Survival gardening to me means gardening to eat and not just for fun. If the truth is known, many gardens likely are more trouble than they really are worth. Here are tips to make a garden really pay in produce as well as fun.

Tools Make The Garden

Huge amounts of food can be grown with just hand tools. But the best hand tools are much more fun to use and make your work much more efficient as well. Though a tiller is useful in some circumstances, it mostly is a way to produce compacted soil and cause trouble. On the other hand, a high-quality forged steel spading fork and a matching forged spade will turn you into the best digger around and all while using no petroleum at all.

Seeds Make Or Break The Yield

Heritage seeds produce very interesting produce that often tastes better and looks better. But beware that you get heritage plants that actually yield. More modern hybrids in many cases are bred to produce even with the diseases and environmental challenges present in your area. Don't be too fast to eliminate all hybrid seeds from your arsenal.

Compost For More

Compost is key to sustainable yields. But making good compost takes time and there is never enough of it. So go to work gathering every bit of compost material you can gather. The more the better and the more the better the yields. There's no time better to get started gathering materials than now.

Other Fertilizers Are Quite Easy

Complete soil tests let you see just what's needed in your plot and adjust the soil to take care of what's lacking. Most soils respond though to two basic fertilizer materials. Those two happen to be easy to get and relatively inexpensive. The first is the seed meals. Any kind of seed meals adds a balance of nutrients, especially nitrogen. The other material is simple ground limestone. In addition, the related dolomite works well in most gardens. Adding other materials like rock phosphates is a real plus, but somewhat optional.

Water Or Nothing

Without water you have little chance for success. Getting the water at the right time is a major challenge more so in some areas than others. Adding compost to soils and adding mulch to the soil surface will both help with maintaining soil moisture where it needs to be.

Vegetable gardens can only be survival gardens if the production is high. Getting a few basics right helps insure that a garden is a really productive spot.