survival crop of the day!

[Treetop]

this is a topic often brought up on gardening forums.... I decided maybe some here would want a good list... do NOT take this as a complete list!!!! I mainly focus on stuff for cooler regions because that is where I am. some of these things are great in both warmer and cooler spots. Feel free to add others! I figure I will add one a day or every few days as my time warrants....

Jerusalem artichokes. this isnt one to ignore! many reasons this is a great survival crop. First it is VERY productive, (it beats pretty much all other grain or tuber crops) it will also produce decently on poor soil. With this plant, you plant tuberous roots, which is also the edible part. Its a sunflower actually, but the seeds arent harvestable. Above ground you have a big wild type sunflower, under ground you have edible roots that actually can survive the winter in the ground. Its rather drought tolerant as well, although if your in to dry of a spot it will still need a bit of irrigation to do well. This plant works atleast up to zone 3, (with the right varieties) and I believe it does well in hot zones but dont quote me on that.

[Treetop]

okay.. a day didnt pass yet, but Im bored and have a few minutes... so plant number two...

Prickley pear cactus... the fruits of this plant is called a "tuna", and store for a VERY long time, and are rather tasty. If you have a wilder strain, the juice in the fruit is still tasty but there is not meat to the fruit and lots of bland but edible seeds... the pads are also edible at any stage, but at young stages people actually purposely eat them in parts of the world... Only those in warmer regions will readily find the most desirable fruits and pads... but there are a few decent fruited ones for cooler regions..

EVERYONE here though will be able to find some prickley pears that grow locally. there isnt an easier plant in the world to grow either. Just divide th pads from the plants and stick part of it into the soil at any part of the year. Ive done this even in the dead of winter with the bulk surviving and thriving. heck one time I had one grow in the 1/4 inch of dust in the back of my SUV... It added new pads and all as if it was in the soil. these plants are beasts! Most people also dont think of it as food, americans anyway... so I rank it as a great survival food because of that as well.

I collect them when I have free time and I see one with a good form. they grow wild here but like I said anyone here could source some varieties if they desired, simply divide it as it grows. all I do is cut most of the pads off a plant, and for good measure plant one pad close to where I found the momma plant, then spread them in places I wont be gardening and it wont get in the way...

Im currently doing a breeding project with these. Im after a cold region good fruit that makes a good hedgerow, so Im collecting the tastier fruit selections from warm regions. If you happen to have any hit me up, we can do a trade perhaps... Also interested in varieties that remain needle free when adults....

i also like planting them under windows of my home... to thwart would be thieves a bit, or peeking toms... If you have them wild around you it wouldnt be to hard to get several thousand pounds of survival fodder going. which will do nothing but continue to add to its mass over time... I got sidetracked on this, but out at my land (not the property I own a home on) I must have a few hundred pounds of it by now, and I only spent a day of hiking with the kids and its just grown on its own....

[Mossy]

Oh, yes. And let's discuss (and re-cuss) those blasted micro-scopic needles. Ugh. Still, they are better than cholla. Much rather tangle with prickly pear.

[Treetop]

If your eating the pads, you either eat young pads before the glochids and needles form OR generally people burn them off.... Ive cut off pads, and handled them well with two sticks. Im told the pads taste kinda like uncooked greenbeans, of course that was the young fresh ones...

[hobo finds]

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/nopalitos- ... etail.aspx

[aloneibreak]

youre right about them growing easily -- hit a couple with the lawnmower and you'll soon have hundreds

i have cut some young pieces and boiled them

didnt really taste like anything

that recipe hobo posted might be good though...

[Treetop]

nice recipe hobo finds!!! I might have to try that atleast once, to know what I might get myself into one day. doesnt sound to bad at all.... I rather like the fruits from the varieties bred for fruit... Even the wild stuff has a good taste to the fruit, its just all seeds instead...

Ok

AMARANTH-pigsweed- QUIONA-lambquarters.... this is really 2-4 plants depending on how you break it down... very closely related ones.

amaranth is cultivated variety of pigsweed, atleast according to most sources... With the pigsweed, you wont really get enough seed to be useful as a grain.. with the right variety of amaranth you can have yields exceeding most other grains on good soil... It also grows well enough on the poorest soils, although yields will be lower... the leaves of all these plants are also edible, so you have harvestable energy dense seeds, and an abundance of warm season greens!

the same is true for quoina but with this one you need to process the seeds to get saponins off of them. Its also a but trickier to find a good variety for a location. but otherwise its a great pick if you find a good variety for your area....

Most dont realize this is food either, although some will.... these are easy to grow and will naturalize even here in the high desert! I have it naturalized as a weed in all my gardens now... I just eat the leaves for the most part... growing it for grain requires specific varieties I DO have, but also good soil to get a large amount of grain. (although some tribes would make massive fields of it and get the small amount of seeds from lots of plants, it works but is tedious) the right varieties grown well can yield over a pound of seed per plant!

Its also a very drought tolerant plant... although yields of seeds and leaves will be affected of course... the pigsweed and lambquarters grow wild in my area... they generally are about 10 inches high with a few leaves and a spoonfull of seeds. they were wild back where Im from in ohio as well... except there they were often 2-3 feet high and you got a couple ounces of seed.

[Treetop]

the next one comes from another angle.... but i wanted to include the thought...

go to a healthfood store if you ever want to store a bit of food. Buy unsplit peas, beans of a few types, get unground wheat berries and whole unground buckwheat, amaranth seeds... etc etc. The reason? well these are all staple foods, they will last a long time if you store them well, but they are also seeds. either for yourself or to trade....

I always thought it was a good idea anyway... thought Id share it.

[Treetop]

SIBERIAN PEASHRUB--- this is a bush. you can use it planted close together as a rather large hedgerow. Each bush will have 5-10 pounds of a small pea like seed. It tastes like a bland bean. Its also good for chicken and other animal feed weighing in at 36 percent protein. Use these as a long hedgerow somewhere and you have a drought tolerant, nitrogen fixing source of animal feed or bland beans for you... It can be a backup to the garden. I love this plant... Get it going and just harvest once a year for the animals. It starts producing pretty young as well.

also most people will not know what it is. this DOES need to be the colder regions with winters... although I cant name them Ive run across similar things for warm regions, a good number of them actually, so I cant tell you what they are... but they are out there... If you put things like tropical-drought-seeds- trees in a few combinations into searches you probably find them....

[Treetop]

Wait a second here! I DO know a warm region edible seeded tree. There are indeed others, but this is the king of them.

Moringa! Not only are the seed edible and nutrient dense, the trees leaves are also edible and nutrient dense. It is VERY drought tolerant. its from africa. I forget its exact range, but it cant live through winters I know that... I forget the exact numbers but between the seeds and leaves of this plant you can account for most of a human diet.

Fewer people would know this then most of the above plants I would think. If you live in a warm region this is a must, imo...

[Engineer]

For those of us up north, building elevated garden beds is a good idea as it allows you to plant a couple weeks earlier in the season. Even if you don't plant them with food crops now, they're a nice landscaping detail that can be turned over to food production if needed in the future.

Another good idea is to hang capped off rain gutters along the sides of your screen porch. Fill them with dirt, and you'll have a ready made garden without having to till the lawn or crawl through the dirt to pull weeds.

[Treetop]

Honey locust is next in line. they have an excess of pods with edible seeds. you NEED to roast the seeds to make them edible, they are a pure survival food, meaning not palatable. they will keep you alive though and will produce when other things do not. few know what they are... some types of farm animals will eat them as forage also, I have read.

Perhaps a more interesting use for the honey locust is using it as a perpetual source of good fire wood. you get a patch of them going and once they are established well you coppice them in such a way they grow more branches, you then can perpetually harvest fire wood for decades. They grow very fast. Its a good quality wood for fires as well.

[Treetop]

next up are the various Elaeagnus species. there are a few. I dont know the names for the warmer region ones, but there are some there as well i believe.

you have autumn olive, and goumi, silver buffalo berry, and a russian olive variant called trebizond dates. I found seeds for this listed as some type of mountain ash on a food importers site. If you have the right strain russian olives are tasty dried, most of them are bird food...

anyway... these are all nitrogen fixing and prolific. even invasive. most of them are berries, and tasty nutrient dense ones few would know of at that... plant these within the rootzone of other trees or bushes and they will increase production of the others trees. (as siberian pea shrub listed above would as well)

they grow fast so lots of biomass for soil building.

[walt2727]

Treetop,
thanks for the info on the Moringa tree.
I'm looking at different sites that detail how it grows here in Florida and I will be adding it to my plantings!
Walt

[Treetop]

im glad someone found it useful is all walt... I feel our global food grid sits on as shaky ground as our dollars do. So I think growing a bit of food, or atleast putting in some trees is a prudent investment of time. to each his own of course, but im glad some others are thinking of it. gardening is growing fast out there. the drive of this list here, is plants off the beaten path that grow easily and most are nutrient dense. I dont need to tell anyone about this neat plant corn.

[Treetop]

todays crop is CHUFFA AKA ground nut AKA earth chestnut

this one is TASTY... or so people say. I havent grown it yet myself...

Its actually a staple in some parts of the world but not in the states... It is a perennial grass with under ground roots that you harvest. Few in the states would know you had a bunch of under ground tubers...

BE CAREFUL with this one though, it can be very invasive! Which means its an easy to grow staple food few can ID.... It is grown as an annual in colder regions because the winter will often kill it! but in warmer areas, you will probably never get rid of it if you plant it. You could grow a small amount in a container and spread it later if conditions call for a food most cannot ID...

[Rodebaugh]

Tough to even find a good pic of the chuffa plant and produce. Some on google images, but not many.

[Treetop]

http://rareseeds.com/chuffa.html

here is a source.

[NHsorter]

Thanks for the thread treetop. I enjoy learning about these lesser known crops. A while back you talked about the pinion trees which I was intrigued by. I never knew that they would grow in my area. Now, in this thread, The Jerusalem Artichoke and the Siberian Peashrub both sound like good additions to my land. I have just had a hard time finding sources for them. Also, is the Jerusalem Artichoke a perennial?

[Treetop]

NHsorter I know I still owe you pinons, SORRY! I will get them there this spring...

as for jerusalem artichokes...

http://oikostreecrops.com/
i love his company, they have many great ones... there are other sources.

As for siberian peashrubs..

for seeds try...
http://www.bountifulgardens.org/prodinf ... r=TSI-7766

for trees try,

http://www.burntridgenursery.com/fruiti ... &parent=28

Yes I purposely picked companies I like and have other cool stuff. Partly because I like them, also because I knew they had it, and lots of other cool stuff.. there are other sources for these...

[Treetop]

http://newworldcrops.com/wp/2012-potato-seeds/

since I am posting seed companies, Ive posted this one before but it deserves a spot on a survival crops thread. this link is to a company that sells potatoe seeds, rather then seed potatoes. generally people grow potatoes from the tubers. These are potatoe seeds though, little seeds smaller then a tomatoe seed. they can last for decades! So if you bought a small amount youd KNOW you could grow potatoes in the future even if you cant source some tubers. they do need a longer season to start from seeds or you will end up with tiny potatoes you would then need to plant those poatoes the next year to get a full sized crop. So start them early if you go from seeds.

http://adaptiveseeds.com/
this is a great company as well, with many grains and such you will not find many places.

http://www.ancientcerealgrains.org/seed ... alog1.html
there is nothing like this company. It has rare varieties of grains, including some breeding work that is better then anything else you can find. they are expensive but if you want to grow grains you need to check them out.... the "miracle seeds barley" offer is of particular interest....

[Mossy]

To me, the #1 survival crop is the dwarf turnip, AKA "radish". Edible sprouts in a couple of days, the root is ready in about 5 weeks and edible at all stages of growth in between.