Imagine a horrible situation: a SHTF event happens tomorrow, and you are completely unprepared for your long-term food supply. Sure, you can hunt, and, if you are a proponent of the zero carb diet, maybe this will work for you, but not everyone wants to live on meat and water alone. Some of us actually like our veggies. So, what to do?
Answer: Grow your own from your kitchen scraps.
Yes, I’m serious. Fortunately, a number of vegetables can germinate from your kitchen scraps without you needing to have a seed base to work from which means that you can get a garden growing with a little water, sunlight, sometimes dirt, and ingenuity.
So, what can you grow this way? Here’s a short list of options for you:
- Lettuce or cabbage: You’ll need the heart of the lettuce or cabbage, a bowl, some water, and some sunlight. Put the heart in a bowl with about 1/2 inch of water and let it sit sunlight for three or four days, and it will start sprouting. Replace the water every few days because it will start to smell. Once harvested, just repeat the process.
- Scallions and green onions: Cover the white base in water and put it on a windowsill in sunlight. This one takes about a week to sprout. You’ll want to replace the water every few days. Just repeat this process when you want more of these.
- Onions: Using the onion’s root section, follow the directions in #2 above. Once the bulb has grown back, transfer this into a big pot of soil to finish growing.
- Celery: Put an inch or two in a jar of water in a sunny area. Replace the water regularly. You’ll have growth which you can harvest within a few weeks.
- Garlic: This may be the easiest one of all. Plant one garlic clove root down in soil, and put it where it can get sunlight. The whole plant will regrow.
- Ginger: Plant a fresh piece of ginger root nubbins down partially covered in soil. Put it in indirect sunlight, keep the soil moist, and give it about two weeks.
There are other plants that are easy to regrow, too, such as bean sprouts, but you get the idea, and now you can start a garden without seeds.
What other vegetables do you grow without seeds. Comment below.
Potatoes, but you have to start with a potato with a skin and even… No boxes or frozen (lol)
Unless you have a garden cranking along all the time like I do here in Florida you will starve waiting to grow your own food if you just start when things go bad. Prepare and get started now. It’s all about the dirt.
Wildcraft. Before agriculture, humanity knew the herbs and wild plants that would keep you alive, There are books, videos, and other sources to help you find the edibles in nature. In my yard, elephant garlic, wild onion, and dandelions grow, because I do not use herbicides, ever. My yard is mowed close, but weeds grow with the grass. My gardens include sandplums, mulberries, apples, peaches, chives and oregano, In a SHTF situation, plants that grow naturally, in city and country, may be the difference between being fed and unfed. Freeze drying and pickling can get you through the winter.
You can also pressure can a great deal of different foods safely. Buy them on sale in a store and can as much as you are able BEFORE there’s a life-or-death situation at hand. Home canned foods last much longer than store bought cans, and the jars are reusable.
Well said. If you have to bug out, dehydrators are very handy, because the food lasts a long time, and the dehydrated food is portable and light, and can be eaten as is. Canning is great if you have to hunker down for the long haul, with no electricity, and the food can be eaten unheated..
Potato “eyes” the white growth on potatos. The are poisonous but when pealed from the potato, they can be planted in soil, and will grow a new plant, and produce more potato’s . Carrots, parsnips are other root plants that when the top is replanted will grow again, but will not look like the original, there will be several roots. Because carrots, and parsnips are biennial plants, the second planting can be left and let go to seed, for a bountiful crop of regular plants the next planting season. Certain roses that produce large budlike seed pockets, called rose hips, can be used for a healthy tea. Navy beans can be grown in a container, in the house, just plant in soil, and put in a sunny window, and harvest green beans.
Search the internet for a recipe for Pemmican. Pemmican was developed in North America by native tribes. Lewis and Clark carried pemmican when they walked all the way from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean on their Corp of Discovery Expedition. It is a dehydrated mixture of meat, fat and fruit. It will keep “forever” and is highly nutritious.
Lamb’s quarters is the north American variety of quinoa. Redroot pigweed is the north American variety of amaranth. Niether depends on bees for pollenation. Both can be eaten raw or cooked.
Sweet potatoes may be propagated from slips, leaves can be eaten cooked. To grow slips place a whole sweet potato in a warm dark place 80F to 100F. Cut the slip off when it is just longer than a bottle place not over one inch of water in th bottle remove all leaves below the mouth of the bottle roots form quickly. Plant with only a few leaves left on the top remove all leaves that would be below soil level.
Most opuntia caci that have flat stems the young pads can be dethorned and eaten like nopal cacti. They also produce seeds that must be ground if you’re going to digest them. The seeds are harder than your teeth and will pass undigested. Many of the same cacti provide edible fruit.
yea that’s what I was thinking and another thing when and if tshf where and what store are you going to get your stuff to get your kitchen scraps so you better stick with food storage and seeds and I ain’t sure about the seeds unless you can fight to keep what you grow
Yes, few people know that navy beans are the beans from string beans. Also Coriander seeds, if planted, grow cilantro.
Also, flax seeds grow either more seeds, or linen. There are also sunflowers for lots of seeds, Corn kernels from a dried cob, etc.
The “three sisters” (corn, beans and squash) all help each other. The corn stalks give the beans (or peas) places to wind around, the beans put nitrogen in the soil, and the squash has thorns which keeps animals from getting in and eating everything. And they all produce food.
Like!! Really appreciate you sharing this blog post.Really thank you! Keep writing.