Want Food Security This Summer? Prepare the Garden
Posted on March 2, 2020 by Spice
As coronavirus numbers continue to climb, people are scrambling to stock up on food. Seriously, last week Salty saw some cans of freeze-dried stuff we bought at $12 selling for three times that. Profiteering much? He was just browsing from curiosity; we’re good. Part of the reason for that is we’ve do a garden every year.
A garden is an overlooked protection from pandemic
I was looking at the food in a produce department the other day, and wondering how many human hands had touched it. Specifically, how many unwashed human hands had touched it. The folks who harvest much of the produce we eat are among the poorest, least educated, and worst supported workers in the Americas. Exactly the folks are are likely to be most hit by any epidemic disease and least likely to engage in good control measures to prevent spreading it.
Many more people have touched commercial food than garden food.**
Then I went home and shook some of my zucchini chips out of their jar to enjoy with my cottage cheese. My hands, and potentially Salty’s, are the only ones that ever touched that food. If there’s any germs on it, I’ve already got them.
Now is the time to start gardening for pandemic protection all year
The fresh seeds are hitting the garden stores. If you didn’t pick yours up cheap last year (highly recommended!), now’s the time. If you’re concerned about stores closing, well just go set yourself up for the year right now. One problem solved.
I just spend a couple of hours starting seeds to plant mid-April. Some of them were from an experiment Salty and I are running on the success of a ‘survival’ seed pack we’ve had in the freezer for years. Others were a different experiment. I saved seeds from some of my own haul over the last few years and I’m planting seeds of various ages to see how they perform after standard storage. The rest were older seeds; purchased commercially months or years ago. Again, it’s a test of what will sprout when it’s not fresh. (We’ll report on what worked and what didn’t when the results are sprouted. Or aren’t.)
Some lessons already learned in the garden project
It’s the beginning of March as I write; too soon to plant in Missouri (the last — we hope– of the snow melted off of the garden two days ago). This planting was of seeds that need to be started indoors and grown to small plants before being moved outside after the last frost, for best results. When I started these seeds, I went with two approaches.
The ‘standard approach’ is to buy starter seed mix and some little trays, sort of like ice cube trays, with small wells for each future plant. So I did some of those. I used the trays made of biodegradable cardboard so I can just cut and plant; no need to remove the tender roots to put in the garden.
The trays were rather messy. Starter mix doesn’t like to wet at first. Adding mix to trays then water on top just made most of the mix float. It had to be worked into the water to actually get it moist enough.
On the up side, all of these materials are shelf stable to eternity. Don’t get them outright wet and you’re golden. Hot, cold, freeze, thaw, sunlight, Whatevs.
Peat pods for garden starters
Salty also found some peat pods. These are little dried discs of peat, wrapped in a biodegradable thin fabric. They expand when you put them in them in water. You poke a few seeds into the top of the expanded pods. Once the plants are ready the whole pods go into the garden.
Peat pods give are an easy answer to start plants for the garden.
We’ll see if one works better for sprouting; but as for the process: Peat Pods RULE. So easy to prep and plant, no mess. I’m Seriously rooting (HAH yes I did that on purpose!) for these to be successful because I love using them. The dried discs are also completely shelf-stable and unconcerned with storage conditions if you don’t get them outright wet.
Food production is a prepper skill that takes practice
Yeah, we’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Putting a ‘garden in a box’ in the freezer does not make you prepared to grow a garden. Successful food production doesn’t take a lot of space or much materials. Seeds take up almost no room, and you can get by with just a few tools at need.
What it does take is prepared soil, knowledge of what works in your area, and experience in defending from pests. Or it takes having planted edible perennials. Once that work’s done, food production from it becomes pretty danged easy. Now’s a great time to start!
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