Urban Survival Planning - Courtyard Vegetable Garden

UrbanSurvivalSkills.com received the following e-mail from a reader who appears new to Survival prepping, but seems to be catching on, learning skills and acquiring Survival Gear and Equipment.

Dear UrbanMan, I am a HVAC technician and am located within the city with a population of just over 500,000. I am living in a quad plex one street of a main six land boulevard. I started a courtyard garden this late spring with the intent to gain some experience growing some vegetables as well as produce some food for the table!

I am growing two types of squash, egg plant, cucumber, mini tomatoes, onions and beets. I tried growing carrots and peas, but that didn’t work out.

You can see from the picture that my squash is large,…..I placed the coke can for scale. With four squash plants so far this year I have harvested 13 or 14 squash fruits. I have about six or seven other fruits coming to ripeness. Each squash fruit is large enough to last three, sometimes four meals easy. I add them to everything, but in a Survival situation I would use the vegetables to augment the rice, beans and pasta I have stored in buckets.

I use one egg and some flour to bread the sliced squash and fry up in a pan, then added to the cooked rice. I have grilled the sliced squash like shisk-k-bobs over the grill and also over an open fire. Pretty good actually. Next I’m going to try baking in a dutch oven over an open fire with rice, beef bullion and some beans – sort of like Survival Jumbolaya.

I am learning how to preserve by canning so I can make some of these vegetables last into the fall. I live in a climate where I think I can grow vegetables through late October. I am also thinking about a small greenhouse so I can grow late in the winter.

I bought a couple of those Suisse Sport Alpine Sleeping bags and Aqua Mira Water Filter Bottles from your Survival Store and am in the process of building some Bug Out Bags.

In my quad plex, I have witnessed Survival Prepping to two out of the three other occupants. I myself have a wife; the other people I’m beginning to develop into a Survival Group are also couples, but not married. One I took to the range shooting my Bushmaster copy of the M-4 and now he bought a Mini-14 and a .357 Magnum handgun. I am working on the other couple as well – at least he owns a 12 gauge shotgun. But both have also planted some vegetables and are about ready to stock some basics like rice, beans, salt, soup stock and such.

So you can see we are starting to get prepared. I have gained a lot of confidence as I am beginning to get prepared but scary as I have along way to go before I satisfy I am ready. Can you ever be really ready?

So thanks for all the information on your site.