Regarding #27 on your list - Stockpile seeds. When buying seeds or plants, remember to buy NON-hybrid. After growing the plants, the seeds harvested from hybrids will not germinate.<<<
That can’t be said too many times, as it is the most important fact at all....saving the hybrid seeds can mean no food at all.
I have had it happen with tomatoes, beautiful plants and not a flower or tomato.
Yes, I too learned a lot before Y2K, and it was fun for me to read in the different groups, how the stored foods were used.
Many like you and I, were glad to have good food on hand, and the many folks who posted when their mate lost their jobs or got sick and how glad they had prepared for Y2K, I could agree with.
I admit I laughed at the ones who had bought 400 pounds of beans and after Y2K, asked how to cook them. The only use that I ever saw that they had planned, was for trading stock or the sheer joy of hoarding.
My Y2K stockpile of food was a real blessing in another way. Since I had the stocked up goods and was set for supplies for a while I took advantage of the opportunity in 2001. I had always wanted to teach but the pay was a lot lower than my profession. So, I took a teaching post at a small college and managed through the transition from high pay to low pay with my Y2K stuff. Was great fun!
A little bit about seeds.
If you have a choice, buy open pollinated seed - If you have hybrid seed, and TSHTF - save seeds anyway.
A bit about genetics - hybrid seeds are a cross between two parent plants. Plant A and Plant B - Not only do you have the qualities of both parents, but you get a boost from what is called hybrid vigor. If you save the seeds from your hybrids you would have AB and AB the plants that grow from that upon pollination can be AA AB BA or BB So, you would get 25% like parent A and 25% like parent B but you would still have 50% that would be similar to the hybrid AB or BA.
So, knowing this, understand that you can if really needed, save those seeds but understand that you just will have 3 different variations of the plant. Don’t throw them away if you don’t have a way of replacing them with open pollinated seeds.
A question: Last year, while weeding my burning bush, I found a tomato plant growing in the mulch. This was 50 or more yards from my garden - I guess a bird dropped the seed there. This became the most prolific tomato plant I have ever grown. In the last month alone, I got over 2 gallons of ripe, and 2 gallons of green tomatoes from it. They just grew on the ground, and the tomatoes had no pests, rot - perfectly healthy. I named it "Volunteer Tomato", and saved a bunch of seeds for this year. Is it safe to assume that since it grew from seed last year, that it will do so again, and grow similar tomatoes given similar conditions? I guess I'm really asking if these seeds can be assumed to be non-hybrid, open pollinated. I already know that it is indeterminate, due to size and length of production.