Potato tops are not good for anything except nourishing and supporting the tubers below. Few people will actually recognize a potato plant growing out by itself. Plant seed pieces about 4 inches deep. Sprouting occurs within 3 weeks. Soil should be mounded up around the plants to give the spuds more room in which to grow.
Carrots yield well, and they are fairly easy to raise and store. In most cases, mature carrots are simply left in the ground over the winter. Cover with 6 inches of leaves, grass, and duff. Dig up as needed for the pot.
The devil with carrots is getting the seed sprouted in the spring. Their minuscule seeds are easily buried too deep and lost. I cover cover the seeds with a light layer of peat moss and a piece of heavy canvas for 10 days to give them a chance to warm and sprout.
This leaves green beans and zucchini. Beans are excellent for city survivors because the mature pods can be left to dry on the plant when there are too many green beans to be otherwise processed. Production of food from 200 bean plants can be prodigious. Beans manufacture their own nitrogen fertilizer. Seeds saved from the last crop are always viable. When finally induced to sprout, beans do well on even very tired, poor soil.
Most zucchini are also open-pollinating, meaning seeds can be kept from one year to the next. Zucchini are a very short-term crop; it only takes around 53 days from planting to harvesting mature fruit. Everyone knows about the production ability of zucchini. In many places it is the subject of jokes. The biggest problem is storage; zucchini can be kept fresh for about 60 days, but after that they get moldy and deteriorate. Long-term storage entails freezing or canning.
All gardening, city or country, requires practice. Learning curves can be steep, but no two areas in the world are exactly the same relative to gardening techniques. City residents who believe they might someday become survivors can easily learn by placing a few hills of beans, zucchini, and potatoes out in the flower patch for practice. Few seeds and little space are required to experiment. Knowledge gained will be invaluable, especially when spread over a whole lifetime. Small-scale fooling around with garden vegetables leads to a continued supply of fresh seeds at the retreat.
I raised beans, carrots, and zucchini experimentally in a small plot across the street from a condo in which I lived in Boise, Idaho. There was abundant space in the lawns and flower beds among the high-rise buildings. But these flower beds were well tended and I risked having my little experimental garden mistaken for weeds and pulled up. Across the street I noticed a landowner who never mowed, pulled weeds, or fussed in any fashion with his yard. I planted there during the dark of night just a batch of seeds to see what would happen.
Nobody expects very much activity on the part of greenskeepers or gardeners during a city’s collapse. No doubt, concerns about errant weeding would not be justified if everything else around has turned to worms. My experimental seeds sprouted and grew, but languished when I was unable to water them. Boise receives only 7 inches of rain per year, on average—it’s really a desert.
City survivors could successfully learn hunting and gathering techniques on the job. They could also learn to garden in 3 to 4 years. By then, the emergency will have passed or you will have died of starvation.
RAISING LIVESTOCK
Livestock can be successfully raised in the deep inner city. Third-worlders do it all the time. It is generally small livestock, with goats being the largest. But, as with all animals, they are made of meat and will sustain life. My father raised rabbits and pigeons for 3 years; it was his and his brother’s duty to keep the critters alive. This is probably more responsibility than most 12-year-olds in our society could assume.
Rabbits
As mentioned earlier, three doe rabbits and a buck will produce sufficient young that survivors can count on at least two rabbit meals per week. Figure a litter of six to eight young weighing 3 pounds every 8 weeks throughout the year. Dad claimed he rebred their does 4 days after they gave birth. The does then started production of the next litter while still nursing the first litter. I never wanted to crowd my rabbits that much, but dad pointed out that this is the way it happens all by itself out in nature.
Rabbit hutches are roughly 20-x-18-x-30 inches deep, made of ½-inch chicken wire top and sides. The bottom is made of ½-x-1-inch hardware cloth. Rabbits produce huge quantities of compost, which is useful in the garden. All this must fall through the hardware cloth on the bottom. Does like having a nest box, about 1 foot on a side and 18 inches deep. Cut a 4-inch access hole in front. The top should be hinged to open for inspection. Each buck and doe should have a hutch, plus one extra hutch per litter to keep them from weaning for 10 weeks, when they are butchered. Any older and they start breeding among themselves as well as consuming huge amounts of food, with little additional size gain to show for it.Figure one nest box per doe. The buck doesn’t need one.
Bean stalks, leaves, hay grass, cornstalks, zucchini rinds, carrot tops, and any other cellulose material can be gathered as feed for rabbits. During spring, summer, and fall they can be fenced into small grassy areas to eat on their own. Summer and fall are also the times when grass and weeds are cut, cured in the sun and then piled for winter food. I also recommend storing a bit of commercial feed against the time when the home-produced kind runs short. Don’t try running rabbits out in areas where hungry soldiers, owls, or dogs are likely to find them.
Rabbits are easy, but not really easy to raise. Now and then, especially in the winter, domestic rabbits fail to breed or lose their litters. There’s no obvious explanation, the litter is just born dead or quickly weakens and dies. Often it is the doe’s fault. I give her two chances and then off to the pot.
Pigeons
Semi-domestic pigeons are another kind of livestock city survivors can use to great advantage. Once established, pigeons mostly care for themselves. They need a protected, secluded roosting area more than a pen. Pigeons fly in and out for their own food and water. They pair for life, producing eight pairs of young per year, always setting two eggs. The young weigh almost a pound dressed at maturity in 30 days.
Fifteen pairs of pigeons produce enough young that, at a minimum, city survivors can figure on four pigeons for dinner per week. Theoretically it should be more than that, but things seldom work out perfectly The process of producing young is materially speeded by a biological oddity of pigeons. Males take over the chore of raising the young from about day 26 till first flight, while she starts the next two-egg nest.
On the downside, pigeons are extremely dirty and full of parasites. They reportedly carry virtually every disease and parasite known to man. They are smelly and pigeon whitewash is, of course not particularly aesthetic. Nevertheless, these critters turn themselves into lots of food. Fifty years ago, raising squabs for market was big business in the United States. Poultry factories have reduced the enterprise to the little we see today