worth taking a chance on. Radishes are a sleeper vegetable. The tops are not edible but did you know that radish roots, the standard of relish trays, are a good cooked vegetable? Boiled up and served with a little salt and butter, these were a favorite in Shakespeare's time. This is a sleeper vegetable because under good conditions, you can harvest ordinary varieties of radishes three weeks--21 days, folks--after planting the seeds. Some radishes grow to enormous sizes (baseball!) and take longer, but again, are good food in a relatively short time. Sweet potato plants look like lovely vines aboveground, with beautiful flowers that will deceive everybody. (Sweet taters are a relative of the morning glory.) You could even grow cantaloupes up a trellis against a wall! Who would think to look for cantaloupes up seven feet in the air? You could camouflage the developing melons to hide them. I did this last year and have photos if you don't believe me.
Growing food inside: Vegetable plants need sunshine to grow, so if this is something you might consider, plan ahead to move any pots into the sunshine for at least 5 or 6 hours a day. That's going to mean wheels under the pots, because a five gallon pot of dirt is heavy. Container gardening has a different set of requirements than growing in the great outdoors. It is not efficient to grow a one-time-harvest plant in a pot. That means no carrots, no turnips, nothing that when you harvest it ends the plant. You want continuous harvest plants for container gardening, so you get a long season for your efforts. Indeterminate tomatoes, zucchini, pole beans, Swiss chard, day neutral strawberries, etc. There are two kinds of tomatoes, indeterminate and determinate. With determinate varieties, the plant produces one big harvest and that's it. Indeterminate varieties of tomatoes keep producing more and more all season long. The same with green beans, only the types are bush and pole. Bush beans (and some half-runner types) make one big crop and they're done. Pole beans keep producing and growing all season long so you get more and for a longer period of time, but they have to be grown on a fence, frame or trellis, so they can get taller and taller. (One variety, Emperor, AKA Scarlet Runner bean, can grow as tall as 10' and produces tons of bean pods up to 12" long.) Zucchini is famous for being a huge producer, but for container growing, select a dwarf variety, as the plants can get very large with a wide spread. Strawberries can be grown in containers very successfully, but pick a day neutral variety so you have a long season, instead of a short burst of productivity as with Junebearing.
Water: Think about your neighborhood. Where are readily-available water sources, other than a municipal water supply? How could any of them be utilized? Think golf course water hazards, irrigation canals, lakes, rivers, streams, water features in municipal and commercial architecture. How far away would they be for you if you had to walk, carrying two buckets on a pole across your shoulders? Would you have the means to purify water? How would you? Strain it through coffee filters, then boil it on the BBQ grill on your back porch? How long do you have to boil water to make it safe? Do you know? Do you know how to distill water if you had to? Have you stockpiled chlorine bleach as an alternate for purifying water? Is the bleach you stockpiled three years ago still good? Do you rotate your supply? How much bleach do you have to put in a gallon of water to make it safe to drink? Are you sure? These are all things you should know, huh?