Long-term food and seed

Before

• Start with food your household already eats: rice, beans, oil, salt, canned goods, and flour if you can keep it dry. A store you will not eat is not a plan.
• Write dates and rotate. Eat the oldest first. The 90-day goal on this site is a step, not the end of a long disruption.
• Keep seed in a different container from the food. Open-pollinated seed can be planted again. Hybrid seed often will not grow true. Label the year.
• Store seed cool, dark, and dry. Do not eat the seed you need to plant the next season. Northeast Florida is zones 9a and 9b. The UF/IFAS vegetable pages say what belongs in the cool season and the warm season.
• Oil, salt, and a way to cook matter as much as calories. A garden feeds you later. The jars feed you first.
• If stores close, assume you will not restock on your schedule. Buy the gap while the shelf is still there.

During

• Measure portions. A long shortage is lost by eating the month’s food in a week.
• Plant only what the season on the IFAS page allows. Water is the limit. See the water-from-any-source guide.
• Share a meal with a neighbor if you choose to. Do not advertise how many sacks you have.

After

• Save seed from the plants that did well. Dry it before it goes back in the jar.
• Restock what you ate. Note what spoiled so you do not buy that again.

Checklist

• ☐Staples you already know how to cook
• ☐Dates on the food
• ☐Seed stored apart from food
• ☐Open-pollinated varieties labeled
• ☐IFAS season checked before planting
• ☐A rule that planting seed is not dinner

Sources

Official pages only. Open them for the full instructions.

• Ready.gov: Build a kit
• National Center for Home Food Preservation
• UF/IFAS Gardening Solutions: Vegetables
• UF/IFAS Extension: Vegetable gardening
• Florida Division of Emergency Management: Plan and prepare