• 50 Posts
  • 236 Comments
Joined 2 months ago
cake
Cake day: March 28th, 2026

help-circle








  • A lot of people commenting here don’t seem to actually be from the prepper community and are giving very naive advice that requires you to have a lot of space, resources, knowledge and luck. Growing a garden is unequivocally not a good idea as your primary food source for a myriad of reasons, if you have the space, time, physical capacity, knowledge, context to grow a garden definitely do so, things like fruit trees, berry bushes and potatoes can be good options but don’t provide steady streams of food and lack protein. Generally long term shelf stable foods and “high value” items for bartering are what is suggested when prepping is being discussed. Don’t forget ways to provide yourself with clean fresh water too, that’s critical if infrastructure breaks down.

    There’s a lot of resources out there on survival food prep, what is good, bad, safe, best practices etc. gardening is never suggested as a first line of defense. I’d suggest you dig into your local areas prepping community because the particular difficulties you may face, what’s available, what conditions you need to work around etc. will all be unique, plus learning to avoid problems with prepping preemptively will be the things that actually help. Having enough to share and trade with other people is also highly important.



  • Producing food, year round, to feed yourself/family is actually insanely difficult. Small scale farming that provides year round is no small task and generally not considered “good” advice for prepping. Do that if you want to supplement sure but you’re going to die if your only source of food is the garden in your yard. Farming is a very labor intensive and resource consuming, highly contextual skill that requires highly specific knowledge with a huge variety of variables that can also just flat out fail through no fault of your own, it’s not a safe plan for survival.

    Long term shelf stable foods like rice, beans, grains, pastas, canned goods, canned protein, dried goods, dried spices/seasoning and salt all need to be stocked before you consider growing fresh food as part of the equation. Also canning/preserving food will be a huge task if you plan to rely on your own grown food, which is in and of itself a time consuming skill that requires the correct tools and knowledge to do well and safely.

    If the time comes that your only food option is home grown food you’re as good as starved in basically the entirety of the US and I’m sure most other developed nations. If you happen to live in an agricultural valley that has actual real, dedicated farms with farmers who actually know how to produce food at scale you will survive longer but it will still be very difficult and social connections would likely serve you better than wasting all your time and energy working a yard garden that produces a measly haul, go spend that time doing what the farmer needs so you can barter.