Planning my 2025 garden with tariffs and deportations in mind?

[NickB79]

I was just freezing the last of my sweet peppers, and started to think how Trump's tariffs and immigration deportations would affect what's on store shelves next year. If he does everything he promised to do, a lot of fresh produce will be hard to find or expensive a year from now. I'm in Minnesota, so if I want vegetables for half the year, they're either imported, canned or frozen.

So, I'm going through my typical crops with that in mind. I already grow 1000 sq ft of garden, but I can easily double or triple that. I can can a lot more produce. I can grow a lot more peppers and freeze them. I have a dehydrator I rarely use, but I might fire that up a lot more. Squash vines can be planted between my apples, pears, peaches and plums, freeing up garden space. Hell, winter squash can be planted everywhere in my yard, and what we can't eat, the chickens will devour all winter.

The state land near me is filled with wild grapes I can make jelly out of just like Grandma did. It also has huge patches of puffball mushrooms that are edible when young. It's too crowded to hunt there during shotgun deer season, but archery season is long and less pressure. Crossbows are legal, aren't expensive anymore, and easier to shoot than bows. And Minnesota allows both spring and fall turkey season. I haven't shot anything bigger than rabbits in the past 5 yr, but might take it up again.

Anyone else making similar plans, or is my doomsday prepper mentality spiralling out of control again? What vegetables are you prioritizing?

[Ocelot II]

1. My yard (also in MN) is too shady to grow vegetables,

so I might have to resort to a CSA. Unfortunately I hate most of the root vegetables and cabbage-family they include in their packages, but I might have to learn to like turnips, kale and Brussels sprouts.

[DBoon]

2. 60 percent or more US seafood is imported

https://sustainablefisheries-uw.org/how-much-seafood-is-imported/

Maybe time to consider "trashcan tilapia"

https://backyardtilapia.com/Backyard_Tilapia_Farming.php

[MiHale]

3. Doing the same...

Took the last couple years and tried new techniques for growing the veggies. Most important thing in my book is soil remediation after harvest. Fertilizer may become more expensive it’s already one of the leading expenses.
Comfrey is a great solution, its NPK is good…N 1.80. P 0.05 K 7.09. That’s for russian comfrey which doesn’t spread like regular comfrey.

We start our seeds in grow tents in our garage which we ‘converted’ into our first floor basement. We’ve moved some of the garden inside the house. We’re going to try to grow lettuce and tomatoes inside under a grow light with exposure to southern exposure. Then we start our peppers, cabbage, tomatoes in the grow tents for establishing ‘starts’ for the bale garden, greenhouse and the raised beds.

Then it’s the medicinal foraging that’s going to be important. Around me we have Prunella Vulgaris growing profusely, it’s a kinda wonder herb.

https://www.medicinenet.com/what_is_prunella_vulgaris_used_for/article.htm

Red Clover, Meadowsweet, Red Raspberry leaves, Bee Balm, Dandelion, Plantain, are all medicinal herbs we use to ward off sickness and boost our immunities. We got all the vaccines and along with our medicinals we haven’t been sick for years.

[hunter]

4. Don't worry, a diet that's 90% corn is good for you. Trump's government says so!

And I hear there's a new product that will soon be at the markets, something called Soylent Green...



The prophesized world of 2022 comes just a little late.

I suspect Trump will be hands-off with regards to California produce, which is where I live and the primary business of my community. Most of my neighbors are immigrants or their parents were.

Much of the nation is going to take a big hit in food prices and availability. Those off-season and frozen blueberries that now come from Peru, for example, are going to end up in China instead.

My great grandmothers canned, pickled, or dried every kind of food. So does my wife's dad. Their gardens were mostly planted with that in mind.

My favorite food preservation machine is my dehydrator. That's not really "green" however and electricity here is expensive, especially in the hours between 4 and 9 PM when solar cuts out and demand is still high. I haven't yet experimented with adding some kind of thermal mass to my dehydrator stack and running it on a timer.

Hunting and fishing are not skills I passed onto my children. In any extended crisis our wild places are going to be flooded with armed idiots who think they can live off the land like their ancestors did.