Sir,
No one should ever plant Japanese Knotweed, even for survival purposes.  The stuff is so aggressive that it can tear a house off its foundation in a matter of months.  I've read of at least one case in England that required the top ten feet of soil be dug out and hauled away to keep it from sprouting again.  If your readers find this invader someplace and can eat it, wonderful.  But  I pray they don't make the mistake of thinking this would be a great addition to their survival garden. - Kathryn D.

Dear SurvivalBloggers:
For all who are called to the American Redoubt: Secure your food and preserve your freedom of action!

If you don't have a place to grow your own healthy food, support those who do. Go in for shares. Help them every way you can. Growing all your own food now may not be economically viable, but secure sources of food are your lifeline in the future. Our goal should be not only to survive, but to thrive!

My brother and I were born and raised in the American Redoubt and grew up living the life of “preppers” and “survivalists” out of financial and environmental necessity. We did not realize our lifestyle was unusual until going off on scholarships to boarding school on the east coast and college in the south. In these uncertain times, we have come back home to our wild mountains, to make the preparations that need to be made. As our father, New Ordinance, says, “I want to turn the lights back on. As I see it, we are here not only to survive the approaching vicissitudes but to preserve the ‘arts of civilization’ and pass the torch to the next generation so that a new civilization can emerge from the detritus of the old to fulfill the original promise and destiny of America.” (From “The Secret Weapon,” Copyright © 2012 New Ordinance)

Speaking as a member of my generation, this is a daunting responsibility. How does one take that first step in the fabled journey of a thousand miles? Our family has begun with the foundation of all civilizations, a reliable food supply. “Food is the sine qua non of all weapons, for he who controls the food supply controls the fate of nations and individuals…. Come what may, a long-term food supply allows the development of the resistance and foments new strategies that are outside the control mechanism. We play our own game, not the adversary's game.” (From “The Secret Weapon,” Copyright © 2012 New Ordinance)

We have been engaged in small scale agriculture for a number of years, searching for crops and agricultural methods that can feed communities across the American Redoubt without a descent into subsistence farming and feudal agriculture. Corn is the easiest grain to cultivate and harvest by hand, easier by far than the cereal grains. Our family has discovered this from real, personal experience. In a world of increasing gluten intolerance and fatal health consequences, corn is also one of the best alternatives for gluten intolerant preppers, like myself and my father. But almost all strains of corn have been contaminated by the genetically engineered Franken-corn that dominates the bread-basket of America. All, that is, except Painted Mountain Corn. What is Painted Mountain Corn?

Simply put, it’s a corn that grows where no other corn can survive. Bred to withstand the harsh climate and short growing season of southwestern Montana, we’ve found that it’s the only corn that will grow and reliably produce at elevations above 5,000 feet in the northern Rocky Mountains. Bred from a variety of semi-extinct western Indian corns, Painted Mountain Corn represents a gene pool with 1,000 years of selection for reliable production in the arid and nutrient-poor soils of the western United States. It is high in anti-oxidants and soft starches and has been tested with protein as high as 13%, which is comparable to hard red winter wheat.

Painted Mountain Corn is GMO-free, open pollinated, and non-hybrid, so you can save your own seed. It is the life’s work of Dave Christensen and the Seed We Need project. Consider giving a donation to his work.

Our family discovered Painted Mountain Corn three years ago and realized that this is the perfect grain for small-scale, independent farmers in the American Redoubt. However, the seed is expensive and difficult to find, and the few seed companies who carry it have very limited supplies and sell out quickly. That is what led us to start growing our family’s crop for seed, and to begin what we call The Painted Mountain Corn Project.

The Painted Mountain Corn Project has two goals. First, to spread Painted Mountain Corn across the inter-mountain west. Second, to feed the American Redoubt.

Grow your own organic GMO-free corn as a basic component of your food storage program, an annual component of your daily food consumption plan and as a source of income in sharing the seed with your neighbors and your community.

Disclosure: We are a small family Painted Mountain Corn seed business, growing and selling the seed online and at gun shows across Montana. We have a small supply of Painted Mountain Corn seed still available for planting this spring. While we love and grow Painted Mountain Corn, we have no affiliation or endorsement from Dave Christensen or the Seed We Need project.

For more about our family and our experiences with small scale grain raising in the American Redoubt, visit our web site.

- Chief (A 23 year-old female physicist, farmer and writer)

Nature is amazing, I love plants. Not only does just looking at them produce a calming effect, they are beneficial to us in every way. From food, to medicine, glue and rope, plants give us everything we need. These are my top five favorite plants because they are amazing, easy to grow or find and have many uses which are especially valid in TEOTWAWKI. Here are my favorite plants found in the wild, and in the garden, and the reasons why.

1. Garlic
 Garlic is great for two reasons, it is a food and a medicine. All parts are edible except for the skin and woody stalk among the cloves. It is the easiest thing to grow and cheap to do so as one clove produces one head. In the garden, it also is said to repel rabbits and moles.
The health benefits are numerous to using garlic as it is reputed to have antibacterial, antimicrobial, diuretic, antifungal, and antiviral properties. Not only is it flavorful, but beneficial in the prevention and treatment of many common ailments.

“There are many miracles in the world to be celebrated and, for me, garlic is the most deserving.”  - Leo Buscaglia

Here are some uses for garlic:
 -insect repellent when ingested in larger amounts or when rubbed on topically, treatment for bee and wasp stings
-high blood pressure treatment/ management
-remedy sore throats, cold hands and feet, earache, tight headaches
-treat fungal skin infections like thrush
-treat and prevent bacterial and viral infections, urinary tract infections, bronchial and lung infections
-treatment for pinworms, roundworms, tapeworms, hookworms, warts
-reduce nasal congestion, coughs, respiratory problems
-boost resistance to candida infections
-flu, cold, stye, prevention
-effective against a wide range of pathogenic bacteria, influenza, meningitis
-boost immunity, circulation
-poultice for aches, pains, sprains
-help with poor digestion, help regulate blood sugar
-prevent scurvy, prevent gangrene
-boost testosterone with a high protein diet (suggested in a study with rats)
-enhance thiamine absorption
-garlic juice used as an adhesive when mending glass, porcelain
-natural antibiotic, 1 milligram of allicin is the estimated equivalent of 15 standard units of penicillin
-inhibit clotting

2. Cayenne Pepper
We love our food spicy. Cayenne is the easiest 'go to' to spice it up a little, or a lot. Again I'm a fan of multi purpose and cayenne is not only a staple in the kitchen but a great thing to have in a medical kit, and as personal protection. Cayenne contains capsaicin, vitamin A, B6, C, E, riboflavin, potassium, and manganese.
"If you master only one herb in your life, master cayenne pepper. It is more powerful than any other." - Dr. Schulze
"In 35 years of practice, and working with the people and teaching, I have never on house calls lost one heart attack patient and the reason is, whenever I go in--if they are still breathing--I pour down them a cup of cayenne tea (a teaspoon of cayenne in a cup of hot water, and within minutes they are up and around)." - Dr. Christopher
Uses:
-aphrodisiac in males
-ant repellent
-topical anti-inflammatory for joint pain, back pain, arthritis, and nerve pain (Do not use on broken skin)
-remedy cold hands and feet
-soothe chilblains with ointment containing cayenne
-prevent gas when used in meals
-stop a heart attack with cayenne tea, 1 tsp cayenne dissolved in 1 cup hot water
-ease dyspepsia symptoms
-rebuild tissue in the stomach and peristalic action in the intestines
-aids elimination and assimilation
-aids the body in creating hydrochloric acid
-boost circulation, increase heart action, arrest shock symptoms
-lower blood pressure
-overcome fatigue, restore stamina, vigor
-stop hemmoraging
-improve itching of psoriasis
-fight pancreatic cancer
-headache relief
-pepper spray main ingredient...cayenne

3. Dandelion
I used to hate seeing all those yellow flowers infiltrating my green lawn, now it almost pains me to mow them down. Dandelions are higher in beta carotene than carrots and higher in iron and calcium than spinach. They contain the vitamins B1, B2, B5, B6, B12, C, E, P, and D, biotin, bitter glycosides, inositol, terpenoids, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium and zinc.
"Suppose your doctor tells you, on your next visit, that he has just discovered a miracle drug which, when eaten as a part of your daily diet or taken as a beverage, could, depending on the peculiarities of your body chemistry: prevent or cure liver diseases, such as hepatitis or jaundice; act as a tonic and gentle diuretic to purify your blood, cleanse your system, dissolve kidney stones, and otherwise improve gastro-intestinal health; assist in weight reduction; cleanse your skin and eliminate acne; improve your bowel function, working equally well to relieve both constipation and diarrhea; prevent or lower high blood pressure; prevent or cure anemia; lower your serum cholesterol by as much as half; eliminate or drastically reduce acid indigestion and gas buildup by cutting the heaviness of fatty foods; prevent or cure various forms of cancer; prevent or control diabetes mellitus; and, at the same time, have no negative side effects and selectively act on only what ails you. If he gave you a prescription for this miracle medicine, would you use it religiously at first to solve whatever the problem is and then consistently for preventative body maintenance?"-Peter Gail
Uses:
-plentiful emergency food
-used to make dandelion wine
-coffee substitute, gotta love that
-strengthen the entire body, especially the liver and gallbladder
-promote the flow of bile, reduces inflammation in the bile duct, helps eliminate gallstones
-reduces liver swelling, and jaundice
-help indigestion caused by insufficient bile
-gentle diuretic
-good for pancreas, bladder, spleen, stomach and intestines
-helps with mature onset diabetes, hypoglycemia
-encourages production of hydrochloric acid and digestive enzymes
-milky sap removes warts, pimples, moles, callouses, sores
-sap soothes bee stings
-help with hypertension
-aids in night vision
-detoxification agent
-therapeutic benefits in the treatment of persistent constipation, acne, eczema, psoriasis
-aids in the treatment of gout, arthritic conditions and osteoarthritis
-recommended for weight loss
-prevent or cure anemia
-appetite stimulant
-use the white juice in the flower stems as glue.

4. Cattail
 Cattails are beautiful, and one of the most useful plants I have have ever encountered. It contains beta carotene, niacin, riboflavin, thiamin, potassium, phosphorous, vitamin C, protein, unsaturated fats and calories. From food, to rafts to insect repellent, this plant seems to do it all.
" Although now relatively unused in the United States, where four species thrive, cattails are deliciously edible both raw and cooked from their starchy roots to their cornlike spikes, making them prime emergency foods." from 'Survival Wisdom and Know-How Everything You Need to Know to Subsist in the Wilderness'.
Uses:
-soothes wounds, sores, boils, inflammations, burns and carbuncles
-excellent food source
-weaving material for mats, backs of chairs,
-great stuffing for pillows, great insulation
-used internally to quell diarrhea, kill and expel worms, also used for gonorrhea
-fluff used as tinder
-stalks are great for use as an emergency raft  
-pounded, soaked leaves make good improvised cordage
-used in construction of thatch roofing
-burn as insect repellent
-use brown head of stalk dipped in animal fat as a torch
-pollen is hemostatic and astringent, used to control bleeding
-sticky substance at the base of the green leaf is antiseptic

5. Nettles
Nettles have a bad name due to their special stinging defenses, I find that handy in terms of defense. No one in their right mind would tramp through a nettle patch just to see what's on the other side. Nettles contain very high levels of minerals, especially calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, phosphorous, manganese, silica, iodine, silicon, sodium, and sulphur. They also contain chlorophyll, tannen, vitamin C, beta carotene, B complex vitamins, and are high in protein. Yes, they can sting, but the sting is easily remedied with jewelweed, plantain, or dock.
"Sitting here writing this book, I frequently sip on warm nettle tea. It's one of my favorites. It does not taste like a normal tea- not bitter, spicy, minty, or lemony. It's more like a strong stock of a rich, deep, green plant essence, and it's one of the most nourishing drinks of all."- Steve Brill with Evelyn Dean in 'Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places'.
Uses:
-food and tea (always cook nettles)
-ward off iron deficiency anemia
-effective in treating allergies and hay fever
-expectorant, recommended for asthma, mucus of the lungs, and chronic coughs
-tincture used for flu, colds, bronchitis, and pneumonia
-infusion is a safe diuretic
-recommended for weight loss
-tea compress good for wounds, cuts, stings, and burns
-used internally to stop excessive menstruation, bleeding from hemmorages, bloody coughs, nosebleeds, and bloody urine
-helps blood clot
-helps treat gout, glandular diseases, poor circulation, diarrhea, dysentery, worms and hemorrhoids
-makes your hair brighter, thicker, shinier
-makes your skin clearer and healthier
-good for eczema and other skin conditions
-cleansing and antiseptic properties
-stems used for weaving, cordage, cloth and paper making

NOTICE: Please be cautious when attempting to prevent, treat or cure any health issues. Be sure to talk to your Doctor before considering any type of health related changes. Also it is important to note that although these suggested uses are easily found in books and on the internet, some may not work for you. Each body is different and some react in adverse ways. Always be sure you know what you are doing before trying any of these ideas. Some of these plants may have 'look a likes' that at best, won't do what you expect, at worst, will kill you.

Sources:
The Doctors Book Of Home Remedies II
Reader's Digest Curing Everyday Ailments the Natural Way
Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places
Survival Wisdom and Know-How
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garlic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayenne_pepper
http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/cayenne.htm
http://www.herbs2000.com/herbs/herbs_dandelion.htm
http://www.leaflady.org/health_benefits_of_dandelions.htm
http://www.the-ultralight-site.com/dandelion.html
http://ghostprepper.blogspot.ca/2011/11/onahwe-ta-preppers-pal.html
http://www.gwenshealinggarden.ca/Quotes.Garlic.htm

Long before the days of supermarkets and organized agriculture, people lived.  We are the evidence.  They lived in small groups and even alone as hunter gatherers.  And remember, this was in the days before language!  How did we do it?  Trial and error?  Instinct?  If so, the instinct has been lost, but with some simple rules, it may be regained.

The good news is we don't have to watch Uncle Ogg keel over in agony after grazing on a patch of poison hemlock to know that it's something to stay away from. Solutions to common problems such as what to eat from your immediate environment can now be had through books, pictures, video and the spoken word.

I am here to tell you that your body can be sustained for long periods of time by taking advantage of the wild edible food that grows from the ground everywhere.  I know because I did it, and I practiced what I preach exclusively for many years.

I lived in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York in a homesteading situation for many years without electricity and indoor plumbing and the modern conveniences that come with those things.  Town was miles away and visits to civilization were few.  The hardships were many, but so were the lessons learned.  By degrees, I came to know that abundance is given by design.  Believe it or not, we already live in the Garden of Eden, but being "civilized" keeps us from knowing it, and the high pitched whine of man-gone-crazy keeps us from knowing its peace and its gifts.

Some of these foods are known to us already, perhaps instinctively. What child hasn't blown the little parachute seeds from a dandelion's puff-ball while laying in the clover?  Girls pull the petals from a daisy saying "Loves me, loves me not..." and collect tiny bouquets of violets while boys brave sharp barbs to collect raspberries and blackberries.  The helicopters from Maple trees, the burrs from burdock, the fluff from a dried milkweed pod on the wind or the bark of the birch tree have all been child's playthings at one time or another.  Perhaps these warm associations come from a lost knowledge that these are all sources of food?

The average lawn contains many, many food sources. I once published a book called The Lawn Food Cookbook, Groceries in the Backyard due to the sheer amount of material there.  This is without taking a walk around the block or going to local fields and waste areas.  Needless to say, if you're trekking from hither to yon, you'll be passing through many of nature's supermarkets. Will you know how to use their assets?

All it takes to get started is the will to do so. Take a trip to the library or the Internet for tons of free information.  I have found, however, that while many resources are strong on the identification and uses, they can be short on practicalities such as harvesting tips, preparation and especially storage for the long winter months. I have sought out the methods of the early Native Americans to cope with many of these issues, and I've used them to great benefit.  While many of these foods freeze beautifully, I found that much can be done with drying foods and making flour from the dried material for a concentrated nutritional benefit.  This has immediate appeal to people who are on foot.

What if you could make yourself "starvation proof"?  What if you knew you could be dropped off anywhere, even on a desert, and not only survive but have all the nourishment a body could need?  Well, I'm here to tell you that not only is it possible, but it's relatively easy for a person of average intelligence to attain.  It certainly might be hard on your system to begin to eat wild food after steady diet of sugar filled fast foods and processed grains, but those problems largely come from the sheer amount of nutrition you would be confronted with.

It's no secret that modern agriculture techniques have depleted nutrients from the soil when they've been grown in the same place for a long time ago, but this is not true for wild food and the places where it grows.  The very weeds that are giving Big Agriculture problems by becoming resistant to the herbicides that are used to "cultivate" today's GMO crops tend to be the very same foods that we could utterly live on for centuries to come.  Ironic, isn't it?  The "troublesome" amaranth, horseweed, waterhemp and lambsquarters all have edible uses.  It's almost as if Mother Nature is trying to tell us something!

While I am not a “prepper", I have found over the years that these folks are my best audience.  The similarities between my chosen situation in the Adirondacks and the scenario where there is some sort of disaster disrupting the food supply as we know it are too striking to dismiss.  The intent might be different, but the techniques remain the same.  The truly prudent know that this knowledge is not won overnight.  Foraging is a skill that needs to be learned and practiced in one's everyday life before one could depend on it in an emergency.  If you feel that disaster is imminent, my advice to you is "start now."  There is a learning curve, but that curve could begin in troubled times if it had to, assuming you had the information in hand.  You could be up to speed in time to stretch your food supplies and be expert by the time they run out.

One note here-- if you have a family during troubling times, foraging together has the excellent benefit of reducing fear.  As you learn and look around and see that a high percentage of the vegetation around you is edible, you will find that this automatically lessens the worry you may be experiencing while ensuring your family's survival.

To start with wild food, concentrate on finding one plant that grows in your area.  The one's I teach grow almost everywhere.  Identify it and test it using the rules of foraging to be sure that it will not produce a reaction for you or anyone that will be eating it.  This means that they, too, should learn and apply the rules of foraging, as stated below.  This is important, especially if you are reaching outside the bounds of the plants that are known to you.

Then, having passed the tests, harvest some, process it and try some.

To recap, select one plant and bring it from the field to the kitchen.  Learn that one thoroughly.  Work it into your menu, but take a gradient approach to learning and using wild food.  You would first use a pinch to bolster the nutrition of a stew, for instance.  What you'll be doing is adapting your body to the pure nutrition that is wild food.  Realize that it's 5-7 times the nutrition of any vegetable we have, so going too fast could have a strong effect, such as the runs.

First a few pinches mixed in, later, perhaps, a whole meal of nothing but wild food.

As you forage around, you'll become aware of other plants that you can work into your diet in a similar fashion.  You'll will become adept and marvel at the ease of harvesting large amounts quickly, taking it and drying it for storage and future use.  Remember not to pick an area clean of something, because you could wipe it out for the next time.  Leaving some will actually give the plant a chance to resurge and grow like a weed — which of course, they are.

Go slow and have fun while you learn the skill that kept all of humanity alive in the eons before recorded history.

The Rules of Foraging

These rules are for your own protection when investigating plants that are new to you. If followed closely, they will protect you in the field.

1. DO NOT collect plants closer than 200 feet from a car path or contaminated area.
2. NEVER collect from areas sprayed with herbicides, pesticides, or other chemicals.
3. DO NOT collect plants with RED STEMS, or red striations or stripes.
4. ALWAYS BE FAMILIAR with all dangerous plants in YOUR area of collection.
5. POSITIVELY IDENTIFY all plants you intend to use for food.
6. Take a piece off the plant and roll between your fingers.  SNIFF CAREFULLY.  Does it smell like something you would eat?  If it doesn’t, DISCARD IMMEDIATELY.  If it does, go to rule 7.
7. Take another piece off the plant and roll until juicy.  RUB the tiny piece on your gum above your teeth.
8. WAIT 20 minutes.
9. DOES YOUR GUM ITCH, BURN, TINGLE, SWELL OR STING?  If no reaction occurs, go on to rule 10.
10. Take another piece of the plant and put in a teacup.  Add boiling water and steep for 5 minutes.  SIP SLOWLY for 20 more minutes.  WATCH FOR NAUSEA, BURNING, DISCOMFORT.  If no reaction occurs, you may ingest a small amount.
11. WAIT ANOTHER 20 MINUTES and watch for any reaction.
12. Keep all samples AWAY from children or pets.
13. Store all seeds and bulbs AWAY from children and pets.
14. Teach children to keep all plants AWAY from their mouths and DO NOT ALLOW children chew or suck nectar from any unknown plants.
15. AVOID smoke from burning plants. Smoke may irritate the eyes or cause allergic reactions QUICKLY.
16. BE AWARE of your neighbor’s habits with chemicals, pesticides and herbicides.
17. BEWARE: heating or boiling doesn’t always destroy toxicity.

After emerging from the woods, I dedicated myself to teaching the lessons that I had learned.  In the early 1980s I set up a wild food walk, sort of a museum of plants so people could learn them without having to seek them out first.  My first Xeroxed flyer for the walk was eventually to become my first book, A Survival Acre.  My materials have evolved over the years to what you can see on my webs ite, OfTheField.com.  Nothing makes me madder than hearing about people starving to death when they're sitting in Nature's Supermarket!  People are always blown away with the knowledge and awareness that comes from discovering the abundance right under their feet.  It is my sincerest hope that you will learn these skills.

DISCLAIMER:
This is information about wild food.  The editors of SurvivalBlog nor the author make no claims as to the correctness, safety or usability of the data.

The information contained herein is intended to be an educational tool for gathering and cooking wild plants.  The information presented is for use as a supplement to a healthy, well-rounded lifestyle.  The nutritional requirements of individuals may vary greatly, therefore the author and publisher take no responsibility for an individual using and ingesting wild plants.

All data is to be used at your own risk.  Using the Rules of Foraging, above, greatly helps to reduce that risk, but they are not fool-proof.

JWR Adds: SurvivalBlog readers will likely recognize the author's name. She is the author of the excellent Linda Runyon's Master Class On Wild Food Survival.Her books, DVDs, and flash cards all have a well-deserved positive reputation.

Although I had a front-row financial services seat for the market collapse in 2008, it wasn’t until fall 2010 that I was stuck by an awakening that “something wicked this way comes.” With a master’s degree in Medieval Literature (it’s not as useless as it sounds, really) two things I have studied are the ravages of war and famine over the centuries, both of which desperately scare me as the mother of two young children.

I have paid particular attention to the many SurvivalBlog entries on gardening, one of my few practical skills. Most are either submitted by seasoned vegetable gardeners who have had a large garden for years, or about lessons learned by beginners.

Gardening is in my blood, passed down from generations of German farmers and English gardeners. My grandparents all moved off the farm, but they continued to garden extensively, as did my parents back in the 1970s. I watched my mother and grandmothers can their harvest. In turn, I have a couple decades’ experience with English perennial gardens, but little experience with vegetables.

I have put off submitting an article for a year in order to try and provide a unique slant on the topic of survival gardening: what happens when an experienced perennial gardener actually makes a serious attempt to grow real food, for the first time ever? And thereby hangs a tale.

We live in a small, conservative Midwestern city, in a solid brick farmhouse that is well over 100 years old, and that was encompassed by the suburbs in the 1930s. If the worst comes, we plan to bug in, as our foot-thick brick walls seem defensible. An old brick carriage house, 1,000-gallon koi pond, sealed-off well, and a rainwater-filled cistern are also on our quarter-acre lot. The perimeter of our property is in perennial beds, with an oval of lawn maintained in the center for our two young children to play upon. We also have a livestock watering trough and 250 square foot strip of vegetable garden in the undeveloped alley, portions of which receive less than 6 hours of sunlight a day. After clearing out some perennials toward the back of the yard, my total space dedicated to vegetables is 500 square feet. We even have an old dirt-floor root cellar. And of course we have a large (72 cu. ft.) compost bin. We garden as organically as possible, although I (very infrequently) cheat with a systemic on some of my more disease-prone roses. We have duplicates of all the gardening hand tools that we need.

My husband and I are both hard workers, still fairly young and strong, with good backs and a love for working with our hands. But we both work full time, so I garden in the few spare hours I can find.

Over the past year I have taken careful notes on my food project. So, as appropriate for a gardener’s tale, I have divided my experience into the four seasons, beginning late last fall.

Winter: Root Cellaring

“More than an hundred thousand persons, of all ages, perished of famine in this district. ‘It was a frightful spectacle,’ says an old annalist, ‘to behold, in the roads and streets, at the doors of houses, human bodies devoured by the worms, for none remained to scatter a little earth over them, all being destroyed by famine or the sword’….often, for the remains of the repast of a groom in the Norman army, the Saxon, once illustrious among his countrymen, in order to sustain his miserable life, came to sell himself and his whole family to perpetual slavery.” (Augustine Thierry, on the Norman Harrowing of Yorkshire)

Root vegetables were the hidden treasure of the medieval peasant—marauding armies might raze your village, burn your barn and steal your cow, but it was hard for them to root out all the turnips and parsnips.

In the fall of 2010 it was too late to put in any new vegetables for this project, but I had some vegetables I had planted for “fun,” including beets, carrots, and some heirloom potatoes that were misplaced in our cellar and rediscovered, sprouting, in time to plant for the spring. I harvested a good 10+ lbs. of potatoes from 6 potatoes planted, for somewhere around a 9:1 yield. I stored these in the root cellar for the full winter; they stayed firm and didn’t begin sprouting till the early spring.

I also stored a sampling of apples, which lasted a long time in the root cellar, but started reaching different stages of mushiness by late winter. I picked out the most perfect apples to keep and wrapped them individually in newspaper. Most were Empire apples, which I had used for making applesauce, and they have a very delicate white flesh; however, not the best choice for a “keeper” apple. In the spring, I planted two late-producing, disease-resistant Goldrush apple trees for my keepers down the road. This past fall we harvested many pounds of paw paws, which make a delightful cream pie, and have kept very well in the root cellar, and I have been experimenting with making sauerkraut and pickles the old-timey way, fermenting them in crocks.

I also had a row of carrots and beets that I “root cellared” in the ground. I just heaped dirt and mulch around them, and they lasted well in the protected, sunken alley. When I dug them out the following spring, they were still beautiful and tasty. This is kind of a lazy man’s clamp, which is an ancient form of root cellar. You dig a pit a couple feet deep, line it with straw, put in your potatoes, apples, carrots, cabbages, and other “keepers,” pile on more straw, and then cover it with a pile of dirt with some “chimneys” of bundled burlap or straw to provide some ventilation.

Finally, my Christmas present to my husband last year was a beer-making set. Although he currently has to brew from kits (we don’t have the room for barley, but perhaps we could put by some seeds, and I read with great interest the recent article on making cider) it has been an entertaining and very rewarding hobby.

Spring: Starving with Wild Edibles

“…three children huddled together, lying there because they were too weak to rise, pale and ghastly, their little limbs ... perfectly emaciated, eyes sunk, voice gone, and evidently in the last stages of actual starvation.” (English Quaker William Bennet, on the English-inflicted starvation of the Irish)

The February full moon is called the Hunger Moon. This always sends a chill down my spine, since it’s a reminder that even when spring is around the corner, your winter stores are giving out and won’t be replaced any time soon.

As I started my vegetable seeds in our basement and set the tiny plants out in cold frames built by my husband, I realized it would still be a long time before they would become productive (our last frost date is May 15th). The problem is, even if your stores last till the spring, and you are a skillful forager, there is still very little for you to live off of, as wild edibles offer scant calories.

We took a wild edibles course at a local nature preserve, and learned quite a bit about the fungi, fruits and greens available in our local woodlands. I started throwing a handful of violet, sorrel, plantain and dandelion leaves into our salads, dressed with herbs and a simple balsamic vinaigrette, which provides a lovely counterpoint to storage foods—but it can’t replace them. We also found at least 5 lbs. of morel mushrooms—truly the feast of a feral king, but unfortunately offering just 340 calories for the whole lot. On the bright side, wild edibles can provide incredible amounts of vitamins A and C, as shown below. On the not-so-bright side, a vitamin powerhouse like Poke Sallet can kill you if you don’t prepare it properly or you eat the wrong part of the plant at the wrong time of year.

Here is a sampling of the food values of some common edibles (per 100 grams):

Chicory greens: 7 calories, 33% vitamin A, 12% vitamin C
Chicory roots: 66 calories, 6% vitamin C
Dandelion greens: 25 calories, 112% vitamin A, 32% vitamin C, 19% calcium, 17% iron
Lamb’s quarters: 32 calories, 156% vitamin A, 62% vitamin C
Poke shoots: 23 calories, 174% vitamin A, 227% vitamin C
Purslane: 16 calories, 26% vitamin A, 35% vitamin C

With such a low calorie count, you obviously would have to forage a huge bag of these items every day for them to make a significant contribution to keeping you alive.

Summer: Praying for Growth

“To eat your own children is a barbarian act.” Soviet propaganda posters during the Soviet-inflicted Holodomor in Ukraine

I started several trays of heirloom seeds indoors on a sunny windowsill, before moving them to a cold frame, and direct-sowed many more seeds. Here are my results for some vegetables that can be harvested over the summer. Cucumbers, mesclun, green beans, snap peas, and tomatillos were also grown, but the results were a thousand calories or less.

Carrots: the heirloom and Danvers-type carrots were a semi-fail, the salsify was a complete fail, and the parsnips didn’t even bother showing up. I am estimating 7 lbs total usable carrots; more went to the guinea pig. Part of the problem may be that they were in partial shade, but a major problem appears to be root nematodes, as they were freakishly misshapen. This was in an area that had never had a crop before. Total calories: 930

Corn: 25 seeds of a miniature heirloom yielded 1 pint of shelled dry corn grown in a 4 x 4 ft. space. Not much, but corn is such an energy powerhouse (365 calories per 100g) that it is worthwhile to keep seed on hand. This year I will be experimenting with several heirloom Indian corn varieties. Total calories: 1,656

Eggplant: 4 heirloom plants produced 16 lbs in 4 sq. ft. of space. Although prolific producers, they offer few calories. Total calories: 1,742

Melons: 4 Asian melon plants produced 15 lbs. The melons were the size of softballs, so I could grow them on a trellis, which is a very efficient use of space in such a small garden. Total calories: 2,449

Peppers: Including sweet peppers, banana peppers, ancho peppers, and an assortment of smaller hot peppers, they produced prolifically in the intense heat and dryness we had over the summer. They are also vitamin C powerhouses (green and red bells offer 134% and 213% daily vitamin C, respectively), and the hot peppers can easily be dried and stored through the winter. I noticed a huge difference between the peppers in the ground and the peppers I grew in pots, which were not terribly happy. Total calories: 1,995

Tomatoes: We harvested 130 lbs of tomatoes off of 20 plants (some of which bore heavily, others which never successfully ripened due to our weird weather). This tally includes 33 lbs. of green tomatoes and 20 lbs of ruined tomatoes, which we included as they would not have gone to waste in a survival situation. Not included are the many tomatoes that went straight into our compost bin over the course of the summer—again, closer monitoring would prevent the ruined tomatoes, and if we had livestock they could always be given to the chickens or pigs. Total calories: 11,700.

One big mistake that we made was, rather than planting roma-type tomatoes, we focused on delicious old heirlooms like Black Krim, Cherokee Purple, etc. that are great for eating out of hand, but they make a watery and flavorless sauce for canning, and are not as prolific as a roma plant.

Fall: When the Harvest Fails

“I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west.” (Private John G. Burnett, on the Cherokee Trail of Tears)

The crops planted for the fall harvest would be the heavy hitters we would depend on to get us through the winter, so a heavy production of calorie-rich food would be crucial to survival.

Beans: I planted 3 different types of heirloom beans in the partially shady portion of the garden and got about a pint of shelled dry beans for 30 seeds planted. This is not a good yield. Possible problems are the shadiness, letting the bean beetles get out of control before tackling them with diatomaceous earth, and planting the beans too closely together. In addition to spacing, another trade-off that one needs to consider is the length of time it takes to grow them to the dry-bean stage (all season) rather than harvesting them as snap beans. Total calories: 6,115

Cabbages: This provided a good comparison lesson for sun vs. shade. I planted several cabbages in late spring in a very fertile, yet partially shaded area of the garden (6 hours of sun)….and later in the summer, I found some leftover cabbage seedlings on the sale rack, completely pot-bound and leggy, and I planted them in an area of scruffy grass in some waste space along a very sunny fence. The sunny cabbages were 3-5 lbs a head, while the shady cabbages were 1- 2 lbs a head. Total calories: 1,742

Kale: With five plants of Red Russian kale, not only is this a lovely, ornamental-looking plant, but I have been able to harvest leaves all winter long in order to have fresh greens and Portuguese Kale Soup. Kale provides 50 calories per 100 g, as opposed to 16 for your average lettuce, and this amount provides 308% of your vitamin A and 200% of your vitamin C. The Irish would cook kale with potatoes for colcannon. Total calories: 3,402

Leeks: We grew 50 or so leeks, half of which are still in the garden, having survived the winter in fine style. I am estimating 10 lbs. Total calories: 2,766

Potatoes: Our potatoes were one of our scandalous failures this year. I planted 5 lbs of (very expensive) seed potatoes and harvested 13 lbs, when a good average should have been maybe 20 lbs for the type I planted. I made a number of mistakes: planting fancy types rather than prolific bearers; not combating flea beetles quickly enough; not hilling them up; not giving them enough space. All this combined with a bad, wet spring and a relentlessly hot, dry summer. In my defense, one of our local farmer’s market vendors, a seasoned farmer, had an even worse crop…but the potatoes should have been the backbone of our garden. As I dug up clump after measly clump, I thought about how devastating it would have been if we were actually counting on the crop. It likely would have been a death sentence. And I was shocked because I thought I was doing a very good job with them. Total calories: 4,541

Squash: With so little room, I planted two Victoria Blue squash in my perennial bed and let them fight it out. One vine died, and off the other vine, which was planted way too late from a seedling that sat in its little pot for way too long, I got two smallish squash—surprising, considering the neglect and mistreatment the poor little vine suffered. To do them right, squash require a generous amount of room (spacing of 6 to 10 feet), but since they keep so well, they are one of the fundamental cops for winter. Next year I will give them more room, very fertile soil, and cover the soil with black plastic, and they really prefer some heat. Since I wanted to test the keeping abilities of squash, I bought 15 assorted pumpkins and squash for Halloween decorations, protected them from frost, and then moved them to our dry basement. They have continued to last well over the winter, and, with some onions, carrots and cream, make a fabulous, savory soup. Total calories (grown): 1,234 calories

Some Hard Lessons Learned

If, like me, you have ever had the thought, “Hey, I’m a good gardener—if things collapse I can just live off the land”…well, think again. Growing vegetables to keep yourself alive is a lot more difficult than growing some fresh tomatoes and pretty roses, even if you already have the compost bin, all the hand tools, the basic knowledge, the fertile soil, the strong back, and a love for growing things.

I have to be able to feed, at a minimum, my husband and my two babies. That’s 4,500 calories a day at a starvation level. Although I did not list all the details here, when I add everything up, including the odds and ends, and calculate it against the number of calories we need, at this level, we would only have 9 days worth of food. (!!!) Our 130 lbs of tomatoes, for example, account for 2.6 days. If we picked our crabapple tree clean, that might provide us for another week or so.

So, this project was definitely a reality check, but I am grateful that I could learn my hard lessons in easy times. Here are a few general things I am planning to do in the coming planting season:

• Approach gardening with humility. Nature is fully capable of kicking your butt, and it can be a struggle even for seasoned gardeners and farmers. Never stop practicing and learn from your failures as well as your successes.

• I will continue to rotate crops and build the soil with compost and manure, and will be trying the organic fertilizer Steve Solomon describes in his Gardening in Hard Times, but I am also going to stock a good amount of time-release conventional fertilizer for if we ever have to live off our garden.

• The bugs will find your crops, immediately, even though you live in the middle of town and have never before grown beans or cabbages. I need to research some gentle, preferably organic, pesticides beyond diatomaceous earth and stock up. 

• I need to better plan out adequate spacing and thoughtful use of land, rather than cramming too many things together. For example, lettuce and leeks can be grown in the partially shady areas, while the rows of corn can be intercropped with rows of early radishes and carrots.

• Ultimately, you can’t get the calories you need to live off of vegetables grown on 500 sq. ft. of land—even if we tripled the garden area and tripled the harvest, it would still provide just 22% of our annual need. We need more land and a way to convert “lost” calories (grass trimmings, vegetables we can’t eat, etc.) into animal calories. We need to consider some contraband city chickens or rabbits. And like Proverbs’ Wife of Noble Character, who “considers a field and buys it,” I am already actively searching for a few acres in the nearby Amish community where we can get started with some fruit trees and a laissez-faire garden.

• I have arranged with some family members to grow some of my corn, squash and other space-hogging veggies on their very large property. This will allow me to practice my skills, give the “three sisters” concept a whirl, test the seeds and potatoes I saved from this year, just to see what comes up from open-pollinated seeds that may have crossed, and better fill my larder and canning jars next fall.

• Grow plants from open-pollinated heirloom seeds. There’s nothing wrong with hybrids, but Monsanto (a creepy company if there ever was one) controls 20% of the world’s vegetable seeds (40% in the US), including the patents on Early Girl tomatoes. Do you trust them?

• Finally, as my selection of quotations shows, all governments are fully capable of starving and “liquidating” their inconvenient citizenry in pursuit of political, monetary or ideological ends. The US has its share of blood on its hands, from the death marches of Indian tribes to the Indian Territory and reservations that were little more than big concentration camps, or the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, and once again there is a rumbling of a distant thunder. Like the Scots, my first inclination is to run for the hills. But for me, joining the American Redoubt is not an option. My roots run deep in this Midwestern city and state, and I will stand my ground and be the “salt of the earth” here.

Planting a garden is a sure way to find out about yourself.  Are you impatient and reckless?  Are you detail-oriented and methodical?  If you haven’t figured it out yet, you will when you till up some soil.  Three years ago at this time, I hadn’t ever planted a garden.  The last time I was even in a garden was when I was 10 years old at my grandma’s house many seasons ago.  I found out that year that I didn’t like gardening as my experience with it was mostly weeding.  Sure, I got to eat some carrots or turnips out of that garden, but they sure weren’t worth all the time spent scorching in the sun crawling around in the dirt.  Looking back, I should have learned all I could from my grandma about gardening—right or wrong. 

Many years later I began to enjoy cooking and one thing I learned was, if you had some quality spices, you could take some mediocre food and make it really good.  I would plant an herb garden!  But as often is the case, the best laid plans…  I never did plant an herb garden, but a few years ago I decided it was time to try my hand at growing my own food. 
What prompted me to start this journey?  A lot of things really.  One, I thought it was a good outdoor activity for me and my family.  I want my kids growing up doing outdoor activities that are productive to them and beneficial later in their lives, not wasting time with video games and television like I did as a child.  Each year I look forward to more of their contributions in the garden—even a two year old can help by retrieving something for me while I work. 

Another reason to plant a garden was the economy.  Things aren’t getting any better out there.  I could save a bundle by growing a lot of things myself.  I was without work for almost a year and the garden really helped out a lot during that time.  And, if things get really ugly, it will help me feed my family or possibly help others by teaching them what I have learned. 

However, the biggest reason for me to start a garden was that I know what is in a lot of the food we buy in grocery stores.  One of my hobbies is fitness and nutrition and when it comes to nutrition, ignorance is bliss.  If you knew exactly what it was you were eating, you may not eat that particular item ever again.  Not only is processed food terrible for you from a macronutrient standpoint, but the chemicals and processes used to create it are downright evil.  We have an epidemic in this country with fat children and diabetes.  I wonder if it is because everything has corn syrup in it…  There isn’t enough money in Obamacare to fix all of the problems these kids are going to have down the line.  My rule is, the further away the final product is from its initial state (the more processed it is), the less I want to eat it. 

The first year I wanted to start a garden I didn’t really know what I was doing.  Fortunately, I had a good friend that was an expert in gardening and he had recently moved into a condo, so he had no space to garden himself.  He gladly showed me the ropes.  He ordered seeds for me and even started them in planters.  After laying out the plot, we used a sod cutter to remove what we could and then tilled the mostly clay soil with some peat moss, chicken droppings, bone meal and blood meal.  I rented a big 8.5 horsepower tiller since it was the first time the soil had been disturbed and the clay made for a real mess.  I put in the contractors edging (deeper than standard edging) around the garden to keep the burrowing pests out.  Then I put up some wooden posts and a plastic fencing.  After smoothing soil, we planted a raised bed down the middle and a few mounds for the vine vegetables. 

I watered ever day waiting for some green sprouts to pop out of the ground.  When they did I was like a kid in a candy store.  I was amazed that you could take a tiny seed, put it into the earth, water it and watch as God made a plant emerge from the dirt.  Sure, I had to weed plenty—I did it every day in the morning before work.  And I had to check the broccoli leaves for green cabbage worms twice daily.  These worms were tiny but had ravenous appetites.  They would wreak havoc later on if not eliminated immediately.  I even started a compost pile and religiously put every appropriate scrap, no matter how small in the pile. 

The harvest was amazing.  I remember that first spinach salad.  What was that funny taste?  I don’t use any chemicals so it couldn’t be that.  I triple washed it, so it couldn’t be dirt.  Then we figured it out—it was the lack of any kind of processing.  No sprays applied by the harvester or at the grocery store to keep it looking fresh.  The funny taste was nothing at all. It was natural food.  It’s what spinach should taste like.  I was amazed.  And hooked.  That summer we ate like kings.  We canned dozens of jars of tomatoes, froze a years supply of shredded zucchinis and peppers and ate enough salad to feed a herd of cattle.  As fall came and went, I looked forward to the next growing season.  I remember feeling a tinge of depression as my green slice of paradise, dried up and blew away with the winter wind.  I also learned that using wood posts was a fools errant—they mostly rotted out and the plastic fencing was eaten through by varmints. 

I planned the next season’s garden and ordered my seeds.  This time, I would attempt to do my own “starts” and I would expand my garden size.  This turned out to be a season of learning and errors.  The first error was that I waited until the spring to till the soil.  I am sure the worms weren’t too happy about it.  The next group of errors centers around my potted plant starters.  Since I left heat pad on them after they sprouted, they become gangly and moved towards the sun.  I wasn’t smart enough to remember my 6th grade biology class and rotate the plants so they wouldn’t be at a 45° angle from the ground. 

Another mistake I made was not using fish emulsion to feed the plants the proper nutrients—they were not very green and the stems were not thick at all.  When I transferred the starts to bigger pots, I suddenly became economical and decided not to fill the new pots to the top with dirt.  That was brilliant as I shrunk the available space for the roots to grow—this was not helpful for making the plants stronger.  Not sufficiently hardening the plants to outdoor conditions before planting was another blunder.  I put them out for a few hours each day, but should have kept them out a lot longer.  Maybe start with an hour or two and by the end of the week keep them out there during all daylight hours.  Finally, when I went to plan the starts in the ground, I failed to wet the pots beforehand and likely damaged some of the roots when I transplanted them into the garden. 

After a particularly windy night, almost all of my tomatoes and my eggplant and broccoli were wiped out.  I had to do the unthinkable—go to Lowe's to buy my plants.  I was amazed at the difference between their thick stemmed plants and the spindly “weeds” I had planted.  The new plants took off and things seemed to be going well.  But then more problems arose.  This gardening was tough!

I had used a section of the garden as the dumping ground for bad produce or produce that had fallen off and started to rot.  I just piled it up the summer before and then it got tiled under that spring.  Well, I was answering for that mistake now.  Volunteers started popping up all over the garden.  At first I didn’t know what I had, but over time, dozens of tomato and other plants were everywhere.  I also had a lot of weeds that I didn’t have the previous season and didn’t recognize at all.  My curiosity got the better of me on this one and I learned that anything that isn’t planted by me needed to go—they basically ruined my raised bed.  I must have had five or six dozen tomato volunteers.  As a side note, a friend of mine didn’t have a chance to plan anything so he took 4 of the volunteers and they produced well for him!  I suppose in certain situations, I could sell the volunteers to people that needed them for food, but as long as my garden is just for me, I will not let them grow in the future.  It was interesting that hybrid seeds from one season’s vegetables produced actual usable vegetables the next season. 

Some of the other lessons I learned, include: 
1)      My red onions did poorly—they need more sun and were partially shaded.  I need to move them to a north side of the garden.
2)      I need to stake my pepper plants immediately after planting.  It seems every year there is a wind storm that ruins some plants and we are in an area that has no shield from wind.
3)      I need to kill the grass on the outside of the edging to protect the onions and other “weaker crops.”  The grass is mixing in with the onions and taking away nutrients and water from them.   My onions seem to get a lot of their water from the surface, so they don’t have deep roots. 
4)     
I need to strengthen my chicken cage fence around my garden with a few more posts. 
5)      Here’s an obvious one—I can’t have a tall plant, like tomatoes near my underground sprinkler head in the garden.  The tall plant blocks the water flow and prevents other things from getting watered later in the season.  Plus it gets soaked and over watered as it is basically blocking the water flow. 

This was a hard season of learning, but I still managed a healthy crop of produce and even increased my volume on a few vegetables.  Most importantly, I have acquired a “book of knowledge” which I can use to help me not repeat the same mistakes this season again.  I’ve noticed that as the summer goes on, I get a bit lazy and don’t weed as diligently as I do early on.  Also, I need to plant a second crop of vegetables later in the spring to have a late summer crop and a third planting in the summer to have a fall crop.  I might as well squeeze every calorie out the garden that I can! 

As I desire to become more self-sufficient with my food, I also planted four fruit trees, some garlic, some blueberries and a few other things.  I plan on expanding that more with an herb garden and possibly a raspberry patch in the next season.  I will also enlarge my garden both in terms of size and types of produce.  I am starting to get a feel for what grows well and what doesn’t as well as what I like out of my garden and what is more cost/time effective for me to get at a store.  I will rotate my crops once again and add a few new items to keep things fresh.  I need to do a soil exchange with a friend that has sandy soil to get better balance in my clay dominated soil.  I am hoping more sand will help with my root and vine vegetables. 

I am glad to be learning these hard lessons now, when I can recover, rather than later on, when making these mistakes can be the difference between feeding your children or watching them starve.  There is a lot of start-up work expended in a garden, but not a lot to do day-to-day.  I recommend everyone try their hand at it to see how they do.  Even with all the challenges I encountered, it is still a great hobby and very enjoyable for me.  I just started my peppers and tomato seeds this year with my 2 year old's help and can’t wait to see them sprout! 

I grew up in the suburbs of Houston, Texas. I was raised by a single mother who didn’t have time for much besides working to pay bills. I wasn’t lucky enough to grow up on a farm or learn canning or learn any useful survival/life skills besides how to cook Hamburger Helper and I was doing that at the ripe old age of 10. I did become a pro at making stew though and I could probably tell you 101 ways to use pasta. And thanks to my grandmother I could even crochet you a scarf if you’re lucky and if I have the spare time between working as a realtor and raising six kids, who are now ages 10-to-22.
 
Getting married, moving away from home at the age of 18 and becoming a military wife introduced me to a lot of new people, new ideas and I was able to learn things along the way that have prepared me for almost any event that may occur in the future that would take most of us out of our comfort zones, be it a job loss, world financial crash, hurricane, government collapse or any disaster that may hit my area. When your husband is out of town for sometimes as long as a year at a time, you have lots of time for reading, television watching and experimenting and that is what I did and continue to do with my current husband who also works long hours. I didn’t think of it as prepping or hoarding or whatever terminology you want to give it. I didn’t have a book that was specifically about a SHTF (I really don’t like that acronym but it is one most people understand so I’ll use it) scenario and there was no Internet back when I started down this path in the 1980s. I just felt in my gut this instinct that I should always be ready for “something”. Maybe that was a result of being so close to the fire so to speak because my husband was in the military and his whole career revolved around preparing for what might one day happen, maybe it was from listening to my grandparents talk about the Great Depression or maybe it was a higher being and verses I had read in my Bible about what one day might happen to this world but regardless I started preparing for something that may never happen in my lifetime but if it does…I’m ready and I want to teach my children to be ready and hopefully these skills and knowledge will be passed on from generation to generation so if “it” ever does happen my loved ones will not only survive but prosper.
 
I don’t talk about survival skills or preparing for any cataclysmic event with my extended family or my friends because I know they’d just think I was crazy and I don’t ever want to worry my children or have them live in a constant state of fear but I do want them to learn so in our house we call the preparations “getting ready for hurricane season.” Most of the people I know have the proverbial “it will never happen here or it will never happen to me” mindset. That is fine for them but not for me and mine. They know we live in the country and we grow a garden and we have a lot of animals. They make fun of us, ask us how we can live so far out and why we don’t just buy our veggies at a Kroger's supermarket. That’s fine, but one day if the SHTF scenario happens then whose door do you think they will show up at? Exactly, mine. Because they will remember that Mrs. S. grows her own veggies and has guns and ammo and raises her own chickens and has cows at her back door. Only problem with that is the part we aren’t telling anyone and that is that we have another even more remote place that we are stocking and getting ready so that if the SHTF event ever occurs we will be leaving here because we feel that every hungry soul in Houston is going to head outside of the city limits and end up on our doorstep and we don’t want to be here when that happens.
 
When Hurricane Rita was due to hit in 2005 we got a taste of what would happen in the event of a disaster. We had nowhere to go so I sat on my deck and watched the farm to market road close to me turn into a parking lot. Several vehicles ran out of gas and there were no gas stations open because those people were evacuating too. There were no bathrooms so the street was littered with whatever people could find to relieve themselves on the side of the road. And I’ve never seen so much trash on my road. We were afraid to go to bed that night because those people might break into our house. One of my kids suggested we open a lemonade stand on the corner. We’d have probably made a fortune!  Regardless, that storm didn’t even blow away a plastic bottle that I’d left out off of the deck railing but it did teach a lot of people a valuable lesson, that they weren’t ready.
 
When Hurricane Ike hit in 2008 we thought we were ready. We weren’t going to evacuate after seeing the results of Rita, we were going to stay home and ride it out. I’d made sure that our above ground pool was emptied and cleaned and then filled it with clean well water and a little chlorine bleach straight from the bottle. I’d gone to the store and bought supplies and we’d battened down the hatches. My uncle had come over to wait out the storm with us and he and I stood in the garage and watched the storm blow by. Once again it didn’t do much damage at our house. Just a few fallen limbs. Then my current husband who was 42 at the time started feeling sick within minutes of the storm passing. He got dizzy and couldn’t walk. The phones, both land lines and cell had all stopped working a few hours earlier so I couldn’t call 911 but I knew he needed help and none of my skills as a Realtor were going to help at this point even though I had learned CPR as a Girl Scout Leader for my daughter’s troop. We loaded him into the car and headed into town 10 miles away. The storm hadn’t done much damage at my house but the streetlights were out and some were hanging so low one nearly hit my windshield. There were trees down everywhere and I had to navigate carefully around them. I had my hazard lights on the whole time. When we got to town I needed to make a left at what was once a light but was now just wires dangling down to the ground to get to the ER and no one [in the oncoming lane] would let me turn. The traffic lights weren’t working so why should they stop? I got a glimpse of how humanity becomes under stress. My uncle had to get out to stop cars and I pulled my Suburban out in front of them with a “you will let me turn into the ER or we’ll both get killed” mentality. I have raised six kids, so you can’t bully me and get away with it because I’ll push back! I got him safely to the ER which was packed with people and later learned that he’d had a stroke due a blocked carotid artery. Yes, even 42 year olds can and do have strokes, especially when they are out of shape, they dip tobacco and are under severe stress. Luckily for him he survived it and has very little residual damage except for poor vision and vertigo. We learned a valuable lesson that day. We still weren’t ready.
 
So that is the who and why of Mrs. S. in a nutshell. The whole point of this however is for you to learn something. So the following bullet points are my suggestions on what you should know, do or start learning now and what you should have on hand or stored so that if a SHTF scenario occurs you won’t have to show up on Mrs. S’s empty doorstep. There isn’t enough room here for me to list everything so I suggest you go online and order some books on surviving under tough situations. Do web searches on “prepper books, survival books, first aid books, Amish books, canning, homesteading, animal husbandry, gardening, etc” because there is a lot of information out there. You can go to Netflix and watch a television series called “The Colony”, it gives you an eye opening view of life in a post collapse situation although not everyone is going to be living with an engineer a doctor and a handyman who can build cars out of toothpicks MacGyver style, ha ha. There’s another show we watched called Survivors which was a post flu pandemic scenario. (Not to be confused with the television show Survivor where you outwit your fellow Survivor opponent on a pretty tropical island somewhere.) There’s also the Out of the Wild series on The Discovery Channel which I enjoyed. The old episodes are on Netflix. It will really open your eyes if they aren’t opened already. So, here’s the list and remember….this just touches the surface of what you need to know to be ready for a life changing event.

1. Have a safe place to go in the event you need to leave and if you plan to go to someone else’s house, make sure you have permission or you might get met at the end of a shotgun. Don’t wait for evacuation orders. Leave at the first sign of trouble. If nothing else, think of it as a little vacation and if you leave a little to late, take the roads less traveled. Learn them now so that if your GPS isn’t working you can navigate your way safely out of town. Buy maps and keep them in your car. Most states have web sites where you can order them for free or go to a State’s travel welcome center and get one there.
2. Volunteer with the Boy or Girl scouts so you can start learning basic survival skills. It’s amazing how many people in this world don’t even know how to start a fire. Speaking of fire, have lots of water proof matches, lighters and a magnesium fire starter. Having a fire can mean the difference between life and death. You can also make fire kindling using Gulf wax, an egg carton and lint from your dryer. Google it. It’s a Girl Scout trick I learned (I learned to cook on the bottom of a coffee can too!). Learn how to make candles or buy cheap ones at the dollar store. I prefer beeswax ones myself. [JWR Adds: All those new open flame sources around your home will make fire fighting skills just as important as fire starting skills. Buy several fire extinguishers or your house, and one for each vehicle. Study how to use them.]
3. Take a CPR class and learn basic first aid then stock up on first aid supplies. Watch videos online about first aid. My current favorite is Dr. Bones and Nurse Amy. I learned to do stitches that way recently. Join your local volunteer fire department so you can use those skills you are learning.
4. Start buying extra non-perishables and canned goods now because once the SHTF you can forget it. I like to buy freeze dried products because they can last for many years without expiring. There are several online companies to order from. Google “freeze dried foods”. I like the #10 cans but I have a large family. Regardless, most of those last 20+ years sealed and two more years even after being opened but read the labels. If you don’t know how to can foods, find someone who does and learn. Look at it this way, you can always give some homemade stuff away at Christmas time. My family loved last year's Pumpkin butter when I planted too many pumpkins in my garden.
5. If you have the space and live in an unrestricted area, buy some chickens and start your own flock. Contrary to popular brainwashed opinion the eggs are safe to eat. We’ve been eating eggs from our chickens for nearly 10 years and we aren’t dead yet. I read Storey’s guide to raising chickens and that and trial and error taught me all I need to know about raising this food source. Hint: stop using ant poison granules in your yard our you’ll lose a lot of chickens. I like to order my chicks from Murray McMurray hatchery online but they sell them at feed stores and some farmers will sell to the public as well. You can also check with your local 4H club and go to livestock auctions. We don’t eat our chickens, just their eggs but if we had to we could. I keep a minimum of 12 but that is a lot of eggs per week even for my large family!
6. Get a generator or alternative energy source now. Plain and simple. Personally, I like to have more than one source because generators run on gas and you could run out of gas and then what? My two choices are solar panels as a back up to the generator but I live in Texas where we have a lot of sun so maybe wind power could be your alternative power source.
7. If you need to buy some land go to your local Realtor or do your own search online. One of my favorite web sites is Landsofamerica.com. There I was able to find lots of good deals. 50 acres for under $50,000, yes it’s on there! Hint: look in states like Tennessee, Arkansas and Oklahoma if you are in or close to any of those states.  Don’t buy land that is a two day's drive away from your main home though. You want to be able to get there safely, not run out of gas trying to get out of Dodge. If you are lucky enough to not need to live close to town then you can live at your remote location and that isn’t an issue but for us we have to still live close to town so my husband can work. My job as a realtor allows me to work from anywhere. 
8. Get a gun and learn how to use it. As a woman I prefer lighter guns with little recoil. Recoil is what a gun does when you fire it and it jerks your arm up. Not including the guns my husband has I have my own .25 handgun, .380 handgun (I wanted a pink one but they didn’t have any!) and .22 rifle. I’m your average sized woman at 5’5” and I can handle those guns easily even if I would need to use more bullets to take down my target. The important thing is that I be comfortable with the gun I am using and relying on to feed me and keep me safe. I used that .22 rifle to run off a cougar in my back yard once. I didn’t kill it, but it decided it didn’t want to stick around and eat any more of my chickens. I sure wish I had gotten a picture of that cat. My hunting family still thinks I was seeing things and just shot at bobcat!
9. Have some sort of water storage set up or be near a water source like a creek, lake, river with year round water. A seasonal creek is great except when you have no water in the winter! I don’t mean “near” like a mile near. Carrying buckets of water from a mile away or more would be too much even for my football playing sons! I mentioned earlier that I have an above ground pool. I bought it at Wal-Mart for about $300. I keep it filled year around “just in case”. The week that my husband was in the hospital after Hurricane Ike passed through I was very thankful for that pool water. I used our huge Cajun turkey fryer pots to boil water on a Coleman propane stove for drinking, cleaning and cooking and used unheated water for flushing toilets even though we followed the “if it’s yellow let it mellow” philosophy that week because mom was not toting water all day. I was alone here with my kids and I was easily (I use that term lightly at my age) able to carry water in from the back yard as we needed it. I took showers at the hospital when I’d visit my husband but if I’d had to I could have heated pool water to bathe in. My next big purchase will be a Big Berkey water filter unit. I can’t wait to get it and try it out.
10. Learn how to grow your own fruits and veggies. Trees are great for the environment and great for a hungry belly. Most fruit bearing trees require at least two of the same kind to produce and some don’t start producing for several years. You can also get a book on foraging and learn what you can and can not eat from nature. Most people don’t even know that those pesky Dandelion “weeds” are great on a salad.

 
I hope that I have provided some useful information to get you started on your journey to being prepared in the event of a catastrophic event in your area. Don’t be caught with your pants down. SurvivalBlog has lots of valuable information and resources that I hope you will take advantage of. I recently enjoyed reading James’ book, How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It which led me to his blog. Be sure and read it as a follow up to this article, because he covers many things that even I hadn’t thought of yet. Good luck and God bless.

My family is from the former Yugoslavia and it had been a family tradition to go back and visit the homeland of my grandparents. Unfortunately for me, by the time I could go, my father had passed and I found only one cousin willing to do it again. As luck would have it, it was the summer of 2000 and I thought the war had been long over. It was only recently I discovered that the horror continued right up until just before my arrival there.
 
After a short stopover in Frankfurt, we boarded a smaller plane to Zagreb. The flight was beautiful, the scenery, breathtaking.
I thought about the stories I was told about this place. My family were farmers there, and I was excited to experience the way of life that used to sustain them. I wanted to see the animals, horses, pigs, cows, chickens, the fields of vegetables, and how they did it all. I had heard about how they would slaughter the pigs, then salt and smoke them, and I really wanted to know how. I don't know if you've had them, but Yugoslavians are famous for their cabbage rolls. I wanted to know how to make the sour cabbage, and how they did all this for ages without refrigeration. I was fascinated with the idea of being self sustaining off the grid, and how they managed even after the war.

We rented a van to get to the tiny village of Covac near the larger city of Okucane. I was surprised at the military presence there still, there were checkpoints with armed guards asking to see your passport. Luckily most of them spoke English and didn't actually seem that concerned with us. We must have went through three before getting to our destination.

Arriving in Covac, it was like nothing I had ever seen. One gravel road, off of another gravel road, one small store at the corner. There were maybe 40 houses altogether, surrounded by fields and farther back, forests. At one time this place was beautiful. Now, unreal. Most of the houses had been destroyed and abandoned. Some had walls missing, bullet holes marred the surface of the concrete, trees even growing where the roof once was. The town pavilion that once held meetings, dances and parties was reduced to rubble. We pulled into the gravel driveway of the house we would be staying at. 

Our hosts came out to greet us, a young lady and her elderly mother. The house was small by western standards, a concrete square with a kitchen, bedroom and cold room. The kitchen had a table and chairs, a woodstove and small counter, and a laundry line all lit with a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. The bedroom held two single beds, and a dresser with a television with rabbit ears atop, again all illuminated with a single bulb. The cold room was farthest away from the woodstove, just a concrete room with shelving on all sides which interestingly doubled as the room to bathe in. The outhouse was about 40 feet away, past the open well, unlit of course. My cousin told me a story about using the outhouse while a chicken pecked her from below, I guess that's when they closed it off at the back. Regardless, I still had some anxiety about using the outhouse at night. The well was open, like the ones you see in old fairytales, with a roof and a bucket on a rope. Looking down into the water, I counted four frogs swimming around down there. I hoped they boiled the water before drinking. They didn't. Meals usually consisted of smoked, salted meats, sausage or bacon, eggs, fresh vegetables like tomato and onion, bread and soups.

I remembered my Grandmother telling me about picking beans in the fields, and moving the livestock from the forests to graze, and back to the barn. Looking out at the fields, there was nothing but weeds. The only livestock in the town was some chickens and a cow. I asked what happened, the stories I was told and the place I was in seemed vastly different. When the war came here people fled and later were forced out or had their homes destroyed or taken over. Most of the younger people never returned leaving a town of mostly elderly. There was no one to do the hard work involved in farming here, and no one could afford the start up costs again even if they could. At one time this land was self sufficient, the people were happy and free, now barren, a way of life lost. I wanted to walk in the fields that sustained my family for generations, I was told I was not allowed. Not allowed? Apparently it had not yet been cleared of land mines so it would be an enormous risk. I still can't believe that a tiny village, so far away from a small town had been hit so hard in this conflict. I recall a story from my Grandmother about her family hiding from the Nazis back in the war. That happened here, at least twice people were murdered in war, here, on this tiny strip of houses, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

We went to visit other relatives in nearby Gredjane, I had hoped they fared better, they didn't. My Grandfather's brother and his wife lived in a small brick house, the size of a shed. The four of us couldn't all be inside at once it was so small. It held a single bed, a woodstove, and a table and chairs. Nothing here was refrigerated, they had no electricity, not even a light. The towns people came by to say hello. Once again I was surprised at the age of the people who remained here. It amazed me that the elderly people chose to stay or come back while the youth took to the cities and stayed there. Leaving that place, it would be the last time I would see my relatives again. My Grandfather's brother died two years ago, six months after my Grandfather.

Back in Covac, it was bath day. My gracious hosts had to heat buckets of well water on the woodstove for me. I bathed in the cold room, in a plastic bucket a foot deep, two feet across. It wasn't pretty, but it did the job. I had to get used to brushing my teeth outside, and just spitting on the grass. I had never done laundry by hand, that wasn't so bad. All in all, life there seemed so quiet, peaceful. It was actually hard for me to sleep at night, I wasn't used to it being so dark, and so quiet. There were no streetlights, no traffic sounds, not even the familiar sound of dogs barking.

They did have a small garden close to the house. They grew potatoes, onions, carrots, cabbages, tomatoes and beans. Since the summer was ending we did get to help with some of the harvest. At this time, they didn't pull out all of the root vegetables, just some for the cold room to use, and some for next years' planting. We put the seed potatoes in a hole near the house. It was full of hay, we placed the potatoes and onions inside then covered them with hay and buried it. The cabbage was harvested, washed and placed in large tubs with brine, enough to just cover them.The tubs were stored in the cold room, then covered with fabric, a wood plank, and weighed down with a brick. Unfortunately my stay was not long enough for me to try them once the process was complete. I must say, although delicious when cooked up, the smell of them fermenting was a little harsh.

I did not have the opportunity to see any meat processing but I was told how it was done. Once ready, the meat was salted, and then smoked in smokehouses. This would occur in the fall so the meat was then hung in the attic which vented the woodstove smoke in one end and out the other. This would continue the smoking process thus preserving the meat longer for later use. After my visit, the smell of a wood fire always reminds me of my trip, and the taste of homemade smoked bacon.

Three weeks had gone by so fast, even here where there were no distractions in daily living. On the long ride home I had a lot to think about. I believe the one thing that made the deepest impression was the fact that this village, so remote, and so small was so deeply affected in their own TEOTWAWKI. I had just assumed that in almost any situation fleeing the cities is always plan A, this trip taught me otherwise. I believe we need to be careful in creating a plan for disaster that is sort of one size fits all. In this situation, in this civil war, the resources in the city were better. Those left in the country were completely alone in a horrific time and to this day, many of their stories remain untold.

I am writing this to encourage you to do with gardening and food preparation what we are encouraged to do with all of our prepping, practice, practice practice, your life depends on knowing that your plan will work!  I don't know if this will even qualify as a survival article but if nothing else maybe it will help some, like me, who need that little kick in the pants to start practicing our survival plans.  Maybe some of our mistakes, outlined in this article, will help you avoid them and experience a more successful first year of gardening than we experienced. 

My husband and I have spent the past three years researching information on seeds and gardening and we agreed that this would be my area to plan and oversee with his help.  We understood that our choice of seeds and the success of our gardening could mean the difference between surviving or not.  We chose heirloom seeds so we could save seeds for future gardens.   We considered our options for placement, we have a very big challenge, we have limited space for a garden due to our location.  We opted for raised beds, this is to help maximize space and yield. 

Last year we purchased our seeds as part of our Christmas, which was centered on preparation and survival equipment.  In February, I began my first year of survival gardening.  I had planned what to plant and knew what needed to be started indoors before spring.  I put the grow lights in the basement fixtures where we were setting up our little green house and meticulously spent a day planting my seeds with a lot of optimism and prayer.  It was very exciting to see the little seedlings start to grow and gave me a real sense of accomplishment.  In the spring I moved them up to our sun porch, to start hardening them off.  We got our raised beds built.  We then prepped the ground we were placing them on, tilling and removing grass etc.  We then filled our raised beds and I made my map of where everything was to be planted based on my assessment of the sun, the space and trying companion planting to help control pests.  The raised beds were also awesome for controlling weeds, grass etc and helped with watering and prevented wasting water.  We used lumber from pallets that we were able to get for free.  The down side is that they will have to be replaced, something we are working on with a more permanent solution,  it is that or stock up on pallets for replacement down the road.

As the days warmed we began planting and moving our plants outdoors.  We also chose to utilize Square Foot gardening in our beds, to maximize space.  We used string to mark off the beds in square foot planting grids.  This worked well for us and we will continue to use this method.  I knew early on that my tomato's were not doing as well as I hoped.  I gave it several weeks and decided to replace them, so I went to a local nursery and bought replacement non hybrid variety's and replanted.  Not an option TEOTWAWKI.  We also had several other failures from our attempt to start our seedlings indoors.  In fact almost everything we started inside failed and had to be replaced or we simply did not grow this year.  I know what some of my mistakes were and will try again this year making adjustments.  The size and type of containers as well as waiting to long to move them up to the sun porch was part of the problem as well as the soil mixture we chose.  So this year I will practice once again and hope that I have learned enough on this front to be on the road to  success. 

We had mixed results with the seeds planted directly into the soil, our beans, squash, peas and cucumber did well but were planted too late.  Our yield was very low.  I also lost my squash's and cucumbers to a pest that rotted the main stem.  We tried using diatomaceous earth for pest control with limited success, you have to reapply every time it rains and it can also kill the critters you want in you garden.  Next lesson learned, Sevin Dust  is going into our survival supplies, at least until I master organic gardening.  A little Seven on the garden is more desirable than a loss of life sustaining food.  The next problem I encountered was my layout failed.  I planted in such a way that my tomato's overshadowed my peppers and we did not get enough sun and they grew like vines and never yielded anything.  They could not get enough sun.  I learned this year what parts of my garden layout worked to best utilize the sun exposure and where it failed.  I also did not allow enough room and need to plant more beans.  The weather was also a challenge, we live in the Midwest and our summers can be very dry and hot.  Our tomato's grew and grew but were not setting fruit or did not ripen until the weather moderated closer to fall.  Earlier planting would have yielded us an early crop to enhance the later crop close to fall, having to replant cost us valuable time in the early season.  We had some great salads using our large variety of lettuces and I learned how to pick the lettuce and a variety of greens to keep them producing.   I was able to can about 19 pints of tomatoes, 9 pints of pickles from the cucumbers before the pests got them and 16 pints of green tomato salsa.  I also gathered a pint of mixed dried beans, navy, kidney, wrens egg and black eyed peas, I will also use some of these for replanting along with seeds left over to see if gathering these worked and if they will propagate, the rest will go into a pot of bean soup this winter.  It was rewarding to put up what little we got out of our garden and deepened my determination to do better next year. 

I learned what I need to plant more of and less of.  For example, I would rather have beans on the shelf than to try and creatively use more radishes than we could eat.  Some of the foods we grow can be canned, frozen, dried or stored in a root cellar but some need to be used fresh from the garden.  I also need to work on spacing my plantings over weeks to extend the yield as well as planting fall crops to extend the the growing season. 

Overall our first attempt at survival gardening was a huge failure, I am so thankful that we were not depending on it this year in a survival situation.  I am also thankful that I dug in and applied my plan and put in the work to learn these lessons and hope that this next year will yield success built on those lessons.  I have learned that the life sustaining skill of gardening needs to be practiced and  lessons learned while we can still feed our families without depending on the food we can grow. I planned very carefully and believed I had it all worked out,  I am so glad I had the opportunity to put my plan into practice before it becomes critical to my families survival and to learn that, I had a lot to learn. 

There were also many things we were prompted to think about and to work out in advance.  We will be working on how to best turn our little sun porch into a green house so that we do not have to rely on grow lights.  Grow lights are a  fine alternative now but may not be feasible TEOTWAWKI.  We are also going to build some cold frames to cover our new seedlings and to give us an opportunity to plant earlier.  These will provide some protection from the chilly spring nights and help hold in the warmth from the day as well as protection from insects until the plants are stronger.  This was something else we learned that we really needed, to help prolong our growing season and give our seedlings a better start.  In working the garden this year we were also motivated to think about water when TEOTWAWKI  hits.   So, we worked out a way that we can have water on hand near our garden during the times we need to water.  We  bought large food grade barrels to place under the down spouts on our garage to collect rainwater with a spigot attached near the bottom.   This enables us to attach a hose so we can water when we need to supplement mother nature.  Our garage is detached from our home and the garden is right next to it, so this works out well.  This won't help during a prolonged drought but most of the time, in our area,  it will provide a really good supplement to mother nature under normal weather patterns.  So much of what we are doing, such as gardening, in prep for whatever may come, is not rocket science but there can be many details that need our attention, before our lives depend on it, things we won't think of until we are using our preparations.  Practicing helps us to find what we have missed.  In some cases we will be able to adjust as we go but things like watering a garden could be the difference between security and success and a devastating failure. 

I don't want to discourage anyone by sharing this.  In spite of my failures, I felt empowered by my effort and the knowledge that I am building and learning skills that could make a difference when faced with TEOTWAWKI.  I learned the importance of not only practicing my gardening but also the need to practice with many other aspects of our survival plan and preparations.   I urge everyone who has not practiced their gardening to start next spring and not wait until your family is dependent on that part of your preparedness plan.  By drawing out and putting my garden plan to paper I have also made it easier to evaluate and rework my plan, now that I put it to practice and learned what worked and what did not.  I hope you have a better outcome with your first efforts.  The important thing is to begin the effort now, before your life depends on it! All the plans, preparation and supplies in the world will not help us if we do not learn to use them, learn what works and learn what does not work.  The bottom, bottom line is that I am thankful for the opportunity to practice my garden at a time that the hungry eyes of my kids and grand kids were not looking at me for success.  Hopefully when that time comes I will have learned all my lessons and will have a very successful survival garden.  In the meantime, we need to practice as though our lives depend on it. 

JWR:
A key to survival will be having a handy way to start seedlings any time of the year, or perhaps to even have a micro-greenhouse for Winter vegetables.  A cold frame is great for this and you can make one for yourself very easily  My wife and I have been starting a lot of seeds recently and I thought I would pass on a simple homemade cold frame idea I had.  This cold frame requires no tools and only about an hour to assemble.  If you buy the materials, you can purchase everything for about $100.
 
I started with an old set of poly garage shelving that I had stored in the garage.  The set I have is a sturdy set made by Continental (I have no affiliation with this company) which sells for $81 or more, though you can find other brands for less.  The shelves are ventilated and the entire set is made of poly with no metal parts, so outdoor s it won’t deteriorate due to rust, and when not in use, they store disassembled in a very small space.  Amazon doesn’t have it in stock at the moment, but this is the one I use.  I like these because they are very sturdy and can handle the weight.  The second item needed is a 15” roll of mover’s stretch plastic wrap.  This wrap adheres to itself and is used by movers to protect furniture, and may be purchased online or at your local U-Haul (again, no affiliation) for about $17.  You may also want to purchase some clear packing tape to keep your creation from unraveling in the breeze.
 
Step 1: Assemble Shelf
To assemble your cold frame, first assemble the shelving unit.  The unit consists of four shelves, with a total of 12 round legs to support the shelves.  As an option, you can combine multiple units to add additional shelves, but beware of the tipping hazard and secure your unit when finished.  The shelves assemble by simply slipping the legs into the four corners of each shelf, requiring no fasteners. 

Step 2: Wrap bottom, sides, and top
Use the stretch plastic to wrap the shelf unit on the bottom, sides, and top first, leaving a bit of overlap on the sides in the front and back, making sure you overlap layers for adhesion, and stretch it to fit snugly. 

Step 3: Wrap front and back, leave a gap
Next, wrap the left and right sides of the shelf unit leaving a 12” gap in the center of the front and back, again overlapping with the sides.  Wrap these in the direction of the back, away from you, starting at the top and ending at the top.  It’s best to use a continuous loop all the way around.

Step 4: Repeat Steps 2 and 3
Repeat these two wrapping steps (steps 2 and 3) to create an overlapping second layer of plastic.

Step 5: Wrap the “Door”
Finally, wrap the 12” inch center section in the opposite direction, but this time, start at the bottom, go up the back, and over the top, ending at the bottom of the shelf unit at your feet.  Leave about two or three feet of extra plastic wrap at this point wrapped around a dowel or old broom handle.  This will allow you access to the cold frame by opening this last section, with a handy place to roll up the plastic.  Wrapping the “door” in the opposite direction will help to prevent unwrapping the rest of the plastic when you open it.  You can open the “door” partially and weight down the roller to allow ventilation, or roll it up and put it on top of the unit as needed.  When closed, tuck the broom handle next to the bottom shelf and hold in place with a log or rocks.   This unit is very light and may be moved indoors if needed due to extreme cold, or moved to different places on your property if the amount of sunlight needed varies.  Place your seedlings and starter trays inside and begin planning your harvest!
 
Options you can add include baling wire for extra security holding the unit together before the wrapping process (though you may have to deal with rust later), and if you are setting it up in a windy area, you might want to anchor it to the ground or a wall.  If you need to use the top shelf inside the frame, you can extend the wrap higher using a light spacer such as a couple of milk cartons on each end of the top shelf before wrapping it up.  If you do this, add a board between them to suspend the plastic wrap “roof.”
 
Best Regards, - Ron in Florida