Less work, more sustainable, means your better prepared, perennial food forest

As a homesteader, back to lander, prepper we are always learning and realizing that it can be a lot of work.  I am sure if you have been doing this for any length of time you know you cannot "buy" your salvation in the form of preps.  It just won't happen.  And I am sure if you haven't come to this conclusion yet you soon will! LOL  So many of us learned to start thinking "how would the pioneers and natives of this country have done it?"  The more we dive into that line of thinking the more we start to look at what is available in our environment and how can we not only use it, but encourage the beneficial things we see and need.  Most of us have figured out that we have to build gardens.  Gardens can be a lot of work, especially if you use conventional wisdom of digging soil, preparing ground, planting, watering, weeding, and all the various things that goes with that.  It quickly grows out of control.  There are lots of things you can do, but first of them is to get rid of your tiller, and learn how to work with what you have, and what to add and do to encourage the kind of ground you need for great gardens.

But this post isn't about all the ground prep and those things to make your gardening easier from that perspective.  This post is to encourage you to look beyond "annual" gardens.  What do I mean?  Perennials, these are plants that will come back year after year, producing things you need... All you have to do is provide a healthy climate for these things to reseed and regrow from.  No time is spent digging, planting, and all of that work.  You just encourage these plants to come back year after year.  There are lots of perennials to consider based on your USDA plant hardiness zones.  The idea is to transition as much of our growing space as we can to a food forest.  Fruit and nut trees, bushes, perennial plants that just keep coming back like strawberries, asparagus, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, apples, pears, plums, peaches, apricots, nectarines, serviceberry, pawpaw, mulberry and the list just goes on and on.  Unconventional plants that fall in the wild edibles area can also be grown like Good King Henry, miners lettuce, sorrel, mache and so many more.  I will post a video below from One Yard Revolution sharing his evolution into more and more perennial plants and how it reduces the amount of work and time spent in the garden. 

Those of us who are working to homestead and do as much as we can ourselves know how much work it can be.  It only makes sense to leverage those things that will reduce that work, provide good healthy food with minimal work.  This diversity will provide you with more food and more choices.  Who doesn't want to get more for less?  If you haven't already made the shift to perennial food crops on your homestead maybe it is time?  Many of these things take time to establish and get to the point they are producing food for you so I wouldn't wait.  Trees, bushes, and vines planted this year will likely take 3-5 years to really start producing.  So no time like the present to diversify!