Chestnuts, jujubes, hazel nuts, sea buckthorn, hardy kiwis, …
3 Likes
That is the start of a low disease pressure fruit list for sure! I’d add jostaberry, persimmon, pawpaw, Jeanne gooseberry, elderberry, quince… I’m sure there are others and it is definitely zone dependent.
2 Likes
This is absolutely arbitrary and something I just made up
What I’ve always said is I want to be at least 35% self sufficient.
We have laying hens. Fruit trees. Asparagus. Berries. Walnuts. Pecans. Figs. Pears. And a substantial vegetable garden. Plus 2 fish ponds on my place. Plus an abundance of deer, wild hogs, foul, rabbits, squirrels, etc as potential food
Why 35%?
My reasoning is just this: The tools, skills, seeds, infrastructure, and land I use to be 35% self sufficient would be just about all I’d need to Ramp up to 100%…or close to it. Mind you, I have 33 acres of agricultural quality property and I use a tiny fraction of it.
Also, I’m very sloppy about some of my product going to waste because it isn’t perfect or I’m tired of it after a bumper crop. In a pinch all that waste would be eliminated pronto.
Furthermore. I can do a fall and spring garden in Texas. I typically just do a Spring garden.
35% but with an eye for all capacities to be scalable to 100% plus in a pinch
7 Likes
Read all the replies. A lot depends on diet, age, ability, zones, etc. I’m on a Plant Based diet, and there are some who live in beans, potatoes, greens only. I have 1/4 acre, and older. We don’t really care for apples, and they take too much valuable space. I have blueberries, lemons, raspberries, grapes, loquat, figs, avocado, pineapple guava, wild plum, olive,banana, Passion flower/ fruit, etc. I have tried to have fruits for year round, with various harvest times so everything isn’t coming in at once, and something available all year.
I grow peppers, carrots, tomatoes, chard, lettuces in their season, a few onions, butternut, zucchini, etc.
I would need to up bean production considerably, can more to preserve perhaps.
I do have at least a years with of beans and rice stored. I do a lot of container gardening. I can move plants around to follow the sun all year. It also keeps some to a manageable size so I’m not inundated with a fruit at one time, and I can harvest with out special tools or machines, or ladders.
Potatoes are nice, but not required . Beans are required, and or quinoa , amaranth, etc. amaranth fries easily, looks like a decorative plant. Most people don’t know what it is, leaving you with the food source . Pineapple guava is a nice hedge plant, but provides fruit.
Water is everywhere here, so fish, seafood , deer, wildlife are abundant.
I use rain barrel to water in summer. But a drainage ditch is in back, so I can get buckets to water if necessary.
I don’t use sugar, salt, flour, milk, eggs, meat.
I have plenty of salt stored, but never use it.
A green house would be nice, but back porch works fine in winter. Winters are not severe here. Fugs come inside on cold nights. Cut the banana down some , cover with insulation batts, and it will regrow next spring.
Avocados come inside to windowed area for the few weeks if cold. Peppers go dormant but come back in feb/ March - so yes, growing on last years pepper plants! Lol.
Basically, I eat: beans , salad, whatever fruit I have, carrots, onions, tomatoes, peanut butter , oatmeal, ( bulk buy), spices, some rice, some potatoes.(“ some” is maybe once a month or at most, once a week). Grains like oatmeal ( daily), amaranth, barley, rice, chia,rice, etc, You can grow rice in a kiddie pool! ( I don’t, but have the instructions to do it) Amaranth as decor plant . Bulk buy and store grains.
And, get a bidet- don’t stress over toilet paper. Cut up old t-shirts or old sheets if you must.
We had no issues with the pandemic. We didn’t shop much, didn’t miss much.
This year I focused on fruit trees- acquiring, and their respective growing mediums, planning out year round fruit that we actually eat. Last year was veggie garden and trying various methods of growing, ( Meittler, double dig, different types of compost, etc)
I have a few more fruit trees to get, prune for smaller size, and need more seeds for different heirloom veggies. I do save seeds, abs that has worked very well.
Everyone has their own way, and needs for a more self- reliant life. I don’t have to have it all or do it all. One neighbor has several different citrus trees. Another has pears and loquat. Others have figs, apples. Muscadine grapes grow wild all over here. Wild blackberries grow everywhere, as does Passion flower. Many have boats for fishing, or a kayak for river/ shallower water fishing. Plenty of hunters around, but illegal to hunt here. Work with neighbors to share and mix what us available.
No man is an island , even in an island! You can’t do all, but all can share. We did as a small community after hurricanes. Those that stayed , and when they could come back, shared when there was no electricity . I’m not sure how it worked in the larger communities, but our small neighborhood shared and helped each other.
So if everyone has citrus, perhaps you grow apples, peaches, pears, and some if various ripening times. If someone has a boat , but no garden, share your garden for some fish.
Just suggestions. No judgements.
5 Likes
You can grow almost anything in containers. Plenty of info out there on this. I have 20+ year old blueberries and lemons in ground. Everything else is in containers, including banana, loquat tree, blackberries, other blueberries, avocados, figs, pineapple guava, one columnar apple, etc. man easy way to start is by cuttings or grafting to existing trees.
Multi grafting is common now- plums, citrus, peaches, apples can be multigrafted for extended harvests. Figs are very easy by cuttings from a neighbor. I started them this way. Research on fruit types and harvest dates will help guide you to extended harvests.
If you have an enclosed porch, put your trees in there ( and veggies, if they don’t need cold) and a small heater to grow year round. There is so much info out there in topics, just pick your fruit and go for it. Everyone has a few losses now and then. Cold Hardy varieties of almost everything are out there. Or, protect in winter inside.
People got serious about self sufficiency during the pandemic. Fruit trees sold out everywhere, hard to find anything anywhere. So start with scions or root cuttings on easy, low maintenance things and work up.
Veggies can easily be grown in containers. But- we all know this. But grow what you will eat. Don’t grow things you don’t gravitate to, or know you don’t like.
We are not big on apples. Have one columnar apple. It got pollinated , and grew a few apples before TS hit area. Knocked them off. So somewhere near me , someone had an apple tree to help pollinate mine, or it self pollinated.
There is a whole world of fruits out there! I’m trying some interesting ones, that I’ve eaten, and liked. Some won’t grow here. Some do better up north. But there is something fir everyone, and a way to do it.
2 Likes
Before getting excited about climate change, please read Steven Koonin’s book, Unsettled.
1 Like
A quick Google search indicates most of the stuff in that book is bad faith arguments and cherry picked data. He did work for BP, so conflict of interest there.
5 Likes
I had not thought of this, but for the 10 bucks it costs for a kiddie pool that would be a fun experiment. Thank you for sharing your thoughts in general!
3 Likes
Agree to disagree:
3 Likes
I grew rice in a kiddie pool one year. Someone stole it. They came in and clipped the tops and took the grain.
I wonder if your neighbor who stole it realizes how easy it is to just grow it themselves… (assuming it IS easy, I can’t imagine there are many inputs other than sowing and waiting/occasionally watering)
1 Like
I don’t want to stray too far off topic, although this book is actually very relevant to the resiliency and security aspect (although not fruit specifically, but touches more on general well being and food security), but Limits to Growth might be a good one to keep in mind if you want a fairly long term look at this issue.
They modeled different “earth scenarios” back in the 70s and this book is an update on how we have progressed as a society according to their models (spoiler alert: we are not on the best track to sustainability).
It not only looks at climate (which I shall not discuss further as per forum rules) but the growth in population of humans in general and the impact that constant growth is (and will) have on the eventual growth limits we as a society are facing as there are more mouths to feed and less “vittles available in the grocery store” on a global scale.
This may be a better tangent to gravitate towards than the climate discussion which will inevitably be flagged as “political”.
5 Likes
The grasshoppers say that I need to chose them or the fruit trees and they won’t allow both! In some ways, I prefer them eating the screens on the house windows over the fruit trees…as bad as that is. Well, I guess the grasshoppers have to go 
Maybe I can figure out a vacuum cleaner that can auto process them into a handy snack like a fast food place. “Parts is parts!” as Wendy’s referred to chicken nuggets. Once you see grasshoppers strip leaves and eat all the bark off young trees, it’s easy to understand the sentiment of farmers who widely spread the insecticides back in the day. No spray is not an option during a severe outbreak. Of course, the general response to resiliency back in the dust bowl days was to move somewhere else. We still have dust coming out of the walls from those days.
1 Like
I just bought some at a farmer’s market, planted some of them and they have produced for years now. I prefer the ones with more rounded bulbs because they are easier to clean.
One of the top probiotics mentioned to help your gut microbiome.
Much cheaper than paying the hospital later.
John S
PDX OR
Sounds political to me.
If so Gene, then I would say this entire thread could be considered political. I’m not sure how discussing how an ever increasing human population wouldn’t factor into “resiliency and security” as this thread is based on, but I don’t know everything nor do I pretend to.
Edit: I DO know about animal population studies and how boom/bust cycles occur based on resource (food) scarcity.
I recall Paul Ehrlich’s predictions. Not so accurate. But definitely made some good political fodder.
But I’m with you on the resilience part. Covers a multitude of sins. Who know where we will be in a few years. But preparing for whatever may come is a good idea
People don’t seem to get that resiliency is not about facing a big Hollywood event. In the best of times people get tested and many end up losing everything and living under a bridge. In the worst of times, think Europe WWII kind of worst of times, some actually thrived.
As I have said I have been in a rather unusual amount of major disasters, and yet I don’t bother thinking about economic collapse or a breakdown in social order; me losing my job and not finding another or losing the ability to work is all the economic collapse it would take to sink me, and a single home invasion from a crazy bastard all the breakdown in social order needed to kill me. The world at large would not even notice.
So I keep large stores of food, because I use it. I grow plants because I eat them and because they are an excellent source of money in propagating them. That money let me buy all sorts of stuff to make me resilient, and open up options to carry me through a very personal economic collapse. Beyond that we are talking style (this or that event), not substance.
5 Likes
I can’t recommend the book Tribe by Sebastian Junger enough. Many people actually missed the blitz in London. During the siege of Sarajevo people often felt better than before.
1 Like