Hide Your Food in Plain Sight
Would your neighbors recognize a tomato plant if they saw one? Wouldn’t the shiny red globes be a dead giveaway? Of course they would. You – along with most of the population – would recognize tomatoes, corn, beans and almost all other vegetables. And since most foods are grown in easily identifiable garden beds, we teach our workshop attendees to grow at least some of their food with plants that work in flower or lawn borders.
In a SHTF situation, your neighbors and even friends will steal any food they recognize when they’re starving. Just think: what would you do to feed your children if they were slowly starving to death? And while I hope that most preppers would be as generous as possible to friends and neighbors, at some point we would have to say “no” to keep our own families alive. Where does that leave us?
It leaves us with our supply of retort foods and other deep preps for sure, but it also means that we need to know about stealth gardening. One of my favorite things to do at our workshops is to walk attendees past our front herbaceous border next to the road and ask them to identify any edibles they see. There are several among the irises and other flowers. No one has ever gotten them all!
Lets talk about plants that no one other than the savvy prepper gardener would ever recognize –
Jerusalem Artichoke
This is my “go-to” stealth food. The plant looks like a member of the sunflower family with its tall stalks and bright yellow flowers (see the header image) but underneath its tubers are a powerhouse of protein, calories and vitamins. One plant can produce many tubers, much as a potato plant would, and in fact the tubers are similar in taste and texture to potatoes. One tuber (which we always include in your “swag bags” at our workshops) will – over the course of a few short years – become a large patch. I started with exactly three tubers and, within four years, had a patch approximately 8’ x 6’. Each year I simply left a few tubers in the ground to reproduce and provide plenty for the next year’s harvest.
Claytonia
While claytonia does not provide much in the way of calories, it’s incredible vitamin C content is a must for preppers. It’s other name is “Miner’s Lettuce” because it’s what the gold miners ate to provide vitamin C. The leaves, stems and flowers of the plant can be eaten as a salad or sauteed. No one recognizes this beautiful lettuce-like plant because it looks too much like an ornamental so it’s perfect in a flower border (edible flowers of course).
Hostas
And speaking of edible flowers, hosta shoots are edible when they first come up in the spring. And because hostas need frequent division, they’re an unending food source. Everyone will easily recognize these lovely ornamentals, but how many will know they can provide food? The hostas in our herbaceous border were actually from my parents home. They've been dug up and moved to new homes with us every time we have. They're fast growers so I'm able to divide them every two years to provide even more plants.
Daylilies
I’ve seen two different approaches to eating parts of the daylily. One says all daylilies have edible shoots and flowers, and the other says to eat only for the heirloom orange variety that you often see growing in ditches beside the road. This is something you must do your own research on. For us, it's what we consider a "last resort" type of food. I will add that, like hostas, daylilies are fast growers and can be divided every two years to make even more plants.
Japanese Giant Red and Mizuna Mustards
Too pretty with its airy fronds to be an edible, it’s perfect for your stealth garden and high in vitamins as well. Many of these Japanese mustards look quite ornamental and we grow several here on our homestead, each of them beautiful in their varying colors and shapes. The young tender fronds are delicious in salads and mature leaves can be eaten sauteed or steamed.
There are many “unusual” looking edibles in the plant world that most people will not recognize. I’ve only touched on a few here but we provide an in-depth list to our workshop attendees each year to help you with your own preparedness.
