How To Start A Self Sufficient Garden

So you know you want to grow a resilient and reliable homestead garden, read on to see how to get started!

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How To Start A Self Reliant Garden

A self-reliant garden is a great way to save money. No need to buy fertilizer, pesticides, or other common gardening inputs. A self reliant garden can even break you away from needing to buy seeds every year.

What is being self-sufficient to you in your garden? Is it not needing to buy from outside of your homestead? To be able to keep the circle of the seasons from seed to garden, garden to table, garden to seed?

This post is about how to start a self-sufficient garden that will grow seed to seed. A garden that will produce food no matter how the season and climate will change.

No Garden Yet?

If you are brand new to growing a garden, you need to decide the location where your garden will grow. Choose your garden site based on where your plants will get the most amount of sunlight in a day. Plants need at least 8 hours of sun, the more sun the better for most plants! Check out the related posts to get your first garden started!

A Self Sufficient Garden Grows Seed To Seed

When you are starting a garden, you need to have seeds and plants to grow in it! You can grow lots of different types of seeds: heirloom, open-pollinated, hybrid, organic, and Open Source seeds.

There are a couple of approaches you can choose for your garden. Are you someone who wants reliability from the beginning, or someone who loves to experiment and explore?

I’m Dependable and Reliable!

You know you are a dependable and reliable homestead gardener because you want tried and true varieties. Plants you know will consistently grow and yield in your garden. Those that you know how they grow and what your likely harvests will look like.

You tend to stick with varieties of plants that you know well. You do your homework if you see something interesting to see if others in your region have had success growing it.

I’m the Experimental Explorer!

You know you are the experimenting and exploring homestead gardener because you love to try something new in your garden. Are you in love browsing through seed catalogs or exchanging seeds with people because a variety looked interesting or the name was really awesome!?

You don’t mind if things don’t work in your garden, it was fun to try it and see! If it didn’t grow, you swap the seeds for something new to try.

Choosing Seeds To Grow

Choosing what seeds to grow in your self-reliant garden rather depends on which homestead gardener type you related with more!

The basic idea for your self-sufficient garden is to grow plants and save seeds from those that are growing well. You want to grow plants that are thriving in your garden because this is them adapting and excelling in your garden. The ability to grow in your garden and the climate you have is passed on to the seeds.

Save Your Seeds

To have a self-sufficient garden, you have to save your seeds. The best gardens will grow with seeds that are local because they are adapted to the growing conditions in the area. You also want and need the seeds to freely pollinate to increase genetic diversity. This brings in resilience and the ability for your garden to keep thriving no matter the weather, pests, or diseases.

Save the seeds from those plants you enjoyed eating and grew well. The following year, you plant the seeds you saved. Taste the plants and save seeds from those you love to eat the most. Replant these seeds the next year and continue that process of saving seeds and replanting.

This is how you create a landrace variety.

So let’s break this down for each homestead gardener type.

The Explorer

Plant a few varieties of the same plant close together. Let’s say 3-6 varieties. Plant them so they all have enough room to grow but don’t worry about trying to stop them from cross-pollinating. You can plant heirloom varieties, open-pollinated varieties, even F1 hybrid varieties if you really want to.

Let them all grow together. Let the bees, bugs, and wind do their thing and move the pollen around these plants. Try the fruits and veggies you are growing. If you loved it, save the seeds to grow the next year. If you didn’t like it, don’t save the seeds!

Next year grow the seeds you saved. Plant them out in the garden, allow the pollen to move naturally between plants. Try the fruits and vegetables. Save seeds from those that grew well and those you loved the taste!

Continue the growing out and seed saving. If you want to try adding new varieties of plants as you are growing and saving seeds do it! This is your garden and you can grow it how you want to!

The Reliable Gardener

Do some research on varieties that perform well in your area. Try growing those varieties together along with ones that you already grow in your garden. Allow pollen to move naturally between plants. If you are really worried about maintaining your heirloom varieties, then grow your landrace project in a separate part of the garden or use tools to prevent cross-pollination like cages or floating row cover. Make sure you have a couple of your favorite heirlooms in with your varieties for the landrace though!

Try your fruits and vegetables. Save seeds from those you liked and those which grew well.

The next year, grow your saved seeds from your landrace again. Grow as many plants as you can. Grow your heirlooms in another part of the garden or grow your landrace project in a test bed area. Allow the pollination to happen naturally.

Save seeds from plants that grew well that had the best flavor.

Continue to grow the landrace seeds and seed saving.

Adding Varieties To The Self Sufficient Garden

As you continue to grow out and save seeds from your landrace garden, you might want to add new varieties from time to time. You can add the plants to your normal garden if you are ok with the cross-pollination and you don’t mind selecting the plants for the traits later.

A more cautious approach that saves you time, in the long run, would be to try the variety first in a test garden or test bed growing area. This way, you can see if the variety will grow well first, then you are putting the best of the best into your landrace and self-sufficient garden.

If your trial plant variety grows well, save the seeds and plant them out in the main garden with the landrace variety the next season. You would then allow the natural movement of pollen, and select the seeds based on the traits you are looking for like flavor, how well the plant grew, shape, texture, etc. You are choosing the traits to grow for the plants to pass to their offspring!

I recommend the test garden approach so you can try new varieties to keep that curiosity without having all the extra work later of removing unwanted traits.

Simply Self Sufficient Gardening

I know it seems almost too easy right? Sow seeds, taste the vegetable or fruit, if you like them and it grows well, save the seeds!

This really is self-reliant gardening, you can move away from not only the grocery store for your vegetables but from needing to purchase seeds all the time too! Remember that this is how plants have been domesticated into the fruits and vegetables we have today and generations of homesteaders, gardeners, and farmers did this without a STEM degree from an ivy league school!

Tips for Success

You might recall that growing saved seeds from an F1 hybrid means you get plants that look different from the plant you saved the seeds from. This is normal, it’s the diversity in the genetics showing up! However, if you are worried about it, start your landrace self-sufficient gardening project using heirloom and open-pollinated seeds instead.
Start your self-sufficient garden slowly. Develop one or 2 landraces at a time so you can learn the skills of seed saving, storage, and selection. Start with easy seed-saving plants first! Fava or broad beans, okra, runner beans, corn, cucumber, melon, squash, eggplant, and peppers are easy to save seeds from and are easy to start converting to landrace seeds.
Don’t worry if varieties cross-pollinate and you get some unusual colors, shapes, or sizes. This is part of the process.
Try not to be hard on yourself if some plants don’t taste good or even if some plants fail. Remember it’s survival of the fittest and most tasty. If it doesn’t taste good – don’t save the seeds!

Dig In and Learn More

If this post has started ideas for your garden, be sure to check out these related posts and helpful books:

Would you give up a garden of heirlooms for one that reliably produces delicious harvests? Let me know over in the Facebook group

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