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Growing Plants Off the Grid

Growing Plants Off the Grid

This page contains information on why and how to grow plants while living off the grid, also you will find useful tips on how to satisfy most of your food needs without having to rely on the city for vegetables and grains. Growing plants off the grid is very essential if you want to declare your independence and be fully or mostly self suffecient. Spending around $75 on vegetables seeds and grains will satisfy the needs of a small family all year round in terms of veggies and grains consumption (for 2 acres of land and up).

Benefits of Plants when Living Off the Grid

If you go the extra mile and decide to grow plants such as veggies and grains, you will greatly reduce your dependence on the outside world (stores, supermarkets ...), because a big part of the budget dedicated to food is spent of vegetables. Here are some benefits of growing plants in your backyard:

  1. It's cheaper to buy seeds than vegetables.
  2. Fresh vegetables right from your backyard (no pestisides or chemicals).
  3. Nothing goes to waste, spoiled vegetables can be composted.
  4. Most veggies can be replanted, so you only spend money on your initial investment.
  5. A nice hobby which makes you feel great afterall.
  6. Can be used as feed for your animals which means you don't have to spend money on feed.
  7. Healthy diet, with more fresh vegetables at home, you’ll be likely to increase the number of servings of vegetables you eat per day.

What Vegetables to Grow?

The first step to planning a successful vegetable garden is to ask yourself these 7 questions:
1- Which vegetables to grow?. This may sound fairly straightforward, but there are a lot of factors involved, and you need to answer some basic questions: What vegetables do you and your family like? Do you want to eat all your crop fresh, or store or preserve some of your harvest? Can you grow the vegetables you like successfully in your climate? How much time and energy can you put into your garden? The first factor to consider is personal preference.

2- What vegetables do you like to eat? The first decision to make in choosing what to grow in your vegetable garden is simple: What vegetables do you and your family like to eat? Perhaps you'd love to grow peas because you remember how wonderful they tasted fresh out of the garden in your childhood. Or maybe your family's crazy about spinach salad or broccoli casserole, or you're just plain tired of frozen vegetables.

3- What are you going to do with it? How do you plan to use your vegetables, and what are you going to do with the part of your crop that you don't eat as soon as it's harvested? Do you want to freeze, can, dry, store, or make preserves with some of your crop?

4- How much do you need? How you plan to use your vegetables directly affects how much of each vegetable you want to grow, and will influence your decision about the kind of vegetable you're going to plant — all carrots aren't alike, and there are hundreds of different tomato varieties.

5- Can you grow it? Not all vegetables grow satisfactorily in ail climates. Some vegetables like it hot; some refuse to grow in hot weather. Some vegetables flourish when it's cold; others just shiver and die. Certain plants go from seed to harvest in a couple of months and will grow almost anywhere in the United States — green beans and some kinds of lettuce are among these obliging vegetables. Others are very picky and need a long stretch of warm or cool weather. You have to take the plant's needs into consideration before you can make a decision on whether or not it's a practical choice for your home garden.

6- Do you have room for it? There are plants that are rather like large pets — they're very endearing, but you just can't live with them because they're too big. You want to grow vegetables that will give you a reasonable amount of produce in the space that you have available. Some vegetables — especially some vining crops like pumpkins — need a great deal of room and give you only low yields, so they're not a practical choice in a small home garden. And if you're growing an indoor container garden, you'll do fine with cabbages in flowerpots, but there's simply no place you're going to put a healthy watermelon vine or a Jerusalem artichoke.

7- Is it worth the bother? Some vegetables require very little nurturing, and you can grow them with a minimum of toil. Others require special attention and need to be babied. Celery and cauliflower, for example, have to be blanched, blanching is a process that deprives the plant (or part of the plant) of sunlight in order to whiten it and improve its flavor, color, or texture. Before choosing a crop that's going to need special handling, be sure you really want to give it that much attention. Some crops, too, are bothered a lot by insects or plant diseases — corn is one of them. If you're not willing to deal with these problems as they occur, this type of crop is going to cause you more disappointment than satisfaction.

Once you know the answers to these questions, all you have left to do is buy some seeds and start growing some fresh vegetables right from your backyard.

More information: We hope this page was helpful and provided you with some information about growing plants off the grid, you can also check our other page Raising Animals. Or for more information check out our main page for more survival scenarios here Survival Guide, knowledge is light, and knowledge can enhance your life. good luck!

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