If there was no food I would grow these in my fall garden for survival.
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These are the best crops for survival in the fall growing season. Why are we talking about fall right now? Because quite honestly, it’s time to get ready for fall. Uh if you’re not getting ready now, you’re a little late, but there’s still time. So, um these are the best crops that I found that would be for survival based off of many different aspects to the crop, the way they grow, the way they store, and all that. So, we’ll get into that. And what I’ll do is I’ll take you around and I’ll show you a rough idea of where I’m going to plant these. The gist of this right off the bat is and what we really want to focus on are storeable crops and multi-use crops. That’s what we want. Okay? So, and when I say storeable, you can say canning, you could say just curing, anything like that. I would leave off freezing for the simple fact that it may not be an option in that scenario, but you never know. Again, it just depends on what you are worried about. First one here, and you have to we’re going to have to wear an imagination hat for all of this cuz these crops are for the summer and we will talk about that when that time is appropriate. But for the summer uh or for the fall, we’re gonna put broccoli, which is not on one of them, but we’re also going to put cabbage in here. And cabbage is a great great crop uh for a number of reasons. One, it has a high storage life. And two, there are a lot of different ways you can use cabbage. So, we plan to put at least at least one of these two beds here is going to be nothing but cabbage, if not both of them. We haven’t totally decided yet. When I say cabbages, you can use Chinese cabbage, you can use a regular heading cabbage, you can do um you know like a uh a baby cabbage. There’s all kinds of different ways. But as far as using them, you can ferment it. It stores for a really long time in the fridge, over a month in the refrigerator. Um and then it’s like, okay, well, what if we don’t have power? Well, it’s going to be cool outside. You can store them outside, right? You can make take a little effort, store them outside and they will do the same. And not to mention when the sun starts to get lower and it starts to get cooler a lot of times you can leave these crops in your garden or this crop in your garden until you’re ready to harvest it. Basically treat it as an ingground refrigerator. So, and then as far as using it though, you know, at at first glance, there’s not a whole lot of different uses for it, but just imagine taking it into stews, taking it making slos, just salads, like all kinds of ways to use it. And it’s high in fiber, full of water. It’s very good crop to have for my area, and not necessarily yours, but for my area, parsnips. So, we’re planning on putting parsnips here. Um, basically the same line as carrots, but parsnips here are a fall crop only. Now, I’m in coastal North Carolina, but this bed, we’re planning, I think, to have parsnips in this bed. At least half of this bed is going to be parsnips. So, they store for a really long time. Same idea. You can leave them in the ground and just use your ground as a refrigerator. We a lot of times don’t harvest our parsnips until December into January. So, and they will be fully ripen and ready to go, but they will be sitting there for a long time. And we may also on the other token put carrots in the same bed. Carrots go hand in hand. These two crops store forever. Um, carrots are really good to can. I love canning carrots. I have not canned parsnips yet. Don’t think I will, but we use parsnips in stews and sheet bakes and all kinds of stuff. So, you can use parsnips across the board. It’s a totally different flavor and it’s really good. Carrots, I don’t need to say anything about carrots. Carrots are great. Same idea. They store for a really long time. You can leave them in the garden. You can pull them up and put them in your refrigerator, especially in the fall. It’s totally different in the fall than the spring, so remember that. But you can leave them in the ground and pull them up when you’re ready to eat them, all that stuff. And a lot of times what happens is they will hold over, especially if you put some protection over them. And then come in the spring, you already have a crop growing that you can harvest very early into the spring. So that’s a great way to use it. My next favorite, and I think we’re going to put them in this bed, is going to be rudabagas and turnups. So rudabagas are really good. They get a nice big bulb on them. They last for a really long time in the refrigerator. Carbohydrates, but low carb. If you’re like a brother like me and needs to lose a couple pounds than low carb, but a little bit is great. Different flavor profile. And then the turnups are really good for multiple reasons. One, because you can eat the greens off of them. Two, they’re really hearty. You can eat the roots and they store for a long time as well. Um, you can use them interchangeably in meals. For flavor profile, I prefer rudabagas, but turnups are right there on par with them. So, there’s a whole t different kind of ways. And if I had to pick only one, I would pick the turnipss because the greens are better than the rudabagga greens. So, you can do that either way. If you want to grow uh turnipss for greens, you just seed them very heavily. And if you want to grow them for roots, you space them out more and you’ll get bigger roots. So, just think about that. All right. So, we’ll take you over here and we’re going to do kind of a broad one here. Um, greens. So, partic in particular, um, collards, kale, and even chard in this bed. Uh, I probably won’t be doing kale. I’ll be doing mostly collards, if not only collards, but collards. And they’re all really cold hearty. Um, a lot of times you can get your collards to last all the way through winter, especially if you put a cover over them. Um, if you get anything below like and stays below 24 degrees, you never warm up. Um, then you’re going to have to keep them covered. But if you fluctuate like we do in coastal North Carolina where we can be 18 degrees and then be 50°, 60 degrees, then back down to 20°, they do just fine out here. Great crop, multi-use. Again, you just have to get creative, but it’s so cold hearty, and it’s a reproducible crop over and over and over again. Unlike your cabbages where it’s one and done, you can plant, we usually plant six collarded plants, and then that’s all we need, and we have food for the entire winter. It’s all in how you harvest them. If you harvest it one leaf at a time, you’ll have them all the time. If you harvest a whole plant, they’re going to be one and done. So, you just kind of pick what you want to do. But again, and that’s fall specific, but this is a great crop to have because it lasts throughout the winter, very, very cold hearty, and you can use it. So, I lump them together because typically in our house, what we do is we use greens interchangeably. So, if we’re cooking like soups or something, I’ll just grab something that’s green like that to put in it. If we’re making some kind of stir fry, generally speaking, we’ll use whatever. Um, but if we wanted to cook like your classic southern collards, clearly we would use southern collards for that and for that recipe. But for the most part, they’re interchangeable across the board. And they’re all very cold hearty. So, all of these are really good to put into your garden, you know, for the survivability factor. And I just want to go on and say like all of these I plant in my garden anyways. This one right here, um, a potato, so like a fall potato planting, a lot of times you can squeeze them in. Really good crop to have. Highly storeable, you know, across the board. You can use them in multiple ways, but it’s a really good crop to have in this bed right here. I’m not an expert at doing fall potatoes, but from what I’ve seen in my summer in my spring potatoes out of a 4 by8 bed, I can usually I usually plant about 30 potatoes and I will get about 50 to 60 lbs of potatoes. In the fall, I imagine I could cut that in half. Now, we’re not talking about eating on high heaven and being like full all the time, but we’re talking about a survival at this point. And 20 pounds of potatoes is actually quite a lot if you believe it or not because one, you don’t have to eat a whole plate full of potatoes. You can eat a potato or two, which is highly recommended that you do anyways, but they will last for a long time, especially in the winter time when our houses are cooler and drier. Then they will store a lot longer. So, this is a really good way, not to mention the fact that you can save a potato and then replant it in the spring. So, you’re already one step ahead. So, let’s take a beat real quick before I give you an honorable mention, which I think is a very important mention. Um, we did an episode on the Backyard Gardens podcast a few years ago now, and it was about like the original homesteading garden. And if you look back in history, and we’re talking like the 1800s and stuff, where, you know, people basically either you lived in a city, which now you’d call it like a little village or something, or you lived out on a farm, right? You basically grew your own food and survived. Um, these were the main crops. They didn’t grow all these crazy ass crops you can get. They grew your standard crops. And you notice I left out lettuce, um, broccoli. Broccoli is is okay, but it doesn’t store for very long. But the focus was multi-uses. So, if I was to design a garden, I was, you know, brand new and I had this little bit of knowledge, I would look at it and say, well, what vegetables can I use in multiple ways that will store for the longest time possible with nothing needed? And then you just kind of go from there, you know, and then you can start building and building and building. Um, like we didn’t really put peas on there because peas are a good one, but at the same time, there’s they’re not crazy multi-use and you do need a lot of them to go. So, you know, if you grow grow the right variety, you can get pretty crazy and you can grow five pound cabbages. Well, five pound cabbage is a lot of food. Um, you know, you can grow a lot of potatoes. And remember, I said one bed of potatoes. You can do two, three beds, whatever you want to do. You know, um, you can break up all of these into different categories of how much you want to grow and how long they will store and then go from there. And it does take some trial and error. So, you know, you want to continue to grow them year after year until you get really good at them in multiple different seasons because a lot of these crop all these crops except for here in this area, parsnips, um, they can be grown spring and fall. So, you get two opportunities a year to try and grow them and they grow differently in each season. And some of them you harvest differently in each season. For instance, my kale this year, I grew them right on through the winter, but in the spring if I harvested the entire plant. Now, if I would have planted it in spring, I probably would have still harvested the entire plant because it was just going to go to bolt. So, you know, and if you don’t know what bolting is, it’s when it creates seeds and the plant gets bitter. So, you can kind of use that to your advantage and then start to tweak out a plan the way you want it. And there’s other crops by all means. But my honorable mention which I have an argument for not it’s not really multi-use to an extent but for the speed of it can be a game changer. Let’s take you over to this bed here. This is our melon bed which is man it is slow going this year. So we’re planning to let this bed go as long as possible. I’m determined to get a melon. I haven’t done really good with melons in the past couple years. So, we’re working on it and I’m just r-rooting plants constantly trying to keep them in the bed, which is fine. We’re starting to get flowers, so that’s great. But, we won’t harvest, we won’t empty this bed out probably until the last minute. So, what does that mean for planting this bed? Well, we’re absolutely going to plant this bed, but we are going to put something in this bed that grows really fast, and that’s going to be the almighty radish. Radishes are so fast to grow. So, years and years and years ago, I saw a video and if you know it, link to it below if you can find it, whatever. Um, there’s a guy, he went to South America and he was like doing a challenge and he’s like, I’m going to try and x amount of days to start a business and he took a pack of radish seeds and he start became a radish farmer. Well, you know, he started it, he grew them, he harvested them, he grew them, he harvest them and within like months he had a full-blown radish farm. you know, he started with a little patch and went bigger and bigger and bigger. Well, what that says to me is that’s a really fast growing crop. I mean, typically speaking, 21 days from seed to harvest. Now, is that absolutely like gospel? No. I’ve actually never really had a seed to harvest radish in 21 days. But in the grand scheme of things, I have had it a lot faster and it stores for a longer time. Now, as far as multi-use, it ain’t the best, but there are multiple types of radishes, too. So, you can do daicon radishes. Um, you can do, you know, breakfast radishes, you can do round radishes, long radishes, skinny radishes, all kinds of different things. Um, I really do think it belongs in this category for this talk because we use them in our garden for two reasons. one quick crops that we want to get into a bed. We want to grow it. We want to harvest it and we want to rest it. So, technically, we’re not wasting any space. We’re using all of it, but then we’re letting given the bed time to rest. We’ve gotten a full harvest out of it. I can mentally be satisfied with that, and then we can go on from there. And two, we use it. If for some reason it doesn’t produce, we just mulch it back into the soil and then let it grow and do its thing. So, radishes are really important. and I wouldn’t sleep on them. If you don’t like radishes, find a way to like radishes if you’re worried about this and start it now. Um, you can pack a lot into a small space, too. So, in one 4×8 bed, I would say, I’m trying to do math in my head, which is never pretty. You can grow three to 400 radishes in one 4×8 bed. I mean, technically by the square foot gardening manual, I think it’s like 16 per square foot. So, I usually put eight per square foot, which means in 32 square ft. 32 * 8, 254. No, 256 radishes. So, I was a little bit off. So, 256 radishes you can comfortably get in there and you could squeeze more in if you had to. That’s a lot of radishes and it’s a lot of radishes in a fast amount of time, which is a lot of calories in a fast amount of time. That can absolutely help you if you need it. And we use it every single year. We get tired of eating. We don’t do a crazy amount, but we also use them to fill little gaps, too. So, if we had to in this bed and, you know, if let’s say we left these peppers longer than we wanted to, we could absolutely pull these peppers and then plant half a bed of radishes with something else. and then you know make that happen. So there’s a lot of different things you can do and you just use that to your advantage. So did I miss anything? Let us know in the comments below. But the key to it is simple storage and multi-use. And those are the three things that we need to look at to keep to get our gardens going through a survival type situation. Um and again I grow my garden to grow my garden but I always started it for that reason. So my mind is always there a little bit and I’ve just grown to like these over the years. [Music] [Applause] [Music]
38 Comments
Roast radishes well in oil, garlic and seasoning. Tastes like a potato and has fewer carbs and a higher nutritional value.
Good video. I’ve been feeling lazy the past couple days. You got me motivated again. Thanks. Ways To Enjoy Radish**. We have a whole new love of radishes once we discovered roasting them. They’re delicious that way. Similar to a mini roasted parsnip or turnip. Roasted onions, roasted baby carrots and roasted radishes, on butter lettuce with oil/white wine vinegar is a favorite salad at my house. After they’re roasted, we add them at the last min to stir fries, or just eat them as a roast veg side dish.
Bush beans, they can grow in the fall in a lot of zones. Gives you snap beans and dry beans and also great for the soil.
Beans!!! Don't forget beans! and squash! As for radish, you can eat fresh, pickle them or roast them so I say multiuse and if you let them go to seed the seed pods are great in salads! 🙂 oh and in a 4×8 bed using the square foot garden method of 16 per sq ft, ummmm that's 512 radish!! lol that will feed ya for a bit lol you can succession plant them too so every two weeks you have a good harvest to last
Do you grow onions or garlic in the fall ?
Beets
Very good video sir
Pickled radishes are great. If you're down to corn bread and beans and you can open a jar, to break the monotony, it kicks everything up a notch.
What zone do you live in?
You forgot about squash, butternut squash & pumpkin store for a long time & beets fed people during a depression & early fall grow some sorghum, it can be made into flower or seeds fed to your chickens & silage given to rabbits, sheep, pigs & goats.
We had no spring this year. Last freeze was May 31st 3°F. Then June 3rd 80°F. Since temps have been from 55° to 90°, with rain at least 2 days per week. A few hard core thunder storms. My spring plants have made it through it all. This being said.. My spring plants will be harvestable soon, and I'm already prepping to plant my fall plants. Only summer plants I have are tomatoes and Japanese egg plant. Green beans are producing very well, cabbages & brussel sprouts are coming right along, bell peppers are just now producing, Carrots, radishes & onions have been harvested and new seeds are in. I'm going to be dropping cabbages, brussel sprouts, turnips, carrots, radishes, onions, green beans, broccoli, spinach, kale, and cucumbers, and fast growing long neck squash in, this week.. Yep, in July. Our first expected frost is September 15th. No summer garden this year, but the spring fall veggies are more important to me anyway. My potatoes are in pots, and doing fine. Rain has been good, Ive only had to water 2 weeks this year. I'm going to drop my fall plants seeds, and throw a green mesh over them. I'm also going to trellis the cucumbers and beans over them. So, they should be fine. Such a crazy grow season for us up here this year. I may throw peas in too. I am definitely canning my harvests. The neighbors are bummed because I have no extras so far. I need to make sure I have enough food put up. -60°F winter is likely again this year. Last winter was mild, so I guess we can't complain. I am happy to report that my "all in 1" homemade spray beat blight and leafy mildew. Yep, got rid of it completely. I also treated the neighbor's tree that was the source of the blight, and it's a beautiful lush green tree now. Yes, I treated the ground.. I treated everything around us. Which is nice because the spray also keeps nasty bugs away too. Anyway.. weird year, but at least I know I can produce a ton of food in really bad conditions, against the odds. Oh, and I bolt some plants on purpose, and I always collect seeds from my own plants. If the parent plant will produce in this environment, the seeds generally will too. I get about a 98% germination rate using seeds from my best plants each year.
Great video! It popped up on my YouTube page and I love everything you said! I am an instant fan. Keep up the good work!
Great info and lots to plan for. Appreciate your knowledge and i have only started two items you mentioned. Thank you!
What zone is this
thank you so much for sharing
What growing zone are you ??
I am in zone 5, and the growing season is done for sure by mid October, on Canadian Thanksgiving Day, officially. The 2nd Monday of October. 🇨🇦 🍁 😊
❤😊 Radishes are absolutely a great plant to grow, and the entire plant is edible. The greens, the flowers, the seed pods, and seeds can be sprouted to eat. Hardy plants too. Bees love the flowers.
Radishes can be cooked, and can be pickled. Very versatile plant.
I would add flavor. A few cloves of garlic, store great, they get planted in the fall. Some of your flavors like oregano and parsley dehydrate well and can be harvested early. My perennial herbs are my favorite, either they over winter or reseed like crazy. A pot on the side of the garden can many flavors. I also grow beans, so many different kinds, that grow quickly now.. I am trying garbanzo beans this year. So many things to add with somewhat quick growing times. Chives give onion flavor and can also be dehydrated for storage.
Very good information thank you for sharing Very good information thank you for sharing
Beets & spinach are two of my favorites to grow in the fall.
I've already planted a 2nd crop of potatoes,sweet potatoes and about too plant more carrots beans and lettuces and kale. But I usually plant butter nut squash for long lasting meals.
I love cabbage but I've never been successful, bugs just take over.
So I just buy it 😏 I use it for keto "spaghetti ", sliced thin, and fried with onions in a little coconut oil or something. So good in so many ways!
What zone are you in?
Cook radishes. They taste like potatoes.
can pickle radishes for on sandwich,hamburger.salad whatever and love the greens,
Want store broccoli, Chop very fine. Dry it in a food dehydrator(no power 2 wire mesh screens and glass add sun it will dry in day or 2.). Never tried that on greens but i am sure you can.
Unrelated, but what type of pvc are you using for your hoops for the garden beds?
I love rutabagas. If you gook them like mashed potatoes and add a tiny bit of maple syrup and butter to them, they taste just like candied acorn squash. Dessert in vegetable form! My garden is absolutely tiny, so I focus on veg that are hard to find or expensive in the grocery stores that I like such as Swiss chard, daikon radishes, and good tasting tomatoes and beans.
I met Bill Mollison of Permaculture fame years ago . He also has a book on Fermentation .
Turnips and the greens
Great video. Good suggestions that I am going to try.
🤟🤠🫵my corn didn't look good
I am harvesting my parsnips seeds now, and walking to the next bed and planting them😅
Here in Arkansas, i will never be without Poke. I leave a patch for emegencies. Bit of a pain to cook, but very nutritious…and berries are useful.
rough hot hot summer here in canton ohio this year. tomatoes are doing the worst. cucamelons,peppers,squash,eggplant,zuchinni all doing great. had to plant a second round of pole beans due to the 90 plus temps duration we had. thanks for the video:)
Can grow Fava beans and sugar snap peas
How do the root veggies NOT decompose? I know some ppl bury a steel can & put veg w/ straw to act as a root cellar, but… 🤷🏼♀️ How are you keeping squirrels/chipmunks/voles/etc out?
Canadian here zone 5b
Planted determinate romas 1st of june and harvesting nooow, started a bunch more with fingers crossed ill get a second harvest… also started another tray of basil and it didnt like the high heat and humidity this summer but hoping for pesto this fall. Had broccoli started in the greenhouse but the damn moths got to the babies. I seriously have not figured out brassicas yet