While I was writing my garden plans, I got to thinking about how much work goes into a garden every year.  How much of that would remain if the gardener died/left/whatever?  If you were traveling through an abandoned area or foraging for food, could you find old gardens? Looking for surviving remains of gardens seems a bit more likely to succeed than foraging through prairie grass for a handful of herbs. What would you be likely to find though?

Things to look for – What could conceivably survive after the gardener was no more? Annuals would be spotty, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wild green bean, or broccoli spreading through volunteers. My lettuce spreads all over the yard though, and depending on the time of year that could be found. Tomatoes also sprout volunteers willingly. Those would likely devolve back to the small cherry tomatoes, but would still be edible for many generations I think. Squashes could carry on, either sprouting new vines where the old fruit rots, or after seeds are scattered by animals.  The squirrels would probably keep corn crops going in some areas.  I know we routinely get ornamental corn that grows where squirrels bury kernels and forget them.  In fact, if you’re really lucky, perhaps you could track a mouse or chipmunk back to a cashe of corn kernels. (Bonus points for snaring the critter to add to the stew.)  Asparagus beds are very distinctive and would probably survive many years without any care.  As would bramble berries. I can spot the drooping canes and silvery sheen of raspberries at quite a distance.  Rhubarb easily survives in the Northern areas.  I’ve even heard that you can guesstimate placements of old homesteads on the east coast by the rhubarb beds that remain to this day.  Fruit trees of course would survive many years.

Where to look – Obviously most will be by a human residence. Stick frame houses won’t be habitable for long after abandonment, but they will still be discernible from a distance.  Looking for fruit trees would be a good strategy, or sunflowers, those are tall enough to be seen easily no matter how tall the grass.   Seeds will be spread by animals, so I would check for volunteers around bushes and fences.  If you’re far enough south, it’s possible you could find root crops that survive winters and propagate, those are harder to spot though, you’ve got to be familiar with a turnip to pick it out from weeds. Garlic could survive, I bet my hardneck garlic would, it handles winters every year, it would expand to make a nice little garlic patch.  Smell would be useful for finding garlic I think.  Watch the birds.  If birds are paying attention to a patch of something, you could find a stand of sunflowers, berries, or corn.  Look for infrastructure, like fencing or raised beds or tomato supports.

Make it a habit – I’ve been looking for food for so long that it’s second nature now.  When I’m out wandering the neighborhood, out for some exercise, or running some errands, I always notice wild and semi-wild food.  I know who doesn’t pick their rhubarb, and who can’t eat all the fruit off their trees. Get in the habit and you’ll start to notice what is able to survive utter neglect.

What do you think? Am I forgetting anything that you’d look for?

- Calamity Jane

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It’s time to plan your locally adapted, fresh food generating plot for 2012.  Yes, your veggie garden.  There are probably as many ways to plan a garden as there are people on this earth.   I’ll share some of my thoughts, but as always, adapt it to your skills, location, needs, preferences and physical ability.

I plan my garden in close harmony with my food storage.  Mostly because there are large parts of my food storage that I try to get cheaply from the garden.   So, the garden leans towards things I can process and store in bulk, and things that store well in cold storage. Then I fill in the space that’s left with family favorites that we enjoy fresh as summer meals. I do all this planning on old fashioned paper. I have a journal, it’s nothing fancy, just a hard back, durable notebook with lots of lined paper, and a ribbon through the spine that’s helpful for place marking.   Every year the garden plan goes in the same journal.  I also have what I call, “As Planted” drawings for most years.  If my garden has differences between the plan and what actually is growing in June, I like to capture that information so that there’s less guess work later.  I make these plans for the main bed, the side beds, cold frames, community plots, etc. These plans help me get my thoughts organized so I can get the seeds ordered that aren’t in my stash, and get the early spring plantings started in my greenhouse without feeling rushed or frazzled.  I sketch out the plot, with the walking paths, and then I sketch in blocks or rows of the crops.

Rotating of crops factors into planning.  I garden a small space, so rotation is a little tricky, and doesn’t always happen 100% as recommended. The basic idea is that you do not plant the same family of plants in the same patch of dirt two years in a row. Ideally, you should try to go three years between repeat plantings.  In my plot, potatoes and tomatoes are the problem.  They are both nightshades, and they both need large chunks of the available plot.  This year I know I have a TON of canned tomatoes in storage.   We just finished up the last of the 2010 tomatoes, so we haven’t even started eating on the 2011 batch.   So, I’m not planting many tomatoes.  Probably just one vine of something we like to eat fresh. That gives me the wiggle room I need to rotate some things around and get the nightshades into different parts of the garden than they were in the past 2 years.

Fallowing.   If you have raised beds, or multiple gardens, fallowing can be very easy and beneficial.  Lay down some cover crop seeds and leave the plot to build up nitrogen and biomass for a year, every 5 years or so.  My favored cover crop here in Iowa is Hairy Vetch.  It can be sown with the spring melt, and will grow without any help from me, fixing nitrogen, providing flowers for pollinators, keeping moisture in and shading out weeds. Garden planning can help you keep track of which garden/bed got fallowed in which year.  When I was designing the beds for the CSA, my 5 year rotation plan had a fallow year built in. In my smaller lawn plot, I find that crop rotation and heavy composting and proper mulching really cut down on the need to fallow.  My plantings are  also much more diverse than what’s found in a commercial or large scale planting. That diversity works in my favor, with small bits of rotation I can move nitrogen fixers into a spot recently vacated by heavy feeders, and vice versa.

What to plant?  So, you’ve got all the above factors in mind. What do you plant? To adapt a favorite saying, my advice is to “Grow what you eat, and eat what you grow.”  For cold storage crops, my family likes Potatoes, Parnips, Carrots and Sweet Potatoes.  I know that turnips grow well here, and will survive the cold for longer than carrots, but unless I’m sneaking them into things, they don’t get eaten. So, this year, I’m replacing my turnip row with the sweet potatoes.  They’ll be eaten by more of the family, especially the baby we’re expecting to join us in the spring.  He’ll be needing soft foods right around the time that sweets will be harvesting. Bulk crops, I usually have tomatoes on this list, but not this year. This year I’m going with Cucumbers and Summer Squash.  By bulk, I am talking about plantings that will yield far more than can be eaten fresh, with the intention of preserving the excess. So, aim for things your family likes canned, fermented or dried.  Corn can work, as can beans, and cabbage.  I place the cold storage crops and the bulk crops on my garden plan first, because they are the most important to my preps.  Then I evaluate the spaces that are left.  I tuck in fresh favorites where the conditions/space/neighbors are suitable.  I’ll put some greens where I know something else will take over in mid-summer, since the greens will bolt around then anyway.   I tuck in some peas where they can fix some nitrogen to a well used corner.  Green beans get as large a plot as I can find for them.  Herbs get tucked in where lighting and water levels will match up.  Prettier plants like kale and cabbages I’ll often put near the sidewalks or in the “flower” beds.

Tailor to your needs.  If, like me you have a baby on the way, count on your fingers and guesstimate when the baby food need will start, and have some crops that meet that need.  If you know you’ll be gone or super busy for a month, time your plantings and crops so that nothing is maturing that month. If you prefer cold storage to canning, make sure your space allocation of plants reflects that.

Planning now will help you with seed orders, spring planting, summer weeding, and fall harvests.   Do you have a favorite planning method?

 - Calamity Jane

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I get questions, about when I think the S will HTF, and when I recommend that people head for the hills.  I rarely answer those people. Most frame the question in such a way, it’s clear they think we aren’t to that point yet.  I’m of the opinion that we’re there.  Not in an OMG The Grid is DOWN! Let’s GO! sort of way, but in a pack it up, pack it in, downsize and settle someplace for the long haul way.

I’m not sure how many of you read the Archdruid or Lord Bison, but that message seems to be flowing from their pens as well.  At this point it’s not a question of when to BO to avoid the highway congestion, the question is why aren’t you already leaving? There are global protests over wide spread economic downturns, saber rattling from several consistently hostile countries, (including one that could trigger another oil crisis,) a jobless rate that’s staggering, a clear downhill tilt to the oil production, and so on and so forth.  There’s no guarantees about where the next Hurricane Irene or Katrina is going to hit. There’s no guarantees about where the next plant closing is going to happen. The only guarantee I see from this point on is that recoveries from the inevitable setbacks will be longer, harder and sparser.  The social nets are already starting to come unraveled:

Closed School in TX

Governor set to close schools on May 1st.

Public Employee Pension accounts headed towards depletion.

US Army Corps of Engineers will delay levee repairs.

States can’t pay their bills.

Why bother sticking around someplace you feel isn’t going to be a viable community when the SHTF? Sure your house may be nice, but you can’t take it with you.  Sure, your job might be nice, but will it survive a grid down scenario or an oil crisis or a reduction in federal spending? You’d arguably be better off if you give it up now, downsize, move to a more SHTF-friendly location, take the cut in pay and start living like you mean to survive. Waiting around to, “time it right” or suck a little more from the federal teat, that’s just a recipe for disaster.  Then you’re looking at having to relocate, job hunt, plant a garden AND rebuild stores all during the first year of a SHTF event.  Major suckage.

I know a lot of our regulars are already hunkered down.  For those that aren’t, what’s holding you back? Be honest. Are you still hoping for that big raise or trying to keep up appearances?  Are you just not ready to give up on the American Dream?

- Calamity Jane

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