4 Ways to Hide Your Survival Garden!

4 Ways to Hide Your Survival Garden

If you already have your plans for a survival garden in the works, you are definitely heading down the right path. Food prices have skyrocketed and the predictions project the cost of food will continue to rise. When SHTF, many people will be forced to leave their homes when their meager supplies run out. This means they will be scavenging food from houses that are nearby or on their route to wherever they believe is a safe location.

Everybody can recognize a traditional garden in neat little rows beside your house or even in the backyard. This means that even those who have never grown a garden will know that your neat little rows mean potential FOOD. If you don’t want to wake up one morning and find all your hard work has been stolen, here are four ways to hide your survival garden from the zombies or members of the golden horde:

1. Create an Illusion in Plain Sight

Plant edible flowers and weeds such as daylilies, dandelions, nasturtiums, clover, land cress, pansies, plantain, violets, purslane, or sunflowers. Most people, even those who may have had a traditional garden, won’t recognize these flowers and weeds as food and may simply walk on by.

You can also plant “prettier growing” vegetables in flower planters so that passersby simply assume they are flowers not food. Sweet potatoes have beautiful vines and purple flowers, dinosaur kale has edible leaves with very pretty flowers.

Use annuals that self-seed such as beans, tomatoes, garlic, leeks, potatoes, and pumpkins. Let the seeds fall where they may to create a messy looking field that most people won’t suspect is a garden. These tactics will not only make your yard look overgrown and abandoned but are just a few of the ways to hide your survival garden in plain sight from most of those desperate people passing by.

Caution: Before eating any flowers or weeds, do your research and make sure you are able to accurately identify each plant and its edible parts and that chemicals have not tainted the growing area.

2. Use Natural Deterrents

Yet another of the ways to hide your survival garden from hungry looters passing by is to keep it completely out of sight. You can do this using traditional security fencing of course, but most people know that if someone goes to the trouble of putting up a fence, there’s stuff worth having behind it. Consider planting poisonous plants or foul-smelling plants nearest to the road to deter intruders from exploring into your yard. If planting poisonous plants is not to your liking, you can try planting recognizable edible plants close to the road. This edible food within easy reach of the road may be enough to satisfy their hunger therefore deterring them from exploring further into your yard looking for your garden.

You can also use natural barriers that block your garden from sight or deter people from taking a closer look at your yard. Natural barriers can include things such as thorny trees like the Lisbon lemon trees or nearly impenetrable hedges such as the Gooseberry, the Japanese Barberry or the Choisya Trifoliate. These hide your garden from view and have thorns as a deterrent for those who might be a little more curious.

3. Spread it Out

If neither of the first two ways to hide your survival garden is appealing, spread it out. Don’t plant your garden in recognizable straight rows. Take advantage of companion planting principles and permaculture garden principles and zones, to help spread your garden out all around your property to hide it from hungry looters. A permaculture garden needs less maintenance from you and it won’t be as noticeable to passersby because it’s not a traditional garden and is designed to blend into the landscape rather than stand out. Spreading your garden out also makes it less likely that persistent looters will be able to locate or pick all of your food.

In more rural areas, the furthest zone from your main house can be developed into a full-fledged food forest. A food forest is designed without the need for maintenance and can be used to further disguise any annual vegetables you do want to grow. After several years of development, it simply looks like a naturally occurring forest behind your home. Even curious passersby who enter your food forest likely won’t recognize food growing throughout the forest.

4. Take It Inside

In urban areas, the best way to protect your survival garden is to take it inside if possible. Modify some of the suggestions above to help keep passersby from entering your building or even noticing your building. Use hydroponics to grow plants without soil. There are even ready-made aquariums with LED lighting you can buy to grow plants indoors without soil.

You can use one, two, or even all of these deceptive tactics to keep your food source protected following a SHTF event. Start planning now and use the ideas that work for your situation and family needs. With a well-hidden survival garden you increase the odds of surviving a SHTF event.