Survival Garden: What to Grow for Food Security

Updated August 14, 2026

What Makes a Good Survival Garden?

Starting any edible garden is the first step to a good survival garden. It could be as simple as container gardening on your apartment balcony, herbs on your windowsill, or as extensive as cultivating an entire homestead with orchards and livestock. The best survival gardens support your family’s eating habits and nutrition, and provide long-term, sustainable harvests.

When the going gets tough, the tough get GROWING. It’s important not to wait until the tough times arrive. Starting even small now will expand your gardening knowledge and help you to create a foundation for success. It’s part practice, experimentation, and art. A survival garden is designed to provide dependable food and increase household food security during disruptions, shortages, rising costs, or weather events, or it can simply be a desire for greater self-reliance.

Looking for crop ideas? Jump to the best survival crops to grow.

Grow What You Like to Eat

A sage and practical piece of advice came recently from one of our long-time employees and fellow gardener, Matt Deguise, as we talked about what I might plant when I build my Growing Dome. Debating whether to plant a fig tree or grapes to produce shade, he said, “Grow what you like to eat.”

The best survival crops are not necessarily those with the highest yields or the longest storage life. They are the foods your household will actually eat. If no one in your family likes radishes, dedicating valuable garden space to them does little to improve your food security. Start with the foods you already enjoy, then prioritize varieties that are productive, calorie-dense, nutritious, easy to preserve, or well suited to your climate.

Match Your Crops to Local Conditions

Having grown up gardening outdoors in Pagosa Springs for the last 25 years, when I perused a seed catalog, I would always scan for varieties with short days to maturity (60 days or less) and zone 4 or below for perennials. While our climate is changing, the season can last a little longer, and the Plant Hardiness Zones have been remapped; it only took a season or two to learn what would grow in my backyard.

I’d be pulling green tomatoes as the first frost threatened over Labor Day weekend, never having eaten a vine-ripened beefsteak. Cherry tomatoes and a Siberian variety gave me the taste of summer I craved. The best garlic I ever planted came from saving a few cloves from a bulb bought at the local farmer’s market and grown right in my county. When I do buy garlic from seed suppliers, I stick to hardneck varieties that thrive in our cold winters.

A greenhouse gives you more control over the ecosystem, can extend your season, and Growing Domes allow you to garden year-round. There are still conditions you may want to consider for optimal production. We often recommend sourcing seeds that have been bred specifically for greenhouse environments, as they are more resistant to diseases that are found with the increased humidity, plant density, and temperatures present. Self-pollinating varieties are also preferred since it can sometimes be a challenge to allow access for pollinators or find the time to hand-pollinate.

Keep It Simple and Sustainable

A resilient garden should not depend on complicated inputs or equipment that you cannot maintain yourself. A Growing Dome is most useful when the growing strategy inside it is still straightforward: healthy soil, good seeds, crop rotation, efficient watering, seed saving, and plants suited to the environment.

We often recommend dedicating roughly one-third of your greenhouse planting space to perennials, as it will decrease the amount of time and space you need to start plants to fill your beds, and will continue to yield year after year with minimal effort. Gardens naturally produce some waste. Turn this trash into treasure by composting or vermicomposting. This will reduce your reliance on store-bought amendments. Succession planting is another staple that will keep the garden productive over a longer season.

Best Survival Crops to Grow

In a survival garden, the most valuable plants often do more than one job. A crop might provide calories, store well, produce over a long season, or preserve easily for later use.

Prioritize Calorie-Dense and Storage Crops

When space matters, it helps to dedicate part of your garden to survival crops that provide more staying power than tender greens alone. Potatoes and sweet potatoes are especially valuable because their starches provide carbohydrates and calories that help make meals more hearty and keep you full. Winter squash also supplies carbohydrates while offering the advantage of long-term storage when properly cured.

Root crops such as carrots, beets, and turnips are not as calorie-dense as potatoes, but they still earn a place in a survival garden. Their combination of carbohydrates, fiber, nutrients, and storage life can help round out meals long after harvest. Many can also remain in the ground until needed or be stored for weeks or months under the right conditions. Their greens are also edible.

I would start my carrots outdoors in April, harvest the bulk of them in October, and they would store in the crisper drawer of my refrigerator until I ran out, usually in February. Obviously, if I wanted a longer-lasting supply, I should have planted more than the three Earthboxes full, but space and water were my limitations. The tops I would turn into chimichurri, dehydrate to use as a substitute for parsley flakes, and freeze them to add to homemade chicken stock.

Together, these crops provide something leafy greens cannot offer on their own: bulk, energy, and the ability to turn a garden harvest into a more filling meal.

Include Legumes and Pseudo-Grains for Protein

Beans, peas, edamame, chickpeas, and quinoa can bring more plant-based protein to a survival garden, but they fill different roles. Peas shine during cooler weather, while green beans, dry beans, and edamame prefer warmer growing conditions. Green beans offer repeated fresh harvests, while dry beans and chickpeas can be allowed to mature for a crop that stores well after harvest.

Quinoa, a pseudo-grain like buckwheat or amaranth, offers protein-rich, shelf-stable seeds, but it takes more work after harvest than most of the other crops in this group. Once the seed heads are dry, the tiny seeds need to be threshed and winnowed to separate them from the plant material, then cleaned and rinsed to remove the naturally bitter saponin coating. The process can take some practice, but it is manageable on a home-garden scale and may be worth the effort if quinoa is a food your household regularly eats. We found that in the dome greenhouse, it produces volunteer seedlings when seed is allowed to drop.

Keep scale in mind when planning these crops. A few plants may provide plenty for fresh eating, but producing a meaningful supply of dry beans, chickpeas, quinoa, or edamame for storage generally takes more growing space. If protein production is an important goal for your garden, plan accordingly rather than treating these survival crops as occasional additions.

Even green beans and peas can be frozen or canned. Growing enough of a crop for preservation can require more space than you might expect. Kansas State Extension estimates 15–16 feet of green beans per person, or roughly 60 feet for a family of four. Gardeners who hope to preserve a substantial supply should plan for more than just a handful of plants.

Grow Nutrient-Dense Crops

Kale and Swiss chard earn their space in a survival garden because they can provide fresh, nutrient-dense greens over a long period of time. Both can be harvested a few leaves at a time, allowing the center of the plant to continue producing new growth. In our Growing Domes, we often keep kale plants growing so long that we jokingly call them “kale trees.” As we harvest the lower leaves, the plants continue growing upward and producing more.

Cabbage and broccoli are also valuable brassicas to include. Cabbage is a great beginner survival crop to experiment with ferments such as sauerkraut and kimchi. Unlike kale and chard, however, they generally require more room for a primary harvest, so consider the space they occupy when deciding how much to plant. Broccoli plants, for example, are commonly spaced roughly 10–18 inches apart.

While potatoes, squash, and other staple crops help provide calories and staying power, leafy greens help supply the vitamins, minerals, and variety that make a survival garden more nutritionally well-rounded.

Crops for Preserving and Long-Term Use

Preserving the harvest is an important part of a survival garden plan if your goal is to subsidize or even replace your grocery bill year-round. We’ve mentioned quite a few ways that the survival plants described above are also prioritized for their long-term storage qualities. Some plants, like most herbs, can be dehydrated for long-term use. Onions and root crops can be stored for long periods of time in cool, dark environments such as a root cellar or pantry. Tomatoes and many other crops can be canned. It’s always exciting when you have a windfall of vegetables, but with careful planning you can keep that harvest on the shelf for that proverbial rainy day and reduce your reliance on store-bought foods.

Fast-Growing or Repeat-Harvest Crops

Radishes, spinach, lettuce, other leafy greens, and carrots are useful crops for succession planting because many mature relatively quickly and can be sown more than once throughout the growing season. In the case of lettuce, kale, and mustards like tatsoi, some of the leaves can be harvested while the remaining parts of the plant can continue to grow to allow for multiple harvests.

Succession planting simply means planting a new round of seeds at regular intervals rather than planting the entire crop at once. This helps spread out the harvest so you are not faced with more produce than you can use at one time, while also keeping valuable garden space in production. In a Growing Dome, succession planting can be especially useful for cool-season crops, allowing you to take advantage of protected conditions and repeat harvests over a longer portion of the year.

Perennial Harvests

There are a lot of survival plants you can grow that will come back year after year with little to no maintenance. The perennial plants that will survive vary by region and available growing conditions. In my outdoor garden in Pagosa, I grew rhubarb, strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries. Many herbs also returned in the spring, such as thyme and chives. Before I moved, I was experimenting with growing asparagus. My secret was covering everything with frost cloth for the entire winter. I believe it gave me another whole hardiness zone.

In a greenhouse like the Growing Dome, which can mimic a Mediterranean climate, the perennial survival crops are greatly expanded. Think fruit trees like citrus and figs. Rosemary can grow into a large shrub. Even if you don’t have a greenhouse, if you have a sunny space, you may be able to consider dwarf varieties like mandarins, planted in containers and moved indoors to overwinter.

Use Your Growing Space Strategically

In my backyard garden space, my soil was extremely poor shale, so I had to create raised beds for most of my plants. Even though I had acreage, my growing space was limited, so I expanded the area I could cultivate by utilizing containers. I had the best luck growing green chiles when I planted them in the large pots that trees and shrubs come in when you buy them from the nursery. My raised beds were a mix of perennials and annuals that I made sure were good companions. Especially in my containers, I would amend the potting soil every season with my homemade compost and rotate the crop that had been planted before. One year it was carrots, the next it might be peppers or tomatoes.

Root Crops in Stable Growing Areas

The Growing Dome has four main zones: Eastern, Southern, Western, and Central. Each of these zones creates a microclimate within the dome ecosystem. The central bed is the most stable overall because it is closest to the thermal mass of the above-ground pond. This is perfect for root crops, which often need cool to moderate temperatures and space for root development. Often, Dome Owners also grow trees in their central bed, which can shade these crops, helping the soil retain moisture and extending the cool season for these survival crops.

Put Fruiting Crops Where They Get More Heat

Fruiting plants such as peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers love the summer heat. In a Growing Dome greenhouse, the Southern beds get the most sun throughout the day and tend to experience the most extreme temperatures. Even if you don’t have a greenhouse, you can experiment with this in your yard, especially utilizing containers, so you can move them when you discover what works best. In many northern-climate gardens, a sunny southern exposure can provide the warmth and light they need for strong fruit production.

There are always exceptions to the rule. My property was almost entirely south-facing, and at high altitude, I had to use shade cloth to reduce UV exposure so I wouldn’t burn or stress even my most heat-loving plants. Our Growing Dome kits include a shade cloth sized for the dome, while the polycarbonate itself has a 65% light transmission rate that helps create balanced conditions for a wide range of survival garden crops.

Take Advantage of Companion and Vertical Gardening Techniques

Those fruiting plants in ideal conditions can grow quite tall and provide shade below to more sensitive crops like lettuces, greens, and herbs. In any garden setting, you can optimize the space you have by planting compatible varieties together. In all of our plant of the month articles, we list a few of the best companions. These could be varieties that enhance the flavor of another plant, ward off pests, or attract pollinators. It’s also important to know which plants don’t play well together, whether that’s because they attract similar pests and diseases, have vastly different watering requirements, or even produce compounds that could inhibit the growth of their neighbor.

Vertical gardening leans into the ideas of companion planting and maximizing your space by growing up instead of out. Think about how to grow trees and vining crops that will create more filtered light below. Some survival crops such as strawberries and thyme can grow below as ground covers, which help hold in moisture, suppress weeds, and protect the soil. In the year-round greenhouse, seasonal conditions also come into play. That fig tree will provide shade in the summer when it’s needed most, but it will still drop its leaves in the fall, allowing more light and heat to enter the structure.

Plan Your Year-Round Harvest: Learn what to grow when, and how to make the most of the different microclimates and growing zones inside your Growing Dome.

Free Download

Year-Round Planting Planner

No form fields configured.

Look Beyond the Garden Beds

When the conditions are right, and we receive adequate rainfall, one of my family’s favorite pastimes is to wild-forage in the mountains for strawberries, huckleberries, raspberries, and occasionally spruce tips. We have even hunted for chanterelles and boletes with a friend who is experienced with identifying mushrooms. You don’t have to go far to find edible wild plants, but you may have overlooked them.

Good wild berry harvest years

Much of what I first learned about wild edible plants came from Katrina Blair, founder of Turtle Lake Refuge in Durango, Colorado. I picked up one of her ‘cookbooks’ at Maria’s bookshop. Her work encouraged me to look differently at plants that are often dismissed as weeds and to pay more attention to the edible plants already thriving in the landscape around us.

These plants are not a replacement for a productive greenhouse garden. Instead, they broaden the food resources available around it. The Growing Dome can protect dependable crops from extreme conditions, while the surrounding landscape adds perennial foods, locally adapted plants, and additional sources of nutrition.

Learn What Already Thrives Around You

Plants such as dandelions, purslane, nettles, burdock, rose hips, and Oregon grape may already be growing nearby, depending on your region. In a survival garden, learning to recognize and use locally adapted edible plants can add another layer of resilience to what you intentionally grow. Those plants have already demonstrated that they can handle the local soil, rainfall, temperature swings, pests, and other environmental pressures. I have heard a weed described as a plant that grows where you don’t want it to. Learn which of your weeds deserve their place in your garden.

Treat Foraging Knowledge as Another Food-Security Skill

I encourage everyone to seek out the opportunity to learn more about edible wild plants. Sources include books, websites, extension offices, and even in-person plant walks. They don’t even have to be wild. Plants we consider ornamentals can provide nutrition as well. Rose hips are a great source of vitamin C. I like to add them to teas and stocks. Did you know hollyhock leaves can be used like a tortilla? I learned that from Katrina’s book, where she features a hollyhock burrito.

The most important thing about foraging is positive identification. Many plants have poisonous look-alikes, or only certain parts of the plant are edible. Learn which ones are the easiest to identify and grow your knowledge from there. As with anything you are going to eat, avoid plants exposed to herbicides, pesticides, roadside pollution, animal waste, or other contaminants.

Build a Survival Garden That Can Keep Producing

A survival garden becomes more resilient when you can produce some of the resources needed to keep it growing. Saving seed, rebuilding soil, and using water efficiently can reduce your dependence on outside inputs from season to season.

Save Seeds

Saving seeds and propagating plants through cuttings or division are some simple methods for growing a more sustainable survival garden. Naturally, plants are made to produce more plants. Learning how to best support this lifecycle will provide you with a source for next year’s tomatoes without having to go to the nursery. Over time, saving seed from the healthiest and most productive plants can help preserve traits that perform well in your particular growing conditions. Gardeners and farmers have used this kind of selection for generations, and many heirloom varieties have been maintained through repeated seed saving.

Starting plants from seed or from healthy established plants, especially for a protected greenhouse environment, also gives you more control over what enters the growing space and can reduce the risk of bringing in pests or diseases on purchased transplants. Start with clean, healthy seed and propagation material to protect the garden you are building.

Build Healthy Soil

Everything starts with a good foundation, and in the garden that foundation is your soil. It helps to start with the best soil you can afford or find, yet over time your plants will pull most of those nutrients out of the soil, or it can become hydrophobic. It’s important to learn how to regenerate your soil with cover crops, crop rotation, and organic amendments. Taking care of your soil is an investment that will pay off over the lifetime of your garden. The biggest asset I had a hard time leaving behind when we moved was the yards of potting soil I’d cultivated for decades with all of the compost our family had generated. I took as much of it as I could with me and hoped the new owners found the same value in it.

Use Water Wisely

In the arid West where Growing Spaces campus is located, water has always been a commodity. In some states like Colorado, you don’t own the right to use the water; the user downstream from you might. For many years, there were laws in place to restrict rainwater collection, and even now that ability is regulated. Long drought cycles and increased populations continue to apply pressure to this fragile resource, and water restrictions are on the rise.

There are ways you can use the water you have wisely, such as choosing certain times of the day to water when the plants can utilize the most of it before it’s able to evaporate. You can also take advantage of localized drip irrigation systems to direct the water into the root zones of your plants rather than broadcasting a larger amount over a greater area. Automated systems can definitely help dial this in and reduce usage. Consider the pros and cons of the complexity of these systems for what will work best for your sustainable survival garden.

The Growing Dome has a natural reservoir in the form of an above-ground pond that can be used to water the raised beds. The pond will still need to be topped off, but it allows water to be stored right where it is needed and used gradually throughout the growing space. Because the pond also acts as thermal mass, helping moderate temperature swings inside the greenhouse, the same feature supports both climate control and irrigation. Making one resource serve multiple purposes is one of the ways a Growing Dome supports a more resource-conscious growing system.

How Much Survival Garden Do You Need?

We used to talk about the Growing Dome’s size by the number of people it could feed. This is a very subjective measurement. We have Dome Owners who only grow succulents or ornamental plants in their greenhouses. While a 15-foot diameter dome may seem to only feed 1–2 people, if you use it primarily for overwintering, starts that you will transplant outdoors, or perennial herbs, it has the potential to feed many more.

Whether designing your greenhouse or planning your garden beds for next season, there are several questions you can ask yourself to determine how much space you need to grow, including how many people you are trying to feed.

• Is your plan to replace your reliance on the grocery store entirely or to cultivate the crops that are the hardest to find locally?

• Do you plan to preserve the vegetables and fruits that you grow so that you have a store of food for the off-season, or do you have a greenhouse or temperate climate where you plan to continue growing the basics throughout the year?

• One of the biggest considerations when planning any garden is to evaluate your resources, especially your time. How much garden do you have time to care for? Even automated gardens in protected environments require supervision, weeding, harvesting, and propagating.

How a Greenhouse Can Make a Survival Garden More Reliable

A greenhouse adds another layer of resilience to a survival garden by giving you more control over the conditions that affect your food supply. Protected growing can extend the season, shelter crops from hail, wind, frost, and wildlife, and create opportunities for repeated plantings and longer harvests. It can also provide different microclimates where you can match crops to the light and temperatures they prefer.

A Growing Dome takes those benefits a step further with passive and active solar features designed to help moderate the greenhouse environment and reduce dependence on outside energy. The above-ground pond provides thermal mass, automated ventilation can help manage excess heat, and optional solar-powered systems can support irrigation and other greenhouse functions off-grid.

With more than 35 years of Growing Dome experience, we have seen families and communities use these systems in a wide range of climates to grow food more consistently throughout the year. A greenhouse will never eliminate the work or resources required to garden, but it can reduce some of the variables outside your control and help make the food you grow more dependable.

Final Thoughts: Start With What You Will Actually Use

You do not need to grow every crop on a survival-garden list.

Start with:

• what your household eats
• what grows well where you live
• what fills you up
• what stores or preserves well
• what you can realistically maintain

Then add resilience over time through seed saving, perennial foods, soil building, protected growing, and knowledge of the edible landscape around you.

Want to grow a more dependable food supply?

See how protected growing can help you extend your harvests, reduce reliance on store-bought produce, and build greater food security.

Grow More at Home