 Hey everybody Rob Greenfield here and today I'm gonna 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 and 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 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 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. So 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. Number one 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 and 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 with different tuber crops. So the second one that I'm going to talk about is called cassava or yuca and for those of you who still haven't heard either of those words it is what tapioca is made out of. So 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 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 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 so 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 and the average one that I've gotten in Central Florida is probably around five to ten pounds of tubers. So that is cassava or yuca that's number two. Number three is another really really great tuber another calorie dense crop and that is yams. The genus and species that I've worked with is diascoria allata if that's how you pronounce it and in Florida this has actually become invasive. It is made 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 a hundred fifty pounds. Imagine I weigh about a hundred fifty hundred fifty five pounds. The one I harvested the biggest one was a hundred fifty seven pounds so the size of me they get massive and average one might be ten twenty thirty pounds is not abnormal and the beautiful thing about all three of these first crops is that most of them you can largely set it set them and forget them especially yuca and cassava. Those are drought tolerant they don't need a lot of nutrients and twelve 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 ten twenty thirty 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 calorie. So those are four calorie crops and 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 that you can't 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 and you can get if you have a if there's a huge stand of bananas you can just dig one of those up with part of the corn plant it in a few years 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 and dehydrate it and then blend it to make a flower and 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 in 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 ten or twenty dollars or for free. The next one that I want to go into is papaya and papaya is extremely versatile papaya is a tree but it's not your typical tree they will last generally about at maximum seven years three to five years might be pretty normal and there are very soft tree you could basically push them over you can you can cut down the papaya tree just with the 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 you can then it's a nice sweet orange or you can eat it while it's green more as a vegetable and I make sort of like a sauerkraut with it a papaya kraut by fermenting it and then people all over the world use it green as a vegetable whether pickled or sauteed or raw what's commonly known as Thai green papaya salad for example and 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 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 and the reason I'm it reminds me of papaya is because they can grow very large and in extreme abundance and they and they can be cooked in a 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 and speaking of zucchini what I have to mention for the survival garden that I'm talking about is a heat loving a heat tolerant squash and for me that is the seminal 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 can 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 had I took home the pumpkin seeds from seminal pumpkins and from two pumpkins the seeds of that turned into hundreds of pumpkins many many many meals to come the seminal 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 and 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 and they are truly truly delicious I've eaten a large amount of them and have never once got sick from them at all and in fact my friend and I actually even made tempeh from them so there's a lot that they can be done 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 and for me my favorite one is the southern peas now there's 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 in fresh or they can be left to dry on the vines harvested once they're dry and they can be stored and 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 and that's an important part about this is storage now in the warmer climates like Florida for example you can grow food year around 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 these 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 on it's incredible so much more than I've 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 and now I want to get into some of the very nutrient dense foods and the 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 there's 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 can have 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 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 and 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 then when you pull it you eat it and it's dead and then in between perennials and annuals is self seeding annuals and these are ones that you let go to seed and they keep spreading their seed and they just keep coming back once you 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 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 and 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 yucca 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 your your beverages like beer and wine you'll once you start to connect with your food your food you see that 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 and with the survival garden this key is planting things that are very 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 for 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 greens and that is perennial spinach is so there's all sorts of perennial spinach is 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 and again these are perennials that you can plant once and they can keep on coming back and coming back so with those perennial spinach is and those 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 thy 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 action some especially medicinal plants that we can grow to really give ourselves that that important immune boost and to really just take care of ourself I'm talking about holistic medicine holistic health care taking into account everything that we're doing the our food our water the way we move our body the way we live our life the way we live our lives but we can grow a lot of our own medicine the number one that I recommend in this survival garden is turmeric and ginger turmeric you take those little rhizomes you stick them in the ground and seven nine months later you'll have a lot more turmeric most of my friends gardens we have turmeric they have more than they can deal with ginger is it 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 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's many different medicines one that I recommend growing is elderberry and along with honey that you can get you from your bees you can make elderberry syrup and this is one of them 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 gonna 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 a thousand peppers wherever you are there are peppers that will survive and thrive peppers are a great part of any garden and then herbs herbs to add flavor to your food living off of your garden does not in any way mean not eating delicious delicious food and in fact it's often far more delicious so some of the absolute survival herbs that I've grown that 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 in 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's so many more plants that I would love to talk about but it 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 chopped and dropped and you can you can ferment this and make a wonderful radish kraut or mix it in with with your different krauts it is a it's delicious it adds a lot of value to meals and you can just produce incredible amount of 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 and then one last thing that I'm going to mention and that is garlic or onions really adds 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 this 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 and if you got a lot out of this video and you found it to be really useful then definitely I encourage you to subscribe to this channel and if you have questions or comments put them below 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