Subsistence Agriculture.

If you can get perennial food plants going, you will be well served.

Me, I've not done this. Should have.

My mountain kin did a bunch of foraging. Tree nuts were a substantial benefit. Poke greens grow everywhere. Blackberries also grow all over the place up in the mountains. We had a go-to blueberry patch at around 3,000 ft altitude. That particular mountain later was made into a bear sanctuary area. I never saw any bears there. Bears and people should both keep their distance from each other. When bears have enough mast for their diet, they stay away from people. I've heard from my lot about cooking bear meat, but never heard any bear-hunting stories. I see absolutely NO purpose in hunting bear. Our two species are not that different -- I'm not killing my own. Knew cousins who hunted fox for furs. I see zero purpose in that. I was hunting high pasture one day. Mr. Fox was hunting the same green, same prey, groundhog. He came out the woods and we stood there looking at each other. I was sitting and I didn't even point my rifle. He walked back in the woods. My cousins would have tried to shoot him. Not me.

If Pap and I had a lean day hunting, we'd gather ramps. He taught me to take what would be used and leave the rest so that they could spread year to year. In his backyard, his dad had planted a pecan tree in the late 1920s or early 1930s (he was a young man when his dad planted it). By the 1950s, that tree was a real nut-producer and we gathered pecans every year. By the 1990s, the tree was freaking enormous. Side branches were the size of other trees' trunks. That area of the county got incorporated by a town and houses popped up all round, so one couldn't go out shooting up into that tree to drop squirrels. We went way out into the nowheresville mountains to hunt. We could have been tresspassing, but no one in their right mind would mess with Pap. We once went to the porch of a neighbor's house to shoot across a road to sight in my .22 rifle when I was around age 12. He didn't ask permission. Pap just did things. Personally, I only know of him getting arrested one time. As he got older, his heart got a whole lot softer (still had a bad temper, though).

To speak to the topic, I went out looking for articles on perennials. The first article talks about all manner of perennial food types. I'm just going to quote the vegetables section. Please read the entire article for complete information.

"55 Perennial Vegetables, Fruits, Herbs and Nuts"

https://www.thespruce.com/perennial-foods-1388677

Begin quote:

Perennial Vegetables

• Artichoke (Try Jerusalem, also known as Sunchokes.)
• Asparagus (Keep the bed weed-free, and they'll produce for 20 years or more. You can take your first harvest in the third growing season.)
• Broccoli (Not all varieties are perennial. Try varieties Nine Star or Purple Cape.)
• Radicchio
• Rhubarb
• Spinach (Not all varieties are perennial. Try varieties Ceylon, Sissoo, or New Zealand.)
• Sweet Potato
• Tree cabbages/tree collards
• Watercress
• Wasabi
• Yams

There are pros and cons to growing perennials and it helps to know them both. Incorporating more perennial foods into your garden is a smart way to save time and money. Another benefit to growing perennials is that you will eliminate the need to prepare the planting area or spend money on seeds or seedlings at the start of each growing season. Once your plants are established, they'll be less susceptible to drought or other unfavorable growing conditions.

But, there are drawbacks to perennials, too. Perennials are not always maintenance-free. Perennials require regular fertilizing to thrive. Many perennial edibles also require a fair amount of pest control. You also won't get the same instant gratification that you may be used to with annual foods. Most perennials don't produce food for the first three to five years.

It bears mentioning that some perennials can spread to the point of becoming invasive. Blackberries, mint, chives, and horseradish are just a few examples of plants that you'll need to keep an eye on. You may want to plant these known spreaders in containers so that you can keep their growth in check.

Take time to chat with a local garden expert before you plant your perennial food garden. If you don't know anyone with a green thumb that you can talk to, try a Master Gardener program, your local county extension office, or tap someone at a nearby garden center. Gardeners usually enjoy sharing their knowledge with others, so don't hesitate to reach out. Here are three important questions you can ask them:

• What types of perennials work best in your climate?
• What precautions do you need to take when planting perennials?
• What sorts of pests and problems can you expect throughout the growing season?

If you are going to have both perennials and annuals in your garden, consider keeping them in separate areas, so it'll be easier to plant your annuals and clean up at the end of the growing season.

End quote

Asparagus, once having gotten a good start will not only come back the next year, it will spread. That's good and bad -- don't let it take-over too much space.
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The following article mentions ramps. I'm glad somebody mentions them. Most don't even know what a ramp is. As many of you know, ramps are pungent to the max. You throw-in ramps when cooking meat. Goes great with fried squirrel & adds flavor to the gravy. The following sez that ramps have a mild onion flavor ! They ain't nuthin MILD about ramps! I wonder if they have some other breed? Eat ramps and your skin will ooze the aroma for days, so everybody has to eat ramps at the same time. Think turbo-onion/garlic.

"12 Perennial Vegetables That Grow Back Year After Year"

https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/perennial-vegetables/


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Ramps for flavor and for health. Most of my kin and their neighbors who came from the mountains lived to be in their 80s and 90s, so I got to hear history straight from the sources. Three of my grandparents lived to be 90+ (my mom's mom lived to 100). The men in my family smoked like freight-trains so they made it to 70 ... if that. Mountain folk usually only chewed tobacco or dipped snuff. Avoiding too much alcohol and using NO tobacco is the rule. Food available in nature, gathered in nature, raised by nature's rules will keep you healthy. Poor folk fertilize their gardens using composted manure. Boiled tobacco will create a juice that can be used as an insecticide; actually, it's one of THE original insecticides. Nicotine is a poison, duh! The Original People only smoked it during ceremonies, i.e. rarely used, special days only.

https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/perennial-vegetables/

https://www.bhg.com/gardening/vegetable/vegetables/perennial-vegetable-garden-plants/

https://www.growingwithnature.org/cold-hardy-perennial-vegetables/

Continued in next post about foraging ...

 

Continued from above

Foraging for food will be determined by where you live and by the climate there, therefore there's a whole lot of variation.

https://practicalselfreliance.com/spring-foraging/

Be careful! Know what you are doing. A lot of wild plants will simply poison/kill you, plus the suffering is unimaginable. Poke weed is edible (boiled twice and added to other greens) when it is first coming up in spring. The green first shoots are OK; however, when the red starts coming up the stem, then it is poisonous. Poke berries are very poisonous and you get horrific gut pains before you die. I've eaten a whole lot of poke greens, very young sprouts, boiled twice.

https://www.primalsurvivor.net/poisonous-berries-chart/

Beautiful nightshade is deadly poisonous. I have a bunch of this stuff growing around my front porch. Comes back every year. It is robust in its own life energy, but if you eat any of it, you are done for. These at my house start with the beautiful purple flowers. The eventual berries can be dark red or dark purple, almost black.

Danger!
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"Spotting the Difference Between Queen Anne's Lace and Poison Hemlock"

https://www.armgroup.net/spotting-the-difference-between-queen-anne-s-lace-and-poison-hemlock



https://extension.psu.edu/wild-carrot-or-queen-annes-lace

https://eattheplanet.org/wild-carrot-queen-annes-lace2/

Wild carrot (a.k.a. Queen Anne's Lace) can be eaten, but if you pull up the roots of the wrong plant and try to eat it, you can DIE. Learn the difference or stay away from this entirely. You can scrape the tap root of wild carrot with your knife and it will smell just like a regular garden carrot and pungently so. If you pull up the root of something that looks like wild carrot, scrape the root, and it smells nothing like a carrot, then throw that away and immediately wash your hands. There's a plant currently invading Virginia that looks a lot like Queen Anne's Lace / Wild Carrot; however, it can grow up to 5 feet tall (wild carrot is far shorter) and is so poisonous that just touching it can result in skin burns -- especially in the daylight sun. This poisonous beast removes all of the skin's ability to fight ultraviolet light = instant sunburn ... add that it is also toxic in other ways.

 

I have a big library and a lot of them are survival related and one of the bigger categories is food related. Right now I am reading a book called "Wild Edible Plants of Texas". Good pictures and descriptions and it covers all of the possible uses of each plant.

Where I live there is a LOT of livestock and also lots of game animals. Then there are thousands of ponds, creeks. rivers and a huge lake. I don't expect to have much trouble providing food. l

 

I am in UK and the majority of my food growing is perennial. Less work, less input, more reliable. The above list contains a good amount of what I grow. Indeed my neighbours don’t appear to realise that it’s food as it doesn’t look like items they would buy at a supermarket!
Today I am using Welsh Onion. Along with my Egyptian onions, we are taken care of there!

 

You burn more calories digesting mushrooms than they provide. In a survival situation the LAST thing that you need is to be sick too if you ate a bad one. Unless you are in a situation where you KNOW that no rescue is coming the less things you eat that you are not totally familiar with and used to eating the better off you will be. It takes a LOOOOOG time to starve to death but not long if you poison yourself.

 

Today we shall require cabbage . No problem there. We have 4x 6’ perennials ( Taunton Deane) . Haven’t bought from a shop in years. Good in pasta dishes,in a traditional dinner, and even as a strong tasting salad. We shall need potato too. Now obviously these are not perennials,but I treat them as such. Mine have been in permanent beds for ten years,and each year I just sling compost and mature chicken manure on there. Upon cropping,I just leave two tubers in there,and the just grow back. Saves work!

 

I'm just now learning about the Jerusalem Artichoke. No doubt I've read some article that included the Jerusalem artichoke (a.k.a. sunchokes, sunroot, wild sunflower, earth apple); however, information about this plant sure never stuck in this make-do / now old brain of mine. My kin didn't grow it, but neither did they raise sunflowers. The tuber grown in my region was the potato ... period. We'd dig sassafras roots to make tea.

Anyway, I've been an idiot. Here's what I'm currently learning:

Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_artichoke














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I tried growing Jerusalem artichokes many years ago . My yield was dismal , nor did I like eating those things . Admittedly though I planted them in a poor spot to begin with , probably too shady . -- Since then I have gravitated to growing for over the winter months spinach and mustard greens . On August 19 in the year 2022 I planted spinach and ate spinach all winter and harvested the heirloom seeds June 10 in the year 2023 . However per square foot of garden space the mustard greens yield more food . My September 10 planting of mustard greens are still growing very well in the last few days of 2023 . I am in zone 6 at a higher than average elevation . Many hard freezes have been on my garden already this winter with the lowest temperature that I have seen this year on my thermometer being 19 degrees . My winter garden is not covered up at all ,nor any protective system . --- I picked and we cooked up a mess of spinach earlier today .

 

Another thought on substance gardening . Some people fork over big bucks for a greenhouse thinking that will help them when SHTF . They need to consider heating that thing with the power grid being no-more . They need to consider how they will water their plants with running water being no-more . With a roof preventing rain naturally watering the plants and no running water , I see a problem .

 

For my folk, it was gardened curly mustard and wild poke greens. Here, poke greens are "weeds". It grows wild on my property and I notice that poke greens really like my nearest neighbor's property ... right up to his mom's house which he occupies / takes care of. He's weak, I'll just go over and cut the poke when it is just a new season's sprouts. He'll not care. I trim one of his trees that impinges on my driveway ... he doesn't care.

Poke grows EVERYWHERE here. People think if it as a weed ... at best, as a poisonous weed. When it's just a sprout (no red in the stem), cut and boiled TWICE, you can mix poke weed with dock weed (we call it "dockry"; a weed that grows in your yard and everydangwhere else) or better yet, mix with curly mustard. This combo of greens is a healthy mix and tastes great. Boil them with streaked meat and this is a delight. In moderation, poke weed is a gut cleanser, purgative. Too much, or boiled only once, or not mixed with other greens, and you'll get gut cramps from hell. Poke berries are straight-up poison -- only birds can eat it and go on living.

Nightshade vines/ belladonna/berry-viness grow all around my property ... right outside my front porch, there are two or three vines. These puppies are absolutely beautiful, yet absolutely deadly. You gotta know your environment. My earliest childhood memories are of my maternal grandmother and I harvesting garden crops and going out into the wild to harvest natural plants and herbs. In her childhood, you didn't much have access to doctors. If you got sick and didn't have a healer like my grandmother, you died. She was born in the very end of the 1800s. If you were weak, you died. Graveyards in my neck of the woods are filled with tombstones of children. That there was no shortage of old folk who lived into their 90s (like my kin), didn't mean that life was good -- quite the opposite. Those who weren't as tough as whitleather just didn't make it. You were robust and smart, or you were dead. One or the other. Yes or no. Life or death.
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