I grow tomatoes because they taste infinitely better than what you can buy.

Yes, I end up with more tomatoes than I can consume. For about one month. For about 8 months of the year if I want fresh tomatoes I have to buy them still.

How large is your garden mate? Or alternatively how bad are you at giving produce away? My grandparents have quite a large garden and have never had issues with too much stuff

That's true, but it's also nowhere near enough to live on.

They get a huge batch of something all at once, and then it's a scramble to eat it, give it away, pickle it, can it, etc. But, the total number of calories produced throughout the season isn't enough to even keep one person alive.

I feel so seen. I ended up making pizza sauce with all of my tomatoes. I would have homemade pizza about once or twice a month, and that is after using as many tomatoes as I could for sandwiches. In my experience, I would say 3 plants is just before the threshold of "too many".

Timing is hard. They product like mad in a very short window.

Canning is a layer of hell.

Freeze dryers are slow, expensive and consume a lot of electricity.

If I had the time/space, I'd stagger my planting, start it indoors, start another batch on time and another late.

I live in a town house but I don't actually have a grassy backyard, just a small shared deck. I've filled it with as many planter boxes as I can but last year I was only able to get two tomatoes to grow and both were stolen by squirrels 🥹

Lol yeah, I have dozens of tomatoes sitting out there on the vine right now because we can't eat them fast enough.

It's a weird split. I've tried to have a garden and would get like five fruits.

i would go for herbs and spices instead maybe that would be worth the effort

sure but you don't have tomatoes all year, only a short time, even if you bottle some.

Being self reliant is mostly impossible if you cant also hunt and forage No ones growing their own wheat for example to make their own bread, let alone collecting the salt they need as well.

we lived off grid for a decade with a massive garden, chickens, ducks, heaps of fruit trees, made our own compost etc

I can't get anything to grow because the dumb animals keepnwating everything, despite my efforts.

I was about to say. Everyone I've ever known who grew tomatoes always had significantly more than they could personally use.

My mom fills an upright freezer with salsa and tomato sauce from like 5 plants each year.

Because they buy the actual substance food at the store. Ignoring the macros, you're eating 80 tomatoes a day person to just keep up.

So people who want to kill you for having to take all those zucchinis they didn't want

We didn't even grow zucchinis this year so many people have extra zucchinis.

Sometimes gardening is just a hobby, tho

Building strong communities is like rule number one in serious pepper communities

We were meant to be rugged individuals, but rugged individuals living in a community with other rugged individuals.

Also, farming has always been a hard job. People who garden are doing the kinds of farming that farmers did before automation became a thing, but they're doing it on a tiny scale. One farmer using non-industrial methods is going to have to really work like a mule to keep just themselves and their family alive. So, gardening using those same methods is never going to produce enough calories and nutrients for anything meaningful.

Even potatoes don't have all that many calories.

If you WERE to try to prep your way to sustainable. you're going to have to buy/store starches in bulk and use the garden +canning for nutrients.

Aquaponics are the way. Simply buy property with a pond. Ez.

all things considered, that's better than most plans I've heard.

It took me weeks to finally grow like 4 strawberries. Was it worth it? No. Was it satisfying? Also no.

There's a farm store near me. When stuff hits actual season, you can walk over there a buy a 25lb box of peppers for $15. The rest of the year it hot house, which is still damn good, but nowhere near as cheap.

it's also cost you a lot of time

Very true, I love gardening, but its very hard to eke out a meaningful calorie count.

At best it's a supplement. I grow beans (lol) at my place because they really seem to thrive and grow practically like weeds. Beans freeze really well and can be dehydrated.

I bought a large dehydrator to compliment my dry goods food storage, which is up to about 8 months worth of dry goods, 3 months of tinned. I like to buy fruit at wholesale prices when it's in season at the farms near me, and make fruit leather, and I make my own biltong. But I also get bags of frozen veg and dehydrate these right from the bag. They pack down much smaller than frozen and are very easy to do. I also have a bunch of citrus trees for vitamin C and easy sugars.

You'll have to trade with people who have more or other things. I'd wager things like salt, sugar, baking powder, yeast , spices, nails, screws, hand tools, will be in high demand come a large-scale long-term collapse.

I mean there was a Silk Road for a reason.

So grimly true.

I think It always been like that in temperate climate.

Growing enough food to survive a year is the easy part, preserving it so you still have food to eat at the end of winter is the hardest and most time consuming part.

Poly tunnels can help grow small-scale crops well into the spring and fall. An earthen greenhouse can do so year round even in places where it gets to -40℃.

That's why I also have a slingshot

I think that last part is key, it's a good skill to have. It's easy to think it'll be everyone on their own when the apocalypse happens, but people generally want to work together if it means better chances of survival.

It's hard to imagine there wouldn't be tribes of people popping up across the wasteland

Nice version of number 2) offer your services to protect them from raiders and get paid in food

A lot of people really think they'll figure both out the same day the world ends.

So if you already know how to do #2, you can take all their stuff, too.

1. Beef Jerky and Canned Beans.

Only if you grow heirloom tomatoes though. Modern tomatoes are all F1 hybrids so the offspring will be shit probably.

Also print out that wikipedia article about crop rotation. And get a handbook about weeds.

How come fertilizer is routed through the Strait of Hormuz? I can't think of a reason why it would need petroleum to be made

Lol. Day R taught me to save bottle caps, and make sure I had plenty of Vodka for the radiation sickness.

Assuming you’re able to produce enough for the off season and have a method to store said food.

It’s called “subsistence farming” and is a crapload of work.

However vegetables are the by far easiest part of being self sufficient. Getting your carbs and your proteins is far harder.

Nervous pet noises

can keep chickens for eggs for protein

breadfruit tree for carbs

It can be cheaper than buying at the store if you plant things that match your local climate and if you are able to eat them fresh they are far better since they have the negatives of shipping.

Not the first few years though as the cost of tools/fencing/etc are an up front cost. But if you do it for a decade it goes down to the cost of seeds, water, and fertilizer which can be pretty cheap in moderate climates.

It's not cheaper or more efficient compared to large scale farming

This professor emeritus disagrees.

To begin with, it takes three acres of land for the industrial food system to feed the average American for a year, compared to maybe 5% of that area—or even much less—to feed a person for a year on a balanced diet of garden vegetables. So how is that three acres more efficient?

https://www.unsustainablemagazine.com/...

It 'can' be cheaper for the quality, but it's still a lot of work.

You need to preserve what you can't eat outright.

You need to recapture/dry/replant the seeds

You need to compost.

You need to tend / maintain the soil.

You need to deal with pests.

You're still not cheaper than farmer fred who's sitting on literally 10 tons of squash.

You can literally work odd jobs and have more food security then trying to garden.

Wet dirt can have a lot of weight. You may want to verify the roof can handle it.

Yep not to mention that if you manage to have a good garden when SHTF you're just the first target for the raiders.

There is an excellent, practical book about surviving economic collapse by someone who went through it in Argentina.

And I honestly would not want to live in a world where there is such instability. Even before electricity, one needed a stable community to thrive. Every time I watch an apocalyptic movie, I always think about how stressful and exhausting it would be to be a survivor, and hope to be one of the first to die. Even if things get better again, I will most likely never experience the levels of comfort I have become accustomed to within my lifetime. No thanks.

Hey

Beherens cans are rodent resistant and cheap at home depot and lowes.

Costco sells 25lb and 50lbs bags of rice and bulk vitamins.

Bulk dry beans and mylar bags are cheap.

Supplement with some ebay freeze dried eggs/veggies.

build a cage. if you leave a small flap on top it doubles as a trap and you can have "free" protein.

Huh? NM is well within the growing zone for tomatos. You can even grow them in 5gal hardware store buckets.

@Hikermick
Am I doing it right?