Your First Food Garden- Things To Consider; Pandemic Survival Covid-19 Series

Food Gardening Decisions

Creating your very own food garden isn't as difficult as many people think it is. In fact, it can actually be pretty simple. It really just comes down to what resources you have available and what kind of a lifestyle you live.

Some of things you'll want to consider are what food crops you want to grow, the climate you live in, plus, alternative gardening systems for growing more food, faster and better, and for gardening without land. 

Choose what foods you want to grow

While climate and gardening space may seem like the two most important decisions anyone should make before starting any garden, in reality,  the reality is that the first thing you should think about is what you want to grow. 

With the many, various solutions to common gardening problems such as climate restrictions and lack of land to grow food on, choosing what you which foods you want to grow will go a long way in helping you make the rest of your gardening decisions.  

You may have ample land on which to grow your fruits and vegetables, but perhaps your climate is harsh and offers only a short growing season.  In this case, you'll want to consider climate control choices, and quite possibly even alternative gardening systems.  

While certain choices may make 'year round growth,' possible for a harsh climate, you also want to consider how much time you have to get from planting to harvesting and eating.  If you're dealing with 'food shortages' in your local grocery stores, and you need foods you can grow and eat fast, you may want to consider not only a 'climate control' option for your crops, but also other gardening systems that allow for faster growing. 

Available Garden Space

If you own a home with quite a bit of land, and you have enough time to tend to it, you could choose  a traditional garden.

If you don't own your home, there are ways to increase the amount of food you can grow with less space.

Even people who live in apartments can often create balcony gardens  or patio gardens, and incorporate greenhouses into them for climate control as well as bug and pest control. 

Some apartment complexes may even allow residents to garden on some of the apartment complex's  unused land, or even replace some of the 'landscaping' with gardens. 

"There's a complex not far from me where one tenant doesn't have a car, so she dedicated her designated parking spot to her very own garden."

City, county, and even state parks, especially 'wilderness type' public recreation locations like national forests can be a guerilla gardener's dream come true, offering remote locations, that while not exactly 'designated' as public garden spaces, also aren't exactly 'private property,' that you could be charged with trespassing on. 

Where there's a will, there's a way, and if you're not growing food, gardening is still therapy, even if you kill everything. 

Climate Control

Once you've decided which food crops you want to grow, you should consider whether or not your climate will be suitable to your crops.  

I happen to live in Florida, in the United States, so I've practically got a year round growing season. Yet, my warm weather can be 'too hot' for many of the fruit and vegetable crops so even I need to adjust to my climate to protect my plants from Florida's scorching sun. 

In a different climate, with a shorter growing season, what you grow and how much of it you can grow will be in direct proportion to the climate as much as it is to the space you have available for growing your fruits and vegetables. 


Is your climate suited to all of the crops you want to grow?

Is it suitable to some, or all of the foods you want your garden to produce?

Is your growing season long enough for you to plant and harvest enough food for your household until the next season?


If the answer to any of these questions is, 'no,' one of the first things you might want to consider is a greenhouse.  

Greenhouses are one of the basic building blocks for a thriving food survival garden.  In addition to regulating the climate your plants will be living in, a greenhouse can extend your growing season, thereby increasing your food production. 

Also, greenhouses offer the added benefits of easy pest control and easy weeding. 


Whether you own a home or not, if you have a yard, but need more climate control than you currently have to grow the foods you want, or enough of them for that matter, there are several ways to control the climate in your garden and increase the yield you get in return for your efforts. 

Two Secrets To Bigger, Better Gardens...

Whether you live in a house with land, or a tiny apartment, or anything in between, with or without a greenhouse, two 'alternative gardening systems,' you should consider are hydroponics gardens and aquaponics gardens.

Hydroponics Gardening

Hydroponics gardening is as simple as ordinary gardening.  Both of them necessitate sufficient light, water, temperature, and humidity.  And both offer incredible benefits to gardeners and preppers.

But with hydroponics, no soil is used.  Instead a soil substitute holds the roots while nutrients are carried by the water.


Indoor hydroponic gardening is not that hard and plants respond well to this method of growing.

Aquaponics Farming

The definition of aquaponics is in its name - it is a combination of AQUAculture (the growing of fish) and hydroPONICS (the growing of vegetables and herbs).


Aquaponics is a perfect example of sustainable food production, and many people are turning to this system of home food growing.

Aquaponics is almost like getting a 2 for the price of 1 deal.  After all, you're getting both fish and fruits and vegetables.  

Plus, as a bonus the food and the crops work together for production, of each other.  So you don't have to. 

Both hydroponic gardens and aquaponics farms incorporate well with apartments and other small spaces, including greenhouses.  The kiddos will love watching the fish swim and learning how the fish feed he plants and the plants feed the fish.  

Alternative gardening systems.

While balcony and patio gardens will provide some space for you to grow your own delicious fruits and vegetables, if you find that you still don't have enough space to grow as much food as you want or need, there are several alternative gardening systems.

Community gardens

One such alternative option option for growing food without land is to start a community garden.  A community garden, according to Wikipedia, "utilizes either individual or shared plots on private or public land while producing fruit, vegetables, and/or plants grown for their attractive appearance." 

Setting up a community garden is going to require some additional work on your part, as you will need to locate land and negotiate some kind of permission, whether through 'donated land,' or by way of renting or buying the land. 

Also, any costs associated with the community garden may make creating a community and/or raising funds necessary too. 

Guerilla Gardens

If a community garden isn't right for you,  another alternative gardening system you could consider is guerilla gardening. A guerilla garden, according to Wikipedia, is a garden "on land that the gardeners do not have the legal rights to cultivate, such as abandoned sites, areas that are not being cared for, or private property."

While guerilla gardens are most well known as an act of activism. and carried out in 'urban' areas, they can also be an act of survivalism, carried out in more remote locations.

Guerilla gardeing can be fun for the whole family. Just make sure to take all the proper precautions before venturing out into the world of guerilla gardens.