Seeking recommendations for planting a survival garden this year Zone 7A

Howdy all,

I'm in Tulsa Oklahoma.

I have about 3600 square feet swale/berm system I started about 6 or 7 seven years ago.

I'll try to take some current photos tomorrow and post them.

I'm concerned we might face a food rationing situation due to geopolitical crap soon.

What should I grow this year that's easiest to store and share?

I'm thinking potatoes and hard squash, herbs.....what else?

Looking for Ideas.

I never depended on this setup to feed me year round and I haven't invested in drying.canning, but I usually grow some annuals every year and enjoy them.

What's easiest to grow in bulk, high calorie and easily storable?

Hard corn?





 

Following is a list of food plant types in order of importance/value to me personally.  Taken into consideration is what grows easiest and best and is the most reliable and productive for my soil and climate, taking into account nutritional aspects.  Keeping quality/storage characteristics are also taken into serious consideration.  Garden space limitations are issues for many people that will dictate what is grown.  Not a serious issue to me, if I need more square footage I have garden area in rotational fallow ready to be put into production with minimal effort (I planned for such possible negative scenarios long ago).

My Priorities:
1.) Maincrop Tomatoes, Irish Potatoes, Dry Beans, Potato Onions, Winter Squash.
2.) Snap Beans, Carrots, Sweet Peppers.
3.) Beets, Parsnips, Celery, Lettuce, Basil, Shell Peas.
4.) Cabbage, Cowpeas, Kohlrabi, Sweet Potatoes, Spinach, Turnips.
5.) Okra, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Summer Squash, Cucumbers, Sweet Corn, Flour Corn. (Low priorities for various reasons.)
6.) Anything else, very low priority.

If all I got planted were the food plant types in number 1 above, I could deal with it and survive as long as I had enough of them planted.  Numbers 1 & 2 would be much better.  Numbers 1, 2, & 3 happen to be all of my annual priorities, but I plant everything listed and more if I can get it all in.

Tomatoes are by far the most important food crop that I home can in jars for my winter/off season food supply.  I also home can in jars sweet corn, snap beans, carrots, beets, parsnips, peas, kraut, pickles.  These are my priorities but I do others.  If you are not prepared to put up and/or cold storage food for winter/off season survival then you are missing some key facets of home food production.  

Seed saving or at least having a multiyear inventory of commercial seeds in hand is critical as well or you are putting you and your loved ones at risk after only one gardening cycle.  The most unwise assumptions most gardeners make is that distant commercial seed sources will always exist, will always be affordable, will always have inventory available, and will always be accessible.  The seed supply system failed just two years ago, was stressed last year, and many seed companies are still struggling to reacquire inventory of some of their product lines before the 2022 growing season.

You are thinking wisely, I wish you success.

Maybe the more important question is what do you and your family like to eat? What grows well in your area?
I am in central IL, zone 5b - having come to your same conclusion a few years ago, these are the crops I concentrate on:
Winter squash
Pole beans
Sweet potatoes
White potatoes
Onion
Garlic
Kale/spinach
Tomatoes
Asparagus
I have planted but not yet had a harvest from:
Peaches
Blueberries
Apples
Strawberries
Hazelnut
You may also want to consider culinary and medicinal herbs. This is also " chick season" in most farm stores, should you want to insure an egg supply.
If you intend to can your bounty, get out and get lids and flats NOW. They tend to disappear closer to canning season. Jars, water bath canners and pressure canners can often be found at garage sales, auctions and thrift stores!
Good luck!

Focusing on things that grow easily and well in my area is a primary concern for me. Things I grow for fresh eating during the summer are too numerous to list but a few include; tomatoes, green beans, lettuce, okra, broccoli, various small fruits, melons and so on.  

I lack a good storage system for thing like potatoes, no root cellar, so for winter we also can a lot tomatoes, beans, jellies and so on.

Mostly for the off season I focus on things that can easily be stored dry or that keep witout refiegeration. This includes common beans, lima beans, cowpeas, soybeans, peanuts and corn as well some others.

Some things like onions and carrots are also left in the ground over winter and harvested as needed and possible. I'm having pretty good luck adapting some other crops for overwinter hardiness and harvest.

A primary winter staple rather than squash is sweet potatoes. They also take the place of regular potatoes as they are much easier to grow for me and keep just fine in the unheated spare bedroom. Due to insect, disease and weather issues, squash and potatoes are both difficult for me. They do fine sometimes but often not, sweet potatoes are much more reliable.

I've found in recent years many things I used to think of as southern, like the sweet potatoes, peanuts and cowpeas do really well for me in SE IN, the same might be true for you.

I think overall it's most important to discover what will grow and produce well for you, even more so than what you really like or think is most nutritional. Happily for us what will grow an what we like are often the same.

Potatoes, beans, and squash would top my list.  Beans store longer than anything and when combined with other foods are a good protein source.  Potatoes are pretty easy to store and provide more calories than others.  Squash store for a really, really long time.  I would plant about 75% of my area with those and then round out the last 25% with anything else I like to eat, especially the nutrient powerhouses with long harvest like kale.

For a long term plan, I would definitely get some fruit and nut trees in the ground, as many as possible.  The more trees, the more food without the annual work.

You didn't mention this, but above all else, I would have chickens.  I don't eat mine, but if you had to, you could.  Barring that, the eggs are an excellent food choice, great protein and fat, the hardest things to get from plants.  They are easy to store, can be used about 1,000 ways, and most everyone likes them in some form or another.

Many years ago, I did a lot of nutritional research and came up with an eating plan that would provide 100% or more of all the RDAs of all macro- and micro-nutrients. Most of my research was lost over the course of changing computers, but the list of plants required was:

Tomatoes
Potatoes
Carrots
Peas
Parsley
Sunflower Seeds
Sesame Seeds
Flax Seeds

In the right proportions, these, plus meat, milk, and eggs, will give you all the calories, protein, vitamins, and minerals you need.

Personally, I would add other things like beans, squash, corn, melons, garlic, etc. But those 8 plants would be my absolute minimums.

How much of each plant? Well, that's one of the calculations that got lost. I do remember that, when translated into square feet of gardening space, each person's needs could be met by less than 2000sqft. That did not include space for animal feeds.

I live in 7b. My list is very similar to what's already posted so I'll spare you. Anyways, I am in the same boat as you, trying to ramp up from gardening for fun and health to gardening out of necessity. For now the plan is to do what I can to supplement what we can get/afford and work towards more food production and even more crucial, more storage.

I absolutely love all these gardening suggestions! Everyone should grow as much food as they possibly can and I love the idea of thinking carefully about what will 1) meet our nutritional needs, 2) keep, 3) be shareable /tradeable.

But....

I'm concerned we might face a food rationing situation due to geopolitical crap soon.

My dad said pretty much this exact thing in 1979 during the oil crisis that followed in the wake of the Iranian revolution. He started biking to work and we planted a huge garden. The whole family was much healthier as a result, but there has been no food rationing in 40+ years since.
We don't know what the next crisis will be, but we do know how to be resilent.
Grow a garden, store food, be healthy.
Do it for you and be happy about it.

"To look out the window at food in the ground gives us power to face the unknown."

I grew up with older people who lived through the Great Depression when they were in their 30s and had small children.  I listened intently when they told of their experiences, and it scared the hell out of me.  Even in old age they were obviously traumatized but would never dare to show weakness by admitting to it, they were scarred and I could see it in their tired eyes.  They never took chances for the rest of their lives, all made sure they had money and food saved up, all had gardens, all did home canning, many had chickens, they never threw anything away that might be useful, and they never, ever took anything for granted.

My parents were children during the Great Depression and often reminisced about food scarcity, and my mother grew up on a farm of all things (the same farm where I happen to live).  Her parents raised beef cattle, dairy cattle, pigs, and chickens.  The family never ate beef and pork unless an animal went lame, because these animals needed to be sold to generate cash income they desperately needed to pay bills.  The milk from the dairy cattle was almost worthless so grandpa thinned that herd down to what the family needed and sold the rest off.  They tended large gardens and ate a lot of vegetables.  My father was sent to live with his grandparents as a child because his parents could not afford to feed their large family.  His older brothers quit school and went off to work wherever they could find it, and they ended up joining the army a couple years before the attack on Pearl Harbor so were the first to be sent off.

When the high inflation and various crises occurred in the 1970s many of those traumatized people went into a reflexive panic mode (PTSD?) and started thinking about survival.  They were wise to do so, even though things did level off again.  My point is better safe than sorry, as far as I am concerned.  The big difference from then compared to today is that today systems and infrastructures are strained to the point of collapse, and global and national debts are off the charts in all of human history.  Wade through the lies and propaganda and it is obvious to see that these are perilous times and it would be best to hedge and act accordingly.

"Normalcy Bias: A cognitive bias which leads people to disbelieve or minimise threat warnings. People fail to comprehend that things will not carry on as they are forever. Consequently, individuals underestimate the likelihood of a disaster, when it might affect them, and its potential adverse effects."

Thanks for all the replies, I'll try to reply individually after I read them all a few times.

When I designed this little hugelkultur food forrest, my intention was always to move to another property. I'm electromagnetically hypersensitive and there are two cell masts on my block, one within 100 yards of my home, the other about 200 yards away.

I needed to move when I began this project, but various circumunstances have delayed and prevented that.

I could have expanded the system to cover the entire back yard by now if I had kept expanding it, butat this location I was more interested in diversifying it and learning how to grow the perrenieas I wanted, how to manage weeds(bermuda grass in particular) and which conditions different plants preferred.

For example I planted asparagus in serveral places, at several levels up the berm, figured out they like my lower 8" of berm, similar things with Elephant garlic, they like a flat area next to a wild plum, spinach is pretty happy on the very top of the berms, but I have to plant it in late the fall I get a bumper crop, it germinates stays small, through the winter then goes nuts when it warms up the right amount.

I get more spinach and kale that way than planting it in the spring, and I get seeds that way also. Same with cilantro. I never get a seed crop if I plant in the spring,

That might be partially because I'm late when I spring plant because I haven't figured it out yet, but the late fall/ early winter planting usually works with several of these plants.

Anyhow I never did chickens, never dug a root celler, because I didn't want to invest the money and energy on it at a house I intended to move away from.

The way I justified the effort I did put in (and I did put in a lot of labor LOL building the berms....hauled in hundreds perhaps thousands of pickup loads of organic materials....was

1)If the buyer likes it and wants to keep it, I'll take some cuttings and dig up some roots, as part of the deal.

2)If the buyer doesn't like it, I'll rent a bobcat, and dig the trees and other plants out, then load the rest into dumptrucks and move it.

Haha.

Then smooth it flat and sod it over.

For certain in a permanant place I want a root celler. And Cistern and ponds and other things.

Chickens are easy and I could have trained my dogs to leave them alone but I've had neighbor dogs and strays hop the fence and it just wasn't worth investing in a secure enclosure here.

But...for this season, my mother has a basement in her home, and I could store potatoes and squash there.

Because of smart meters I have no utilities at my house except 400W of solar, I bought a kit, welded my own frame(adjustable so I can tilt them towards the sun seasonally) but it's barely enough to power some lights and a laptop and LED tv/DVD player.

No refrigeration.

No cold celler.

Plenty cold in the winter to store stuff in most of the house during winter.

I had depression era grandparents, and great aunts and uncles, and I did one year can some pickles, My great Aunt's June's recipe. If I find it, I'll share it.

She called them kosher dills, an approximation of it without measurements:(She was Chrutian I only phrase it that way because...can a Christian make Kosher food? LOL

Diluted apple cider vinegar(forget the ratio)
Fresh garlic
Fresh dill
Yellow mustard Seed
Kosher salt(forget the amount/ratio)

You pack he jars with chopped up fresh garlic, fresh dill sprigs, etc and the cucumbers, then boil the vinegar water and salt, pour that in to fill it, then seal it. Then you are supposed to sterilize it by double boilering it, or whatnot but I didn't bother.

Haha. Wait a few months.

Turned out great.

But the mason jars were super expensive.

I did three cases that year and gave two away ate the rest

Great Aunt June canned every day of her life almost. If it wasn't garden greens it was jams and jellies. She almosr singlehandedly funded the construction of a new church by selling her canned goods as a fundraiser.

I think the congregation/neighbors must have returned the jars though.

It's impractical for me to "can" emergency preps.

Unless it's dried veg. You can put dried veg in mason jars and make it more cost effective. Instant stew just rehydrate?

But generally regarding canning, It makes more sense for me to buy canned salmon and canned tomatoes than mason jars.

Right now.

This year.

Based on the cost of mason jars.

Canning sun-dried stuff is a good idea maybe though.

Laura Trovillion wrote:Maybe the more important question is what do you and your family like to eat? What grows well in your area?
I am in central IL, zone 5b - having come to your same conclusion a few years ago, these are the crops I concentrate on:
Winter squash
Pole beans
Sweet potatoes
White potatoes
Onion
Garlic
Kale/spinach
Tomatoes
Asparagus
I have planted but not yet had a harvest from:
Peaches
Blueberries
Apples
Strawberries
Hazelnut
You may also want to consider culinary and medicinal herbs. This is also " chick season" in most farm stores, should you want to insure an egg supply.
If you intend to can your bounty, get out and get lids and flats NOW. They tend to disappear closer to canning season. Jars, water bath canners and pressure canners can often be found at garage sales, auctions and thrift stores!
Good luck!

Thanks,

I should get some asparagus this year.

I've been planting a few roots every year for the last few years, wish I has started them the first year.

They didnt' like where I planted them a few times, and I found the sweet place two years ago.

But this might be of interest to everybody:

From what I have read asparagus can develop a deep root system, up to or maybe more than ten feet deep.

They like loose sandy loam(The best asparagus around Tulsa comes from Bixby...sandy loam area....S. E. Hinton's Tex....

I didn't have loose soil, when I started it was clay soil. What loosened up my soil was the addition of manures and water management. Bacteria plus nutrients plus water lets clay soils expand into loose soil.

The NEXT time I construct a wood log based berm, I want to try this:

1)drill and innoculate the logs with mushroom spawn
2)Build two slanted stacks of logs with a gap at the apex.
3)Fill the in between space with rich compost.
4)Plant asparagus on top after the whole structure is topped with soil.

My hypothesis is based on asparagus failures. They don't like it when they drill down and hit wood.

But they don't mind being high up.

As long as they can drill down.

I'm thinking asparagus might be the perfect plant to move water as a pump if I plant them in between to impearmeable log structures. On top.

The water they bring up can help water the top plants near them.

At year seven most of my logs are becoming dirt, but this might speed that up.

Best bamboo?

7a

With permission, I dug up a little root cluster of a wimpy local bamboo.

I chose it because I was taught to be fearful about river cane, a heartier local  that sends out long suckers above and below ground like Godzilla bermuda.

LOL.

I want bamboo I can eat. I want bamboo I can make scaffoldings with.

Which species does best in 7a?

The river cane is evergreen.

The wimpy one I planted is annual..

Neither one is best for food but river cane is great for basket making, fishing poles and architecture.

Of the two.