Even if you could grow allll your own food, you can't store it all safely long-term. Most foods can't be canned without botulism and will go bad in the freezer. And there's so much to know about canning dos snd don'ts.

There's prepper companies who are experts in "long term food storage." They sell food in #10 cans or in food grade plastic buckets, some contain several mylar type bag portions, all of which can last 10-20 years off the floor in a cool dry room. If you want to prep, go there.

For a garden, a 4x4 raised bed can fit 3 or 4 tomatoe plants you can eat for a few months. You can use old potatoes with ears to plant away from tomatoes in sacks. They must be grown apart. Deer and squirrels will eat it all anyway unless you have tall fencing. It's a lot of work.

Truly, there isn't much most people can do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Growing your own food isn't easy or cheap unless you know how to grow it from seeds and how to make your own seeds for the next year.

It doesn't take a PhD in rocket engineering. Trial and error? Sure. It's not that hard, nor that expensive once you get over the initial investment.

Think you meant Aerospace engineering.

Anonymous wrote:Growing your own food isn't easy or cheap unless you know how to grow it from seeds and how to make your own seeds for the next year.

+1 the costs for homegrown surpasses the inflation rates.

Anonymous wrote:We live in Florida most of the time. Right now I have okra, peppers, cucumber, tomatoes, melon, lettuce, lots of herbs. And my loquat tree is making so much fruit.

I’ll plant beans (different types), cauliflower, kale, maybe a few others…in the fall. Then, cabbage, broccoli, potatoes (different types) and peas in December/January.

I also have orange trees that produce more than I could ever use. Lemon and lime trees. And fig trees. We have laying chickens. Plenty of wild game and fish on the property.

I’m not worried about a food shortage. I just enjoy growing much of my own food.

Sounds like you have an awesome setup. The DMV is zone 7 though. We can't have citrus outdoors. We can grow kale, peas, etc in the spring/fall but not the winter or summer.

I started growing vegetables in 2020 because of covid. We eat a lot of salads and I can keep us in lettuce and tomatoes most of the spring and summer. But lettuce doesn't keep for winter ... I guess if we were really pressed we could grow it indoors. I tried more robust veggies like broccoli but those are too space intensive. I'm trying potatoes this year, but potatoes are cheap to buy.

It's never cheaper than the store. Beds, soil, pest control ... especially when one bad weather episode can wipe you out. I think there are many good reasons to grow your own food. It's just not more economical than an expert with professional equipment and all day to work on it.

I would love to see front yard produce gardens become more common / socially acceptable. I'd also like the restrictions on residential chickens to lighten up a bit.

I grew tomatoes and bell peppers one year. When it was all said and done I realized I spent about $3 per tomato / bell pepper. Which is about 3 times the cost of either at the grocery store.
I grew each plant in 5 gallon buckets. Bought potting soil and fertilizer. Bought lots of other stuff. Had to water the plants at least every other day, so I couldn't go on vacation all summer. I bought a timer for the sprinkler so the sprinkler would come on by itself when we went out of town for a few days. When we got back we discovered that the hose busted open, so there was a huge puddle / quasi swamp in the yard.

And then just as the tomatoes would start pinking up, critters would come along and take a bit out of them.

The positive thing is that we learned home grown tomatoes really taste so much better than store bought tomatoes.

Anonymous wrote:Roma tomatoes and green beans. Growing potatoes is great too, but can't use same garden as tomatoes.

Buy tomatoe plants at a nursery. You can fit 4 plants in a 4x4 raised garden. You can buy raised garden in Amazon, and fill with soil and compost from a nursery. For potatoes, you can buy velcro sacks on Amazon. Save your old potatoes and they will grow stems. Then just cut in half and put in soil. Stem up. For beans, I just metal rake a few bags of compost into a cleared yard area and put seeds in ground. You will likely need deer fencing though. That's the crappiest part of getting going.

You don’t have to grow from seed unless you are very particular about varieties. Home Depot and nurseries will have seedlings for $2-5 each depending on size. That’s a good price for the amount of tomatoes,peppers or herbs you can harvest from one plant.

We live in Florida most of the time. Right now I have okra, peppers, cucumber, tomatoes, melon, lettuce, lots of herbs. And my loquat tree is making so much fruit.

I’ll plant beans (different types), cauliflower, kale, maybe a few others…in the fall. Then, cabbage, broccoli, potatoes (different types) and peas in December/January.

I also have orange trees that produce more than I could ever use. Lemon and lime trees. And fig trees. We have laying chickens. Plenty of wild game and fish on the property.

I’m not worried about a food shortage. I just enjoy growing much of my own food.

Anonymous wrote:There is a book called “buy the butter, make the bread” that breaks down the economics of homemade things. Check it out of the library.

But it’s not ‘grow the wheat’.

PS maybe bunnies for protein? I'd say chickens but you know DCUM and back yard chickens....

Op, grow things that do well where you live. Even a little food could help in an emergency.

Some ideas, pumpkins tomatoes garlic beets sweet potatoes all grow well for me. A fruit tree is always a good idea. Easy to grow your own lettuce. Herbs. Green onions. Dandelions are healthy to eat.

It’s an expensive hobby. very time intensive and unless you are unemployable it will be more expensive than grocery prices (even from seeds.). Here are a few reasons: You need to start seeds indoors growing seedlings in trays. Then you need to make raised beds using non toxic materials and having low fencing to keep out rabbits. You also need to buy tons of soil for the beds (or make rich compost from many many pounds of leftovers over probably a year or two.).
The hot summers we have here are brutal on things like tomatoes and spinach but are ok for okra, kale and cherry tomatoes. Potato’s and onions take a lot of space and are the cheapest things you can buy at the store, I would not waste your time or space on them. I would do beans and some hearty greens and zucchini or cucumber. Then you need to water/weed and trellis/trim everyday during summer and do bug inspections and use soap spray for the bugs if you don’t want to use pesticides. You will need someone to take over if you leave for vacation for a few days. Your yields will be high all at once so you will need to use canning or freezing. It’s a labor of love and in no way a cost savings in any possible inflation scenario but great for learning to appreciate how lucky we are to have our abundant agricultural infrastructure. It really only makes financial sense if you cannot work or can only make pennies an hour.

Anonymous wrote:You're going to have to move further out to have enough land to be able to raise enough food to feed your family, especially if you want any variety at all in your meals.

Myth. You can actually grow tremendous amounts of food in small spaces with willpower. There are tons of YouTube videos showing examples.

Anonymous wrote:Growing your own food isn't easy or cheap unless you know how to grow it from seeds and how to make your own seeds for the next year.

It doesn't take a PhD in rocket engineering. Trial and error? Sure. It's not that hard, nor that expensive once you get over the initial investment.