My Climate Disaster-Pandemic Victory Garden

The ongoing pandemic has highlighted the tenuous links in society between the consumer and their sources of food. These links are probably not as fragile as many doomsayers would have you believe. However, these supply chains can be disrupted for days to weeks by world wide pandemics, regional climate disasters, and nutty human behavior.

A Measure of Self Sufficiency

Growing your own food gives you piece of mind and ties you into the rhythms of the seasons and the earth itself. It will allow you to bear witness to the accelerating climate changes going on all around us.

This post is meant to give you a little inspiration to grow your own. While you might not be able to totally live off the land, you can at least supplement your food with some tasty, fresh vegetables. It’s not that hard, and the best way to learn is by doing. So please enjoy a tour through my climate disaster – pandemic victory garden!

Disclaimer — Any product linked too has been used by me, has been found to be of high quality, and is thus recommended. Some of these links are affiliate links.

Good Soil and Composting

Good soil makes strong healthy (and nutritious) plants. Some yards have good soil to begin with, and some don’t. I live in Houston which is underlaid by thick, dense clay everywhere. Most houses around here have about a foot of low grade top soil dumped around the house to grow lawns and landscape on. Not great for vegetable gardening. So a lot of work has to be done to make the soil grow vegetables.

If your soil is not great, you can always grow in containers — then you can make your own blend of the perfect soil. Often, just using bags of top soil that are marked for vegetable gardening is good enough. If you have some compost to add, even better.

Compost is broken down organic matter that provides readily available nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, and calcium) to your garden plants. Yard clippings plus kitchen waste are broken down by worms, bugs and bacteria into essential nutrients. Your kitchen waste can supply a steady stream of rich nutrients for your compost pile, and garden.

Utopia Kitchen scraps container. This thing has worked great. It came with carbon filters to soak up the smell, but they were a pain in the ass to install and didn’t do much anyway. This thing will fill up pretty fast, not leaving too much time for odors to build up anyway as long as you empty it regularly. You will need to wash it out periodically.

Looking inside the kitchen scraps container. Egg shells, coffee grounds, orange peels, lime wedges, onion skins, moldy or stale bread, etc. I leave out animal products such as bone, gristle, fat, oil, cheese, etc. Composting all of these scraps results in less regular trash, so less times a month I put out my garbage to be picked up, and less wet/stinky trash, because all the wet stuff is usually scrap waste that goes in the steel bucket. The only nuisance is that sometimes those tiny fruit flies will appear, which is usually fixed by taking it out to the compost pile more frequently.

Compost Bin. Can’t find this particular model anymore, but this one is similar.
Levers lock down the top and keep animals out. I put chicken wire underneath it when I first put it in place to keep animals from burrowing up from underneath.

Kitchen scraps go in the compost bin with other yard trimmings. It all gets mixed together with a small spade, then gets a good soaking with the hose before closing the lid. Adding water is an important step. However, if you over water it will start to stink because it’s shifting to anerobic instead of aerobic decomposition. If that happens just turn it over with a shovel so more air gets inside. You don’t need a bin if you are just composting yard waste. There are many types of compost bins from none at all, to home made, to purchased bins or drums that rotate (which put more air in it).

Fresh, dark, rich compost available by lifting up the panels at the bottom. When I plant a new pot, planter or bed, I add a few shovels full of this stuff.

Here’s a good book about composting that I recently read, called… Let it Rot! – The Gardener’s Guide to Composting.
Also, there are tons of articles and blogs about this topic too.

When and What to Plant

The climate you live in dictates when you can plant different kinds of vegetables, berries, fruit trees and so on. For things that are planted new every year, your zone mostly dictates when you can start planting outside. The further north you are, the longer you have to wait longer before putting plants in the ground. Of course you can always start seedlings inside before the frost is gone.

USDA Zone Map – click here to find out your zone .
The Gardening Know How website has specific instructions and zone info for the US, specific US states, Canada, and Great Britain.

For plants like fruit trees, you may be out of luck growing in a climate that gets hard freezes during the winter. And if you live far south, you may not be able to grow things like blueberries which like it a little cooler. However, there are always exceptions, and it never hurts to try and grow something that is supposedly not right for you zone. You may be surprised.

And… climate change is already moving these zones north. Now. Today. I doubt if the USDA has upgraded the zone map to figure that in, and it would be a moving target anyway because the change is, and will be ongoing.

Predicted planting zone changes by 2050.
From the US National Climate Assessment, 2014.

A successful garden starts with good seeds. You can order seeds from many different places. I have used Amazon, Park Seeds and Stark Brothers. There are many others.

Starkbrothers.com is great and I have ordered many live plants and seeds from them. Early in the growing season they ship depending on the last frost dates for each USDA zone, so if you ordered live plants it might come late April, but seeds ship anytime. You can get good seeds and all kinds of garden supplies on Amazon, some of which are shown below.

When buying seeds you want seeds that are produced from a reputable source, have a high germination rate (more of them will actually sprout), and you get a good value for the money (enough seeds + good germination). Also, hybrid versus heirloom is important. Hybrids are usually plants that have been bred for some particular characteristic, such as disease resistance, higher yields, etc. Some hybrids are engineered to be difficult to get good seeds from, so you have to buy more seeds the next year.

An array of seeds, bought from Amazon, Park Seed, Stark Brothers, and harvested directly. Some gardeners file their seeds in envelopes, labelled with dates and all, and **put in files in a spiffy box**. I’m not that fancy yet. I store all of them in a large plastic zip lock bag.
(click on image for a larger version)

Heirloom seeds are closer to wild in a way, and often represent older and sometimes forgotten or less used varieties of plants. Heirlooms also have the advantage of giving you seeds that can be planted again.

Here’s an overview of my seed collection…

Seeds from reputable companies like Stark Brothers or Park Seed are great. The germination rate is usually pretty high and they offer lots of heirloom varieties. The black packets with white text in the picture above are from Stark Bros, and the copper colored packets are from Park. There are many great, reputable companies out there I haven’t tried, such as Burpee Seeds.
Amazon is a great source of seeds, though some brands are better than others, and a lot of them are overpriced. The rest of this list are seeds I bought on Amazon…
Mountain Valley Organic seeds have been pretty good, with a fair number of seeds in each packet and good germination rates. I have planted these –> Chard | Kale | Lettuce | Arugula
Seedz brand found on Amazon have generally been pretty good quality, with high germination rates, though a little pricey. I have planted these varieties –> collard greens | snap peas | kale | pumpkin
Rebel Gardens carrot varieties are pretty good, though they are expensive and don’t give you that many seeds. They have a lot of interesting heirloom varieties of carrots.
Other Rebel Gardens seeds I’ve used have been expensive with not the best germination rate, so I will not be buying these in the future.
I recently got more bok choy seeds from “Seeds of Change” via Amazon. They did very poorly, with only 3 tiny seedlings coming up from a whole packet of seeds. And they weren’t cheap either. So stay away from this brand.
A total surprise was the “Open Seed Vault Survival Garden” seeds. I had bought it about 3 years ago and opened it this year to plant when seeds were hard to find online in the pandemic rush to garden. The “seed vault” is stuffed with small packets of many different types of vegetable seeds. The germination rate was near perfect as far as I could tell, and the plants are all robust heirloom varieties. My latest round of cucumbers, zuchini, bok choy and cherry tomato plants came from “the vault”. 🙂
However, I’m not sure I’d buy the Seed Vault now as the price has more than tippled lately due to pandemic price gouging. I got it in 2017 for $14.95.

I lay the seed packets on the ground where I’m going to plant them, then take a pic with my phone so I can remember what I planted and where. The bricks were marking where the pepper plants I got at the local big box store were going.

Fire pit garden with seed packets laid out so I could remember what I planted and where. Planted these seeds in rings. It’s mostly important to know what you planted early on when the seedlings are coming up. After the plants are bigger you can usually tell what it is.

A lettuce plant that went to seed. This usually happens later in the plants life cycle, or as a response to some stress, like a steady period of high temps.
Usually when a leafy plant goes to seed the leaves become too bitter to eat. You can yank the plant and let it dry out before harvesting the seeds for next year, thereby saving you some money. Also, as a general rule, heirloom plants give you better seeds.

In The Ground, Raised Bed and Container Gardening

I have all three types of growing areas, in the ground, raised beds and containers. The raised beds and containers seem to do better in this blazing hot and humid climate, as long as I am good about watering them. The in ground beds sometimes don’t do as well because the ground here is super clay rich and full of all sorts of bugs and plant diseases.

I have learned to add lots of compost and even sand to my in-ground beds here, to help with the drainage, and to keep the soil a bit looser. Plants do much better, especially potatoes and onions when the soil is a little looser.

Sweet potato shoots planted in the ground on the left, with seeds sprouting from some New Mexico hatch chili that I had collected.

About 7 weeks later sweet potato vines everywhere.
Some onion that I planted from seed is next to the garden light.

Sweet potato vines were trimmed back and a few select shoots were put in water.

Sweet potato shoots sending out roots after only two days in water! This made me realize that selling sweet potato shoots, or “slips” as they are called, is potentially quite a money maker for the seed companies! As long as you have one healthy slip to put in the ground you will be up to your ears in sweet potatoes soon enough.

After a week! Wow!
I put these in a big ziplock bag and dropped them off at a friend’s house so they could start their own sweet potato farm.

Side yard where I planted some zucchini plants. They grew like crazy, but the fungus got them later. So this area was replanted with some heat tolerant plants, like peppers and eggplant. The eggplants are growing like crazy. They must like the heat.

Tiered wooden planter from Costco. They don’t seem to stock this one anymore. This thing has been great, but wood will rot after a few years, hence the bungie cords holding the top tier together. This pic is in early spring after just planting tomato and pepper seedlings. The blue dots on the soil are bits of MiracleGro fertilizer. Be careful adding fertilizer, as you can burn your plants with too much of it. I usually sprinkle a little bit at the start of the season.

About 8 weeks later the raised bed is booming. Lots of collard greens on the bottom row.

Early spring with cucumber sprouts from the “seed vault” (top) and just planted onion shoots from Park Seeds (bottom).

Mid-season view of raised bed and planters. Clockwise from left: rusty old fire “pit” filled with dirt and full of salad greens, tiered planter with tomato and peppers, cucumber plant with cut branches for supports, fig tree in blue pot, cherry tomato plant seedlings in plastic pot that the big tomato plants came in, and onions (middle).

A couple of months later, onions doing great. Onions like soil that drains well, and this fabric pot really seems to do the trick. I was impressed with these pots and ended buying a few different sizes. If I had more dirt to fill them with I probably would have bought a few more!

First baby eggplant. Can’t wait to get a bunch of these! These seeds came from the Open Seed Vault (discussed above).

Gardening with the Seasons

It has really hit me this season that in this super warm climate, you have to start certain plants as early as possible. Many of these plants have faded as the heat intensified. Tomatoes are a good example. They are a summer plant most places, but here they stop producing fruit when the heat really gets going.

So tomatoes have to be planted in late February or early March after the (very low) risk of frost has past. Some of these heat sensitive plants can be planted in the fall here, so there’s always that to look forward too. Wherever you live, you will have to figure out how to plant with the seasons.

Zucchini plants. In this same area I had planted some raspberry cuttings last year. I knew they wouldn’t make any berries until next year, so I planted some additional crops around them. Unfortunately, the zuchs got so big that they were shading everything else, though I eventually yanked out the zucchinis due to fungus, so the young berry plants started getting more sun again and growing like crazy.

Zuchini growing. Fungus got them pretty quickly as the temperatures rose. Ended up yanking all of these plants and putting other ones in.

Second planting of the side garden. Peppers and eggplant. When something is done growing, be it due to heat, disease or whatever, it’s time to yank it out and put something else in there to take advantage of the rest of the growing season. This bed had been prepared the year before for the blackberry plants with the addition of manure, top soil, compost and sand, so it’s got some of the best soil in the garden.

Snap peas late spring, already too hot and the plant is dying.

Meager pea pod harvest. I pulled the few pods I had, dried them out, and saved the seeds to plant in the fall when it cools off here. If you live in a colder climate you would sprout them indoors before spring, then plant as soon as the frost danger was over.

Second round in the salad fire pit, late spring, already pretty hot outside (80s – 90s in May) Right side is lettuce and arugula which is not doing well in the heat. Left side is bok choy which is doing great in the heat. I will be planting more bok choy soon.

Cherry tomato plant with fungus (I’m guessing). These were on lower branches so I trimmed them off immediately. Generally speaking, diseased plant material should be put in the trash instead of the compost pile.

Watering

Vegetables are water hungry plants. Most of them need to be watered everyday. Putting a layer of mulch over the soil your plants are growing in can help keep the water from evaporating too quickly. It also helps discourage weeds.

Some very motivated gardeners will set up a drip irrigation system on a timer. I’ve done that in the past and that works great. But it can be a real pain in the buttocks to make sure all the little fittings and tubes are working properly.

Lately, I just water by hand every evening if it hasn’t rained. You have to be careful not to blast your seedlings, small or sensitive plants with a strong jet of water. This year I found the best thing to water a garden with – a simple watering wand. It keeps me from bending over too much, and puts out a lot of water at low pressure. This might be the best purchase I’ve made all year! LOL! 😀

Harvest and Preserving

This is the fun part, eating the fruits of your labor. A great problem to have is an abundant harvest. You will have to figure out ways to preserve your food. Pickling works well. You can also create good will with friends and neighbors by sharing your bounty.

First blackberry harvest. Birds soon discovered my blackberry bush, so I had to put **netting** over it to keep them off. They still manage to snag a few, but most are spared.

Rainbow chard harvest. This went into a stir fry and was delicious.

Cukes and a tomato. I’ve had to get creative about what to do with all the cucumbers. I’ve been making lots of cucumber salad and am about to pickle a bunch of them. Tomatoes get picked before fully ripe to keep the birds from pecking at them, and the caterpillars from boring into them.

“Dad’s Cucumber Salad” using cukes from the garden. Recipe from **15 Cool Cucumber Salads That Are so Hot Right Now,** Allrecipies.com.

Cucumber salad stored in 10 year old plastic container.
Check out the blog’s last post about how to
**Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Legislate and Donate** to reduce your plastic footprint.

Southern style collard greens with ham, bacon and onion — super tasty! Made by loosely following the recipe **Kickin’ Collard Greens from AllRecipies.com**. This was the first thing to be harvested this year. I am about to plant another crop as they are generally heat tolerant.

Chopped cukes, bell pepper, onion and some fresh oregano in Ball Glass Jars, waiting for hot pickle juice to be poured over them.

Bread and Butter pickle recipe from America’s Test Kitchen on YouTube.

Close up of assorted pickled peppers, cherry tomatoes, garlic cloves and onion.
Pickled according to a **recipe in Bon Appetit Magazine.**

Yumtastic!
I’ve been eating these right out of the jar, and also chopping it up to make a coarse relish for hot dogs. My mouth is watering just typing this up. Wow!

Bok choy, heirloom carrots and sweet Texas onion.

Resources

There are so many great resources out there. My favorite source these days is YouTube. Here’s a list of a few YouTubers that I watch religiously. It’s garden porn, you can’t look away. 😉

Self Sufficient Me – this guy cracks me up! Years worth of hard core gardening videos.
Epic Gardening – focussed on urban and container gardening
Hollis & Nancy’s Homestead – gardening and more
Veronica Flores – general gardening tips, lots of detail

If you don’t like these, there are literally hundreds of others, so have at.

I hope this post found fertile ground in your mind, and gave you some food for thought. Anybody can grow a little vegetable garden, you just have to try. And even a small space is good enough to get started. So you’ve got nothing to loose but your complacency… get out there and start gardening! Woohoo!!