From Survival Blog – Get Your Soil Ready For TEOTWAWKI, by C.J.

A topic that seems to get little attention in the prepper community is your soil.  We spend countless dollars and hours preparing our homes, family, and arsenal for the coming catastrophes, but we do little to prepare our soil.  Many preppers store away garden seeds of heirloom varieties, but…

From The Simple Dollar – Garden Tips: Saving Seeds and Starting a Seed Exchange

Several readers have written to me requesting information on saving seeds from their garden, which is an awesome frugal practice. Fall is just starting to tiptoe into the picture here in Iowa, and for us that means that the gardening season is starting to wind up. This year was actually a very uneven year for [...]

Somebody pointed out this article to me.

10 Indoor Plants That Can Eat Insects

For some inexplicable reason, I want one of each. I’m not really sure how these plants relate to self-reliance, but they are cool.

From Survival Blog – A Perennial Food Supply, by L.H.

The end of the world may happen tomorrow or who knows when.  Hard times are happening now and may get even harder.  A food storage system and MREs act as a life jacket when times get tough.  But you need to have a plan for when things get even…

I really need to start an asparagus patch.

Or rather, growing starts for your garden from seeds.

How To: Grow Starts from Seeds

Yeah, if you want to get a head start, now is the time. Over at my mom’s house she’s already got two inch tall plants under the grow lights.

mmpaints over at Self Sustained Living has an interesting idea for sprouting seeds.

A couple of people commented recently and asked about survival seeds.

“Survival Seeds” are just what Hometown Seeds calls one of their packages of non-hybrid seeds. Non-hybrid (or heirloom) seeds are seeds that grow into plants that in turn produce viable seeds (from which plants will grow as you expect them to).

I know, you’re thinking “Well, isn’t that why plants make seeds in the first place?” And “Yes” is the answer to that.

However, most seed manufacturers have figured out how to do some admittedly cool plant variety and species engineering on their seeds so that the plants produce more or bigger fruit or they capitalize on some other trait. Most of the time, this engineering means that no viable seeds are produced from the plant. Virtually all the seeds you but at the Home Depot, Lowes, or Walmart are Hybrid type seeds. Most of what you buy at the local “Garden-only” store are hybrid too.

So these seeds are called “survival” because if you save the seeds you grow, you’ll be able to continue your garden from year to year without buying more seeds. It also comes packaged so that the seeds last a long time before becoming non-viable.

The pack I received contains 16 different types of seeds:

• Lincoln Peas
• Detroit Dark Red Beets
• Kentucky Wonder Brown Pole Beans
• Yolo Wonder Pepper
• Champion Radish
• Lucullus Chard
• Black Beauty Zucchini
• Waltham Butternut Winter Squash
• Bloomsdale Longstanding Spinach
• Scarlet Nantes Carrots
• Long Green Improved Cucumber
• Rutger’s Tomato
• Golden Acre Cabbage
• Romaine Paris Island Cos Lettuce
• Golden Bantam Sweet Corn
• Yellow Sweet Spanish Onion

So could the seeds from this this pack provide all the food needed for a family to survive? It’s possible, I suppose, but I doubt it. They could easily produce the majority of the produce a family would consume, though.

For more on hybrid vs non hybrid seeds, check out What’s the Difference Between Hybrid and Heirloom Vegetables?