🌱 Emergency vegetable garden
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A vegetable garden won't feed you in an emergency lasting days, but in a long crisis it tops up the pantry. Start now: it takes a season to learn.
Open the guide in the app (works offline)Step by step
- Start with the easy ones: radishes and lettuce (harvested in 4–8 weeks), green beans, zucchini, tomatoes, potatoes and herbs.
- On a balcony, pots or grow bags at least 20–30 cm (8–12 in) deep will do. Tomatoes and peppers need about 6 hours of direct sun; lettuce and herbs cope with partial shade.
- Sow to suit your climate: summer vegetables go in once there's no more frost, and leafy greens cope with autumn and mild winters.
- Water at the base of the plant, early in the morning or at dusk. Cover the soil with straw or dry leaves: it holds moisture and saves a lot of water.
- Make compost from vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, eggshells and dry leaves: in 3–6 months you have fertilizer.
- Potatoes give some of the most energy per square meter and grow well in bags.
- Keep seeds in envelopes, somewhere cool, dry and dark; most last several years. If you want to save your own seeds, choose heirloom varieties, not hybrids.
Safety
- Don't water anything eaten raw with rainwater from the roof or untreated dishwater.
- After a flood, don't eat vegetables that have touched the water.
- Next to roads or industrial sites the soil may be contaminated: use pots with fresh potting mix.
Source: FAO, "Improving nutrition through home gardening", and USDA (food after a flood)