It's a huge effort to grow food and it's "in for a penny, in for a pound" due to huge economies of scale. Crops vary by region and season, so preservation is a second job. Not trying to be a downer, but you guys need to take a hard look at reality and history. Don't be dumb. It's far more efficient to work a minimum wage job and buy raw grains than to produce those grains yourself unless you have sufficient capital to begin with. And if you did, you would do best in a monoculture, which is basically specialization. You can't research all the diseases and requirements of every plant and animal as well as partition your land to handle it. You can as a hobby, accepting suboptimal production of course.
Wait a minute. All you have to do is put a seed in the ground and cover it with dirt. Right. Ha. You’re right friend. Growing food is a second job...at least if your goal is to preserve food. Two tomato plants, a cucumber plant and a squash plant, that’s doable for the hobby gardener. Even then, it’s a huge learning curve. But if you’re trying to manage survival gardens, it a job all by itself. Growing multiple types of vegetables is not easy in the slightest bit. “I’ll grow tomatoes and can them”, you say. Well to end up with 10 quarts of tomato sauce you need about 36lbs of tomatoes. Thats a lot of tomato plants, a lot of maintenance, everyday picking, for me every other day canning tomatoes. Throw in green beans, potatoes, etc. it doesn’t stop. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the learning curve. All this to say, [OP] start growing food right now, no matter where you are, where you live. You may not be able to grow a lot, but you will be learning. Trust me, to manage a successful survival garden can be fucking complicated.
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