Hybrid, Heirloom... Huh? A Quick Run-Down of "Survival Seeds"

One of the items I had on my prepping plan for this month was to buy some survival seeds. Everyone knows that gardening is a valuable skill both pre- and post-TEOTWAWKI, but what makes a seed a "survival seed"?

If you go to your local garden center, you'll find an overwhelming array of seed packets. If you were to select a few packets, store them in a sturdy container packed with moisture absorbers, and keep them in a dry, cool place, they would stay viable for a long time. In a time of need, you could take the seeds out of storage and expect a reasonably good germination rate. Your family eats and you're the hero of the day due to your foresight. Voila! That's survival seeds.

What types of seeds should you store?

That local garden center of yours and seed company catalogs offer a stunning array of seeds complete with what I affectionately call "scientific plant people lingo".

I've read a couple of books recently that have given me a deeper understanding of the scientific plant people lingo and where our food comes from in general - Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. If you haven't read either of those two books, get thee to a library and check them out. They are fascinating and thought-provoking. You'll learn something and like it, I promise! Here's my attempt to distill the pertinent bits when it comes to survival seeds.

Heirloom - Heirloom plants are open-pollinated, which means they take care of their reproductive business without people needing to be involved. If you plant seed gathered from an heirloom plant, you can expect that the baby plant will be like the mom/dad. Many heirloom varieties have been passed down from generation to generation and are time-tested.

My Dad's favorite variety of corn, Golden Bantam, is an heirloom variety. Our local garden centers no longer carry Golden Bantam in bulk, much to his displeasure. When he asked about it at one garden center, they told Dad that "Only old farts plant Golden Bantam any more." You should've seen the scene that ensued! What the local garden centers do carry is hybrid corn.

Hybrids - When people get involved in plant reproduction, some interesting things can happen. A hybrid occurs when you cross dissimilar varieties of a plant. The good thing about hybrids is that they often have something called, remarkably enough, "hybrid vigor". Hybrids can be especially healthy, disease resistant, or have other desirable characteristics. Sounds great, right?  It is, until you try to plant the seeds harvested from a hybrid plant. The next generation will not be anything like the hybrid and will probably give you very poor results overall.

Seed companies love hybrids because you have to purchase seeds over and over again. That's fine and dandy... unless it's TEOTWAWKI and you need to save seeds from your crop in order to have something to grow next year.

Another category of seeds that I will mention briefly is genetically modified (GM) seed. These seeds can only be created in laboratories. Geneticists are able to combine genes from a wide variety of organisms - plants, animals, and even bacteria. Many people have issues with that in general, and GM seed is definitely unsuitable for survival seed. For one thing, seed companies hold patents that make it illegal to save your seed. Saving seed would probably be fruitless, anyway, because they often splice in genes that interfere with reproduction.

Are you still with me? Good.

What's the bottom line?

You can choose to store hybrids, but do not store only hybrids. The bulk of your seed storage should be heirloom varieties. That way, you can gather your own seeds and perpetuate your crops from year to year.

It goes without saying that gardening is hard work and you can't pick it up post-SHTF and expect to suceed. Start practicing now.

Our Choice for Survival Seeds:

I seriously considered building my own survival seed kit, but there are lots of companies out there that sell pre-made kits. Quick and easy? I'm all over it. I chose Everlasting Seeds, a company that sells canned, organic, heirloom seeds.

I ordered their Garden in a Can, which is a #10 can full of 79 types of seed. I was attracted by the sheer variety - it has everything from asparagus to cucumbers to wheat to catnip. Included inside each can is a garden guide that gives planting and harvesting instructions.

Garden in a Can

Contents of Garden in a Can

Everlasting Seeds accidentally sent me their Vegi-Max and Herbs in Can instead of the Garden in a Can. They quickly remedied this and sent me what I ordered, but it gave me an opportunity to check out these products as well. As much as I could check it out without opening it, anyway!

The Herbs in a Can is the size of a can of soup. It has all of the same herbs included in the Garden in a Can.

Herbs in a Can

Vegi-Max is in a #10 can. It has fewer varieties of seeds than Garden in a Can, but in greater numbers.

Vegi-Max Contents

Everlasting Seeds also carries Crops in a Can and a Medicinal Herb Garden Collection.

If I had to do it again, I would probably order the Vegi-Max instead of the Garden in a Can. In a crisis situation, it would be better to have a greater quantity of more sustaining vegetables than to have a few each of wide variety. 

According to the Everlasting Seeds website, if you store their seeds between 66-70 degrees, they will last between 5-9 years. If you refrigerate them, you extend their life to 10-15 years.

The seeds contained in the cans are fine for my particular climate. They even include my Dad's favorite Golden Bantam corn seed. If you live in, say, Texas, Maine, or Hawaii, you may need to check and see if these seeds are optimized for your climate. If not, find another purveyor or make your own can of survival seeds. Research the plants that work best for your area and store them in a ammo can or similar container. Throw in some dessicants (You can read on the Everlasting Seeds site about dessicants vs oxygen absorbers) and store it in your fridge. You've just bought your family some extra food security for the next decade.

However you decide to do it, think about storing some seed. How are you going to eat when your food storage runs out?

Could the Japanese Tsunami Deepen the Global Food Crisis?

While I was up with Baby Dear in the wee hours of this morning, I happened to turn the TV to CNN. I listened to accounts of the horrifying earthquake damage in Japan. I watched the tsunami waters consume homes, vehicles, and countless lives. The magnitude of the disaster is stunning.

Now, I'm obviously not an economist, agronomist, or any other -ist that means anything. I'm just a paranoid mom who knows that the world is already on the brink of a massive food crisis. With that caveat in mind, here are my thoughts:

1. If you watched any of the tsunami footage, you saw the waters engulf what appeared to be fields and greenhouses. A quick check on Google confirmed that Sendai, ground zero for the disaster, is in the midst of the Japanese agricultural heartland.



A rice paddy

2. The same Google search showed that one of the major crops of this area of Japan is rice.
3. Salt water, debris, any chemicals picked up by the water, etc. are bad for crops! Not to mention the huge societal disruption Japan is facing. This could disrupt agriculture in the area for some time to come.
4. Japan consumes a massive amount of rice.
5. Up until now, the Japanese have imported very little rice and mainly consume what they grow themselves.
6. With a large portion of their rice crop in jeopardy, Japan will be forced to import rice.
7. This could lead to a spike in the price for rice, or perhaps even a rice shortage.
8. Even worse: If the unthinkable happens and those damaged nuclear plants have a Chernobyl-type accident, crop land in Japan could be contaminated for years to come. This would continue the food shortage/price increase scenario in addition to all the other tragic effects of such a disaster.

Again, these are just my own thoughts. Who knows if they have any real validity. I do know one thing. I'm buying a bunch of rice the next time I make a trip into town. I was going to do that anyway, but this gives me added motivation.

Month Nine in Review and Month Ten Prepping Plan

It's been a very productive month here at the Harried Homemaker Acres. I'm very pleased with what Hubby Dear and I have accomplished.

In Month Nine....

1. I got a FoodSaver and used it to vacuum seal dry goods like nuts and chocolate as well as meat for the freezer. I'm very happy with my purchase and I'll keep you posted about just how long it extends the shelf life of my stored foods.
2. I made a first aid stockpile plan and purchased quite a few items on the list.
3. I'm learning how to sew using the antique sewing machine that was gifted to us. My first sewing project - cloth pads - is coming along very slowly. I definitely am an inept seamstress, but I'll keep plugging away at it. I'll let you know how my handcrafted feminine items work after they get put through their paces.
4. I bought some more food storage items, including dry milk, snack foods (Nutella!), and miscellaneous canned goods. I also canned more ground beef and chicken.
5. Hubby Dear and I did some work outside in the garden in preparation for the spring planting season. We made our seed and berry orders and we'll be ready to go next month. I hope. We still have a lot of Mel's Mix to prepare and garden boxes to fill and we're going to get blasted with up to 6" of snow.



Most of our seeds and some new garden goodies arrived today

6. I finally got a shelf for the top of my Shelf Reliance Harvest 72" can organizer. One of my fabulous readers pointed out to me that Shelf Reliance actually does sell a top shelf (separately) for their food storage systems. I decided not to add to Hubby Dear's workload by having him make one and just ordered it. It cost $26.48 (ordered through a consultant, including shipping) and it will support up to 150 lbs.

The gray metal grid on top is the new shelf. It is sturdy and will be very useful.

In Month Ten:

1. I'm going to add to my EDC, which stands for Everyday Carry. These are survival items you carry with you everywhere. I'm going to add some things to my keychain and purse to help me be prepared for a wide variety of situations.
2. The majority of my prepping budget is going to be spent on food storage. In fact, the news articles about the looming food shortage/inflation problem that I've shown Hubby Dear have convinced him that we need to build our food storage more quickly. He thinks we should double our monthly prepping budget for next month and spend it all on food storage. Is he becoming a prepper or is he just trying to shut me up? ;0) I'm thinking our purchases through carefully so that I spend this money wisely. I'll definitely keep you all know what I end up buying.
3. We need to finish putting soil into our garden beds and begin planting at the end of the month. Our strawberry plants should arrive in late March and we'll also plant peas, potatoes, and lettuce around that time.
4. Hopefully, I'll finish my cloth pad project.

What have you done to prepare recently? What preps do you have in store for the next month?

The Mainstream Media Wakes Up

My third child, Sweetie Pie, has a mild obsession with Brian Williams, thus we always watch the NBC Nightly News at our house. Today they presented a story about sharply rising food costs across the globe. Wow, finally a mainstream news source saying something that preparedness-minded folks have been warning about for a while.

Food costs reach crisis proportions

It sure makes me glad we're building our food storage!

Is Food Storage This Year's Furby?

A Furby

Do you remember the Furby? It was the hot toy of the Christmas of 1998. At that time, I was a newlywed, in college, and working part time as an extremely inept customer service rep at a department store. Shoppers came to blows as they competed for the few Furbys we had in stock. One of the highlights of the store's employee Christmas party was a chance to win one of three Furbys. I remember thinking that was extremely lame and didn't understand all the fuss about them. Twelve years later and now a mom to four children, I get "Furby Mania" a little bit more.

It seems like there may be a bit of the same sort of mania building in our country about food storage.

First, I read about Mountain House freeze-dried food rationing on The Survival Mom's blog. Then, I tried to order a few Superpails of wheat, navy beans, etc. from Emergency Essentials. Emergency Essentials is my go-to source for bulk supplies of wheat and other staples that I cannot buy in my area. I haven't found any place cheaper, especially when you add in the cost of buckets, mylar bags, and O2 absorbers. (I get rice, flour, pinto beans, and sugar at Sam’s Club and then package them myself, which you can read about here.)

I took a look at EE's Superpail page and lo and behold - nearly all of the products had a little yellow square displayed next to them, meaning they were backordered. I then checked out Walton Feed's website. Walton Feed looked like they had most things in stock, but they were going to take 4 weeks to ship them to me. (I got my October order from them in about a week.)

The next 15 minutes of my life were spent in a full-on freak out. Was a wide spreading food shortage approaching? I was willing to blow this month's budget and spend our last dime on kidney beans and freeze-dried beef stroganoff, if I could only find them in stock. I called Hubby Dear at work and demanded that he take the rest of the week off and drive me to Utah or an LDS cannery, whichever was closer. He muttered something vaguely reassuring before telling me he was busy and had to get back to work. How dare he be so callous about something so important, I huffed.

Twenty minutes, some deep breathing, and a handful of peanut butter M&Ms later, I regained my composure and began to think more clearly about the situation. I have been prepping for less than a year. There could be some sort of cyclical or seasonal shortage of food in the food storage industry that I was unaware of. Or perhaps something dire was indeed happening.

This article on the SHTFplan blog explains a lot about what’s going on.

It sounds like the shortages and backorders are being caused by rising demand from people like you and me. The food storage companies are struggling to keep up with the amount of orders now, but Mountain House anticipates the shortage will resolve by February or March of 2011.

Those of us who haven't finished our food storage are going to have to be patient until supply and demand balances back out. Is preparedness becoming the new "in" thing? Will it be a fad that will quickly be discarded like an old Furby? It will be interesting to see how this plays out, especially if good economic times come back.

Say it ain't so!

I was poised to write an entry about the Carnival Cruise ship debacle, but couldn't ignore this: They are predicting that the world will be hit with a chocolate shortage.


Tell me you didn't recoil in horror when you read that.


World demand for chocolate is increasing while the supply is decreasing. Raising cacao, the bean that gets made into chocolate, is back-breaking work and the farmers just don't get paid very well for it. As a result, cacao plantations in Africa are being abandoned as farmers look for other ways to make a living. Analysts predict that by the year 2030, chocolate may become an unaffordable luxury according to the article I read on this topic.

Chocolate isn't essential to life. Not technically, anyway. Most people I know, however, think chocolate is essential to their happiness.

The good news for those of us who build up food storage is that you can store chocolate for two+ years. The secret is to vacuum seal chocolate chips, candy, etc. in a mason jar with the aid of a FoodSaver. I've never done it since I don't own a FoodSaver (yet), but I read a helpful tutorial about it on Granny Smith's blog.

Sounds like we should all be adding chocolate to our food storage. Buy it when it's on sale, seal it up, and don't forget to rotate! I think I have some peanut butter M&Ms I need to rotate into my stomach right now...