So, you are thinking of Burying Food in your Garden?
My son called from the Central Valley in California last night and said over 10,000 acres of farm land in the Central Valley are under water. They have been underwater for too long.
And they have not had the worst of the flooding over there in California.
Cropping land, vegetable growers and orchards. A-wash for too long now. Flooded.
Even the local farmers markets are facing fresh food shortages.
Another major interruption to the food supply chain.
And still it rains in California. (The drought is broken though!).
But soon it will be too hot to replant.
And the Central Valley supplies the US with 25% of its fresh food. And still it rains.
This year would be a good year to start a garden if you don’t have one in already.
Another friend of mine said her neighbour told her she is starting to bury canned food in her garden. In case the food runs out. We shook our heads. Maybe she should PLANT a garden, I said. Then put the food in jars in her PANTRY. My young friend said.
Burying food. Good Lord.
A whole community of people who do not know how to grow food or how to cook it. Even squirrels do better than that.
They will definitely be crying when fresh produce goes up another 8%, over the 9.9% it went up last year.
Get those seeds in the pots this week. I even put some zuchinni seeds in pots last week! Just as soon as this weather warms up we are going to get planting.
We have a lot of work ahead people! People. Feed thyself!
What is going into your garden this spring?
It is going to warm up soon, right?
Celi
PS It is raining hard here too – and thundering. This is Boo. Hiding from the mean old thunder! Under my desk. I just scoot my chair back up and put my feet on him. (laughter).
52 Comments on “So, you are thinking of Burying Food in your Garden?”
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thekitchensgarden 
We all need to re-learn the things that our forefathers knew and understood…..or for that matter take note of what the Amish are doing….I am posting from London and the same issues apply here in the UK and all over Europe.
Yes they do! NZ as well.
Every old person I ask about how they managed in the ‘old days’ say first- we had a big garden.
Not only did the gardens provide wonderful food, but. hours of joy and therapy for everyone involved….I loved the garden when I was growing up. So simple and yet so effective…
I so agree! Every time I get out to garden I NEVER want to go inside! Even in the rain!
You can’t feed a family on a 7000 sq. ft suburban lot, but you can have variety. I have 3 stone-fruit trees, 4 Citrus- possible in the SF Bay area; 4 different berries; a Passion fruit vine that gave 250 fruits one year!! And raised beds for vegetables. My go-to fail-safe vege. is Fava beans. I plant a bed in November and harvest in April/May. This year, I also planted in January, and despite the endless wind and rain; with some support for the wind- all are flowering vigorously.
I love that you have trees too – Fava Beans! What is your favourite meal using those? I LOVE passion fruit. I grow all the greens for 3 households all winter, in big pots in the window of my little glass house attached to the house. Isn’t it amazing how much food we can grow and how much LESS we waste when we grow it ourselves. Your garden sounds lovely!
There are so many Middle-eastern recipes with Fava beans. Regrettably I have an unadventurous spouse- steamed with butter, is the recipe I have😁😏.
Everything tastes better with butter!
Maybe we will put some fava beans in this summer!
Oh good lord..when I first read that I thought you meant burying food scraps to compost and or for fertilizer around plants. I think your friend might want to suggest a shrink to her neighbor? Ok, that wasn’t nice but really..what is wrong with the pantry, as you say for storing extra food? At least you wouldn’t have to dig it up when the apocolypse arrives.
Another suggestion to people who can’t or won’t grow gardens is to maybe find a local CSA or a community garden for extra produce. There is a website called Local Harvest where you can find just about anything you want or need close to your home. I think it is http://www.localharvest.org
I was just on that sight last night! Was hoping to find suggestions local and, at least in my area, found that of most of the sites listed they hadn’t been updated in years- many years, and I know for sure that 90% of the CSA’s listed are now gone sadly. I would just add that often searching a county government website for local food programs and resources may be more current. Mine has great info for low income, seniors, community gardens, farmers markets, food banks- really anything depending on what you’re looking for plus they offer classes on gardening, composting…again many different and sustainable individual food learning opportunities.
This site has been round for years and I do not know what happened to its staff. I find that CSAs contribute to food waste unless you are a really good every night cook. That being said you are supporting local farmers which is fantastically sustainable.
Not having room for a garden is true for the majority. So we have to nut out ways to help.
I love the idea of local food programs
I have no words about tinned food in the ground…I really thought a post about compost was coming along, which I am doing but now I sit here trying to rationalize how anyone would seriously bury can food. In other news, I found out yesterday that a neighbor in the apartment 2 doors down from me, a very young couple is working to put in their own raised bed garden in their 2 small plots! We talked about our horrid “dirt” situation, crops (they have chosen too many I think for a first attempt, but at least they are trying) and the resident bunnies and wildlife. I love that they are exploring this path!
so funny about the canned planted food )
My small garden will have tomatoes, pole beans, basil, garlic, and rhubarb. Plus one rattlesnake master plant that comes up every year.
I can’t do without batik either! What on earth is a rattlesnake master plant?
It is a member of the parsley family native to the original midwest grassland prairies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eryngium_yuccifolium
I won’t be planting any cans of food this year. 🙂
So much to do – So little time!
I always plant too much and am endlessly giving it away, oh so joyously. I love growing my garden. Beans from my own seeds. Beets but often fail. No idea why? Soil too much clay? Carrots don’t do well either. Tomatoes but I buy plants. Peppers also buy starter plants. Eggplant. Same. Lettuce cucumbers, arugala, kale, squash butternut and spaghetti. Basil, parsley. I think that’s it! We have a sink hole in our garden this year though as he had a trench dug to put in a ground source heat pump. Oh we love it! No longer on oil heat.
That sounds so comfy!
Maybe you can fill the trench with bulbs.
I love beets for the greens. Ours never get terribly big- probably because I have been eating their greens! I hope to plant lots of butter nut this year.
That always do well here. Unless that nasty squash bug gets them.
The nasty squash bugs can be a killer! Literally!!! We fight them every year, especially on the zucchini!!! I go through and pick them off daily! And the squash stem borers! Also killers of the squash! Some years our squash can be bountiful, and some years it’s a real struggle to even get a few! 😦
I think the idea of burying caned goods is so that you still have food after strangers break into your house and steal what’s inside Of course, that’s assuming they don’t hurt you or worse. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that there is the expectation that the cans will produce some sort of plant with more canned vegetables and fruit on them. You never know what some people are thinking.
As a retired Biology teacher, I was amazed that city kids had no idea where their food came from besides going to a big store to pick it up. If you discussed it, they thought it just appeared in the back somehow. Many were disgusted with the idea that I raised chickens and that I ate their eggs. I don’t know where they thought eggs came from.
There is a lovely story from a friend of mine who butchered her own chickens. Her daughter watched her one day and said “ Mama. There is a chicken in that chicken!”
Knowing where your food comes from is so powerful.
They might be expecting plants full of little shiny cans come spring!
THAT is the scariest thing!!! So often I think, “How can people possibly think that way?” And I have absolutely no answer to that question!!!
Right?
I prefer to grow and can, not bury my food. There are 3 varieties each of tomatoes and peppers started along with pots of lettuces and herbs. Two more varieties of peppers will be purchased at the nursery when it is time. Garlic is in the garden since last fall, overwintered thyme and oregano are up. Waiting for the asparagus bed to sprout. Peas, carrots, and spinach will be direct sown soon. Beans, corn, summer squash, cukes, komatsuma, and pumpkins after the last frost date in May. Blueberries, raspberries, thornless blackberries, apples, Asian pears, peaches, plums, and Concord grapes are in the orchard. Maybe potatoes and sweet potatoes if I have space. Dealing with a painful shoulder and ortho treatments right now, so no new beds will be dug this year. Hopefully the three year project to build a raised flower bed can be completed once eldest son finishes the stone patio in the back. I don’t want to bring in a load of topsoil to finish filling it until I can get the rest of the stones out of the way. That will be a bird, bee, and butterfly garden with the herb bed on the edge along with my fig. Looking forward to consistent weather to really get under way again. Last year’s home canned goods are dwindling and all frozen veggies are gone.
Oh my you have some wonderful plans. All our tomato sauce is gone. Sob! I hate it when that is all gone. Herb gardens and figs!? Peaches and plums! Where are you?
SW Virginia. The fig is a Chicago Brown and barely hangs on against a south facing stone wall.
I love fresh figs
I have started several things from seed, tomatillos, eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, basil. However my nursery is in an un-insulated part of the attic and the seedlings didn’t like this last snap of cold. So planted more. Moved some downstairs to the sunroom. Ready to plant seeds outside now that we are into warmer days. Hopefully my garden will do better than last year, my first trying to grow in this coastal area with sandy alkaline soil. I am planning on all the above plus greens, tomatoes, pea pods, green beans. Everything may end up in pots however I have been working to amend the soil and trying to learn from local gardeners what works best.
Learning from the locals is the very best. Plus your compost heap!😂🦋
And raising your beds just a little.
Potatoes grow well in sandy soil. I see lots of very tasty meals in your future!
That cold snap!!! Grr.
I do have raised beds! Thank goodness but didn’t get good soil in them the first year so have been all about amending the soil. I don’t have a compost heap as the HOA says no. Have to find a way to tuck one in the backyard where it’s outta sight! may try some potatoes, space is at a premium so may have to think on that a little. Can’t wait to see your gardens this year!
Can you have one of those skinny ones? Or a worm farm?
You can grow potatoes vertically.
And yes – if it EVER STOPS BLOODY RAINING!! I so look forward to the gardening. I use as little area as possible – with maximum food – it is my thing.
Thunder is so scary. So over]-the[-top scary. Boo Berry Betty I’m looking into making a small food forest. Do you know anything about food forests?
Not other than what it is. My sons property could be described as a food forest in that they eat from the trees all year but they do hardly any maintenance so how long it will last I don’t know.
Plus it is in NZ where we can grow food all year long.
Thank you….I think I will stay with my own type of raising food, but my brother is planting a food forest in in Durango. It will be interesting to see what and how he does it.
Is it all
Fruit?
No. I plant in raised beds, so much easier to weed and pick
You’re waiting for things to be warm enough to plant, and down here I’m waiting for things to be cool enough to plant. Not long now. My two new passionfruit vines should start fruiting next season, my bell pepper is bearing already, and I’ll soon be sowing pumpkin, zucchini and beans, all of which are on the menu several times a week. I’m going to try for potatoes and sweet potatoes too. I have a chook yard full of well rotted wood chips, chook poo and all the pulled weeds and household vegetable scraps from us, our neighbours and the local cafe. Time to dig some of it up and spread the black gold around.
It always makes me smile how we plant at the same time on opposite sides of the planet! It is our link.
Passion fruit! Oh be still my heart – I mean tastebuds!
Yes! My mouth is watering just thinking about frozen passionfruit pulp, passionfruit curd, fresh passionfruit in Greek yoghurt….
Cruel!! 😂
I’ll have a look at the garden when we get home… it was doing so well when we left. I popped pumpkin seeds in everywhere including with the roses in the front garden. One of pumpkin vines went up a tree so we have at least half a dozen “tree” pumpkins. I know the cucumbers will be finished so I’ll replace those with snowpea seedlings. The Wellington Wonder climbing green beans thrive most of the year. In April I’ll plant elephant/Russian garlic and when it cools off I’ll put in fava/broad bean seeds (so useful, you can eat both the leaf shoots & beans). I like to grow eat leafy greens… malabar/climbing spinach, rocket, silverbeet, red sorrel, nasturtiums and as many herbs as possible… especially anything I can make pesto from and has multiple applications. Our subtropical microclimate also suits chillies/peppers, ginger, galangak, turmeric. Recently we added a new 3 foot wide space between the shed and fence lined with large black plastic pots in which when we left the tomatoes & basil were doing well.
I like to grow stuff I can save seed from but if pushed for time I’ll buy seedlings… as will happen next week when we get home after our holiday.
We’ve got a lemon and an orange tree and pots of strawberries plus planted a few fruit and avocado trees a couple of years ago so that will take time.
Comfrey for the compost bin/tea. Flowering plants for bees, insects & birds. And sundry useful or beautiful plants… I try a few new things each season to see how they fair.
Our yard is slightly smaller than a quarter acre block and we only have rainwater tanks.
(Urban permaculture home garden located in rural village, mid north coast NSW, Australia, i.e. southern hemisphere)
Our hens feed our neighbours up and down our road. And then in late summer they return the favour with soooooo much extra produce. No sales in either direction – just sharing what we’ve got.
That is the best! I love barter. Eggs for vegetables!!
Poor Boo!
I hope the friend’s neighbour is planting the cans in a plastc container, ot they will rot! Definitely better off in the pantry or cellar.
Most European and Mediterranean bean stews were originally fava beans. That’s all we had!
I think I might plant some. Fava beans. Not cans!! 😂
They are delicious and very much a spring veg!
I love fava beans – he were my grandmother’s favourite!
Boor Boo