I’m no gardening expert. My wife handles most of that work, and she’s got skills I definitely don’t have. But over the years, I’ve watched what she does and learned a few things about how growing your own food can really boost your food security. It’s not about becoming completely self-sufficient overnight – that’s just not realistic for most of us. It’s about having something to fall back on when things get sketchy.
We’ve got this big backyard, and my wife has turned it into something pretty impressive. Our combined efforts at home and the community gardens produce about 15% of what we eat annually. It’s not total self-sufficiency, but it creates genuine security when supply chains face disruption or prices spike unexpectedly.
Starting doesn’t require expertise – just curiosity and patience with the inevitable mistakes every gardener makes.
Working with Your Geographic Constraints
We live 60°North, which brings unique challenges that shape everything about our food security planning. The growing season here is ruthlessly short – we’re lucky to have four months without frost. Snow covers the ground for six months of the year, and even when it melts, planting anything before June is gambling with nature.
I’ve watched experienced gardeners at the community garden lose entire harvests to unexpected September frost. Some vegetables handle cold better than others, but when you’re working with such narrow margins, every week of the growing season matters enormously.
This geographic reality means you can’t simply follow advice written for temperate climates. If gardening guides assume six or eight months of growing time, most of their recommendations won’t work for harsh northern conditions. You need strategies specifically designed for short seasons and unpredictable weather.
Getting Your Space Set Up Right for Food Security
We’re pretty lucky with our backyard space – it’s big enough to do some serious growing. My wife has set up these raised beds where she grows carrots, peas, beans, turnips, rutabagas, and other vegetables. The raised beds work great because they warm up faster when our short summer finally kicks in, and let’s be honest, every day counts when you’ve only got a few months to work with.
But here’s the thing that really changed the game for us – we got access to this community greenhouse. That facility is enormous, and it lets us start plants way earlier than we could otherwise. When you’re dealing with a climate where you’re lucky to get plants in the ground by June, every extra week matters tremendously.
The greenhouse extends our effective growing season on both ends – starting seedlings earlier in spring and protecting tender plants later into fall. This extension capability becomes critical when your outdoor growing window is so narrow.
Berry Bushes and Maximizing Space
We’ve also got berry bushes scattered around – Saskatoon berries, haskaps, black currants, raspberries. Even managed to squeeze in some strawberries. These plants are workhorses once they get established. They produce year after year without much fuss, and berries are something you really notice when you’re buying them at the store.
The key thing I’ve learned is you’ve got to use whatever space you have creatively. Maybe you don’t have a big yard like us, but you might have community resources you haven’t thought about. Or maybe you can maximize what you do have with containers or vertical growing. The point is to start somewhere and build your food security from there.
Dividing Roles in Our Food Security Plan
Over the years, my wife has become quite skilled at gardening. She handles our backyard beds and also has her own plots at the community gardens. Sometimes I think she knows every gardener in town by now.
This might sound unusual, but this division of labor actually works pretty well for food security. Not everyone in the family needs to be an expert gardener. My wife has the green thumb and the patience for all the daily work – watering, weeding, watching for pests. I handle other parts of our preparedness setup.
The community garden has provided more than just extra growing space. It’s become a network of experienced growers who share knowledge about what actually works in our climate. My wife learns techniques from other gardeners, trades tips, and sometimes exchanges produce. This collective knowledge proves invaluable – these people understand our specific growing conditions.
You don’t have to figure it all out by yourself. Maybe your spouse or kids are more interested in hands-on gardening. Maybe you’ve got neighbors who want to team up. The important thing is making sure someone in your circle can reliably grow food when you need it.
Learning from Generational Knowledge
The person’s gardening skills don’t develop overnight. This knowledge likely came from family – passed from mother to daughter or father to daughter over generations. It’s become a lifelong habit rather than a crisis-driven response
This generational transfer of knowledge creates more reliable food security than panic-driven gardening attempts. Skills develop gradually: understanding soil conditions, identifying successful varieties for your climate, learning preservation methods. These capabilities must exist before you need them.
When I see people trying to start gardens during emergencies, they’re usually too late. The knowledge you build now becomes your insurance policy against uncertainty.
How External Factors Affect Our Planning
During the COVID pandemic, while others were scrambling to hoard food supplies, we continued our usual gardening routine. The stores around here still had plenty of food, so there wasn’t pressure to suddenly grow everything ourselves. My wife just kept doing what she always does – planting the same kinds of vegetables she plants every year.
I think that’s actually the right approach for most people. You don’t want to be making major changes to your food security plan based on whatever crisis is happening this month. If you’re already growing food regularly, you’re in a good spot when problems do come up. If you’re not, trying to start a garden in the middle of a crisis is probably too little, too late.
We’ve never been motivated by supply chain issues or food prices going up. We grow what we grow because we want to, not because we’re worried about what might happen at the grocery store. Maybe that sounds casual, but I think it’s actually more sustainable than panic-driven gardening.
Growing food is just what we do every year. We don’t change our plans because of whatever crisis is in the news. That way, we’re already ready when problems actually happen.
Daily Maintenance Reality
The daily commitment required for successful gardening often surprises people. In our dry climate with hot summers, gardens need daily watering. My wife tends both our home gardens and makes regular trips to the community garden for watering and weeding.
This time investment becomes significant, especially when you’re maintaining multiple growing locations. But my wife has time for this work, while I focus on other aspects of our food security planning.
Understanding the daily maintenance requirements helps you plan realistically. If nobody in your household can commit to daily garden care during the growing season, your food security plans need adjustment.
Keeping Food Around When You Need It
Now this is where I actually do get involved. My wife grows it, but I handle much of the preservation side of things. I’ve gotten pretty good at canning rhubarb – we grow tons of it, and when I can, I preserve it for months. We don’t eat rhubarb constantly, but having it canned means it’s ready whenever we need it.
We make jam from all those berries too. Black currant jam, raspberry jam, whatever we’ve got plenty of. Again, it’s about extending the food security you get from your growing season into the months when nothing’s growing outside.
We also have a food dehydrator for preserving fruit, though this method tends to be quite intensive and takes considerable time to dry food properly. The process works, but can require more attention than canning.
Exploring Indoor Growing Options
We haven’t invested in hydroponic systems yet, but I’ve researched hydroponic walls designed for indoor use. These layered systems sit inside the house and can grow herbs and some vegetables year-round. For our climate, extending food production through winter months could significantly improve our food security.
This option needs further investigation to understand what crops grow well hydroponically and whether the energy costs justify the food production. But for harsh climates like ours, indoor growing might bridge the gap between our short outdoor season and year-round food needs.
Emergency Food Backup Strategy
But here’s something people might not expect – I also buy freeze-dried meals. The good ones that last 25 years. Yeah, they’re expensive upfront, but think about it this way: we’ve got six months of winter when we can’t grow anything fresh. Having those meals as backup means we’re not totally dependent on what we managed to preserve from summer.
Most of what we harvest, we just eat fresh while it’s in season. We’re not trying to preserve every single thing that comes out of the garden. That would be a full-time job. But the items that preserve well – the rhubarb, the berries for jam – that’s what we focus on putting away for later.
We eat fresh during the growing season, preserve what we can, and keep emergency meals for winter when nothing else is available.
Being Realistic About How Much You Can Grow
The reality about self-sufficiency depends entirely on where you live and what your situation is. If I was living in some cabin way out in the woods, yeah, I’d want to grow pretty much everything I eat. But we live in a town where I can still buy food at the store, so the pressure’s not the same.
I’d estimate we grow maybe a quarter of what we eat. Realistically, I’d like to see us produce enough to cut grocery costs by 75%, supplementing with store-bought foods to maintain nutritionally balanced meals.
Twenty-five percent represents substantial savings on groceries and reduced dependence on external food sources. Setting achievable targets prevents the common pattern where people attempt complete self-sufficiency, become overwhelmed after one difficult season, and abandon their gardens entirely.
This percentage provides a solid foundation. Once you master growing a quarter of your food reliably, expansion becomes an option rather than a necessity. Consistent production at this level builds both skills and confidence over multiple growing seasons.
Even partial food production creates genuine security. You learn which plants do well around here, when you can safely plant without getting hit by frost, and the tricks for keeping food good through winter. These capabilities matter during supply disruptions or price increases. You know you can produce food when you need to. You’ve got the skills and the setup. That peace of mind is worth more than the money you save on groceries.
What We Decide to Grow and Why
We focus on nutritional variety instead of trying to grow the most calories possible. I mean, vegetables and fruits don’t have tons of calories anyway – that’s not really what they’re for. But they’ve got nutrients you can’t get from stored grains or freeze-dried meals.
My wife plants crops like carrots, peas, beans, turnips, and rutabagas – vegetables that grow well in our short season and provide different kinds of nutrition. She also focuses on cruciferous vegetables like Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, spinach, and broccoli for their nutritional density.
The berries are excellent because they’re packed with antioxidants and vitamins, plus they taste far better than anything you buy at the store.
Nutrition as the Foundation of Food Security
I think this approach makes sense for food security because you’re not trying to replace calories – you can get those from stored rice, pasta, whatever. You’re growing fresh produce that’s hard to store long-term and expensive to buy when it’s good quality.
Stress increases your body’s nutritional needs. Fresh or preserved vegetables and fruits from your garden help maintain health during difficult periods.
Plus, let’s be honest – morale matters. Fresh strawberries sure taste better than canned food when times are hard.
Dealing with Weather That Doesn’t Cooperate
Our growing season is extremely short. We’ve got snow on the ground for six months out of the year, and even when it melts, you’re taking a gamble planting anything before June. By September, you’re already worrying about frost killing everything off.
This is the biggest challenge for our food security planning. You can’t grow anything when there’s three feet of snow outside. That’s why we keep those freeze-dried meals around – some years the garden just doesn’t deliver.
Making the Most of a Short Season
So we work with what we’ve got. That greenhouse facility helps extend things a bit on both ends of the season. We can start seedlings earlier and maybe keep some plants going a little later in the fall. But basically, we’re looking at maybe four months of actual growing time if we’re lucky
This is why preservation becomes critical for us. With only four months to grow food but twelve months to eat, extending that summer harvest is essential. Multiple preservation methods – canning, jam-making, and dehydrating – help bridge this gap.
I think a lot of people don’t factor climate into their food security enough. You can read all the gardening books you want, but if they’re written for places with longer growing seasons, much of that advice isn’t going to help you.
What I’ve Learned That Might Help You
The biggest thing is to use whatever resources are available around you. That community greenhouse has been huge for us – way more valuable than trying to expand our backyard setup. Look around and see what’s available. Community gardens, seed exchanges, maybe neighbors who want to trade space for labor.
You need multiple layers in your food security plan. Fresh growing, preservation, and emergency supplies. Redundancy saves lives in survival situations – when one system fails, others keep you fed. Never depend entirely on growing alone, especially when frost can kill your entire harvest overnight.
Those gardening tips from warm places won’t do you much good when you’re dealing with real winters. Figure out what works for your weather, not theirs. Work with your climate, not against it. Build systems that work every year, not just once.
Experienced growers stick with crops that work in their conditions. Beginners often start big projects and quit after one season. Emergency situations don’t allow time for learning basic gardening skills. Skills develop gradually – understanding soil conditions, identifying successful varieties for your climate, and learning preservation methods. These capabilities must exist before you need them.
The knowledge you build now, the relationships you form with other growers, and the preserved food in your pantry – these become your insurance policy against uncertainty. Begin with what you have and build from there.
