Daily Survival

Saturday, June 20, 2026

The Best Fruit Trees And Bushes To Plant

Here are some ideas within certain states about the best fruit trees and bushes to plant. One of the most rewarding things you can do for your family and your food storage goals is to plant your own fruit trees and bushes. Once established, they provide a steady harvest year after year with very little ongoing cost, and there’s nothing quite like walking into your own backyard to pick fresh fruit for breakfast. Today I want to walk you through some of the best options for home growers, along with tips for choosing the right varieties for your climate and your space available.

The Best Fruit Trees And Bushes To Plant

Why Grow Your Own Fruit

Growing your own fruit means you control exactly what goes into the soil and onto the plant, which is wonderful for families who care about clean eating. It also means real savings over time, since a single mature tree or a row of berry bushes can produce far more fruit than most families can afford to buy in a season. Fruit trees and bushes also add to your overall food security. Even in years when grocery prices climb, a backyard orchard keeps fresh fruit on your table.

Best Fruit Trees To Plant

Apple trees are one of the easiest fruit trees for beginners. Apples are hardy, store well, and have varieties suited to nearly every climate zone. Look for disease-resistant varieties like Honeycrisp, Gala, or Liberty, and remember that most apple trees need a second variety nearby for proper pollination.

Cherry trees are wonderful for families in cooler climates with a true winter chill. Sour cherries like Montmorency are especially easy to grow and are perfect for pies, jams, and dehydrating. Sweet cherries need a bit more care, but they reward you with fruit that is delicious straight off the tree.

Peach and nectarine trees produce quickly, often within two to three years, and the fruit is wonderful fresh, canned, or dried. They do need a sunny, sheltered spot, since the blossoms can be sensitive to late-spring frosts.

Pear trees are low-maintenance and long-lived. Wide varieties store for weeks after harvest, which makes them a great choice if you want fruit that lasts into the cooler months without much processing.

Plum trees are compact, often more tolerant of poor soil than other fruit trees, and produce heavily once established. European plums are wonderful for drying into prunes, while Japanese plums are best enjoyed fresh.

Apricot trees do best in regions with cold winters but early, dry springs, since late frost can damage the early blossoms. When conditions are right, a single tree can produce an enormous harvest.

Best Fruit Bushes To Plant

Blueberry bushes are beautiful, productive, and packed with nutrition. They do need acidic soil, so plan to amend your planting area with peat moss or a soil acidifier if your native soil leans alkaline, which is common here in the Intermountain West.

Raspberry canes spread readily and produce two crops a year if you choose everbearing varieties. They’re one of the most forgiving fruits to grow and a favorite for children to pick straight from the bush.

Blackberry bushes are vigorous growers that produce heavily in midsummer. Thornless varieties make harvesting much easier, especially if you have young children helping in the garden.

Currant and gooseberry bushes are wonderful old-fashioned choices that thrive in cooler climates and partial shade, making them a great option for a spot in your yard that doesn’t get full sun.

Elderberry bushes have become increasingly popular for their immune-supporting properties. They grow quickly, tolerate a wide range of soil conditions, and the berries are excellent for syrups and home remedies.

Tips For Choosing The Right Varieties

Always check your hardiness zone before choosing a variety. Here in the Salt Lake Valley and much of Utah, we generally fall into zones 6 or 7, which works well for apples, cherries, pears, plums, raspberries, currants, and many apricot varieties, while peaches and blueberries need a bit more planning and soil preparation.

Pay attention to chill hours, which are the number of cold hours below a certain temperature a tree needs each winter to produce fruit properly. Choosing a variety suited to your chill hours will save you years of disappointment.

Plan for pollination. Many fruit trees, especially apples, pears, and sweet cherries, need a second compatible variety nearby to produce fruit. Always check pollination requirements before you plant.

Give your trees and bushes room to grow. It’s tempting to plant closely for a fuller look right away, but proper spacing keeps plants healthy and productive for decades.

Mulch generously and water consistently, especially during the first two years while the root system is establishing itself.

Growing Fruit In Hotter And More Southern Climates

I know many of my readers garden well outside the Intermountain West, so I wanted to add some guidance for those of you in places like Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Texas, since your growing conditions are quite different from ours here in Utah.

In Arizona and southern Nevada, summer heat and low chill hours are the biggest factors to plan around. Low-chill apple varieties such as Anna and Dorsett Golden perform far better than traditional apple varieties that need a long, cold winter. Peaches and nectarines also do well if you choose low-chill varieties bred specifically for desert climates. Pomegranate trees thrive in this heat and are among the easiest fruiting plants in the region. Figs are another excellent choice, tolerating both heat and drought once established. For bushes, look at desert-adapted grapevines and jujube, which handle extreme heat beautifully. Afternoon shade and deep, infrequent watering help any fruit tree survive the hottest stretches of summer in this region.

In northern Nevada, where winters are colder and closer to our own zone here in Utah, many of the same trees that do well in Utah, including apples, cherries, and pears, will also thrive.

In Oklahoma and Texas, growing conditions vary widely by region, but humidity and heat are usually the main challenges rather than cold. Peach trees are a favorite throughout much of Texas and Oklahoma, with varieties bred for southern heat and humidity producing especially well. Pecan trees are a wonderful long-term investment in this region and are practically a Texas tradition. Plum trees, particularly Japanese varieties, handle the heat well and produce reliably. Fig trees also do nicely throughout most of Texas and southern Oklahoma. For bushes, blackberries are outstanding throughout this region and often outproduce raspberries, which struggle more in southern heat and humidity. Muscadine grapes are another wonderful regional choice, especially in eastern Texas and Oklahoma, where humidity is higher.

No matter which of these states you call home, the same basic principles apply. Choose varieties bred for your specific chill hours and heat tolerance; give your trees afternoon shade if your summers are extreme; mulch well to protect roots from heat stress; and water deeply rather than frequently to encourage strong root systems.

Preserving Your Harvest

Once your trees and bushes start producing, you’ll want a plan for preserving the extra fruit. Canning, dehydrating, freezing, and making jams or fruit leather are all wonderful ways to enjoy your harvest throughout the year. A backyard orchard pairs well with a home food storage plan, giving your family fresh fruit in season and preserved fruit year-round.

Final Word

Planting fruit trees and bushes is one of the best long-term investments you can make for your family’s health, your grocery budget, your food security, and your efforts to beautify your yard. The work you put in now, choosing the right varieties, preparing your soil, and giving your plants room to thrive, will reward you with baskets of fresh fruit for many years to come. Start with one or two trees or a small row of berry bushes this season, and watch how quickly your little homestead grows. May God bless our world, Linda

The post The Best Fruit Trees And Bushes To Plant appeared first on Food Storage Moms.

from Food Storage Moms

How to Get Rid of Weevils in Your Flour

Dealing with bugs around your homestead is just a fact of life. Outside is one thing, inside is another, and inside the kitchen and on your food is something else entirely! Insects are creepy enough all on their own without infesting the things we eat. Sadly, one of the grossest food pests is also one ... Read more

How to Get Rid of Weevils in Your Flour can be read in full at New Life On A Homestead- Be sure to check it out!

from New Life On A Homestead

Friday, June 19, 2026

What Is a Prepper Group? Pros, Cons, and How to Find One

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The post What Is a Prepper Group? Pros, Cons, and How to Find One appeared first on The Survival Mom.

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10 Unusual Home Security Tips You Might Not Know

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Whether you’re an experienced home defense guru or a complete amateur, the best way to prepare against a burglary or home invasion is to prevent it from happening in the first place. But no matter how watchful you are, sometimes you have to sleep, and some thieves know how to get around the standard home security measures.

In case that happens, there are many unusual methods to protect your family and valuables–methods that don't involve moving out of your 3-bedroom house and into a fortified castle.

Here are 10 unusual home security tips you probably didn’t know.

1. Use Dowell Rods in Sliding Glass Door Tracks

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a home that doesn't feature an aesthetically pleasing sliding glass door. They provide a great view and allow natural light to flood the house.

However, they're not very secure. A well-prepared and knowledgeable burglar has ways of getting around the average sliding glass door. And if the door is improperly installed, they can easily lift it off the tracks, so be sure to check your sliding glass doors for baseline security.

The best way to secure a sliding glass door is to put a dowel rod or something similar on the tracks and lodge it between the door and the wall. If a burglar manages to unlock the sliding door, they still won't be able to slide it open if a dowel rod is in the way.

2. Move Your Alarm Keypad

Installing a home security system is a fantastic way to deter potential burglars, but it's not fool-proof. Most alarm pads are placed by common entrances, such as the front door or back door. This is done because it's convenient and because you're only allowed a brief amount of time before the alarm goes off and the authorities question you for living in your own home.

Because the front and back doors are such common places for a keypad, burglars know exactly where to look. An observant thief will scope out the place and watch the numbers you enter into the keypad. A would-be burglar can also glance through the window to see if you engaged the alarm system before leaving the house.

Be mindful of who might be able to view your keypad when you arm or disarm it, and move it somewhere out of sight. Or at least block the keypad when using it. Another option is to have multiple keypads, one by an entrance and one in the master bedroom in case of a suspected break-in when you need to act fast.

3. Use a Key Lock Box

Everybody knows someone who keeps their spare key in an extremely commonplace—under the mat, in the mailbox, under a potted plant, or in a fake rock, just to name a few. Don’t be that person. If you want to leave yourself a set of spare keys somewhere, install a key lockbox somewhere on your property–the kind realtors use.

Backup keys will be just a simple combination away, and only you will have access to them. Just like with your security system keypad, make sure nobody can see you enter the combination.

4. Use Mother Nature’s Help

Mother Nature has had eons of time to develop the perfect home defense system: thorns. Consider planting bushes, vines, or trees in areas you don’t want strangers access. For example, you could plant a thorny shrub underneath the windows of your bedrooms so no one can climb through them without getting torn up.

Some great examples of thorny bushes, vines, and trees are:

Many mesquite varieties
Honey Locust
Pyracantha (firethorn bush)
Climbing roses
Cats claw acacia
Oregon grape holly

5. Don’t Hide Valuables in the Master Bedroom

The master bedroom is one of the first places burglars look after entering a house. Master bedrooms are typically easy to access, which is part of the charm for burglars.

Take a quick inventory of what you keep in your master bedroom. Is there jewelry, electronics, cash, or credit cards? Anything of value that can easily be moved should be relocated to somewhere unexpected.

And what’s more unexpected than jewelry in the laundry room? Or an emergency fund stashed in your toddler’s bedroom? Few criminals would think to check for valuables in these places. Doing the unexpected can save you in the long run.

Avoid the more common hiding spots such as in CD or DVD cases, under mattresses, behind pictures, or in lightweight safes that can be easily be carried away. Some burglars might not give up until they find something valuable. In case of that, you could keep fake jewelry in a jewelry case by your bed. This would serve as a great decoy for any burglars.

Speaking of decoys…

6. Get a Decoy Safe

To start with, never store your valuables in a safe that is not high quality and hasn’t been bolted down. But if you really want to foil criminals, from clumsy robbers to Ocean’s-11-caliber operators, buy a small decoy safe to throw burglars off the scent as to where the real goods are.

Because burglars want to get in and out as fast as possible, they'll be much more likely to run off with a decoy safe full of fake valuables and discontinue their search. Be sure to put the decoy safe somewhere easy to find and the real safe somewhere very difficult to find.

7. Keep Your Car Keys With You

Keep your keys on you during the day and by your bed while you sleep. Most car key fobs have a panic button nowadays. If you hear or see a burglar trying to get into your house, press the panic button. The last thing a burglar wants is to rob a noisy house that draws unwanted attention.

Better yet, also keep a garage door opener nearby. If you open the garage, it will make it easier for the neighbors to hear your car alarm. Just make sure the door leading into the house is locked.

Note: This only works in neighborhoods where the houses are very close together.

8. Install Fake Security Cameras

Real security cameras can be a bit pricey, but luckily, fake ones can be just as effective as a deterrent. Many burglars scope out a house before deciding to target it, and seeing cameras—whether they're real or not—can cause them to second guess their decision.

Install these faux security cameras around your property, especially at points of entry. To add another layer of authenticity, get fake cameras with blinking red lights. But remember, this is a deterrent, not a replacement for a real security system.

9. Utilize the Element of Sound

Sound can be a powerful ally in home security. Consider installing gravel or pebbles on your walkways or beneath your windows. The noise produced when someone walks over them can alert you or your neighbors to unwanted visitors. Similarly, wind chimes by the entrances or windows can add a touch of beauty to your home while serving as an unexpected intruder alarm.

10. Use Privacy Film on Windows

While windows are great for letting in light and viewing the world outside, they also provide potential burglars with an easy way to see inside your house. To remedy this, consider installing privacy film on your windows.

Privacy film lets in light, but distorts the view from the outside, making it difficult for anyone to see what's inside. You can find many aesthetically pleasing designs that add both security and style to your home.

Originally published on Urban Survival Site.

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The post 10 Unusual Home Security Tips You Might Not Know appeared first on Homestead Survival Site.

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What to Do When Hospitals Are Overwhelmed or Unreachable

Emergencies rarely announce themselves with enough warning to let you plan. A major earthquake, a prolonged grid-down event, a pandemic surge, or a widespread infrastructure failure can make hospitals inaccessible within hours. Roads wash out. Fuel runs dry. Staff cannot get to work. Facilities fill beyond capacity. When any of these scenarios unfolds, the burden of basic medical care shifts from trained professionals to whoever happens to be present, which in most cases means you.

This guide is not a replacement for formal medical training. It is a hard look at the practical steps every prepared household should take now, before a crisis, so that you are not making life-or-death decisions from a starting point of zero. Knowing what to do when the ER is not an option could be the difference between a manageable situation and a tragedy.

Understand Why Hospitals Fail During Disasters

Hospitals are designed to handle elevated demand, but they have hard limits. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, mass casualty events can overwhelm even well-resourced facilities within minutes, forcing triage protocols that redirect all but the most critical cases away from the building. In lower-scale but prolonged emergencies such as extended power outages, supply chain disruptions, or regional flooding, the problem compounds over days rather than hours.

The vulnerabilities are predictable:

Generator fuel typically runs out within 72 to 96 hours without resupply
Blood supplies and sterile consumables deplete rapidly during surges
Staff are also affected by the disaster and may not be able to report to work
Communication systems often fail alongside electrical infrastructure
Evacuation routes may be impassable, stranding patients and blocking incoming help

Understanding these failure points is not pessimism. It is the foundation of realistic preparedness. If you know a hospital may be unavailable for days or longer, you can plan your medical supplies, training, and protocols accordingly.

Build a Serious Home Medical Kit

Most households keep a first aid kit stocked for minor cuts and headaches. That is not what we are talking about here. A preparedness-grade medical kit is designed to handle the kinds of injuries and conditions that become life-threatening when professional care is delayed. Building one requires intentional choices, not just grabbing the largest box off the pharmacy shelf.

Core supplies to prioritize:

Tourniquets (CAT or SOFTT-W, at least two)
Hemostatic gauze such as QuikClot or Combat Gauze for wound packing
Chest seals (both vented and non-vented) for penetrating torso injuries
Israeli bandages and elastic bandage rolls
SAM splints in multiple sizes
Airway adjuncts including nasopharyngeal airways
Oral rehydration salts for dehydration management
A blood pressure cuff and stethoscope
Nitrile gloves, eye protection, and a CPR face shield
A comprehensive medication supply covering pain management, infection, and chronic conditions

Where you store this kit matters as much as what is in it. It should be accessible in under sixty seconds, clearly labeled, and known to every adult in the household. A kit in a locked cabinet that only one person knows how to open is a kit that will fail you at the worst possible moment.

Get Trained Before You Need to Be

Equipment without skill is almost useless. A tourniquet in the hands of someone who has never practiced applying one correctly can make an injury worse. The same applies to wound packing, CPR, and airway management. Training is the force multiplier that makes every item in your kit actually functional.

Courses worth pursuing:

Stop the Bleed (free, widely available, covers hemorrhage control basics)
CPR and AED certification through the American Heart Association or Red Cross
CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) training through your local FEMA office
Wilderness First Responder or Wilderness First Aid for those who spend time in remote areas
A full Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) course for the most serious preppers

Skills degrade over time. Schedule refresher training at least every two years and practice hands-on scenarios at home, not just mental walkthroughs. Run your household through a scenario where you simulate an injured person and walk through the response steps together. Awkward rehearsal is always better than first-time performance under pressure.

Know Your Household’s Medical History Cold

In a normal world, your doctor has your records and your pharmacy has your prescription history. In a crisis, those systems may be offline or physically unreachable. If a first responder, field medic, or neighbor with medical training asks what medications someone in your household is taking, you need to be able to answer without hesitation, in full, without looking anything up.

Every person in your household should have a one-page medical summary that includes:

Current medications with dosages and schedules
Known allergies including drug and environmental
Chronic conditions with a brief description of management protocols
Blood type
Vaccination history
Recent surgical history
Primary care physician and specialist contact information

This is where a working knowledge of EHR (Electronic Health Record) software becomes genuinely useful for preparedness planning, even though most people never think about it from that angle. EHR for solo practitioner is what your doctor uses to track your health history digitally. Most of these systems now include patient-facing portals that allow you to log in, view your complete records, and export them as PDF summaries. Before a crisis hits, access your portal and download a full copy of your medical history. Print it and store it in a waterproof sleeve inside your kit. If you have family members who use different health systems, repeat the process for each one. The EHR exists only when the internet and power do. Your printed copy exists when nothing else does.

Manage Chronic Conditions in a Grid-Down Scenario

Acute trauma gets most of the attention in prepper medical content, but chronic conditions are statistically the bigger threat during prolonged emergencies. Diabetes, hypertension, asthma, seizure disorders, and heart disease all require ongoing management. When supply chains break and pharmacies close, managing these conditions with limited resources becomes a specialized skill.

Preparation steps for chronic condition management:

Work with your physician now to build a 90-day supply of critical medications through insurance provisions or disaster preparedness programs
Understand the symptoms of your condition worsening and what interventions to apply
Learn which over-the-counter or alternative measures can bridge short gaps in medication access
If insulin-dependent, know the storage requirements and degradation timeline of your insulin type
For asthma, ensure you have both a rescue inhaler and a controller inhaler fully stocked

This is also where your printed medical records become critical again. If you end up in the care of a volunteer medic, a field hospital, or even a neighbor with nursing training, handing them a complete summary of your condition shortens the assessment window significantly and reduces the risk of treatment errors.

Establish a Neighborhood Medical Network

Solo preparedness has hard limits. A neighborhood where three or four households have coordinated their medical resources and training is dramatically more resilient than the same households each preparing individually. Collective preparation allows for role specialization, resource pooling, and mutual support that no single household can replicate alone.

Steps to build a local medical network:

Identify neighbors with medical or first responder backgrounds
Create a shared inventory of significant medical supplies without requiring anyone to disclose sensitive personal information
Designate a central triage location that is accessible and known to all participants
Agree on communication protocols for alerting the group to a medical emergency
Run periodic group training sessions, even simple ones like practicing tourniquet application together

The goal is not to build a field hospital. The goal is to ensure that when something serious happens, the people closest to you know what they have, who has skills, and what to do in the first critical minutes.

When You Have to Move the Injured

Improvised evacuation is one of the highest-risk activities in a disaster medical scenario. Moving an injured person incorrectly can worsen spinal injuries, accelerate blood loss, or send someone into shock. At the same time, staying in place is sometimes not an option, whether due to fire, structural collapse, flooding, or the need to reach a care location.

Core principles for moving an injured person:

Do not move anyone with a suspected spinal injury unless the environment itself is an immediate threat to life
Use a drag carry for short distances when you must move someone alone
Improvise a litter from a tarp, sleeping bag, or two poles run through jacket sleeves for longer moves
Keep the patient as level as possible and monitor their airway continuously during movement
Communicate clearly with the patient if they are conscious; tell them what you are doing and why

If you are moving someone to a car, know the nearest urgent care facility, community shelter with medical staff, or National Guard aid station before you leave. Have a printed map. Do not assume GPS or cell service will be available.

Mental and Emotional Preparedness Is Medical Preparedness

Acute stress degrades decision-making. Fine motor skills deteriorate under adrenaline. People freeze. These are not character flaws, they are documented physiological responses to extreme situations. The best way to counter them is prior conditioning through realistic training and honest mental preparation.

If you have never seen a serious wound, the first time you encounter one in a real emergency is the worst possible moment for your first experience. Consider:

Volunteering with a local EMS agency to observe real-world calls
Taking a Stop the Bleed instructor course so you teach others, which deepens your own competency
Practicing scenarios under mild artificial stress such as a timer or a darkened room to simulate pressure
Talking openly with your household about what to do in a medical emergency before one happens

Calm, practiced action saves lives. Panic costs them. The emotional work of preparation is just as legitimate as buying the right tourniquet.

Final Thoughts

Hospitals are extraordinary resources when they are available. The problem is that disasters do not schedule themselves around hospital capacity. Building your own medical preparedness is not about distrusting the healthcare system. It is about recognizing that the system has physical and logistical limits, and that the gap between a crisis and the arrival of professional help is a gap you may have to fill yourself.

Start with training. Add equipment. Document your household’s medical history. Connect with your neighbors. None of these steps require a large budget or a medical degree. They require the same thing all good preparedness requires: the willingness to act before the emergency, not during it.

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