#132 - Why You Should Be Planting A Garden Now
I have heard many people say that they are prepared for a disaster or whatever SHTF situation may come. They boast about their preps and that they have a purchased a "Seed Vault" with heirloom seeds so that they will be able to grow food afterward in the event of a long-term situation once they run low on their stored food supplies. I hate to say it but in the preparedness world, someone like this is referred to as a victim, not a survivor.
Those seeds sitting in your preps are doing you absolutely no good at all, and when the time comes when you finally decide to plant them, unless you are quite experienced at gardening, they aren't going to do you much good then either, except give you a false-sense of hope while you slowly starve to death.
You can not expect to just take a handful of seeds that you ordered online from a Prepper Supply Store and place them into the ground which you have not properly maintained and prepared beforehand, and suddenly expect them to grow plants that will miraculously save you and your family from starvation. I'm sorry, but that is not how gardening works.
It takes years to learn how to garden and produce enough food to feed your family. It takes years to learn how to learn how to prevent or deal with root diseases, fungal growths, and control insects and pests from destroying your plants and stealing that precious food right out of the hands of your family.
The time to learn how to garden and grow food is not after an SHTF situation happens, it is right now, today. If you are not learning how to grow your own food right now and gaining that invaluable experience as a gardener, you and your family will starve to death after a long-term SHTF situation happens.
So, when your tomato plants develop blight, leaf mold, or blossom end rot, what do you do about it? When your lettuce gets attacked by nematodes, how do you deal with them? You won't be able to Google it and look up the answers to save your crops.
This is why it is so important to learn these things now, when it is not a matter of life and death. If a crop fails now because of a mistake you made, it is ok, you are not going to starve because of it. You learn from the mistake, correct it, and try again.
However, if you wait to try to learn to garden when it is a matter of life and death, you are not going to make it. The majority of all gardeners take at least two or three growing seasons to finally be able to get a decent harvest, all that time learning from their mistakes until they finally get it right.
So, would it be better for you to plant you garden directly in the ground or in raised beds? Different conditions would necessitate the use of one over the other. Knowing about the differences, the benefits of each, and when to use each is valuable information that can impact your outcome of your harvest.
So, do you have enough food stored up and enough seeds stored away to get you and your family through two or three years of failed harvests before you are finally able to grow your own food successfully?
Unless you have been living in a cave, under a rock, with no electricity or access to social media, you are aware of the severe weather that has been affecting the mainland US this year with all of the storms and resulting flooding and how it has affected the farming industry. That situation is trickling down to the grocery stores now as we see empty shelves and product shortage signs on grocery store shelves across the United States.
Those shortages are not going to be a short-term situation as the signs lead you to believe because many of those farmers were never able to plant at all this year. The ones who were able to plant will have a drastic reduction in the crops they will be able to harvest. Both of those thing combined will lead to continued shortages of those products.
It will also lead to higher food prices because of supply vs. demand. Anytime an item is in short supply, or even perceived to be in short supply as in the case of oil for instance, that in turn drives the price of the item up.
Expect higher food prices over the next few years, and that will not just affect vegetables as the signs also lead you to believe. That will also affect meat and dairy products as well because those crop shortages also affect the feed for cattle. If the cost of their feed goes up, the cattle ranchers will in turn pass that higher cost on in the price of their cattle when it goes to market.
The weather isn't going to suddenly get better next year with no storms affecting farming. Each year we seem to have more and more severe storms. Both the frequency and the intensity of the storms is increasing and that will continue due to the solar minimum that we are currently in. It will not improve for several years until we come out of the solar minimum and the sun becomes more active once again.
Use this time that we still have to learn how to garden and grow your own food. Do it now, while you still have other options. Don't wait until it is too late and you are out of options. Think about what just happened in Venezuela, how the citizens were eating their own pets and zoo animals to try to survive.
Don't put your families through that when you can avoid it by simply learning how to grow a garden today.
Until Next Time,
Aloha & 73
