Small Space Gardening for Survival Food
Now more than ever you need to take charge of your life. The cost of food costs is out of control, endless job losses, more ‘pandemics looming on the horizon. the future is bleak. So now is the time to prepare! So what do you do? One thing you MUST do as part of your plan to survive is to grow a small space survival garden! Growing food is a way to feeding your family. And you can use excess food to barter and obtain other supplies that you need to survive! Pick the right items to grow and your small survival garden can also provide medicinal herbs to utilize in times if uncertainty. With this said let us take a look at how to begin growing a garden in small spaces.
Gardening for Survival
Whether you have a small yard or just a patio to work with – there are methods you can use to protect yourself from a survival event where store shelves are empty.
There are many different techniques and tricks will allow you to build the most beneficial survival garden for your survival needs. With a little bit of strategic planning, you’ll gain peace of mind knowing you can feed your family and take care of many first aid needs, too.
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Utilize All Space to Grow a Survival Garden
Although many survival leaders talk about creating giant gardens in order to have every necessary type of crop produced, a small space will do just fine. Sometimes, a large space is just simply not an option.
You can’t grow a field full of row upon row of potatoes, corn stalks, vines growing this way and that. But just because these individuals have purchased huge homestead properties doesn’t mean your situation is hopeless.
Once you get creative enough, you will find a method that works best for you your small space garden . Plan it right and you can grow a survival and bring your garden to its fullest potential. Just because you have a small yard or patio, it is possible to grow a wide variety of crops.In fact growing a personal garden will be imperative to survival.
Though it may not be a huge food source. The produce will help to prop up and trade in a time of need. This is how preppers think. Survivalist are alway looking for way to utilize what they have around them. You can use any small space to grow a garden for survival.
Planters, patios, vertical spaces are all ideal to planter and sow seeds. This will prevent you from having to fill up space in your home with planters.
Although, you can still go that route, if you want to produce as much as physically possible. Living in an apartment that isn’t ground level might make it feel impossible to grow your own survival garden.
But with planters, greenhouses and balconies, you will be able to make the most of your space. Any window or glass door that provides sunlight can be used to your benefit, too – in case you need to grow them inside, and you can also purchase lamps to provide artificial sunlight if window sunlight isn’t an option.
Start with a Small Container Garden
This will help you find the best plan for you, so that your vegetable garden can do as much for you as possible when and if a SHTF event takes place.
A small container garden is a great way to start a sample of any type of crop, so that you can determine its importance and value in your life.
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Here are a few of the methods to try when creating a small container garden:
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Grow Food in Window Boxes
Planting a few crops in a window box will help keep the plants elevated and out of the way. If you have children or pets that like to get into trouble, a window that is high enough could be the solution you need.
This option also gives the plants a direct spot for sunlight to hit, so you won’t have to worry about moving them around in order to provide the plants with more sun. You can even find self-watering window boxes that have a reservoir built in to keep your plants healthy.
Stock Up on Grow Bags
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Grow bags take up very little space and they allow you to create a mini ecosystem in just one bag. Fabric grow bags offer great air circulation for the plants, which helps them grow healthy and tall.
You can place these handy grow bags anywhere they can receive sunlight. And they are easy to water, and can host several crops at a time. These are ideal for growing a survival garden in a small space.
Use Planters to Grow Survival Garden
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Instead of using planters for flowers you can pack them with edible plants and vegetables as part of a small space survival garden.
And since they come in a variety of size you can start off small and expand your small container garden as necessary. As you get the hang of gardening, you’ll be able to plan crops that utilize your small survival garden more effectively.
Of course, for all of these methods you will require the right amount of sunlight for each plant. If your space lacks direct sunlight, then use LED grow lights for vegetable plants.
The above will only work if the grid is up. Use LED and schedule lights that turns on and off with timers. This will give plants and vegetables the rays necessary for their growth.
Grow Your Survival Garden Vertically
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Whenever you see most survival gardens in videos and on blogs, you see a horizontal landscape with rows of produce growing. This is a space hog strategy that not many survival preppers have the luxury of planning.
In order to save space, you can grow your garden vertically, instead of horizontally on the same plane. This is a great method for many vegetables and greens. When you grow a vertical garden, you save on floor space and make the watering process easier.
Vertical Garden Towers for Gardening
You can use a tower or trellis to encourage the plants to grow upwards. Using planters, you can attach your plants to a trellis, creating a wall of produce. This method keeps all of your plants in the same area, while also giving them plenty of space to grow.
When attaching plants to a trellis or tower, it is important to make sure plants are far enough apart in order to get the sunlight they need. As long as the bottom of one plant isn’t blocking the sun from the one below it, there shouldn’t be a problem.
Small Space Gardening Using Raised Bed Gardens
When the plants are raised in the air, there is better air circulation for every plant. This helps to prevent disease and pests. However, its important to consider watering habits as the soil tends to dry quicker due to increased air circulation.
You can conserve water by setting up an irrigation system using tray underneath the plants. Then reusing it.
In addition you want to consider the wind conditions if you are attaching plants to a trellis. As long as everything is secure and sturdy, there shouldn’t be any issue.
Ready Made Vertical Towers
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If you have the budget the you may want to consider purchasing a readymade vertical tower planter to grow a survival garden. Some of these use soil and others are hydroponic, using water to grow the vegetables.
Instead of kneeling in the dirt you can focus on growing healthy with the right combination of light, water and nutrients.
Grow Survival Food Produce With Small Space Gardening
If you want to grow your own food you can utilize small space gardening to grow vegetables, herbs and even edible flowers. To begin you need to consider the amount of nutrients in each vegetable or fruit to grow. Consider growing plants vitamin C rich produce such as bell peppers, tomatoes and broccoli. They are long lasting and hardier than many other vegetables.
Grow Longer Lasting Vegetables
Plan to grow longer lasting vegetables like potatoes, onions, garlic and squash. And keep them in a cool, dry place to last the longest.
You can also learn how to prepare the produce for long-term use, such as learning how to dehydrate it or canning.
Plan a Cycle for Your Small Space Gardening
Once you have a plan and process for all of your crops, you can focus on fast-growing crops. Some foods, such as radishes, will be ready to harvest quicker than others. Make a list of fast-growing produce so you can grow your emergency food as soon as possible.
Choose each plant with a goal, whether it’s for nutritional or medicinal purposes or to have a steady supply of vegetables.
Grow Potatoes a Family Staple
Potatoes are easy to grow, and can be prepared in many different ways. Fries, mashed, chips, hash browns, baked, sliced, and even roasted. They can be stored for several months in a cool pantry. Potatoes are also full of nutrients, from potassium to vitamin C.
Cold Climate Kale
Kale can withstand cold temperatures making it a reliable plant to grow in a small space survival garden. It’s full of fiber, packed with vitamins and nutrients. And if stored properly, kale will last about a week.
Beans a Good Source of Protein
Since there are so many different types of beans, you could fill an entire small garden just with beans. For how small beans are, they carry a surprisingly large amount of nutrients.
They store well for a year or more if you put them in the right kind of bags and store them at an appropriate temperature. After you’ve picked the beans and prepared them, you can save some of the seeds for your next gardening cycle.
Cabbage
Versatile and nutritious you can cook cabbage, eat it raw in or add it to a salad. Cabbage is full of fiber and great for digestion and be fermented for long-term storage.
Grow Hardy Tomatoes
Tomatoes can be added to many different dishes, and will always taste fresh and light when ripe. They are easy to grow, as long as the vine has a place to grow properly. The only disadvantage to tomatoes is their shorter shelf life.
If kept cold, tomatoes can last for about five days. The good news is, you can easily can tomatoes and use them later in things like stews or sauces, so this is still a great plant to put in your small space survival garden.
Vitamin Rich Spinach
Spinach is full of fiber and vitamins. Spinach can be frozen (or dehydrated for if the grid goes down) in order to increase shelf life. This is a vegetable that can be prepared in many dishes, and is a great salad ingredient.
Micro-Greens
One of the best foods to grow for those in apartments or who don’t have much space at all is micro greens. You can give your family a big boost in nutrients with fast-growing, tiny crops in less than two weeks.
Radish microgreens are probably the most nutritious in terms of what they deliver, but you can also grow things like alfalfa sprouts, kale, pea greens, beet greens, and more. This is something all survival households should be growing for the vitamin benefits alone.
Use Succession Planting for Quick Crops
When you are doing small space gardening succession planting is a great method to utilize. It will help to stagger the harvest dates of your food. Giving you a steady supply of new crops to feed your family.
Instead of planting all of your seeds at once, stagger the planting of produce and plants. If possible estimate how much of each crop you want to produce in a season. This way you can try to determine the appropriate amount of seeds to plant each time.
Continue planting every 2-4 weeks so that a new harvest is ready when you need it. A succession plan will help to optimize the preservation of seeds and crops, and help to prevent any waste.
Enrich Small Garden Survival Soil With a Countertop Compost
A countertop composter not only provides a visually appealing place to store your kitchen scraps, but they give the opportunity to turn waste into compost. Many countertop composters have filters, in order to prevent any unpleasant smells from filling your kitchen space.
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You can opt to buy a simple countertop composter or you can use any container to dump your compostable kitchen scraps.
Compost is often their only source of nutrition, so it’s important to give each plant a healthy amount of compost material. Compost will be most beneficial when about 1-2 inches of it is worked into the top 3-5 inches of soil in a planter.
Just layer some materials and make sure there are drainage holes in the bucket before you get started. You want to add food scraps and other material, like paper periodically, stirring it and keeping it moist and in a place where the sun can help with the decay process.
Attract Pollinators for Small Space Gardening Areas
Pollinators are crucial to gardens. Here are a few simple ways to attract pollinators to a small space garden.
Use Hanging Flower Baskets
Hang some baskets full of flowers around or near your garden to attract pollinators. Make sure you plant flowers that attract pollinators, like coneflowers, daisies, and ironweed.
As long as they are close to your survival garden, they should make their way down to your plants to pollinate. For example, many people use hanging planters on their balcony and grow their garden in containers on the patio below them.
Water source
If you have the space for a bird bath or small bowl to place water in, you are more likely to attract pollinators. Plant require pollinators in your small survival garden. Increase your garden space potential by inviting to pollinators to visit, and in return will help boost the success of your small space garden. Be careful not to accidentally drown garden pollinators place small water bowl and lightly water areas.
Shelter
Providing shelter from the elements, like rain, will give the pollinators a place to rest or hide from predators. If they feel safe in the environment that you have provided, they are much more likely to stick around for awhile.
Manual Pollination for Small Space Gardening
If you can’t seem to attract pollinators, or your plants are all inside, you can try to manually pollinate your plants. Some garden plants, like tomatoes, just need a light shaking in order to get the pollen to the right place.
Other plants will require a more delicate process called hand pollination. To hand pollinate, take a clean tool (like a Q-tip) and gently wipe at the center of the male plant’s stamen. Then, find a female flower and swipe the stigma with the pollen from the Q-tip.
Interplant Strategy to Use Small Spaces Efficiently
An interplant strategy is when you plant small crops in-between larger ones. When the small crops are ready, they can be picked so that the larger crops can then have the room to grow.
It’s important to make sure that the smaller crop you choose is a fast-growing crop, so that the bigger plant will be able to grow in a larger space when it needs to. This is a great way to conserve space, as well as moisture and soil.
When you interplant your small space crops, the leaves of each plant should be just touching. And once the bigger crops have been picked, the whole process can begin again.
Pick Medicinal Herbs & Plants for Small Gardening Spaces
Instead of growing flowers use all of the small spaces available for gardening. Use windowsills to grow medicinal herbs and plants. In survival situations pharmacies will are not likely be available to get over the counter medicine. So to help you begin here are is a few medicinal plants to consider:
Aloe Vera to Grow in Small Space Gardens
Is known to soothe and moisturize the skin. Which is helpful for burns and clearing up acne. In addition Aloe vera can be helpful with digestion issues. The Aloe plant can be stored for about a week in the fridge, and about eight months in the freezer.
Ginseng
While its not suited for all climates, it helps to boost the immune system, lower blood sugar and increase energy. All of which are necessary in a survival situation. Dried ginseng can last for several years, so it’s a perfect survival crop.
Use Echinacea to Stave Off Colds
One handy item to grow in small space garden is Echinacea. It helps to boost the immune system and relieve pain, and you can apply to help heal wounds by easing the pain and pressure. For medicinal purposes, echinacea plants are usually only good for a week.
Soothe With Chamomile
Chamomile is known as a digestive relaxant, and it can help to ease menstrual pain. Use chamomile flowers to make chamomile tea, one of its most popular uses. Chamomile can help relax your body, which may help you fall asleep.
Ginger Ideal Survival Medicine
Ginger helps to ease nausea and motion sickness. The medicinal part of ginger is the root that can be boiled with water into a tea. It helps with heart health, chronic pain and to strengthen the immune system.
Calendula
Calendula is an antiseptic and an antifungal plant. This plant is used to soothe and heal. You can use it in survival as it can be used on wounds, rashes, to treat infections and reduce inflammation.
Growing a Small Space Survival Garden
Growing a survival garden in a small doesn’t have to be a difficult process. You simply need to plan what you will plan in a strategic manner.
This means planting seeds and use tower gardens to grow high opposed to grow a garden along precious ground space. As you master the gardening process, you will find innovative ways to add the crops to your limited space.
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Think vertical gardening and utilize food sources as edible décor to save space while saving money and producing survival food.
Concluding Small Space Gardening for Survival
Small space gardens are not only beautiful but tOr they will hey serve a purpose in survival situations. They will help to top up food supplies in tough times when food is short. And they give meaning in many other ways. Begin today by growing a few simple herbs, vegetables and medicinal plants and watch your garden grow!
