Our nation has been on a collision course with simple, natural living for quite some time. People in cities are crammed into high-rise apartment complexes, working 12 hours per day, eating fast food as a daily staple, and getting sicker by the minute. What will it take to reverse this trend? Well, unfortunately, we don’t seem to be able to do this on our own. It is taking an economic crash, the likes of which pales in comparison to  the 1929 fiasco to get us thinking about going back to the basics of growing our own food.  The truth is, for far too many of us, if we don’t start developing some basic survival skills, we simply won’t eat.

So how do we go about growing some of our own food and eating healthy if we live in an apartment? It’s simple.  Create a Freedom Garden. There are several ways to do this in a limited space. One way is to grow your veggies in pots indoors near windows, or with grow lights.  Another suggestion is to use balcony space and create vertical gardens in which plants are started in containers and trained to grow upwards on trellises, poles, or anything that encourages upwards growth.

Hydroponic gardens are another option, and can be made cheaply and easily. These require no soil, just nutrients and water. You can have fresh, organic tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, squash, and many other veggies right at your fingertips.

Start your project with something easy like squash, lettuce, spinach, carrots, or beets. I live in the high desert, and these veggies grow outside like crazy here, even with the harsh weather and limited growing season. Squash, lettuce, and spinach do not require much depth, but carrots and beets do, so remember this when creating your gardening space.

To get your Freedom Garden started, make sure that you get only Heirloom seeds. GMO (genetically modified) or hybrid seeds will not work if you plan to harvest seeds for the next crop. Once your veggies ripen, choose the best plants from your crops, and harvest the seeds for your next planting from them. If you plant GMO seeds, it is likely that your harvested seeds will not be viable. The same goes for hybrid seeds. Heirloom seeds are the seeds that go back for hundreds of years, and are pure. Their genetic makeup has not been tampered with through artificial genetic modification techniques, or cross breeding.

Choosing only the best plants for your seed harvesting will ensure that future crops yield the best results. Also, be sure to gather extra seeds to create your very own personal seed bank so that you have something to fall back on just in case.

In short, one of the things that we cannot do without is food. To stay alive, we need to eat. If the shelves go bare, having a Freedom Garden in your apartment or backyard will be worth its weight in gold. So pick a gardening method, whether it is by indoor or outdoor containers, or hydroponics, choose your seeds wisely, and start planting for food freedom. This is the way to stay alive and healthy in today’s world.

Here are some handy links for starting your Freedom Garden:

1. How to Harvest, Process, and Store Vegetable Seeds by Grandpappy.
2. Where to Buy Heirloom Seeds in Bulk.
   

[Ed. Note: Barbara lives on a small ranch in Oregon with her husband, where they raise geese, chickens, horses, Oggie Dog, a variety of cats, and an opinionated Macaw named Rita. Barbara believes that self-sufficiency and localization of food sources is necessary to survive the coming depression. To this end, she hopes that sharing information with others of like mind will lead to a brighter future where people reach out to each other and form small communities in which food is grown locally, and trade is established between neighbors.  For more of Barbara’s tips on sustainable living, click here now.]

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