Food for Survival IV

Anyone who is a true survivalist should be thinking about raising some of their food themselves. I realize that there are some of you who will not be able to raise much, depending on where you live. Even when I lived in the one room efficiency apartment, I raised a little bit of my own food. I had two window boxes in which I grew leaf lettuce and spinach. I also had a half whiskey barrel sitting just outside my door. Several other apartments had large planters outside their doors also, but I was the only one that raised vegetables in one. In the center of the barrel I planted one tomato plant and I surrounded this with onions, radishes and carrots. While I did not get a lot of food from this method, I managed to save a few bucks on salad fixings. Between my window boxes and the barrel, you might be surprised just how much can be grown. For instance, the window boxes were kept producing all year long and the barrel all summer. Each time I picked something, I added more seeds to the soil and had a continous supply. There are ways to grow food no matter where you are. It is better if you have ground to dig up and plant, but vegetables can be grown in an apartment, on a porch, a balcony, a roof, just about any place that you would like to. You need to choose your vegetables very carefully. For instance, both tomatoes and peppers grow well in containers. With a little experimentation, you may find many other things that will grow indoors. One of my sons lives in a mobile home in a trailer court. The lots are small and there is a rule against digging up the yard. However, there is no rule against building flower boxes and growing things. On the end of the trailer, on top of the hitch is a box extending the full twelve feet of the trailer and about three feet wide. Along the south side of the trailer is another box about twice that size. Dirt was dug in the country and hauled in and the boxes filled. He keeps some flowers along the front of each box, but the main items in the two boxes are vegetables. The flowers are just there for show and to keep the owners of the park happy. When I lived in the suburbs of Chicago, I planted tomato plants among my wife's flowers in the front of the house. No one even noticed the fact that I was growing vegetables in front of the house. This freed up space in my small garden to raise more other things. People who own their own property should definately grow as large a garden as they have the time and the knowledge to take care of. There are a whole lot of books and web sites on vegetable gardening so I will not go into it to deep here. I will however give some gerneral tips as they pertain to survival gardening. First decide whether you are going to raise just what you can eat as it is picked or are you going to raise some for storage. Raising what can be eaten as it is picked keeps you hand in gardening and allows you to expand easily should the need arise. Many people who work full time and have other things in their life that take a lot of time will find this the best method for now. Do not go so big at the beginning that you cannot take proper care of the garden. All that will do is cause a lot of frustration when the weeds take over and you get little or no vegetables.