Survival gardening isn’t something you need to get depressed about. Just plan your gardens as if the supermarket doesn’t exist and the worry will melt away. Plant a big garden – it’s fun and great exercise.

Sometimes you can get so consumed with the “what ifs” that you miss the beauty of right now.

Fear is everywhere and it’s even crept into the realm of gardening.

There’s a good reason for this, of course. We see the Republican establishment freaking out over outsider Donald Trump… and the Democratic establishment freaking out over outsider Bernie Sanders.

We see waves of immigration sweeping into Europe and wonder if there will be any native European culture left in another generation or two.

We see the possibility for runaway viruses and the even higher possibility of a deeper financial crash following the multi-year papered-over Depression we’ve been in for a decade.

And then we think, “could I feed myself if things got bad?”

I’ve been a property consultant for serious preppers, food forests, prepping websites and even developers. A lot of that material stays off this blog because I like to keep things light, plus I keep my clients confidential. I also simply enjoy writing about fun gardening stuff here, despite the scary “Survival Gardener” title I use for the website.

It’s probably a personal failing. I need to knuckle under and help teach you guys some of the skills you need to grow lots and lots of food in case it’s ever a necessity. I’ve poured more of that information into my books, of course, but don’t always dump all my prepper stuff here.

On our homestead we’ve been able to supply all of our large family’s vegetables from the gardens out back and have had some extra to share.

That’s a great feeling.

Though I started gardening on a larger scale because I felt we were facing an uncertain future, the fear for tomorrow really melts away when you’re out in the sun, pushing a wheel hoe, planting seeds with a two-year-old or filling a basket with sun-warmed green beans.

Stop. Breathe. Say a prayer. Pick some more green beans. Kiss a kid. Plant another row of corn.

It’s easy to get caught up in the fear and forget to live.

My In-Depth Guide to Survival Gardening

Last year when I wrote Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening, I let myself dig into the various scenarios of what could go wrong and how it could go wrong.

Could I garden if the electricity went out?

Or if the well gave up?

Or if we ran out of gas?

It’s good to ask these questions and I spent a lot of time and research on them, not to mention testing lots of crops, tools and methods across multiple garden plots in multiple climates. We grew crops in Tennessee for multiple years, then grew simultaneously in temperate North Florida and in tropical South Florida. I was even working on setting up a test plot near Canada but realized I simply couldn’t do everything as well as I wanted being spread that thin.

All that to say, I put in the worry and tested the methods so you won’t have to do quite as much.

Readers agree:

Grow or Die could easily stand alone as a crash-course in gardening… or it could be the end-of-the-world manual you need to get through a crisis. Consider it cheap insurance at $2.99 for the kindle version and $14.95 for the full audiobook version.

The paperback version from my publisher has been delayed longer than expected but it’s on its way soon. I have the proof on my desktop right now (thank you, Matthew).

Knowing that I can grow a garden in multiple climates and produce plenty of food if things got ugly brings me plenty of peace.

There’s no room for gloominess when you have the knowledge in your head and some crops in the ground.

I’m rooting for you.

*Image at top courtesy franzconde. Creative commons license.