Attention gardener's - best survival crop
Posted by altonianTrader@reddit | preppers | View on Reddit | 18 comments
What crops/plants/varieties would be your top 5 (or 10 even) to plant before/during/after SHTF (whatever your definition of SHTF). Suppose you were limited on being able to bring in food from grocery stores and/or you were unable to rely on your pantry stockpile. What would be some of the most nutrient dense plants that you would grow? What can store easily with little to no refrigeration? Obviously you would want to supplement this with foraging/hunting/fishing if possible. I would think a mixture of things that grow really quick (or don't require lots of soil amendments) and things like squash/pumpkin that can store for a while without you having to process them.
volci@reddit
Squashes
Root veggies
Tomatoes (yea - they need to be canned/juiced/frozen...but they're nearly idiot-proof to grow 🤠)
Cucumbers (if you like pickles)
Mushrooms
Anything that can be dried relatively easily
Fruit & nut trees (you gotta get these planted way before you want/need them...but they're relatively low maintenance once they're mature)
ButterPuppets@reddit
Cucumbers are water. There’s like 30 calories in one. Great snack for those of us trying to cut back. Not a good source of calories for supplementing your pantry.
TheSnootBoopining@reddit
But they grow like weeds and are a source of safe hydration... they solve for a different problem, I guess.
bellj1210@reddit
came here to say potatoes and carrots (root veg). Very easy to grow large volumes of either of them. A pototo based diet will suck after a while, but will provide enough calories to keep you from going hungry, they also store for months in a basic root cellar.
PersephoneIsNotHome@reddit
Why no love for beets? Or cabbage?
chesurell42@reddit
beets and cabbage singlehandedly allowed most of eastern europe to survive and therefore a large portion of all anglo saxons.
cabbage is the only vegetable that ferments with just salt, no vinegar needed, and just about any vegetable you add to your cabbage and salt will also ferment.
beets along with kale are one of the very few vegetables that not only survive frost, but become significantly more nutritious after a frost.
aka, if winter comes early, beets and kale naturally assimilate to become more valuable to humans.
plus red cabbage is the best, something about that purple color along with the beet has extra nutrients.
I consider both of them a staple although i live in the tropics, sometimes I have to go to three different stores to buy beets but its worth it!
Connect-Type493@reddit
You can ferment many vegetables with just salt, look up lactofermentation. There's nothing magical about cabbage. From personal experience, It works with cucumbers, beets, carrots, radishes, green beans..
Puzzlehead-Bed-333@reddit
Yes! And green tomatoes, peppers and onions. Been doing lacto fermentation for years.
Connect-Type493@reddit
Asparagus too!
watchingthingsmelt@reddit
Perennials. Lots of perennials. Berries, asparagus, sorrel, ramps, potato onions, garlic, perennial kale, sunchokes, pawpaw, fruit trees, ect. Bonus points if it's native and can withstand your local climate. Put these in the ground now, because some takes years to get to full fruiting potential.
Also the crops everyone else is mentioning.
Buy a book on seed saving or learn how to do it now, because you won't be able to order seeds online if SHTF.
Subtotal9_guy@reddit
You had me up until sunchokes, I've never had more and extremely painful gas until I had those.
uselessbynature@reddit
Painful gas? Husband and I had no idea what they were and we fucking mowed down on a pound of them. On a shmancy Valentines dinner I’d made for us.
Within hours it was coming out both ends in the worst way fucking ever. Painful in a way that food poisoning isn’t even painful-and that’s pretty fucking awful. Sharp and twisty like you’re in some hell prison being shanked for all of eternity. I’ve literally been at deaths door after a botched surgery and still wanted to live-that night of the ‘Chokes I seriously wished death would just take me. I involuntarily gag if I pass by them on the store. He had same exact reaction. And we had tiny toddlers at the time.
Evil. Fucking evil.
Fuckers should have a warning on them.
KindlyPlatypus1717@reddit
You poor bloody souls.. on V day of all days, too ðŸ˜
uselessbynature@reddit
Thank you for your pity kind stranger.
Funny thing-we just got divorced and he's pretty bitter. He sent me a bag of them on Valentine's Day this year.
KindlyPlatypus1717@reddit
Oh wow, I don't know what to say 😅 I'm sorry for the unfortunate destiny, though at least you can now look back and chuckle at the irony! Next you've just got to find a way to put a blended inulin potion in his protein smoothie or something to get the last laugh 😂 That would be childish... And probably illegal, but it's an idea nonetheless 🙈
AstaMouther@reddit
Add chickory and dandelion greens to your diet to fix your gut in regard to inulin. Ginger root in the meantime to reduce bloat from gas
War_Hymn@reddit
It for me here in the Great Lakes area, my top 5 excluding leafy greens will probably be a traditional wheat (for carbs and straw), sunflowers (oil), carrots, apple (fruit, cider, smoking wood), and beans (for plant protein). Other than their practical uses and nutritional value, these choices are ones I have hands on experience in growing (well).
Grains and beans once properly dried are basically shelf stable for years. Sunflower and other oily seeds are a little more finicky, but if stored in a cold room at ~50'F/10'C raw seeds will last up to a year; roasted seeds last about 4-5 months in the pantry. Carrots and other similar root vegetables will require a root cellar set up for fresh storage, which at its basics will be a dark cold room with the roots stored in opened crates or boxes filled with sand, straw, wood shavings, etc.
Potatoes get mentioned a lot, but I've never had any success growing them. Probably an anomaly, that or they don't like the heavy clay soil I have on my acreage. I also find them difficult to store.
PerformerDifferent69@reddit
My experience with potatoes has been similar. We have a problem with flea beetles and the potatoes we do get we have a hard time storing for long periods. Could be our climate idk but I can't seem them lasting us through the year.
Much prefer growing crap loads of beans as with beans alone you get almost all of the nutrients you need to survive.