I’d be doing both (except for not having a basement), especially if the disaster I was planning for was an unknown period of reduced food availability which could easily last years.
Canned food can only run out, produce keeps producing.
Unless, in addition to knowing how to garden, you also know how to can.
Yeah. Preparing for a possible blizzard in February is one thing; starting a garden at that point will do you no good whatsoever.
Preparing for possible long-term disruptions to the food supply system is something else altogether.
Though I will note that some of what I eat while comfortably snowed in will be my previous summer’s produce, put up for the winter.
Yes, canned food runs out. You have to keep a decent supply on hand, and eat it periodically so you can replace it with new stock. So better hope that any long disaster takes place during the harvest, except you may not have the electricity or gas needed to can the food.
Other than for fruits and pickles, you’re going to need a pressure canner. Also, the canned food I’d want on hand would never be canned carrots, green beans or peas, it would be baked beans, stew, things that are filling and protein-based.
There are unusual potato varieties you can’t find at supermarkets, but there’s more than standard Idaho white ones. I doubt the Yukon Gold our Kroger sells are noticeably inferior to home-grown Yukon Gold.
I used to grow brussels sprouts. The store-bought ones, if prepared properly, taste as good as what I grew.
Are homegrown turnips and rutabaga superior to store kinds? 
Yes, my grandmother and her sisters came from farms in AR, and moved to St Louis, but carried their knowledge of growing food with them, as well as a tolerance to the hard labor of picking crops (all of them had picked cotton and other things in their home town). Also, they were experts at canning. I recall my grandmother mentioning an orchard near their home in North St Louis County (very very rural at that time), and she could pick the peaches and can them, it was part of the benefits of my grandpa’s job (who ran greenhouses that supplied many of the flowers to St Louis florists at that time). That generation never turned down food opportunities, since many of them lived a type of austere life in the Depression.
No, but you can grow varieties that you typically don’t see even in specialty stores.
We grow these Tokinashi turnips, and they’re really good; sort of like what I imagine a baby turnip would be like, versus the usual big purple & white ones.
I can’t speak to turnips, but the rutabagas I’ve grown are much more tender and less woody or fibrous than the weeks old ones you get at the store that are preserved in food grade wax. Home grown ones, however, are smaller than the commercially grown variety.
Michelle Obama promoted vegetable gardens.
The same article mentions both Jill Biden and Melania Trump (during the first administration) keeping up Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden, and it still exists in some form. It’s surprising it hasn’t been turned into a putting green by now.
Of course, having a White House vegetable garden for show and culinary purposes is a minimal form of promotion of home vegetable gardening.
Incidentally, I just ate our first home-grown tomato of the season. Picked at full ripeness, beautiful to see, with scant flavor (the variety is “Cluster Goliath”). Hopefully, the other varieties we’re growing this year will taste better.
People who had worked in factories for 4 generations had no such knowledge.
The necessity is to do all of the above. A little here and a little there is what will keep you healthy. A good supply of rice and beans will go a long way, but if you can’t also get some garlic and onions and tomatoes you are going to be miserable.
Tomatoes I could preserve, but I’m not growing onions and garlic when I can get a supply of more than I can use all season long at the store for a few bucks.
That’s just fighting the hypothetical.
Probably both parents didn’t work in factories. And even factory workers have hobbies. My grandfather worked in the steel mill, and he had a big backyard garden.
Regarding not planning a garden in February during a blizzard was an interesting take on the subject; I thought that is when EVERY one planned the garden, for the hope of some thing good to eat after all the snows and slushes are gone, after the puddles have dried and the ground is firm enough you can turn the ground over. Most home gardeners in cold states know that is the time to top dress their soil, with steer manure, for the weeks ahead when you plant seeds in the now fully prepared soil. I was probably 11 when I did that in Northern Illinois, ordering seeds by mail (yes, me) knowing the ground had to be ready for the seeds and the soil all together. I knew that, back then and as a Navy brat I was not raised on a farm by farmers (my city born and bred mom called me and my brothers Peasants but I was proud of that). February here in Southern California is much the same, only we actually can put stuff in the soil that same month instead of merely waiting for seeds to be sent in the mail and turning the soil over. Out here we don’t leave the soil fallow for long, it is in use for summer crops, fall crops, winter crops and spring crops, each planted in a separate small plot. The goal is not to feed the entire family on what is growing in there but to enhance what is going on the dinner table. When I lived in cold climates we rejoiced in the tullips peeping out of the snow, knowing that there was nothing else that was going to grow for months. In Illinois, after we picked the pumpkins I grew at age 11, we put them in the basement to store (the only house I lived in that had a basement, we don’t have them in earthquake prone Californnia) knowing that that was going to be pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the seeds to munch on while watching tv, and content to let the garden take a winter rest. Out in California the soils have to be replenished as there is no long time frame between crops, the are in constant production, planning, again, knowing how many days for growing the peas planted on New Years Day will be picked in March, and the vines dug under in May to plant other crops on top of that can use the nitrogen (like vining crops). Planning a big deal with gardening, everything has a time it is best by and many things will produce beyond that but you need space for the next crop in that space. That is why square foot gardens are successful, it doesn’t take much space per plant and you know what you have going in there.. If you don’t plan you are more likely to fail. Plant tall crops at the edges of the garden. In cold climate areas you want them to not shade the other parts of the garden, in a. hot climate such as mine you plant for them to give shade for the pepper plants, tomatoes and such. Seed packets that recommend full sun do NOT reckon on 100-119 days and hot evenings with no rain. Gardening is peaceful to many because it connects us to the ancients who came before us with the same hopes for a productive crop and successful storage. I think all that is taken into account in the victory gardens, V for Victory, yes, but also a sense of victory over any impending food crisis, war or not. …another quote here:: from another poster, earlier this month. Michelle Obama promoted vegetable gardens… Yes, and I was glad to see her doing that and I am amazed people did not seem to remember it. That garden was shown weekly on the various major news networks, showing what was planted when it was harvested, what they ate, and some of the white house chefs preparing food from it. I looked forward to those updates. I think they wanted to show that no matter where. you are, what kind of foods you allowed yourself to eat, there was a way to make it happen… sorry for the long discourse.
That’s when you plan it, yes. That’s not when you plant it.
What I meant by “starting” in that post was planting. Sorry if that was confusing.
No. Do not spread manure on frozen soil. You need to be able to work manure in soon after planting, or the nitrogen will volatize into the air. Also, if there are heavy spring rains before the soil’s workable in spring, the manure may wash off, creating a pollution problem downhill instead of fertilizing your ground.
I don’t know much about growing in California but the rest of your post makes sense to me.
And even if you do do prep work for your garden in February, or even plant some things, that still isn’t going to help you get through that blizzard. But the garden you planted last year just might.