posted 3 weeks ago
If "feed in bad times" means "keep alive in the absence of supply chains", you need calorie-dense crops. Look into the culinary traditions of indigenous people in your area and in climates like yours for ideas.
Sunchokes are a permaculture cliche, but they tick the box for "stays long term" and "stores a lot of calories". They can make it tricky to grow other things where you plant them, but few to no climates have problems with sunchokes randomly wandering off into the woods and outcompeting native species there.
Cattails are less widely utilized, but the rhizomes are a good starch. If you can encourage a wet spot somewhere in your garden to stay wet year-round, you may be able to introduce them.
If your climate likes potatoes, it might also like the other south american tubers like yacon and oca.
"healing" means many things to many people. If you're on long-term prescriptions, consider researching any plants from which the compounds in them are derived, and get familiar with the variability in botanically sourced medicines versus industrially sourced ones. plenty of traditional garden herbs have medicinal traditions associated, and the failure mode of small doses is more "doesn't do anything" than "kills you" for the ones we consider edible.
for disinfection, look back to where people got their booze in your region before modern supply chains. alcohol is a powerful cleaning product, and if you're cleaning with it rather than drinking it, you don't have to worry about the "and if you mess this up you go blind" parts of the distillation process.
and if you're looking into holistic plant-enhanced quality of life for prospective bad times, try a bunch of plants whose leaves people claim make good toilet paper, and cultivate an excess of your favorite. Grow lots of them around your outhouse, just in case.