Survival Crops to Grow during Hard Times (with examples from history)

a few weeks ago Mark over its self-sufficient May released a video on the top crops to save you from Starving in which he talked about food insecurity inflation the current political environment and the top six crops that he recommends you plant in hard times to feed yourself and your family now it's a great video and I will drop a link for it in the description down below but today I'm going to talk about three crops which did not make the list but should have in my opinion based on their history of feeding people during hard times so what foods make it on my list that didn't make it on marks well I'll give you a hint it's one of the oldest cultivated plants growing on the planet with remains found in caves in Ghana dating all the way back to 2000 BC don't worry we actually still grow and eat this today I'm talking about cow peas now you may have heard them called pinkeyed Purple hold peas or Black Eyed Peas now why do they deserve a place on the hard times list let me start with pink eye purple peas they are an incredible food to grow during hard times because they are drought tolerant and they produce abundantly they'll grow almost anywhere they'll grow in hard clay soil they'll grow in poor soils they'll grow in alkaline soils you name it this summer I wanted to test it we have alkaline hard clay soil here that is just really specific about what actually will grow in the actual soil here as opposed to my raised beds that you can see behind me so I tilled up a spot of land I literally threw some of these peas in and I left them I didn't weed them I didn't add fertilizer they were watered very minimally and this was the infamous drought of 2022 for Europe that was going on here and as some of you might remember if you saw my garden disaster video there was a period of time where I was actually out of the country during the hottest month of the year actually during August and during that time these peas went four weeks without any water whatsoever when I came back the plants were still alive and and even though the pods had actually dried on the vine I was able to pick them shelve them throw them in a pot of water with a little bit of salt and pepper and within five minutes I had a full meal as a bonus pink had purple hold peas are full of protein and vitamins and with minimal effort you can have a hearty Savory meal so now I'm going to take you on a little history lesson here back to the 1860s and the U.S Civil War well as the union troops moved through the South they cleaned out the storehouses and barns and took the Food Supplies that were there one of the things they had cleared out were the pink eyed purple peas which were a southern staple at that time many Southerners faced with starvation turned to what was left which the Union Army had deemed inedible and that was the animal fodder which you guessed it in this case it was black eyed peas Black Eyed Peas not only became a staple in our Southern Cuisine but they're also celebrated every New Year's Day as a good luck food so based on their history as survival Foods I definitely recommend adding these to any Hard Times food list now for the second food that I would like to add to Mark's list but before I go on if you haven't done so already please click on the Subscribe button down below so that YouTube will know to show this video to other people interested in this topic thank you so much for number two I'm going to go back to my roots in the South but this root vegetable is worldwide I'll give you a hint the Germans named a winter after it during World War One any guesses as National Geographic put it turnips throughout their long and lumpish history have been the food of cows pigs sheep the desperate and the poor and in case you didn't know it you can grow it for the greens or the turnips or both both are nutrient and vitamin rich with turnips having about 30 percent of your daily vitamin C requirement and cooked turnip greens boasting a whopping 220 percent of your daily vitamin A 66 of your daily vitamin C and over 600 percent of daily requirements of vitamin K if turnips help Germans survive the turnip winter of 19 1917 and helped the British survive World War II I think turnips deserve a place on this list now for number three I'm going to take you on a walk with me because here I'm talking about not just one food but many I'm going to ask you to keep an open mind because I'm actually going to be talking about foraging and I know for many that can conjure up visions of wilderness survival shows or things like that but don't worry I'm not going to be asking you to eat any wild grass or dig up any grubs today because for me foraging is all about knowing what in your environment around you is edible let me show you some examples here at the edge of my Village is a meddler tree these may be uncommon today in many places but they are mentioned even in Shakespeare's plays as you can see right now they're very hard these fruits are unique in the fact that they provide winter food because they actually become ripe after the hard frosts come these guys will actually start to get soft and they taste a lot like apples here is a fig tree growing in a ditch now it's small right now but it will be bearing fruit probably within a couple of years so I'm going to keep an eye on this one this is an Elderberry tree although you might not recognize it if you're looking for it in the fall or the winter and by paying attention you start to recognize trees and plants by their blossoms and by their leaves well before their fruit becomes ready for the taking I do want to say that I'm a very optimistic person I do not think that the world is coming to an end but what I do believe is that there is immense power in knowing how to feed yourself during hard times

Channel: Now Gardening

Views: 116,137

Keywords: now gardening, food shortages, food shortage, vegetable garden, emergency preparedness food, food shortages empty shelves 2022, food shortage 2022, best crops to grow at home, best vegetables to grow, best vegetables to grow at home, cost of living, garden, gardening, grow your own food, grow your own food at home, grow your own food self-sufficiency, how to, inflation, survival garden, survival garden crops, survival gardening, survival gardening basics, self sufficient me

Id: YTL7rIzI_X4

Length: 5min 41sec (341 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 15 2022