Is growing food a waste of time?

[latrocinium]

Does anybody think that growing food could be a waste of time? I'm talking about a situation where the S really has HTF... where that food is absolutely essential.
Unless you have some kind of defence or you live in a remote location, what is there to stop people just taking everything you have worked towards?

Cheers

[unsure]

the old addage `safety in numbers ` comes to mind .
hyperthecticaly [sp] depending on what time of year the shtf , if its late summer or into winter ,its a bit late to be planting anyway but most of the population would have died off or moved onto camps of some sort .so planting in spring wouldn`t be a problem .

[metatron]

If you have a garden you really should stick up at least one solar powered LED light with sensor, there only £30 or less. Other than that, put up trellising and plant Prunus spinosa or other thorny plant with a secondary food use.

Get a few geese too if the above is not enough. In a shtf world, once you know someone is robbing you, you can't show weakness as others will follow, be brutal. In the mean time you have fresh produce and a more secure garden.

[jansman]

Growing food is not, and never will be a waste of time. I operate a permaculture system. This means a perennial system of fruit and nut trees, interspersed with vegetables such as brassicas and herbs.
If anyone raided my garden they would struggle to gather food quickly as it is so spread out. Plus I would shoot them!

[piglet]

I am with Jansman on this one.
Permaculture and food forest are the way to go.
Low impact and very much self sustainable.
And most importantly, low visibility.

Those with land should aspire to it.
Those without land or a garden should at least attempt small scale guerrilla farming.
Or at very least, learning about wild edible plants.

If you don't at least try now, it will be too late to learn, or do, when you need it?

I was lucky enough to grow up within a stones throw of the countryside in an era when kids could wander freely.
I collected wild food like Blackberries, Apples, Chestnuts, and Fungi amongst many others, usually to sell locally for pocket money.
All of those things grew wild and were very common if you knew where to look.
Today its not so easy to do...But there are plenty of places where you can walk freely so why not plant a few less than obvious perennial and hardy food plants, just a few yards off the well trodden path whilst out getting some fresh air and exercise.

[triffid]

If you have land, even a window box, you should at least TRY to grow vegetables / herbs. If you can't (learn to) grow anything in the good times how will you possibly learn in the bad?
We grow a fair proportion of our veg. I cant honestly say, that financially, it makes that much sense (seeds etc) but home grown food tastes sooooo much better and in these environmentally challenging times it's nice to think of your foods eco footprint to be in food yards rather than food miles!

And although I say it doesn't perhaps make financial sense a garden full of potential food is a very obvious prep from TSHTF to the more likely scenario of unemployment / global food shortages. And like others who have posted on this thread eg Jansman/Piglet I suspect that after perhaps a few false starts you will actually enjoy FOOD gardening. We do.

[nickdutch]

If you are talking about a possible time of total social unrest, then the thing that could keep you ok would be canned foods, dehydrated foods and the like. Whether you buy them or can and dehydrate them at home shouldn't matter, so long as you have them. If you are growing foods now, then you are storing up fresh foods that you can dehydrate or can. So whats the waste of time? In all cases you still have to think about whether it is economically viable to get or make the compost, to take up the time weeding and watering, to buy or use vegetable safe fertilizers and the like.
But as with all thing, it depends on what you are preparing for and how you feel that things are going to go in your future.

Canning can be expensive as the jars, lids, rings and the like all cost money. Canners are pricey and a good dehydrator can set you back a pretty penny. A food vacuum packer can also cost real money too. It does seem more affordable to just buy cheap canned foods from Tesco or dehydrated foods online, but in that case you are losing out on the nutritional content and also valuable time in skill development.

I think its more worth while considering home growing, canning and dehydrating as part of a larger strategy to reduce the cost of living in 5 - 10 years time more then how to survive a zombie apocalypse. For me, I like tinned meats for the convenience, but the cost of it can be very prohibitive if you are thinking of using them as part of your day to day meals and on top of that they are lousy with chemical preservatives and sugars that I shouldn't have in my diet due to candida, so I am going to go back to canning to make up many half pint jars of pork as part of my weekly or monthly dietary requirements rather than to use them for long term food preservation and storage.

IMHO, a multi leveled strategy that incorporates buying tinned foods, making canned foods, making dehydrated foods and home growing might be more interesting. but yes, there is a time and energy aspect too that you will need to look at.

[junmist]

What's to stop anyone taking anything off of you sound's like the real question to me. If you are worried that you can not defend it then hide it plant food around the neighbourhood have sacrifice food/preps that people can find while other preps/food are hidden in plan site. Grow unusual food plants have a wild garden. Become part of the community.
Growing food is a life choses if you do not enjoy growing things then doing it because you feel that you should is a waste of time and you will hate it, find something else that will help you get through a rough time fishing/hunting/woodworking/brewer and then bargain for your veg.

[grenfell]

I too don't think growing your own is a waste of time and if you save seed and make your own compost there's not too much wasting of money either. I'm not sure how the whole thing could be protected should there be gangs of hungrey people roaming the country, maybe delay planting (depending on the time of year) live off your supplies and plant next year when those gangs of the unprepared have moved away or died out.
I know just what junmist is saying with his idea od a wild garden. My front garden is open to the road and I've got some of it planted with my "herb" garden. There's the usual chives and rosemary but also I have Good king henry, lemon balm, wild strawberries and sorrel and some others such as horehound and soapwort. It does look a bit wild, when not in flower the chives look like grass and with some of the sorrel in seed they and some of the others look more like weeds to most people. There are also cowslips which can be eaten not that I have and even some bluebells which I can't eat but the bulbs can be used to make glue should the need ever arise.

[jansman]

Nick has this about right. I hold a lot of canned storage. I also have a large garden and an acre of ground I rent. Growing food takes effort-let nobody tell you otherwise!
I think that in a bad situation, the abilty to eat stored food, with some fresh food you have grown/ foraged is great. That fresh food could just be cut and come again lettuce in a few pots. Really.
The effort part is the reason I am gradually going over to a permaculture system. One neighbour commented that my garden "Looks like a jungle".Bear in mind that his is 150 feet of stripey lawn and napalmed-bare borders. Mine is full of fruit trees,bushes, poultry and rabbits. He also commented on my rainwater harvesting system. He *suggested* it was OTTT. At that point he got told to...you get it!
This system is VERY low input, and very high yield. Today I made a big salad, bowl of new spuds, and a dozen eggs. The 'weeds' are poultry and rabbit feed and some of it salad(like chickweed). This weekend there are two rabbits ready for 'harvesting'.I have surplus produce for my eldest and her chap( who, sadly, is struggling to get work).This is all done in an area of 75'x 14'.
Down the road are my other fowls, goats and polytunnels.

Whatever you can grow, however little, it makes a difference.