Now that nearly two years have elapsed since the start of the pandemic, it’s more vital than ever that city folks need to know how to feed themselves, a family, or community in an emergency. As you do your weekly grocery trip, you might have noticed how foodstuffs have skyrocketed in price in the last few months! In times of calamity and instability, it is always ideal to be not only self-sufficient but frugal, because things can turn upside down without warning, and you never know when you might need an emergency fund.
In a dense urban setting, it might be frightening to even consider how to feed yourself in the middle of a pandemic. How do I even start? Where will I find time to garden between long WFH hours? The fact of the matter is, the sooner people make the shift to grow their own food, the more resilient our communities will be. And for the hesitant reader, you might think you’re too busy to pick up a new skill, but urban farming enables you to devote time to yourself, to reconnect with soil, and take pride in the fruits of your own labour. Think of how good it will feel to eat fresh veggies you planted yourself, knowing exactly what went into it!
In this post, I will go over how you can start your own Victory Garden amidst this pandemic, something to nourish the bodies and minds of you and your loved ones during this turbulent period of our lives. Most of these projects will allow you to harvest in just a few days, so you can try urban farming and reap rewards with minimal commitment!
Sprouts: harvest in 2 days
Sprouts are one of the most nutrient dense crops available, plus they require no light and the least amount of experience to grow! It is the perfect grow project for beginners: all you need is a glass jar, some water, a screen and your attention.
For pennies a day, you will grow a lot of sprouts. After the soaking period, you can tilt them out to drain. Repeat this cycle once or twice a day, and you can start to eat them. Sprouts and microgreens are highly nutritious and versatile — you’ll enjoy incorporating them into different recipes just as much you’ll enjoy eating them!
🌱 Get your complete guide to sprouting here.
💸 How can I feed my family on only $50/week?
If you order seeds in bulk from seed companies, you can get a lot — and I do mean a lot — of seeds for very little money! And it’s not just sprouts and microgreens that you’re growing with these seeds.
Spending $200 on seeds I got 50 kg speckle pea, 10 kg sunflower, 1 kg broccoli brassica blend, 10 kg mug beans, and 1 kg spicy lentil crunch, which will feed you and a family easily for months. Sprouts are tasty and have all the building blocks to life. It is important to order a good variety of seeds, so you don’t get bored with the taste and also make sure you have all the nutrients.
🌱 What are the best sprouting seeds to get?
Most sprouting seeds are super healthy, so really it’s up to you! Here is a list of what people typically get to start sprouting.
- alfalfa
- broccoli
- speckle pea
- watercress
- mustard
- radish, red especially
- wheatgrass
- sprout blends (these are great as they work together in the time they take to grow)
There are so many more seeds and you can grow and take a look at these sites for all the seeds you can sprout. You can order seeds from these locations. Mumm’s Seeds or Vesey Seeds
📍 Where can I store seeds?
What is amazing is that you can store your seeds for up to one year in a cool and dry place. If you put them in a fridge, they can last even longer; and if you freeze them, they can really maximize its lifespan.
Microgreens: harvest in 12 days
Many of the seeds that you get for sprouting can be grown out to microgreens. They are supper tasty and are ready to eat in around 12 days after sprouting your seeds. Above is a station I set up during the COVID-19 isolation. This is an east window, so I don’t need any extra lights to grow these things.
What is amazing is that you don’t need a lot of resources to grow microgreens, and if you get a couple of hours of direct sunlight you will see an amazing harvest. For a complete video guide on all the ways to grow different types of microgreens check out this amazing channel, On The Grow.
Leafy greens: harvest in 25 days
Leafy greens are ready to harvest in around 25 days or more. If you have space to grow a lot of leafy greens at once, you can start to thin out leaves much sooner if you plant your seeds close together.
🥬 Thinning your leafy greens
This means planting all your leafy greens close together and thinning them out as they grow. What is amazing about this technique is that you can harvest much sooner than waiting for the plant to fully grow. In a way, you get a continual harvest.
Ways to procure food during disaster
🪴 Wall farms
Since you are in an urban setting, turning your window or wall into a farm is the next logical step. This won’t yield immediate growth, but will allow you to make the most of your space to grow what you need. You can consider the different options available for your vertical farming project I laid out here.
Hydroponic farm made with PVC 
IKEA shelf converted to grow 
Urban Cultivator that grows food 
A great wall farm from Opcom
🪱 Meal worms and larvae
Yes, that’s right, larvae is extremely easy to grow and cultivate in a tiny space. It might take some getting used to, but once you realize how you can take your food scraps and produce nutrient dense food right in you home, you will start to get the picture.
If this is too much for you to swallow, you might want to think about this for your pets. Cultivating meal worms and larvae will save you money and make sure your animals are getting some of the best food around.
📦 Shipping container farms
Shipping container farms are an amazing way to feed a community in any disaster or pandemic. There are many companies that have fully converted shipping containers and allow you to purchase them and start growing food right away! However, container farming might not be the best if you are in a financially difficult situation, but if you are able to order one of these it will prepare you well in the concrete jungle.
📦 Get your guide on container farming here.
🧺 Foraging
Foraging would be unique to your situation, and it’s important to know what grows in your area. Once you understand what around you is safe to eat, you’d be surprised about how much you can eat! Many flowers and so-called weeds are edible. You can read more about foraging in the city here and here.
🌳 Guerrilla gardening
If you don’t have your own land to grow, go out, find it, and plant on it — this is the guiding philosophy of guerilla gardening. There is a lot of vacant, abandoned land out there that is not owned, used, nor maintained. You can start tilling it and planting your seeds. You can even find people with an empty lawn and ask them if you can till this land and start growing food on it, offering to share the yield of what you harvest. Walking around your city, you will find many spots that get full sun and would be amazing to grow food on.
⛑ Rescuing food
Dumpster diving might seem a little extreme for some urban farmers but, to me, it’s about using the resources that we have at hand and, more importantly, preventing food waste. Grocery stores throw away a lot of perfectly edible food and if you are in need, this is a great place to find food. If you are in good terms with the owner or workers of the store, you can even arrange to pick it up before it is tossed out. I personally go to the dumpsters at organic grocery stores, where you can get a lot of amazing things! Join be and be a food hero!
📱 Bridgefy: free mesh network
I want to recommend Bridgefy to you, an app that allows our cellphones to communicate for free using bluetooth, without cell phone towers or even cell phone plans! This means a mode of contact like this will be critical during times of emergency. Like the mycelium of the earth, our cell phones link together like nodes in our brain.
Bridgefy uses a mesh networking platform to achieve a free, end-to-end encrypted communication. Our cell phones mesh together and allow us to communicate up to 300′ to the next node. With enough participation on this app, we can build a mesh that would be free to communicate through. In a disaster, this type of communication can be key to survival. If you are in a condo, you would be able to communicate with the whole building and coordinate resources.
Updated August 20, 2021. Originally published March 26, 2020.
