Topic: How Much Garden You Would Need to 100% Survive On - page 2. (Read 648 times)

As a suggestion. Storing canned food  is likely a better option.

If the world goes to shit an outdoor garden will attract a lot of people.

Maybe a thread on what foods should be stored.

Canned chickpeas would be one as they take a long time to go bad.
Bottled water no better would be some ceramic filters.
Interesting problem.

What size of food room and how many cans would last 2 years? this could be done.

Also 5 years of stored food is it doable?

One of the things I love the most and I put it as my first goal within the future plans is to own a small garden for farming, unfortunately the city in which I live is difficult to get a garden no matter how small, the houses here are adjacent to each other and there is not enough space to form a small garden, the solution is to go out to the countryside or Resorting instead to surface cultivation, surface cultivation can be a good alternative in such cases, but it requires more experience and skills required.
Individuals like nations need food self-sufficiency, otherwise we will never be free. In addition, wars and famines may occur and we are forced to feed ourselves so it is necessary to acquire farming skills.

People would really be just ending up on getting consideration on having a garden is on the time where there's famine or severe economic crisis and also attached with some total devastation that affects crops
and plantation on where it did really come to a point that there would be scarcity.Yes, it might still be impossible to happen as of this moment but we cant really remove the probability that it might really be a reality in upcoming years to come.

For now we are still fully dependent since there are supply from different aspects which as long you do have the money or funds then you wont really be finding yourself to be in trouble in terms of food
or sustaining or simply surviving yourself. Garden is a good option though but not all would really be having the interest and would just simply stick out into their fiat and bought simply.

i guess, that's one way to look at it. if you have no time or no interest in growing your own food, you can always find another option or job that can give you income to cater your needs. we can't really expect people to tend their own garden if it is not in their vocabulary. but in that case, he should be the one looking for his options how to survive in this crisis.

also, when it comes to having your own garden. you can always make a barter to your neighbors or friends regarding your harvests. so you can you have variations of vegetables.

You can grow more crops in a small place if you have enough knowledge and resource to do that. In many urban places where open space to grow crops is hard to find, people use their rooftops.

People in the modern world like to be involved in service work that doesn't require any physical effort and they intend to buy foods from the market. Very few show interest in growing their own foods by investing some time because they can earn more money within that time if they do other work.

Evil tongues say that this is the work of Putin's secret climate weapon, but I think this is the consequences of the accident in the Gulf of Mexico in 2021, which almost killed the warm Galstream current, which made the climate milder in Europe, when there is no extreme heat in summer and there is no extreme cold in winter. Although I don't have an extra chromosome like Greta Thunberg to be a big climate change expert.

The environment, as well as the climate, isn't the same as before so growing plants and crops isn't as easy as before. There are also lots of things to consider for us to grow crops and plants. We need a good location, season, and so on so mostly, only professional farmers and agriculturists could grow good plants.
Also, we now have different focuses and priorities. Most of us don't have enough time to do things like planting so we rely on supermarkets when it comes to our necessities. Our generation now is different. We rely on technology and our time each day is limited to doing important stuff for us to survive so planting couldn't be our top priority if there are still other alternatives.

Actually, that is just about the right question. Because half of this population would die from depression if you took their phones away from them, or if they were impaired in some other way e.g. could not access the internet.

Now you take the surviving half, and also take away electricity as well for several hours, in unpredicable times of the week. You'd kill off 90% of THAT out of despiration.

So 95% of the population would wilt if the electricity was cut regularly. Taking away markets and food stores too? That would finish off the rest of the population.

Seriously, it just shows how dependent society is on electricity, and how even more dependent they are on stores - that this entire article is just wishful thinking, far away from reality. I will bet $100 that most of the people who read that article do NOT want to attempt something like that unless they were in extreme desperiation (And I will take your $100, because once you know how basic things are in the 3rd world, you will start to think that most people in developed countries are spoiled).

I think whether gardening is therapeutic depends on a person. I know people who are really into it, but I personally hate sand and dirt, so doing something that requires a lot of contact with them is annoying to me. Also, while I've noticed that fresh produce is sometimes very expensive in Western countries, it's very cheap in my home country, so unless it's something like growing your own basil, chillies or cherries, it doesn't make any financial sense to put lots of effort and resources into growing your own veggies, for example.
It all really depends on where you live and what you have. If you live in a flat you're renting in a city, it's much harder than if you have your own house and land in a village. But even in a village, people tend to specialize (someone grows potatoes, someone grows corn, others have animals and get tons of milk), and then cooperation with others when you exchange goods works much better.

I mean, how can we objectively calculate this, seeing as we do not all eat the same amount of food. It could theoretically be enough, but it also depends on what foods you are growing and how much you need on a daily basis. There is also an issue of seasonality, you would need to alternate what foods you grow as well as have a bunch that can keep through the winter.

It was nice to remember how everything was beautiful and green in the spring, and now, unfortunately, the heat waves are destroying everything in front of them, regardless of all the effort. Anyone who tries to grow their own food under these conditions really needs to be incredibly persistent or as some would say a little crazy.

Those are few of the reasons on why I like to live in a rural area. I can raise my very own crops there and then grow some animals like pigs because here in urban places the space here is only limited and people will get angry at you if you raise animals like chickens especially pigs because of the strong foul smell. You know, houses here are very close to each other. The soil on rural areas are also soft and healthy, perfect for gardening.

The only downside here is like you said, the market is too far away. Before you go on town, you need to make sure that you list all the things that you will be needing for quite some time so that you won't missed anything.

There needs one more factor to be added in the above theory and that's seasonal crops. You can not just have fertilised land and grow whatever food we want. We need it harvested according to the seasons. Too much rain and your wheat can't grow but definitely you can have good quality of rice in that season. Even with 2000 sq feet of space one can do miracles using the hydroponics cropping. Mutliple crops can be planted and have the dietary requirements achieved with the same.

Though article is pretty much convincing but it does need proper planning before one can achieve high quality crop cycles. For every crop cycle fertility of soil will reduce significantly and it may need additional steps such as halting crop harvesting in that land for particular period of time.

In that case we may need to grow on another apart of land until the previous one gets breathing.

My father lives in a rural town where there's ample of land for gardening or even farming. And he indeed grows his own food. Actually, the entire neighborhood is partially independent when it comes to food. They've got chickens, pigs, cows, goats. They've got all kinds of vegetables and fruits around, both planted and wild.

However, they're still not 100% self-sufficient. For example, there are still spices that they can't grow but they need everyday. They also need condiments that they can't produce. So they still have to go to the market every once in a while. But when worst comes to worst and survival is the only thing that matters, they could probably get by, at least in terms of food.

Good day. Quite interesting thread! I don't think that it is real for our modern life:) Personally I have a garden, I grow plants, flowers and some vegetables. But still, I buy the main products in the supermarket. In my opinion better will be to make cool landscape design project with help from https://avantilandscaping.ca/ guys and use your backyard for rest!

I see where I went wrong. Assumed 1 square foot = 3.3 square meters, when in reality its closer to 1 square foot = 0.1 square meter.

I put common dirt in a big plastic container. With wood chips, chopped tree branches, grass clippings, leaves. Sprayed water on it. Turned it to mix everything up. Its been decomposing for many months now. It looks and smells bad. That's what I'm using for my potatos. They're growing ok, it doesn't look beautiful. It looks like a swamp. Need to find a way to introduce more oxygen. Everything is too clumped together and choked off. Sawdust might work but am trying to see what type of results I can get without using electricity or modern conveniences.




If 200 sq feet can produce 200 pounds of potatos in a 90 day period. And 200 lbs of potato might be "sufficient" food for 90 days on a rationing system.

I'm not playing devil's advocate. Perhaps we are planning for future potato world.

There are very highly efficient progressive methods such as permaculture (smart forest) or aquaponics (aquaculture and hydroponics closed system cultivation) that allow you to get a lot of food even in a limited space, spending little effort or even fully automated. But I think that the problem of hunger on a planetary scale (and the breath of this horseman of the apocalypse is already close) will not be solved by progressive agricultural methods, but by a breakthrough in the field of pharmacology - a type of universal dry food for people approved by the dietitians association. Long term testing on pets doesn't seem to show any significant side effects from switching to dry food and clean water, I think the next step is to offer it to people. Of course, marketing efforts are needed to make people want to switch from natural food to dry food, but I think that this issue is completely solvable.

I think that natural food will very soon become a luxury that not everyone can afford - people will go to a restaurant on holidays and on special occasions to eat a steak or a lobster. And on weekdays, just eat a handful of these inexpensive tasty granules from the nearest pharmacy with a balanced composition, as well as the necessary set of vitamins and minerals - and do not worry about food anymore. My cat has been doing this for ten years every day and he's fine.

ps Technically, there is no problem making a Soylent-type universal nutrient liquid to solve the problem of food and drinking water in one blow, but without regular chewing, the gums weaken and the teeth begin to fall out, and this is an unpleasant side effect that I would like to avoid.

235 lbs is 106 kg
200sqft is 18.5 sqm
It gets you 5.7 kg per sqm, nothing out of the ordinary for somebody who does this in order to get results.

While plants do technically grow out of thin air they still need nutrients to grow that big fruits or tubers or else, your average garden without aid won't be able to produce 20 kgs/sqm unless much of that is water, like cucumbers. And you can't live on cucumbers

I wonder what you tried to do with yours that went wrong, potatoes are quite resilient in growing, it takes art to mess them up . My specialty is growing cabbage with leaves opened up like a sunflower and harder than bamboo!


I wouldn't use herbicide either on small plants with short flowering fruit cycles but you could help them a lot with a weed barrier. Obviously not that cheap HDPE or PEHD or whatever poly- thing but one sheet made out of wool and wood resin. Not going to last more than 4 years as it does discompose but nothing to worry about them either. The problem with weeds is that once you get some nasty stuff like knotgrass it will be a pain in the ass to get rid of it, you're going to feel the need to buy a flamethrower.

Back to the main topic, did a bit of math on those assumptions.

7 billion means 1.6 trillion sqft, so if the online convertor is right this is about 57392 square miles so we could feed the entire world if we raze Georgia to the ground and make it all agricultural land.
The metric system is simpler, 18.5 m2 per person,  148 000 km2, so ~ Sweden or Spain, and we have land for beaches and resorts left.
Seriously doubts those claims, it would mean  Lesotho would be needed to feed the whole of Africa.



If you can't see that tiny green dot there, I don't think you can see any reason to believe the claims either. 

If you want to survive by growing your own food the space inside your garden won't be enough.
You have to plant vegetables on your own(or rented) piece of property,somewhere in the fields.
This raises another question.Who is going to protect your vegetables from stealing?
Having access to water is really important.What if your property is too far away from a river or a lake?
There's not enough agricultural land for all the people in the cities,so I guess that the division of labor will be preserved.The farmers will keep farming and the people in the cities will keep doing their business.

I honestly don't bother much with strawberries🍓, they grow without too much effort - although I always plan to get as many varieties as possible and pay a little more attention to them. Since I'm allergic to something that producers spray strawberries on (and other fruits and vegetables), this is the only way I can eat them without looking like I've been stung by bees or wasps🐝


You’re right there, people can hardly estimate areas without ever really planting anything and doing gardening. Considering the safety nets I use, I estimate that I have about 150 m2 more or less, although the area is a bit bigger, but there is a space where I make compost and plant plants like comfrey that I use as fertilizer.

Of course, part of the area is also a flower garden, because a garden without colorful flowers is not a real garden🌼