By agrimag
In times of crisis, people always go back to nature and grow their own food just like the old times. Survival gardens are extremely useful, especially during calamities; it is a small farm where you can plant highly nutritious crops for the family’s dietary needs. With this garden, you get to secure your food supply if food shortage in the area arises.
It can also be a convenient way to produce vegetables that can be stored for future consumption. Harvested crops like carrots, potatoes, onions, pumpkins, and the like from a survival garden entail long-term storage abilities that are very beneficial for saving food, especially during a crisis.
Starting a survival garden
1. Location
Things you need to consider are sunlight, accessibility, access to water, and fertile and well-drained soil.
For sunlight, your survival garden must be placed where crops can be exposed to sunlight for at least six hours a day. To ensure proper growth and development, most of these nutritious crops require enough sunlight as their source of energy.
Second, your garden must also be near you or at least accessible to you for easy monitoring. This will help you regularly check if there are problems in your crops like pests and diseases. It will also save you from crop thieves.
Aside from this, you also need to check if you have easy access to water for irrigation. If water is near, setting the irrigation system is much easier.
Lastly, in identifying the right location, you must have fertile and well-drained soil. Well-drained soil is well aerated plus it drains water moderately so it allows crops to grow well. Soil tests can be done to check the nutrient levels of the soil as well.
2. Suitable crops for your household
In choosing crops, you must know how much your family consumes and how much your garden can produce to maximize and balance the food production well. You must select crops that are suitable to the season and/or climate, and they should be crops that you and your family consume often.
3. Maintenance of the crops and the land
Make sure to give proper care to the plants until they mature. Use organic fertilizers made of animal manure. Dividing and proper spacing are also crucial in your garden. It will ensure that there will be no disruption during the growth of the crops and that there will be no competition for sunlight and nutrients for each variety. After planting, put a fence around your survival garden to keep animals like rabbits or poultry away from it. Regularly check your garden for pests and diseases to ensure that there will be no hindrance to crop development.
Food shortage is one of the things that we don’t want to happen amid the crisis that we have now, or in the future. So to avoid panic and worry, secure your food source. By starting a survival garden, you know exactly where your food comes from, and how they were grown.
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