13+ Survival Gardening Crops To Grow To Live Off Your Garden

Hey everybody, Rob Greenfield here.

Today, I'm going to talk to you about

the survival garden.

What I mean by that is a garden

where you don't have to go to the

grocery stores or the restaurants, and

you can live off of this. It can

produce your calories.

It can produce your nutrients.

At the very least, it can get you

through weeks or months

of not having to go to the grocery store,

so this is the survival garden.

Okay, so why would I be the one

to talk to you about the

the survival garden?

Well, I recently finished a year-long

project of growing and foraging

100% of my food.

So, for one year, every single thing

that I ate either came from my

gardens or that I foraged from the wild.

Down to the salt, the oil, all

my calories, my nutrients,

my protein, my fat.

You name it.

So I have quite a bit of experience

and this survival garden that I'm

going to be talking about today is

specifically going to be for where I did

this project, which is central Florida.

This survival garden is more

for a warmer climate, but

there's a lot that you'll be able

to learn from this video,

no matter where you are,

and, most importantly, wherever you are,

you can grow an incredible amount of food.

It's just a matter of adapting to

the correct plants that are

designed to not just survive,

but thrive in your area.

So, I'm going to start off

right away with calories.

#1, I'm going to share sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes are a truly amazing crop.

A lot of us know sweet potatoes

for the potato itself, but what a lot of

people don't realize

is that the greens are edible as well.

Between the nutritious greens

and the calorie-dense tubers,

they're one of the most important

crops that can be grown as far as

putting out an incredible amount

of calories and nutrients.

I probably grew 600 pounds of

sweet potatoes in my year

of growing and foraging all my food.

I'm just blown away at how much

you can grow.

Now, a lot of people imagine these

little orange ones at the grocery store,

but they come in all shapes and sizes.

I've seen sweet potatoes that are

up to 13 pounds

and I've been blown away

at how much sweet potatoes

you can grow in a

relatively small amount of space.

In a standard front yard,

it's possible to grow

all of your calories.

Let me say that again.

It is possible,

in a standard front yard,

to grow all the calories you need

you need with different tuber crops.

So, the second one

that I'm going to talk about

is called cassava or yuca.

For those of you who still haven't

heard either of those words,

it is what tapioca is made out of.

This is the true survival food.

Over a billion people around the world

depend on it for their very survival.

It's twice as calorie-dense

as sweet potatoes,

at about 700 calories per pound,

is what I've read,

So, it is truly, truly calorie-dense.

A couple of pounds of this per day

meets your calorie needs.

That said, it doesn't have a lot of

nutrients, but we'll get into the

nutrient crops soon.

So, the beautiful thing about cassava

is you literally just take a stick of it,

a branch, you take that branch,

you stick it into the ground,

come back 12 months later and you've got

yourself a whole cassava tree or bush

or whatever you want to call it,

with the tuber under the ground.

You don't plant it like a potato.

You plant it with a little cutting,

basically, and you can actually

eat the leaves as well.

Now, cassava, or yuca, has cyanide in it,

but a lot of foods have cyanide in it and

it's just a matter of cooking it

the right way.

Again, a billion people live on this

around the world.

You just have to cook it.

So, that's yuca, or cassava.

One plant can put out 10, 20 pounds

of tubers from one plant.

The average one that I've gotten

in central Florida is probably

around 5-10 pounds of tubers.

So, that is cassava or yuca.

That's #2.

#3 is another really great tuber,

another calorie-dense crop,

and that is yams.

The genus and species that I've

worked with is Dioscorea alata,

if that's how you pronounce it.

In Florida, this has actually

become invasive. It has made

it out of cultivation.

I believe it's originally from Asia,

possibly Africa too,

and it's a commonly grown crop

for many people around the world.

Now, when I say yam, a lot of people

think of the orange ones

that you get at the grocery store,

which we call sweet potatoes and yams,

interchangeably. No.

A yam, the largest one that I've ever

harvested was 150 pounds!

Imagine, I weigh about 150, 155 pounds.

The one I harvested, the biggest one

was 157 pounds, so the size of me.

They get massive.

An average one might be

10, 20, 30 pounds is not abnormal.

And the beautiful thing about all

three of these first crops is that,

most of them, you can largely set them

and forget them,

especially yuca or cassava.

Those are drought-tolerant.

They don't need a lot of nutrients

and 12 months later, you come back

and you can have a whole survival garden.

You can do your fence around your property

all with yuca and yams, and just have

a living fence of serious calories

to be able to come back to

when it's needed

or just when it's desired.

But, back to the big yam, the average one,

10, 20, 30 pounds, they're delicious.

I actually prefer them over potatoes and

they are a vining species,

not an edible leaf, unlike the

yuca and the sweet potato.

Both of those have edible leaves,

but this is just another

beautiful calorie crop.

Now, another calorie crop

that I want to mention is potatoes.

The crops that I'm talking about

are a little bit more for

the warmer climates, although

sweet potato is something that's

grown throughout, but potatoes

are a standard that can be grown

all across many climates.

It's not one that I have a lot of

experience with. I have grown it

in Florida, but that is a really wonderful

crop that you can grow in huge volumes

as your calories.

So, those are four calorie crops.

The next one I want to get into is,

indeed, a calorie, but it's also

a delicious fruit and a favorite food

of many people around the world,

and that is bananas, and I'm also

going to talk about plantains.

Bananas are a true survival food.

You can take one --

bananas, by the way, you don't

plant them from seeds.

You plant them from a pup,

which is basically a small plant.

How bananas work is they send up

babies or pups, little shoots

out the sides. If there's

a huge stand of bananas, you can just

dig one of those up with

part of the corm, plant it,

and in a few years' time,

you can have a whole stand of bananas.

So, bananas in central Florida,

where I did my year, for example,

within about 12 months,

they can be starting to produce.

Within a few years, you can be

talking about huge quantities

of bananas and plantains.

Now, bananas can be eaten green,

fried, for example,

or you can wait until they're ripe

and you can eat them

as a delicious banana.

You can also actually dehydrate the skin

and the banana, whole,

dehydrate it and then blend it

to make a flour.

Then, of course, plantains

are a staple of many, many, many

people all over the world.

Those can be eaten ripe,

as a delicious sweeter flavor,

or they can be eaten savory,

when they are still green.

So, that is the banana.

You can grow hundreds

and hundreds of pounds of bananas.

You can start it with something

that you can get for $10 or $20,

or for free.

The next one that I want to

go into is papaya.

Papaya is extremely versatile.

Papaya is a tree,

but it's not your typical tree.

They will last, generally, about

maximum seven years.

3-5 years might be pretty normal.

They're a very soft tree.

You can basically push them over.

You can cut down the papaya tree

just with one swipe of a machete,

but the fruit is a beautiful fruit

and it's very versatile.

So, of course, you can wait

until it's ripe and then it's

a nice, sweet orange,

or you can eat it

while it's green,

more as a vegetable.

I make sort of like a sauerkraut

with it, a papaya kraut

by fermenting it.

Then, people all over the world

use it green, as a vegetable,

whether pickled or sauteed or raw.

What's commonly known is

Thai green papaya salad, for example.

I love to make a coconut curry

out of my green papayas.

If you're dealing with wasps,

a pest that often comes for the papayas,

then the best thing to do is not wait

for them to get ripe and eat them green.

So, this is a great staple crop,

not as calorie-dense as the

earlier calories I mentioned,

but very filling and very much

has calories to it.

Now, in a colder climate,

something that actually

somewhat resembles, in my mind,

the papaya is the zucchini.

Zucchini, in a colder climate,

is a true survival crop.

I hear stories all the time about

people saying that,

in the northern climates,

they have so many zucchinis

that they have to put them on

their neighbors' doors

to try to get rid of them,

but their neighbors hide from them

because they don't want them

because they have so many.

The reason it reminds me of papaya

is because they can grow very large

and in extreme abundance, and

they can be cooked in a similar manner,

and they don't, again, have

an incredible amount of calories,

but they have a large amount

of sustenance and can

really fill you up.

So, that's the papaya and,

for some people, the zucchini.

Speaking of zucchini, what I have

to mention for the survival garden

that I'm talking about is a

heat-loving, heat-tolerant squash.

For me, that is the Seminole pumpkin.

It's amazing what you can do

with one seed.

Most people, with their pumpkins

and with their squash, when they

buy them at the grocery store,

what do they do?

They take those seeds out and they

throw them in the garbage.

At the very least, you

could compost them, but what

you can actually do is plant them

especially if they're a

local variety.

When I had dinner with a friend,

I took home the pumpkin seeds

from Seminole pumpkins.

From two pumpkins,

the seeds of that turned into

hundreds of pumpkins,

many, many, many meals to come.

The Seminole pumpkin is

my favorite pumpkin, personally,

my favorite squash.

Wherever you are, your survival garden

can definitely include squashes.

The next thing that I want to move on to

is talking about a little bit of protein.

For me, one of my favorite sources

in the garden is pigeon pea.

Now, pigeon pea is a perennial crop.

It's not a bean that has to be planted

year after year. It's actually

a tree that will continue to put out

pigeon peas and sometimes

multiple times per year and

even throughout the year.

They're a truly delicious --

they're called gandules.

They're very popular in Puerto Rico

and other parts of the Caribbean,

other parts of Latin America as well.

They are truly, truly delicious.

I have eaten a large amount of them

and have never once got

sick from them at all.

In fact, my friend and I actually even

made tempe from them.

So, there's a lot that can be

done with them.

So, that is pigeon peas and,

along those lines, the next one

I want to talk about is ground cover

beans or peas.

For me, my favorite one

is the southern peas.

Now, there are many types of

southern peas. You've

probably heard of

black-eyed peas, for example.

There's many different types of these

and I don't know the names of

all of them, but

we're talking about spreading the seed

on the ground.

It creates a wonderful ground cover

and it produces a lot of

healthy food.

It can also be used

as a cover crop

and as a nitrogen fixer to

add nitrogen to your garden.

Now, these can be eaten fresh or they

can be left to dry on the vines,

harvested once they're dry,

and they can be stored.

The same goes for the pigeon peas as well.

So, talking about survival,

these are foods that, when dried,

you can have these lasting in your pantry

for years. That's an important part

about this, storage.

Now, in the warmer climates,

like Florida, for example,

you can grow food year-round.

In the northern climates,

the key to success with

the survival garden is producing

as much food as you can

during that window of time that you have

and then preserving it for the fall.

Now, for all the people out there

who are saying, "Oh, you can only

do this in Florida,"

I have to say, the most extreme abundance

that I've ever seen

was in the fall in places like

northern Wisconsin, where I'm from.

The abundance of nuts and different

fruits, like apples and plums

and pears and berries,

is incredible -- so much more

than I've ever seen in

some warmer climates,

so you just have to work

with your area.

So, those are a few examples

of protein. We've covered calories.

We've covered some protein.

Now, I want to get into some of

the very nutrient-dense foods.

The really good news is that

a lot of these nutrient-dense foods,

whether you want to be self-sufficient

and being able to exist without

a grocery store or restaurant at all,

these nutrient-dense foods

are a no-brainer for everyone

because they take very little work.

They can save a lot of money.

They're some of the healthiest foods

out there that you can eat and,

environmentally, they're one of

the most logical things to grow at home

because shipping greens is one of the

least efficient things that we can ship.

So, I'm going to talk about

perennial greens and the first one

that I'm going to talk about

is moringa. Now, moringa is

also called the vitamin tree

or the tree of life, and it is

truly the tree of life.

it's one of the most nutrient-dense

plants on Earth.

Supposedly, it's about 20% protein

by weight, as well, so a lot of

greens and vegetables actually

do have a lot of protein in them

as well.

Moringa is a perennial.

You can start it either from seed or

you can take a cutting, stick it in

the ground and have a moringa tree.

You can make a wall around your

property with moringa.

You can dry moringa leaves,

turn it into a powder, and

you have your own multivitamin

that you can travel with, and

it's also a really great crop

that you can trade.

You can trade others this

nutrient-dense powder that you make

for other things that you need,

or you can actually make a little

business out of it and sell it.

The next green that I want to talk about

is katuk.

Katuk is another perennial green.

By perennial, what I mean is you plant it

and it produces year after year

after year.

Up in a northern climate,

a beautiful perennial is rhubarb.

An average rhubarb plant can last

for 25 years!

Imagine you plant it and 25 years,

every spring, it just keeps coming back.

Annuals, you plant once

(for example, carrots)

and when you pull it, you eat it,

and it's dead.

Then, in between perennials and annuals is

self-seeding annuals.

These are ones that you let go to seed

and they keep spreading their seed

and they keep coming back.

Once you've got them going,

you've got them going.

So, in the survival garden,

I highly recommend working with

perennials and self-seeding annuals

as much as possible.

So, I mentioned katuk and the next one

that I want to talk about is chaya.

Chaya is an ancient food.

It's been eaten for thousands of years.

I don't remember if it's the Mayans

or the Aztecs, or possibly both,

that have had it as a staple part

of their diet.

It is also called tree spinach.

Very calorie-dense.

This one also has to be cooked because

it has cyanide in it, just like

I mentioned with the cassava or

the yuca, but again, it's just

a matter of preparing food right.

All things have to be prepared right,

whether it's coffee or chocolate

or the way you're producing your

beverages, like beer and wine.

Once you start to connect with

your food, you see there is a process,

a way of doing things.

But chaya is a beautiful one.

This is one where you can literally

just take a stick of it,

put it in the ground and,

after you have a few trees of chaya,

you can be spreading chaya to your

entire neighborhood.

Another one that's very drought-tolerant--

With the survival garden, the key is

planting things that are

very tough, that don't need to be

consistently watered,

that don't need a lot of nutrients,

that don't have too many pests,

and all of these things apply, generally,

to perennials over annuals.

So, the survival garden is one that

you can walk away from and,

three months later, you come back

and your food isn't gone;

you have more food than when you left.

So, that is chaya.

The next thing I want to get into

is another green and that is

perennial spinaches.

So, there are all sorts of

perennial spinaches.

There's Brazilian spinach and

New Zealand spinach,

Okinawa spinach, longevity spinach,

just to name a few.

Malabar spinach is another one.

There's probably a good dozen or so that

are grown in the area where I have done

most of my growing.

Again, these are perennials that you can

plant once and they can keep on

coming back and coming back.

So, with those perennial spinaches

and the chaya, the cassava leaves,

the katuk, and the moringa,

that right there is quite a bit

of diversity in itself.

So, there is a saying and that is,

"Let thy food be they medicine

and let thy medicine be thy food."

Now, in 2020, that is,

"Let your food be your medicine

and let your medicine be your food."

Pretty basic.

Now, the beautiful thing is that,

yes, our food is our medicine,

but there are some especially

medicinal plants that we can grow

to really give ourselves

that important immune boost and to really

just take care of ourselves.

I'm talking about holistic medicine,

holistic healthcare, taking into

account everything that we're doing --

our food, our water, the way we move

our body, the way we live our lives,

but we can grow

a lot of our own medicine.

The #1 that I recommend in

this survival garden is turmeric

and ginger.

Turmeric, you take those little rhizomes,

you stick them in the ground, and

7-9 months later, you'll have

a lot more turmeric.

Most of my friends' gardens,

who have turmeric,

they have more than they

can deal with.

Ginger takes a little bit longer.

It takes more like, I think, about

a year and a half.

I've successfully grown ginger,

but it takes longer to get it

to be a large amount and to get a lot

to harvest, but very, very easy to grow.

So, turmeric and ginger, very easy to grow

and very, very important medicines.

There are many different medicines.

One that I recommend growing

is elderberry. Along with honey

that you can get from your bees,

you can make elderberry syrup and this is

one of the most incredible

natural medicines

that prevents cold and flu.

I like to take a spoonful of

my elderberry syrup

every single day.

It's one of my favorite things and

it's also an extremely delicious treat.

So, I've covered calories,

I've covered some protein,

and I've covered greens as nutrients.

Those three things right there

can take care of a massive, massive

amount of your entire needs.

You could probably live just off of that,

but there's no need to because

there's such an abundance

of other foods.

I'm going to name a few other things

right now that are really easy

and important to have as a part

of this garden.

That would be peppers.

I grew serrano peppers,

starting from one seed

from a pepper from my friend's garden.

I, for a year and a half, had

a serrano pepper plant that put out

well over 1,000 peppers.

Wherever you are, there are peppers

that will survive and thrive.

Peppers are a great part of any garden.

Then, herbs.

Herbs add flavor to your food.

Living off of your garden does not

in any way mean not eating delicious,

delicious food. In fact, it's often

far more delicious.

Some of the absolute survival herbs

that I've grown would be Cuban oregano.

Grows like crazy.

It's a huge oregano leaf.

Then, there's lots of other ones.

African blue basil grows into shrubs,

brings in an incredible amount of

bees and pollinators.

So important to have different plants

that can bring pollinators into

your garden and herbs are

one of the easiest things to grow.

You have cilantro and basil and dill,

just to name a few.

Herbs are a very easy beginner plant too.

If you're just getting started, herbs are

a really great place to start.

I'm going to mention just two more,

even though there are so many

more plants that I would

love to talk about, but

a truly amazing one

is daikon radish.

We're talking about a radish that can

get this big, that can become

self-seeding, that's coming back,

that creates a great ground cover,

that can be chop and dropped,

and you can ferment this

and make a wonderful radish kraut

or mix it in with your different krauts.

It's delicious, it adds a lot of value

to meals, and you can produce

incredible quantities with it.

That's the daikon radish.

Wherever you are, radishes can be a

part of your game and radishes

are one of the fastest foods to grow.

You can get them in about 30 days.

Now, a garden could be complete

without tomatoes, but tomatoes

add such an incredible value to life.

Where I did my survival garden,

that would be the Everglades tomato.

In really hot climates, it's often the

very small tomatoes that you

want to work with,

not the really big ones,

but in northern climates,

you can produce so much tomatoes that

you could not possibly eat them.

So, tomatoes are just a beautiful,

beautiful thing to have

in the garden.

Then, one last thing that I'm

going to mention is garlic or onions

really add an incredible

amount of flavor.

Garlic is also a great antimicrobial

and antibacterial, a really important one

for fighting off sicknesses.

In central Florida, my big ones

would be garlic chives and then

society garlic.

These are perennials

that do really well.

I also grew garlic.

That's harder in the southern climates,

but I did it successfully,

but in the northern climates,

garlic is an easy one.

So, that is my survival garden.

I've covered your calories, your protein,

your greens.

There are more things than that;

however, if you have just this going

and you work with the perennials

over the annuals, we're talking about

almost never having to take a trip

to the grocery store.

This is my tips, especially focused on

a warmer climate.

In future videos, I will have some

that are specifically focused on

colder climates, so make sure

you come back and

tune in for that.

If you got a lot out of this video and

you found it to be really useful,

then definitely I encourage you to

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Hit that Like button to make this

get out into the world so people can see

that it is possible to live without

grocery stores and without

restaurants, and live in a way where

we are working with the Earth,

rather than against it and

where we can live happily and healthfully

with food sovereignty

right in our own communities.

Love you all very much.

See you soon.