“For everything, there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.” – Ecclesiastes 3:1-2.
For everything, there is a season, but your growing and harvesting can and should be year-round. Many gardens will be ending soon, hunting season is rolling in, and it’s time to winterize and plan for Spring. If you haven’t brought nature indoors yet, now is the time to start doing so. You could probably get one more late harvest of garlic, turnips, kale, mustard, and some squash before the cold weather sets in, but what then? Have you considered bringing your growing indoors or learning techniques to grow indoors?
SEED-SAVING
If you haven’t ever seed saved and you always relied upon picking up your seeds at the local grocery or hardware store, you are going to be in
If you have one plant in particular that produced the best fruits or vegetables, you want to capture those seeds for next year’s planting. You can even start growing the seeds indoors when the outside temperatures are still too cold, harden them off in the sun when it is warmer, and get them in the ground for an early spring harvest.
Each fruit or vegetable is going to have a different way of harvesting and saving the seeds. Most seeds you can just cut out and dry on a paper towel for a few days before storing them away in a ziplock baggy. A tomato is a little different though, so I will demonstrate how to save the seeds for next year. First, you want to make sure your tomato is open-pollinated. All heirloom tomatoes are, but modern hybrids are not. Seed companies create hybrids that may be useful the year you plant them, but the second generation of seeds might not even bear fruit. Heirlooms are based upon hundreds of years of careful seed saving by generations before you or thousands of years of natural selection in nature or both, so they’re going to be more reliable for seed saving.
When your seeds are dry, you can peel them off the paper towel or store the whole paper towel in a zip lock baggy or small Mylar bag. If you are keeping them for more than a year, use an oxygen absorber and small Mylar bag, and store them in a root cellar, back in your pantry, your refrigerator, or in the freezer. The rate at which your seeds germinate will drop slightly with each month and year. Still, to plant, you can just put the seeds in a starter or bury off pieces of the paper towel your seeds dried on. I have had successful germination of plants from seeds I saved five or more years before. If you pack them for longevity, some say you can germinate them 20 years from when you pack them.
Seed saving is a skill to have, and it will ensure that you have the option of growing food after any disaster.
HOME MICRO-GARDENS
While a home micro-garden won’t ever produce enough for you to thrive on after a disaster, they will provide you with the essential nutrients
Beyond just the nutrition, sprouts are a prepper’s secret weapon stash. They are super easy and reliable, but they also take up very little space and can remain viably active for years. One pound of mung bean sprout seeds, for instance, will yield 10 pounds of mung beans sprouts. That’s 130 grams of protein, 261 grams of carbs, and almost 1,400 calories. It’s a survival superfood.
And, sprouting is easy. I use a simple sprouting lid for a jar. I also use a larger screen container. You could simply use a mason jar with a paper towel rubber-banded to the top. It is so easy. Just soak a teaspoon or two of the seeds overnight. Drain and leave upside down for a few minutes to ensure no standing water in your seeds. Rinse your seeds and drain like this once or twice daily. In a few days, you will have more sprouts than you ever imagined. Some nutritionists and preppers swear by sprouts.
A windowsill garden is another possibility through winter. With enough light and warmth, you can manage several small plants. Lettuce, Fino Verde Basil, small pepper plants, container tomatoes, onions, garlic, even carrots can be grown by a window with enough warmth and light. LED grow lights can supplement the light needs of your plants during winter’s shorter days. You can continually sprout your carrots by removing the greens, cutting off the top 1 inch, and soaking that in water until roots form in the
Could you survive on just your home micro-garden endeavors? Maybe, if you had them all going at the same time and in full force, but it would be hard. The U.N. Food and Agricultural
GROW TENTS & HYDROPONIC SETS
Every year that passes, the cost of a small grow tent setup with fans and lights drops in price a little bit. What was once just mainly for growing secret, illegal plants has become more mainstream for gardening enthusiasts. The problem for both grow tents and small hydroponic setups are, of course, electricity. You need
Both grow tents and hydroponic setups are great for plants that provide vital nutrition. Still, you can also convert a room or a garage space after a prolonged disaster or grid-down situation if you have the water, electricity for lights, special grow lights, a fan, and can maintain growing temperatures. Converting an entire room or garage could provide you with enough to survive on when you consider the yield of an 11-foot square micro garden, as mentioned earlier.
If you have the land for it, there’s lots of information on fish farming, and you can raise plants in the same aquaponic system. You would need something like a greenhouse over it all to keep it from freezing during the winter, but it is being done. If you have a large aquarium in your home, you could be harvesting plants and Tilapia out of it all through winter. Tilapia fingerlings, the baby fish, can be purchased live for a few dollars, often at fish stores. As Fingerlings, they are from 1/2 to 1″ long. Within about eight months, with proper feeding proportions, they are edible at about 1 to 2 lbs. Leave a few in the tank, and they will multiply and give you a steady, reliable protein source.
Just because winter comes, it doesn’t mean you have to stop growing your own food. If the supply chain crashes with snow on the ground, you could still supplement your food stores with freshly harvested food with some of the approaches I just outlined. Nothing short of dedicating a garage or whole room will provide you with enough to survive entirely, but you can supplement your food supply in many of these ways.
What do you think? What’s your winter harvest plan? Are you doing something to extend your growing season indoors this winter that you could tell us in the comments? We would love to know. I read many of the comments and respond to many of them when I can.
As always, please stay safe out there.
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