Okay, every survivalist should have a seed bank, right? Hold on a second. First ask yourself these questions:
- Do you have a place to plant a garden? – Personally, my family has both a “shelter in place” and a “bug out” scenario. Our shelter in place home is on a river beneath a large grouping of trees. It would be virtually impossible for anything to grow at our shelter home. We could always annex and clear adjacent or nearby land, however this would give away our primary shelter in place security protocol, which is stealth. However, our bug out location, which is in a more rural setting does have a place to garden, so we can check this box.
- Do you know how to garden? – Seriously, you can buy a surgical kit on the web, but that doesn’t make you a surgeon. Obviously, this analogy is overkill, but you get my point, right? If your gardening knowledge is simply putting a seed in the ground and watering it; you’ll probably fare better by eating your seed bank rather than planting it. Here are a few articles on survival gardening.
However, If you want to buy a survival seed bank, and you lack gardening skills, we suggest that you need to buy a farmer’s almanac and other offline media to help you grow your green thumb in a survival situation. You cannot simply Google these skills in most survival scenarios, so having the written word stored alongside your survival seed bank would be ideal.
- How long will these seeds last? – Most people hear “survival seeds” and assume that they will have a similar shelf life to most other survival products, but that is not the fact. Properly stored seeds (sealed airtight, in a dry cool place) will have a varying shelf life. However, a good rule of thumb is that your overall seed bank will lose about 20% in potency each year. Meaning, in year five, you can expect that around 20 percent of your seed will successfully sprout.
- How important is the Non-GMO aspect? – Very, but not for health reasons. Genetically modified seeds do not produce seeds, they produce seedless watermelons. If you are buying a seed bank for the purpose of survival, one of the most important tasks of survival gardening is harvesting seeds to replant next season. (you should have a book that helps you with this skill too.)