Growing Food in a Crisis
By: Violet Bee
Tags: Environment, Food, Gardening, Covid 19, Climate Change

Growing

Growing Food in a Crisis

Gardening is the backbone of a resilient food system.

Image courtesy KT SHEPHERD

Only a few generations ago the kitchen garden was a staple of life and an insurance policy against trouble. Just as a well stocked pantry was the key to household resilience and surviving the lean seasons. Recent events have laid bare the delicacy of our global system of commodities and how quickly an emergency can ripple through our lives, unsettling everything.

When the emergency is regional, like a hurricane, the surge in buying can be absorbed relatively well and recovered from easily, if it is short lived. When our emergencies drag into weeks or months and are wide-spread, breaks in the supply chains begin compounding. Add uncertainty about the duration of the crisis and we find ourselves in a world of hoarding and empty stores. Even where the exists food in warehouses, the disruptions make it difficult to get to customers.

The problem of supply assumes we all still have the means to purchase and that’s simply not the case. With unemployment out of control and government aid still only a vague notion (and not nearly enough at that) many are now finding themselves in even more precarious situations than they were already. Now is the time for us to retake some control of our food to feed ourselves and our neighbors.

Gardening has suddenly become a means of survival again, and nurseries and seed supply companies have been overrun with orders since this crisis began and a few that I normally use even shut down ordering temporarily because they were inundated.

While options might be limited and orders delayed, if you have the resources to make a seed or seedling order, I’d recommend it as the best option, since you’re likely to get more consistent results and cultivar specific advice for growing.

If access to seeds or various kinds of starts is not an option, there are many vegetables, fruits and seeds/grains that can be grown from things you find in your kitchen.

Regrowing Food from Scraps

There are many foods that can be grown from the scraps in your kitchen. Vegetables where you have the root end, i.e. the bottom of your celery, heads of lettuce/greens, and leeks/green onions can be regrown by rooting those items in water and then planting. The same thing can be done with the heart of bok choi and napa cabbage.

Potatoes can be sprouted and grown quite easily and sweet potato slips can also be started from fresh. Some potatoes will have been sprayed with an inhibitor to prevent them sprouting, even organics, but I’ve had no problem with my organic grocery store potatoes.

Greens, such as beet, turnip and radish can be grown by planting tops, though they can be a bit of an acquired taste. Carrots that have been lying around in your fridge may sprout if you plant the tops (they’re biennials), and while you can eat the greens, you might consider letting them flower and harvesting seeds for planting a fall crop. The same is true of the rest of the aforementioned greens growing roots. Parsnips can also be regrown like carrots, for their seed, but their greens should not be eaten. Radish gets a special mention because their young seed pods are edible and delicious.

Finding Seeds

Your pantry may also contain seeds in the form of dried beans (nothing that has been split will grow, i.e. split peas or split red lentils) and seeds. Seeds like sunflower, sesame, quinoa and pumpkin, if whole, un-roasted and un-polished should grow. There may also be a few in your spice rack, whole dill, mustard, fennel and other seeds used as spices. You can try pre-sprouting some of each for a viability test.

From here it gets a bit more complicated. Seeds can be harvested from some of the items in your kitchen as well. Tomatoes, peppers, melons, winter squash and cucumbers, to name a few. In some cases, like winter squash, the new squash you grow may or may not be exactly what you expect because different varieties can cross-pollinate. You may end up with what is affectionately known in gardening circles as franken-squash. It may or may not be to your liking and not worth the risk, if you have limited growing space. Many grocery store varieties will also have been grown from hybrid seeds, which don’t reproduce true to their parent. Again, if you have a yard and no other seed supply, maybe worth a try.

Nuts and grains are also possible, but more complicated and longer term (in the case of nuts) and not practical for emergency purposes.

Calorie Dense Staple Crops

If you have access to make a supply order or are trying to choose how best to utilize your limited growing space, one thing to consider is how many calories you’re going to produce from your crops.

In a perfect world, these are the items I’d recommend you grow:

Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Beans, Corn, Winter Squash, Sunchokes, Quinoa, Sesame Seeds, Pumpkin Seeds, Sunflower Seeds.

They are calorically dense, nutritious and all of them can be stored relatively easily. Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes and Winter Squash need different types of curing, while the rest of the list needs drying. In all cases, once properly handled they will store for months (the cured ones) or years (the dried ones). The only exception are the sunchokes, which store in the fridge for a few weeks only, but are worth keeping on the list because they are prolific producers, just eat them first. Alternatively, because they are perennial (U.S. zones 4–9) they can be left in the ground if you grow more than you can eat.

Container Growing

If your growing space is limited to container growing, these are excellent resources to get you started. If you can get a copy of the Bountiful Container I would especially recommend it. They have advice for growing just about everything (including trees) in containers.

Sprouts and Microgreens

If you have a seed supply of sprout or microgreen seeds, they can be a great way to bridge the gap while starting longer growing vegetables and are very nutritious. Sprouts are especially useful as you need no growing medium, except water, and you eat the entire plant, including the nutritious seed.

Growing in a Garden

For anyone with a yard, community garden plot or any other space you can inhabit, here are some nice resources for learning to grow some of these staple crops which have the potential to keep you and your neighbors fed.

If you have a space and are otherwise unable to garden, or are able but have no space, this is a great time to start working with your neighbors. Physical distancing can be easily maintained and you can share your abundance with the neighborhood. Once you have some plants growing, you can even reproduce some, like tomatoes, from cuttings to get everyone growing.

Sweet Potatoes:

Corn, beans and squash using the three sisters method:

Potatoes:

Perennial Sunchokes:

Beans:

However this current emergency plays out, a few things are sure. It will take a long time for most people to recover from this disruption. Even families untouched directly by the pandemic have likely been economically impacted. For those of us who are still on solid ground, growing our food is an important part of community resilience. Food banks are being overrun and many around us are struggling. Hopefully in a few months I’ll have a bounty to share with my local food bank and enough seedling tomatoes to pass out to all of our neighbors. If you have some time and the means, maybe you can do the same.