Guerrilla Gardening for Long-Term Survival

"It takes a lot of food for an active person to survive."

Eating local takes on a whole new meaning in a survival scenario, and while growing your own food is never easy, it is the surest way to a full belly. A crop can be nurtured, controlled, and even protected as need be. To a starving stranger or a starving horde, your crops or pantry items are probably worth more than is your life. You won't have to defend something that nobody covets—and nobody covets what they don't know you have.

The ability to feed oneself efficiently and discreetly under varying conditions could be an indispensable skill in a prolonged upheaval where normal food distribution is halted or seriously disrupted. Gardening of any kind is not rocket science—people have been doing it for millennia all across the globe—but there are specific skills you will need to develop to get macro production in clandestine micro settings:

• Choosing appropriate and compatible crops
• Camouflaging crops with natural and improvised screens
• Maximizing natural barrier plants and pesticides
• Adapting raised-bed, square-foot, tower, and canopy gardening to your site
• Feeding your garden with natural compost and manure
• Growing foods without soil or sunshine

An added bonus of growing your own food is that it is cheaper, fresher, tastier, and as organic as you make it, and your footprint (carbon and otherwise) is greatly minimized. The perfect companion to his Eating on the Run and Survival Guide to Edible Insects, Fred Demara's new how-to manual, Guerrilla Gardening for Long-Term Survival, gives readers food for thought about starting their own guerrilla gardens.